Jury Weighs Whether "Darn Good Mother" Lindsay Clancy Is Criminally Liable For Murdering Her 3 Kids

Jury deliberations in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial started on Aug. 27 after five weeks of testimony.

Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, is accused of killing her three young children while her now-ex-husband was running errands in January 2023.

The 36-year-old mother faces three counts of first-degree murder, one for each child: Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan.

Judge William Sullivan gave the jury the option to instead consider second-degree murder or manslaughter.

Only a few hours of deliberations happened before Sullivan ordered a recess until 9 a.m. on Friday at the Plymouth Superior Court in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

No verdict was reached on Thursday.

In his closing argument on Aug. 27, Jacki Thrapp reports for The Epoch Times, that defense attorney Kevin Reddington urged jurors to find Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity, alleging that “her mind was gone” during the killings and said she was in the throes of postpartum psychosis.

“This young lady is not guilty of the killing of her children because she was suffering from a disease and defect, as his honor instructed you,” Reddington told jurors in closing arguments.

“And they’re not going to be able to prove otherwise.”

Additionally, Reddington describved the accused murderer by saying: "This young lady did nothing wrong in her life. She was… a darn good mother."

Lindsay Clancy’s defense attorney:

“This young lady did nothing wrong in her life. She was… a darn good mother.” pic.twitter.com/mL03GAuHlg

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) August 27, 2026

Clancy admitted to strangling her kids with exercise bands in the basement of their home in a coastal Boston suburb, slicing her wrists and neck with a knife, and jumping out of a window in a failed suicide attempt, which left her paralyzed.

Her now-ex-husband, Patrick, said that months before the incident, the mother told him she was having thoughts of suicide and harming their kids.

Clancy was also prescribed medications and checked into a psychiatric hospital ahead of the incident.

Her then-husband testified that Clancy had a “normal” demeanor when he left to run errands that day.

When he returned, he found his injured wife, who informed him that the kids were in the basement.

Clancy detailed what happened in a call with him a week after the incident, he said.

“She heard a man’s voice telling her that if she didn’t do ​it now, she would lose her chance or something like that,” he testified.

Prosecutors acknowledged that Clancy suffered from mental health issues but said she carried out the killings while knowing it was wrong.

“This case is not about our mental health system or how it treats women,” Assistant ​District Attorney Jennifer Sprague told jurors.

“That’s a distraction to get you angry and passionate about an important issue, but an issue that’s not on trial here.”

Clancy faces life in prison with no possibility of parole if she is convicted on any of the first-degree murder charges she faces.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 22:10

States Race To Cut Food Stamp Errors Before Penalties Kick In

Authored by Sylvia Xu via The Epoch Times,

States are racing to reduce faulty payments to food stamp recipients, in a bid to avoid penalties included in the signature budget bill passed by Republicans last year.

Starting in October 2027, states with payment error rates of 6 percent or higher must cover 5, 10, or 15 percent of SNAP benefit costs, depending on the payment error rate.

Even though the deadline is more than a year out, enrollment in the program has dropped by more than 5 million recipients as a result of the stricter rules, according to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.

Forty-one states and the District of Columbia made improper payments of more than 6 percent in 2025, according to the Department of Agriculture. Nearly half of states will have to pay more than $100 million in penalties, according to publicly available federal data.

Just nine states fell below the 6 percent error threshold in the 2025 fiscal year: Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Nebraska, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Four states are considering dropping the food stamp program entirely as a result of the new rules, according to a survey by the American Public Human Services Association.

California, New York, and Florida would be responsible for more than $1 billion in SNAP costs if they failed to reduce their rates of erroneous payments. Texas would owe around $750 million.

For several states, however, a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill delays the cost-sharing requirement for an additional two years. Nicknamed "the Alaska Carveout," the provision allows states with improper payment rates of 13.34 percent or higher in fiscal 2025 to put off the cost-sharing requirement until fiscal 2029.

Similarly, states exceeding that threshold in fiscal 2026 can put off cost-sharing until fiscal 2030.

In addition to next year's deadline, beginning this October, states will bear 75 percent of the costs to administer the food stamp program.That's up from the 50 percent share paid by states since the program was started in 1964.

The tighter rules address a "financing mismatch" in the food stamp program, according to the Cato Institute, a policy research organization. For decades, states have processed SNAP applications and distributed benefits, while financial consequences have fallen overwhelmingly on federal taxpayers. That gives states little incentive to control waste and prevent fraud.

SNAP payment errors totaled more than $10 billion in 2025. More than 87 percent of that amount was due to overpayments.

A sign indicates that a store accepts SNAP benefits in Miami on April 21, 2026. Joe Raedle/Getty Images 'Significant Waste'

SNAP is a federally funded program, administered by the states, that provides food benefits to low-income families. In 2025, federal taxpayers spent about $103 billion on SNAP benefits and nearly $7 billion in administrative fees.

With an overall error rate of 10.6 percent, nearly one in nine food stamp allotments went to an ineligible recipient or was paid in the wrong amount.

State agencies made improper payments mainly because they did not verify recipients' eligibility criteria, such as citizenship, employment, finances, identity, residency, and household size, before making a payment, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Although the 2025 error rate decreased slightly from previous years, it still showed "significant waste" at the state level, according to a June statement from the Department of Agriculture.

Errors can stem from either state agencies or recipients. While state agencies can make mistakes when updating recipient information or processing payments, recipients may also forget to report income changes or additional family members.

Those are "honest mistakes" rather than intentional fraud, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said in a July report. Even so, the errors prove that "state accountability is severely lacking in SNAP," Rollins said in a June statement.

People line up to receive free food during a Thanksgiving food giveaway at Shiloh Mercy House in Oakland, Calif., on Nov. 24, 2025. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

After the One Big Beautiful Bill Act took effect in July 2025, participation in the food stamp program dropped 12 percent-more than 5 million-to 37 million this April, according to Department of Agriculture data released in July.

Rollins attributed the decline to the administration's crackdown on fraud and ineligible recipients.

The downward trend may continue, as 11 states reported that they may narrow eligibility policies when costs change.

State Response

Error rates might not reflect the true picture of how a state distributes money, historical reports suggest.

A 2015 audit by the Office of Inspector General found that states hired outside consultants and error review committees to mitigate individual errors identified by quality control, rather than addressing the root causes of eligibility inaccuracies.

And in 2014, the Department of Agriculture could not validate state-reported error rates in 42 of 53 state agencies because of date-quality issues.

Nonetheless, a July survey of 39 states from the American Public Human Services Association found that agencies across the country are "working incredibly hard" to reduce error rates by addressing root causes.

States reported that they will invest in workforce training, root-cause analysis, and technology upgrades to improve payment accuracy.

Virginia, which would face 15 percent cost-sharing based on its 2025 errors, has stopped self-attestation of eligibility since the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed.

It previously allowed applicants to self-report expenses and incomes.

President Donald Trump shows his signature on the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” at the White House on July 4, 2025. Since the bill took effect, participation in the food stamp program dropped 12 percent, according to Department of Agriculture data released in July. Brendan Smialowski/Pool/ AFP via Getty Images

Louisiana is offering a $1,500 bonus to staff who maintain an error rate of 4 percent or lower.

The agency is also automating checks on household income to reduce unintentional errors, which account for 62 percent of the state's inaccuracies, according to the think tank Invest in Louisiana.

Mississippi is updating its 35-year-old eligibility systems to ensure program integrity, according to the Mississippi Department of Human Services.

Minnesota is investing millions of dollars to modernize decades-old technology used to administer state programs, according to the Minnesota House of Representatives.

Each change suggests that new financial accountability rules are making a difference, according to the American Enterprise Institute.

Workers and volunteers help distribute food boxes at a drive-through food distribution facility, in response to a federal government shutdown and SNAP/CalFresh food benefits delays, in City of Industry, Calif., on Nov. 5, 2025. Mario Tama/Getty Images

The American Public Human Services Association survey reported trade-offs for increased accuracy, including timeliness of benefit payments and a delay in EBT chip card implementation.

And four states indicated that they may drop out of SNAP altogether or pause participation in the program as a result of the cost-sharing provisions. The survey report did not disclose which states are considering dropping out of the program.

The American Public Human Services Association did not respond to a request for comment.

The 'Alaska Carveout'

Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, states with error rates at 13.34 percent or higher will secure a two-year delay in cost sharing. The "Alaska Carveout" provision was negotiated and secured by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) prior to voting on the budget bill.

In a July 2025 letter to Alaskans, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said the state had worked hard to include delayed cost-sharing in the act because it had the highest payment error rate in the country.

The provision currently affects six states and the District of Columbia. Those include Alaska, New Mexico, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, and Oregon.

But the exemption may precipitate a reverse effect by rewarding the worst-performing states while penalizing those working to reduce their error rates, according to a July report from the Cato Institute.

To delay penalties, states could slow efforts in correcting errors and keep improper payment rates elevated, according to the think tank.

Data Sharing

In an effort to overhaul fraud, waste, and abuse in government programs, the Trump administration is pushing to codify data sharing between states and the federal government.

"We need to know where your tax dollars are going, and if the state of California and the state of New York aren't going to tell us, we need Congress to force them to tell us," Vice President JD Vance told a fraud task force roundtable on Aug. 5.

Technological verification and data-sharing measures can solve the majority of integrity problems in government programs, said Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy.

Read the rest here...

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 21:45

Mayor Of Indiana City Claims Race Discrimination After Delayed Utility Repairs

If a group's entire world view is built on the notion that they are perpetual victims because of their race, every time something bad happens to them they are going to go looking for racism as the scapegoat.  In other words, they are going to see "racism" under every rock and behind every tree.  They will even see racism in a power outage. 

When it come to the black community in the US, though, most of the bad things that happen in their neighborhoods are directly caused by their own behavior. 

In mid-August a powerful windstorm hit northwest Indiana. Gusts reached around 99 mph in Gary, comparable to a Category 2 hurricane.  The violent weather toppled trees onto lines, snapped hundreds of poles, and damaged transmission structures and substations.

The repairs have been difficult and slow moving.  This week NIPSCO (the Northern Indiana Public Service Company) reported that 99% of customers in the region had their power back, however, Gary Mayor Eddie Melton (Democrat and mayor since 2024) took to the left-wing media to make political hay out of the incident.

In an interview with far-left activist "journalist" Don Lemon, the mayor answered in the affirmative when asked if he thought the large black population of Gary was the reason the utility companies were slow to finish repairs, suggesting that there was a racial element to the city's longer wait time.    

After a heavy storm in Gary, Indiana, the mayor went on the Don Lemon show and implied that the power was off for 13 days because of racism because Gary is a predominantly black city.

But, the electric company, NIPSCO, claimed that they were being shot at while they were trying… pic.twitter.com/ZfPUpU84VD

— John K. Amanchukwu Sr. (@REVWUTRUTH) August 26, 2026

Other media outlets also asserted that Gary was being singled out for slower repairs because of the community's 75% - 80% black population; comparing the event to the disastrous FEMA response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.  Indiana Governor Mike Braun (a Republican) has called for an investigation into the two week power outages in some areas of the state, though he has not supported any arguments of racial discrimination.  

The delays in Gary can be easily explained by simply asking NIPSCO and checking with local police:  The company had to hold off on repairs and find extra security for their line workers after scouts identifying damages were shot at in a predominantly black neighborhood. At least one NIPSCO vehicle was hit multiple times by gunfire and the workers pulled out of the area. 

Police were called to the scene but never found the shooters. This news was widely reported, yet the Gary Mayor and the left-wing media have apparently ignored it.

As a result of the attack, the city had to coordinate with city police, Indiana State Police, and state officials to ensure crews were protected during the restoration process. The city added that ISP sent additional troopers to assist local forces.  This takes time and adds extensive delays.

In other words, the violence inherent in black neighborhoods led to their own suffering.  The inability to behave, even during a grid-down crisis, made it impossible for work crews to do their jobs. 

The opportunism of activist politicians looking for racial victim-points is a dying business.  Americans have had enough of race hysteria, BLM and the eternal quest for minority handouts and pity.  Mayor Eddie Melton and agitators like Don Lemon will likely be dragged by the public for their behavior here. 

That said, the crisis represents yet another example of leftist activists deliberately jumping to conclusions.  They are so desperate to make the public believe "systemic racism" is real that they are willing to agitate and exaggerate for the sake of narrative.  Eventually, they will end up creating the very anti-minority sentiment that they claim to be fighting against.  Keep accusing people of racism after they tried to help you, and they will stop helping you.            

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 21:20

Trump's Energy Policy Could Cost US 540 GW Of Renewables, Says NRDC

By Diana DiGangi of UtilityDive

Aspects of the Trump administration’s energy policy - such as the rollback of Inflation Reduction Act tax credits, the introduction of new tariffs and offshore wind lease buybacks - could cause the U.S to lose between 390 GW and 540 GW of new wind, solar and energy storage capacity over the next decade, according to projections from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“Crucially, these lost projects are not actually replaced with other sources of new power,” the NRDC said in a Wednesday report. “At most, only 9 GW of additional gas capacity is added with Trump’s policies in place.”

The report cited near-term supply chain bottlenecks for gas turbines, volatile fuel prices, “and the general cost-competitiveness of new renewables relative to gas” as reasons for the NRDC’s low estimate for new additional gas investment. 

An August report from Global Energy Monitor counts 189 GW of gas-fired capacity currently in the announced, pre-construction, and construction phases in the U.S., a number which “nearly doubled” in the first half of the year, “but uncertainty persists about how and when this capacity gets built.”

“Two-thirds of gas-fired capacity in development globally, and more than half of projects tied to data centers, do not have a named turbine/engine manufacturer,” Global Energy Monitor said. “Nearly one-quarter of projects earmarked for data centers do not have a named start year. Turbine supply constraints, financing uncertainty, local data center moratoriums, and mounting public opposition leave the true scale of the gas power buildout uncertain.”

Amanda Levin, NRDC’s director of policy analysis, said during a Tuesday press call that the group’s modeling still anticipates “significant growth in renewables under this administration. But we don’t go nearly as far, and we lose more than half of everything that we expected to be able to build with the combination of market forces and proactive policy.”

Both Levin and the Global Energy Monitor report noted that due to order backlogs for gas turbines for combined-cycle plants, developers who need to bring firm power online quickly are turning to alternatives like simple-cycle or reciprocating engine plants, which “are less efficient than combined-cycle plants and carry higher emissions per unit of electricity generated,” Global Energy Monitor said.

Levin said this trend supports the NRDC’s position that the Environmental Protection Agency’s gas power plant emissions rule should not be repealed, though the Trump administration has announced its intention to do so.

The trend “highlights actually the value of these types of standards … which is that the market is not acting in a perfectly rational economic way,” she said. “These types of regulations could prevent this type of highly polluting type of power generation by requiring us to think about how we are building out this gas that we’re trying to build over the next few years to meet this growing load.”

The NRDC’s report also forecast an increase in power costs due to a need to “rely more heavily on the existing, higher-cost legacy fossil fuel system” in absence of new renewables generation. The power sector will spend $5 billion to $15 billion more on fossil fuels, the NRDC said, while claiming $45 billion less in IRA tax incentives, relative to the group’s January 2025 Snapshot case.

“By 2035, average household electricity rates are projected to increase by an additional 4.2% to 5.5% nationwide, relative to the January 2025 Snapshot case,” the NRDC’s report said.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 20:55

Moscow Warns It Could Target British Military Facilities In Unprecedented Statement

From the very start of the Ukraine war, the United Kingdom has consistently been among Kiev's most open and ardent military supporters, time and again transferring heavy weaponry, including cutting edge long-range missiles like the Storm Shadow.

At the start of this week, Britain announced it plans to provide Ukraine with classified technology to allow for the country's own manufacturing of the British/French-designed SCALP air-launched cruise missile (which in the UK is known as the Storm Shadow). The allies expect to set up a production line in Ukraine as soon as year's end.

Getty Images

Already, Ukraine has used its domestic-made and designed Neptune cruise missile to strike oil refineries and military sites deep inside Russian territory. A domestic-made SCALP would present the likelihood of Ukraine then using this Western-designed missile to directly attack Russia, which only increases the chances of an eventual Moscow-NATO clash. Ukrainian forces already appeared to have used the missile on Donetsk and other locations closer to front lines in the Donbass.

On Thursday the Kremlin has issued one of its strongest warnings and threats aimed at London to date, accusing the UK of "fully taking part in the war on Kiev's side" - and thus thwarting any chance of peace talks while adding fuel to the fire.

Moscow is now saying that the UK's own military facilities could become fair game for direct attacks.

Kremlin spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a Thursday press briefing, "We have repeatedly warned that the response to Ukrainian strikes using British weapons against Russian territory could be directed against any British military facilities and equipment in Ukraine and beyond."

Zakharova urged "all residents of the United Kingdom to think about the inevitable, catastrophic consequences of the hostile steps taken by their own authorities." She also laid out:

"We propose that the British leadership once again carefully analyze the situation and immediately, in the most resolute and unequivocal manner, abandon the hostile, aggressive line, which can only... create the risk of the conflict escalating to an entirely new level."

Ironically this comes just on the heels of a rare visit of the CIA Director to Moscow. US officials claim the Tuesday meeting between John Ratcliffe and top Kremlin intelligence officials was to convey a warning to President Putin to not attack any NATO member. However, many analysts are skeptical that this was the official reason.

Russia could target British military facilities in Ukraine and beyond in response to Ukrainian strikes using British weapons - MFA spox pic.twitter.com/JRrPaRipUX

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) August 27, 2026

Zakharova further said on Thursday that Britain and France were "playing ⁠with ​fire" after years of escalating their involvement in Ukraine.

But London appears unmoved, with a UK Ministry of Defence official responding on Thursday as follows: "Britain stands shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine and we are committed to providing the equipment Ukraine needs to defend itself against Putin’s illegal invasion. Russia should be in no doubt about the resolve of this government to stand against Russian aggression, in Ukraine and against the UK and our allies," the official stated.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 16:30

Quinn: They Know What's Coming, Because They Planned It...

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency involved.” – Ludwig von Mises

“The financial history of the last century shows a steady increase in the amount of public indebtedness. Nobody believes that the states will eternally drag the burden of these interest payments. It is obvious that sooner or later all these debts will be liquidated in some way or other, but certainly not by payment of interest and principal according to the terms of the contract.” – Ludwig von Mises

Anyone living in the real world of commuting to a job, buying groceries, paying rent, filling up their gas tank, paying utility bills, paying property taxes, and generally trying to live an honest hard working life with a couple weeks of vacation per year, knows they are being fed a load of bullshit by the Trumps, Bessents and Warshs of the world. They are spinning false narratives, faking the economic statistics, lying to you about how dire our economic situation is, and above all, spending and printing fiat at hypersonic speed in a desperate attempt to give the appearance of normalcy, when in reality we are living through the most abnormal, corrupt, degenerate, dangerous period in history.

This normalcy bias is employed by the vast majority of dumbed down, I-gadget addicted, debt enslaved, mRNA jabbed, zombie-like consumers, as they shuffle through their daily existence believing the propaganda shoveled at them 24/7 on the boob tube and their social media accounts, by billionaire oligarchs, corrupt politicians, captured media talking heads, and the invisible government pulling the strings to manipulate their thoughts, decisions, and false beliefs. As a born cynical skeptic, I no longer believe anyone or anything. I’m real fun at parties.

As our national debt surpassed $40 trillion last week and has been accelerating at a rate of $13.4 billion per day (annualized rate of $4.9 trillion) since July 1, the only analogy I can make is the final scene of Thelma & Louise when they purposely drive off a cliff into the Grand Canyon, rather than face the consequences of their actions. But, in my daily existence, the people at the gym, drugstore, and grocery store seem happily oblivious to the extreme danger we currently face as citizens of a dying empire, intent on going out with a bang. We are accelerating towards an economic meltdown, inflationary financial collapse, and possibly global war, and no one seems to care or acknowledge reality.

It’s almost as if the 270 million sheep, who allowed themselves to be injected with a Big Pharma toxic gene altering poison, with little critical thinking skills to begin with, have been rendered deaf, dumb and blind to the machinations of their overlords as we spiral towards collapse. It seems only 5% to 10% of the population have the proper critical thinking skills, distrust of the government, ability to do math, comprehension to understand history, and courage to tell the truth and act rationally, in an irrational, perverted, debased world, built on debt, delusions, and denial. It makes me sick to my stomach observing the cowardice, corruption, and degradation of the pedophile elites who wield the power in our society, leading the sheep to slaughter and the world towards catastrophic ruin.

The government continues to propagandize the masses with their massaged, manipulated and made up statistics showing a steadily growing economy, relatively low inflation, and historically low unemployment. Trump and his lying minions consistently point to the stock market at all-time highs as proof everything  is great. It is great for Trump’s family of insider trading grifters, his billionaire banking buddies, the congressional scum sucking snakes becoming multi-millionaires on a $175,000 salary, and all the toadies in the media pretending this everything bubble isn’t due to printing $3 trillion per year as the only crutch for this Potemkin village of debt, created by our Deep State overlords and their highly paid apparatchiks.

Even though the propaganda outlets: CNBC, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, among others, are compensated gloriously by Big Pharma, Big Banks, the Military Industrial Complex, and Big Corps, to lie, obfuscate and mislead the masses, one only needs the most basic of math skills and understanding to see what is really happening in this country. Is it a sign of a strong vibrant economy when credit card delinquencies are at a 15 year high, student loan delinquencies are at a 6 year high, and auto loan delinquencies are at an all-time high? And this is before the real pain of a recession takes hold. This chart reveals immense pressure on average Americans who don’t have the benefit of insider trading tips from Trump.

Hysterically, mouthpiece for the Wall Street cabal, Bloomberg declares the all-time low in the savings rate is because the masses are making a killing in the stock market, so they no longer need to save. In reality, the average American household, making $83,000 per year, is only saving 2.7% per year because their government is spending over $7 trillion per year, while the Federal Reserve is printing trillions and conducting stealth QE, creating a massive inflationary headwind.The cumulative inflation over the last 10 years, even using the massively massaged CPI, is 39%. In reality, it is up well over 60%. Average worker pay has risen by only 45%.

Only in a warped, debt saturated, consuming society would this be seen as normal. In a normal, healthy economy which produces more than it consumes, the savings rate would be 10%, like it was from the 1950s into the 1990s. People are not saving because there is nothing left to save. When credit card debt sits near an all-time high of $1.26 trillion and the average person has a $6,600 revolving balance accruing at 22% interest, the savings rate makes sense. The average American is deeply in debt and barely surviving.

Among the vast plethora of phony government statistics, the unemployment rate is one of the most manipulated fake data points in history. It has no relation to the real 25% unemployment during the Great Depression. The current reported unemployment rate of 4.1% is a bad joke, completely falsified through the manipulation of the labor force figure by government drones at the BLS.

Only a triple jabbed, BLM supporting, Fauci fan believes the labor participation rate is currently at the same level as it was in 1974, before the overlords initiated the destruction of traditional families by forcing women into the workforce in mass through inflation, feminist falsehoods, and non-stop propaganda about girl power. They have purposely under-reported the actual civilian labor force to drive down the unemployment rate. The labor participation rate is far above the reported 61.4%.

At the turn of the century the labor participation rate was 67.5%. It drifted slowly down to 66% before the Federal Reserve/Wall Street cabal created great financial crisis. This is where faking it until making it went into high gear. The Boomer retirement false narrative was used as the participation rate plunged to 62.5%, far greater than the Boomer retirement pace.  Millions simultaneously became disabled and began collecting Social Security. The labor participation rate actually increased to 63.3% just before the Covid scamdemic was rolled out in early 2020. If you analyze the actual numbers, the ridiculousness of their manipulation model reveals the falseness of their numbers to mislead the masses about the strength of our economy.

• In January 2000, the working age population was 209 million, with 141 million in the work force. Today, the working age population is 275 million, with only 169 million supposedly in the work force. The population is up 66 million (+32%), while the workforce increased by a minuscule 18 million (+20%). There are now 106 million working age Americans supposedly willingly not working. This is untrue. Millions would be working if there were decent paying jobs to be had.

• There are 1 million less people employed today than one year ago, but amazingly the BLS drones want you to believe the unemployment rate dropped from 4.3% to 4.1%. Meanwhile, 2.8 million people must have made millions on AI stocks, laying bets on Draft Kings, or getting insider tips from the White House. They did not leave the labor force. They are unemployed.

• The BLS fantasy statisticians actually pretend you are not in the labor force if you give up looking due to not being able to land a job.  We are to believe that with 275 million able bodied adults, 162 million are employed, with 28 million working part-time, 9 million working multiple jobs, 16 million “self-employed” and 22 million pretending to work in government offices and funded by taxpayers.

The labor participation rate, at a minimum, should be 63%, with a more realistic level of 65%. This would put the actual unemployment rate at between 6.7% and 9.9%. Anyone who isn’t brain fogged from the jab knows the unemployment rate is closer to 10% than 4%. Does default rates near highs and the savings rate at lows jive with a 10% unemployment rate or a 4% unemployment rate?

The Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity created a realistic measure of true unemployment which  includes not only people who are unemployed and looking for a job, but also those who are involuntarily working part-time and who are earning poverty-level wages, or less than $26,000 annually before taxes. This “functional unemployment rate” is currently 24.9%, which jives nicely with the Great Depression level of 25%.

The 4% unemployment rate is as believable as the 3.4% CPI reported by the BLS drones, when everyone knows inflation is raging at 8% to 10%. Proof of the government faking these numbers is so blatant when they try to convince you health insurance costs have dropped by 33% in the last four years. Meanwhile, the median 2026 premium increase across all “Affordable” Care Act health insurance plans was 20%, and insurance companies have requested a median premium increase of 14% for 2027.

The world is cyclical in nature and human beings have a tendency to make the same mistakes over and over. Warsh and his central banker co-conspirators can talk tough about inflation, but it has been above their 2% target for the last 65 months, and they are doing the opposite of what would be needed to drive inflation to the 2% level. In fact, with the fiscal mismanagement of the country’s finances, waging wars across the globe, and nothing but $2 trillion to $3 trillion annual deficits for eternity, the bond market is ignoring the lies of Warsh and Bessent and dictating the path of long-term interest rates. It is very likely we will experience a replay of the late 1970s and early 1980s, except our debt is $40 trillion today versus $900 billion in 1980. Warsh is no Volker, and doesn’t have the balls to do what would be required.

The facade is crumbling and the bond market is going to hold the profligate politicians and the Wall Street owned central bankers accountable for what they have done. Their job has been to enrich the oligarchs and impoverish the peasants, and they accomplished their mission, pushing the country into an abyss with no hope of recovery. The 30 year Treasury just reached the 2007 peak at 5.27%, but in 2007 rates were headed lower and the national debt was less than $9 trillion. Today, rates are headed higher and the debt is $40 trillion and headed much higher. It’s a recipe for disaster.

The falsehoods and fabrications are running hot and heavy as we accelerate on the road to perdition towards a catastrophic denouement. Trump, Bessent, the Wall Street cabal, and their mouthpiece media (Axios, Fox, CNBC, etc.) are desperate to make you believe the Strait of Hormuz is open, oil is flowing freely, the impact on prices is minimal, and Iran is on the brink of collapse. Grand announcements about more sanctions, after we have had non-stop sanctions for 47 years against Iran, is comical. Bessent, the sodomite, thinks his bloviating bullshit and threats can move the markets in the direction he chooses. Look at the results, so far.

Barak Ravid, the CIA/Mossad Israeli plant at Axios, and Trump’s chief propaganda mouthpiece, dutifully reported the lies about 40 tankers exiting the Strait of Hormuz Friday night, with his source as unnamed “U.S. Officials”. This was then followed up with fake headlines declaring a 400% increase in traffic through the Strait, designed to drive the price of oil lower. All lies. Neutral sources, using satellite imagery, show very little traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Does this look like “traffic exploding by 400%”. They keep talking and the oil tanks keep emptying. When the reality overwhelms the false narratives, the price of oil will explode.

It seems both Biden and Trump do not understand the definition of STRATEGIC. They have both drained the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve totaling 327 million barrels during their terms for the sole reason of winning elections by artificially lowering the price of oil. The reserve is now at the same level as it was in 1982, when U.S. oil consumption was 15.3 million barrels per day, versus 20.6 million barrels per day now.

Even worse, Trump isn’t using the reserve in the U.S. He is selling it to foreign countries. That doesn’t sound too strategic to me, but this is the same guy who is going to import toxic Argentinian beef to undercut U.S. ranchers in order to win the 2026 mid-term elections. The SPR, stored in salt caves, is reaching levels where it can’t be effectively pumped. We have just over a month before the true bottom.

As Bessent ramps up his lying campaign to keep bond yields from reflecting the reality of our current and future economic quagmire, Kevin Warsh, the self proclaimed inflation fighting hawk, continues to flap his gums, while actually contributing to the inflationary fiasco. If a Federal Reserve chairman really wanted to squash inflation he would be raising short-term rates, reducing the Fed’s balance sheet, and using his influence with Wall Street banks to make it more difficult to lend money to consumers and the AI bubble corporations.

Warsh is trapped because if he does what he should do, the AI/Data Center financing circle jerk will implode and crash the stock market, making his Wall Street owners and Trump very angry. So instead he is actually exercising QE by expanding his balance sheet by $224 billion, while not raising short-term rates, and funding the $3 trillion deficit, the Iran/Ukraine war, and the AI bubble. Fed chairmen will always choose printing to pulling away the punch-bowl while the party is roaring. The rich get richer and the middle class is buried under a tsunami of relentless never ending inflation.

Kurt Altrichter explains just how easy the Fed and their owners are acting when it comes to credit, as we enter the crash zone. Everyone is going to keep dancing until the music stops, just as they were doing in 2007.

“Bloomberg’s index of how easy it is to raise money across stocks, credit, and rates just closed at the easiest level in its 35-year history, looser than 2021 and looser than the dot-com peak. This is the liquidity holding stocks, gold, and credit near records all at once. Conditions this loose have never lasted. When they tighten, the most leveraged trades, AI and credit, unwind first.”

The easiest financial conditions in history always leads to bubbles. We are in the midst of so many bubbles simultaneously, it is just a matter of time before the needle comes along and pops them quicker than an athlete collapsing from myocarditis after a Pfizer death jab. The stock market is now more overvalued than it was at the 1929 top and the 2000 dot-com top. Jim Cramer and his fellow boobs and bimbos on CNBC will never warn their non-thinking day trader audience about the imminent collapse of this debt driven bubble. There is a reason Berkshire Hathaway was sitting on $400 billion of cash in the first quarter. The market is 50% more overvalued than it was in 2008 before the last Fed induced financial crash. Winter is coming.

One year ago there was very little talk of data centers or AI, as the climate change and DEI narratives were still being regurgitated by the legacy media and the woke social media arms of our beloved overlord Epstein class. Suddenly, in 2026 the “need” for thousands of ginormous power sucking, aquafer draining surveillance centers (aka data centers) was essential to the future of our country, even though we seem to be functioning fine without these nature destroying monstrosities. One moment Bill Gates and his ilk are telling us cow farts are destroying the planet, the next moment these surveillance centers using more electricity and water than exists in some states are perfectly fine and essential.

And the dumbed down masses don’t even question the demands of these globalist billionaire totalitarians who have already killed millions with their covid jab genocide. These data centers do not benefit the average person in any way. The narratives are false. The electricity to power them doesn’t exist. The water to cool them does not exist. The entire AI scam bubble is exactly like the internet dot-com bubble. The bloated defense budget of nearly $1 trillion is about to be surpassed by the capital spending (all financed with debt) of just four companies: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta. It’s a race to win the AI war. But it will result in another financial debacle, with the Magnificent 7 and those financing this bubble begging for a bailout. And they will be bailed out at your expense.

With Nvidia, OpenAI, Anthropic, Palantir, Flock, among many others loaning each other money to buy each other’s products and recording it as revenue, you should be getting an Enron/Worldcom vibe. The IPOs are coming hot and heavy, enriching the hucksters at the top, but once the financing fraud unravels, the stocks will collapse, bankruptcies will follow, and billions of square feet of rotting data center skeletons will be left in communities across the land.

It’s always a good idea to see what the corporate executives of the biggest corporations are doing, versus the narratives they are spinning on CNBC. With corporate profits at all-time highs and the stock market marching relentlessly higher, for some reason the corporate executives who know the truth about their companies sold $77 billion of their stock, a 20 year high (excluding covid). That is surely a sign of good times ahead. Right? Previous peaks in insider selling proceeded market tops and the crashes that followed.

It’s good to be the kings. These corporate insiders didn’t get into the top 1% by being dumb. The top 1% wealthiest households surpassed the wealth of the entire middle class in 2023 and have continued their acceleration upward, as they own most of the stocks and real estate in the U.S., which has appreciated rapidly since 2023. It’s funny how the middle class started losing the battle after the great financial crisis and their free-fall has not abated. When the Fed, Wall Street, Epstein class and the DC swamp all conspire against the middle class to enrich themselves through monetary and fiscal corruption, the ground work for revolution has been laid. Once this debt saturated shitshow implodes and the middle class is left holding the bag again, fireworks should commence.

You know you’ve crossed the Rubicon economically when interest on the national debt has surpassed our humongous war budget, and you need to issue more debt to pay the interest. With annual interest already exceeding $1.24 trillion and headed towards $1.4 trillion next year, you can understand Bessent’s spasmodic gyrations in keeping rates from exploding higher, as they should. If the 10 year Treasury was 6% and 30 year Treasury was 8%, where they would be in a free non-manipulated market, interest on the debt would be closer to $2 trillion per year and it would be game over for this declining empire of debt.

I’ve painted a dark picture, but it is a true picture based on unequivocal facts, not some nonsense narrative spun by liars, thieves, and pedophiles. When you see the Chinese central bank add 60 tons of gold in the 1st six months of the year, bringing their three year accumulation to 14 million troy ounces, along with central banks across the globe increasing their gold holdings, you can discern there is trouble brewing and countries are positioning themselves to survive whatever conflagration the American empire ignites during its ongoing death throes. Bessent’s economic warfare against China, Russia, and dozens of other countries across the globe will only add gasoline to the fire consuming this crumbling empire.

When you step back and observe the insanity consuming our world, you have to ask yourself whether this is really due to mind numbing stupidity and incompetence on the part of our leaders or due to a master plan by the new world order satanist pedophiles to purposely destroy western civilization and its financial underpinnings, which had allowed a vast proportion of the planet to rise out of poverty into the middle class. I do believe the globalist oligarchs are evil, arrogant, narcissistic, and diabolically power hungry, but I don’t believe they stupid and incompetent.

Therefore, I must conclude every seemingly preposterous act by our hand picked puppet politicians, their bureaucrat apparatchiks (Cabinet, FBI, CIA, DOD, DOJ), Wall Street financiers, central bankers, activist judges, and global organizations like the WHO, WEF, NATO, UN, and thousands of NGOs controlled by billionaires and surveillance state organizations, are part of the plan to depopulate the planet, impoverish the survivors, create a totalitarian electronic surveillance state, and control the peasants through CBDCs, mandated digital IDs, and social credit scores, which will restrict your opinions, movement, and ability to make a living and feed yourself.

When you grasp the almost incomprehensible malevolence of their end game, you begin to understand the seemingly insane choices being made on our behalf by those pulling the strings of our political, financial, and social institutions. The developed nations of the world have cumulatively added $100 trillion of debt since 2020, even as the demographics of their countries are incapable of servicing that debt. To exacerbate this recklessness, they all simultaneously flooded their countries with third world savages in order to overwhelm their social welfare systems and tear apart the social fabric of their societies.

The planned and coordinated covid plandemic, which successfully forced 70% of the global population to be injected with a toxic, gene altering, cancer and myocaditis causing death potion, has accomplished more than our overlords could ever imagine. It proved Huxley’s supposition that the slaves would come to love their servitude. Even as turbo cancers, heart attacks, and other issues created by the spike protein damaging their bodies, the vaxxed refuse to believe they were poisoned by their own government and medical establishment. The vaxxers still worship Fauci, even though his own texts and emails prove him to be a mass murderer. This phase of the depopulation agenda is underway and will ultimately eliminate hundreds of millions from the gene pool.

When Russia and Ukraine were about to conclude a peace agreement in March 2022, Boris Johnson was sent to Zelensky by his globalist controllers in order to insure the war would continue and expand. Four and a half years later, the US/NATO continue to wage their proxy war against Russia in an effort to weaken Putin, drive the price of oil and natural gas higher, exacerbate the global food crisis, and goad Putin into starting WW3.

The U.S. sneak attack of Iran, under the false pretenses of an imminent development of nuclear bomb by Iran, on behalf of Israel (because they have incriminating info on Trump from the Epstein files), has accomplished the feat of creating a global economic catastrophe, with soaring oil prices, and shortages of fertilizer, natural gas, diesel, and rare earth minerals necessary to produce the technology needed to run our world.

When you see Trump and his minions sanctioning the world, while threatening tariffs, kidnapping presidents, manipulating the oil, stock, and bond markets, you come to the realization Trump has been installed to initiate the global collapse, which they believe will usher in the final solution for the pesky peasants consuming too much of the world’s resources.

Once the economic and financial collapse wipes out the remaining wealth of the middle class, the masses will be clamoring to be saved by their overlords, who will “generously” provide their CBDC “solution” to the collapse they purposely created. The collapse is baked into this cake made of debt and there is no avoiding the disastrous outcome. They will solidify their stranglehold on the global wealth, increase their control over resources, and force the masses into their techno-gulag.

If you don’t sense the extreme acceleration towards this dark dystopian future, then you aren’t paying attention, are trapped in your cognitive dissonance, or are one of the highly paid henchmen promoting the new world order headed our way.

The almost desperate roll-out of thousands of data surveillance centers is because their techno-gulag world will require almost unthinkable data processing power to track every person on the planet; record our movements, spending, social media interactions, and conversations; and dole out punishment (disabling your auto, disabling your credit cards, freezing your bank accounts) to the dissidents (formerly known as conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers). The rapid roll-out of flock cameras across the country is a key component of their techno-gulag plan. They want to have the technology in place before the financial collapse. It’s a race to the finish.

Knowing we are in the final phase of this Fourth Turning should have given me an idea of how bad it would get, but the realization of how malicious, immoral, and satanic the Epstein pedophile class is proving to be, is stunning to behold. We are in the midst of an existential battle against diabolical evil for the future of humanity. Losing will mean an end to the freedoms and way of life we have experienced for 250 years.

Sixty years ago Carroll Quigley revealed the invisible hands controlling the system, and now they are pulling out all the stops in implementing their plan to make sure we own nothing and they own it all. We are experiencing the tragedy. Hope won’t be enough to win against such a determined enemy.

“The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalistic fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the worlds central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank…sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence co-operative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.” ― Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, 1966

If you want a future for you children and grandchildren, you will need to step up now and do whatever you can to throw a monkey wrench into the gears of their data centers. Good luck and Godspeed.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 16:20

Alberta Premier Rejects Using Oil As A Weapon Against Trump

Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

Alberta's Premier Danielle Smith has rejected the idea of slapping export taxes on crude oil exports to the United States in retaliation for the Trump administration's tariff salvo against Ottawa, saying they would be damaging to Canada.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith speaks at the Canada Strong and Free Network in Ottawa on Thursday, March 23, 2023. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick)

"Although I understand the need to respond strongly to these tariffs, I cannot think of a more disastrous policy decision than cutting off or taxing Alberta's oil to the United States," Smith said as quoted by Global News, adding that the move would trigger a disproportionate tariff response from the United States that could hurt the Canadian economy.

"It would not only extinguish the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Albertans, it would economically hobble our friends and neighbors in other provinces to the east," she said, warning of millions of jobs getting lost as a result of the tariff war.

Alberta exports about 4 million barrels of crude oil daily to the United States. Last year, the total value of these exports stood at about $80 billion. Trump has so far not threatened tariffs on crude oil coming from Canada but, according to Smith, this could change if Canada itself decides to use oil exports as a weapon in the tariff war.

As for the possibility of threatening the U.S. with a suspension of oil exports, Smith suggested this would be an even worse idea. "The United States would, of course, respond and cut off all gasoline and diesel from their refineries to Ontario and Quebec, right as we turn into fall and winter," she told media.

Smith also said the U.S. could replace Canadian crude with crude from Venezuela, as a result of which Alberta would in turn lose its biggest oil buyer. This may be theoretically true, but with Venezuela's oil production at barely above 1 million barrels daily and not all of that going to U.S. refineries, such a replacement is quite unlikely in the medium term.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 15:40

Army's Project Janus Selects Five Reactor Companies For Rapid Development

The US Army's Project Janus, which we detailed at length back in November, has selected its initial batch of reactor developers to bring advanced nuclear energy to Army installations to ensure resilient and ready power. 

BREAKING: The first fully operational commercial nuclear microreactor will be deployed at a U.S. Army installation in 2028.

To achieve this, the Army has awarded a combined $2.2 Billion to five competing commercial companies.

— Jeff Waksman (@Waksman84) August 26, 2026

The program is looking to move reactor developers through their first-of-a-kind and second-of-a-kind designs at breakneck speeds with the goal of “bending metal as quickly as possible”.

The following companies have been selected to participate under Project Janus:

• Antares Nuclear
• BWXT Advanced Technologies
• General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems
• Radiant Industries
• Westinghouse Government Services

The nuclear industry has suffered from decades of atrophy with little to no new nuclear construction to incentivize the manufacturing industry to invest in supply lines to support the build-out of a new national nuclear program. Project Janus looks to assist with revitalizing the commercial nuclear industry while also benefiting by harnessing the reliability of nuclear energy to enhance the abilities of the armed forces. 

Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy, and Environment, Dr. Jeff Waksman, who is also a program lead for Project Janus, has remarked in recent interviews that reactor developers will be constructing and operating their reactors on various Army installations across the U.S. and will be compensated for the achievement of various milestones related to successful construction and operation of their reactor designs. 

$2.2 billion has been set aside by the Army and the Department of War Innovation Unit for milestone-based awards. Project Janus is aiming for their first operational reactor by September 2028.

Dr. Waksman has also provided estimates in multiple interviews for the price expected to be paid by the Army for power purchase agreements, with prices as high as $0.20-$0.30 per kilowatt hour. This price will vary greatly depending on location and use case. 

In addition to receiving milestone awards, reactor developers also have the opportunity to move through a faster regulatory pathway than the traditional NRC pathway, similar to how a lot of the developers have been moving through the DOE pathway under the Reactor Pilot Program. 

This will enable companies to demonstrate the operation of their design to investors and potential commercial offtakers. There has also been discussion of the potential for offtake agreements from the military bases for the first and second-of-a-kind reactors that are built under the program.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 15:20

Trump Officially Renames Lake Ontario To "Lake America"

Now, on to important matters... 

On Thursday, US President Donald J. Trump renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America, a move he's been teasing in recent days on Truth Social - including writing that America doesn't "expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer" amid an ongoing trade spat with Canada. 

On Tuesday, Trump posted an image of the lake with 'Lake Ontario' crossed out and 'Lake America' above it - with an American flag on the Canadian side.

"The United States is the greatest protector of the Great Lakes, including the body of water currently known as Lake Ontario," Trump wrote in the EO, adding "The Lake will continue to play a pivotal role in shaping America's future and the global economy. In recognition of this flourishing economic resource and its critical importance to our Nation's economy and its people, I am directing that the Lake officially be renamed as Lake America." 

The order directs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to update the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) within 30 days, and requires all federal government references to the lake refer to it as "Lake America." 

Approximately 47% of the lake lies within the US. 

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 15:00

New Jersey May Pay Home Battery Owners To Help Grid When Demand Surges

New Jersey officials are weighing a plan that would allow homeowners to use batteries as emergency energy backups and a way to earn extra money. Under the proposal, storage systems installed at customers' homes could join a virtual power plant program, helping the grid when electricity demand surges and paying participants for taking part.

On July 15, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities issued a straw proposal for a two-year, technology-neutral VPP. The state's electric distribution companies would oversee it, and it would need to launch no later than July 1, 2027 Utility Dive reported.

In its transitional form, the Cool Down notes that the program would cover customer-sited batteries as well as other distributed energy resources. Officials are also looking ahead to a market-based, open-access VPP tariff for 2029 and beyond. Where rules allow, participants could combine payments for local grid services with wholesale market revenue from PJM Interconnection.

For NJ residents curious what a battery setup could look like for your own home, it may be worth exploring EnergySage's free tools to compare home battery storage options and get competitive installation estimates. EnergySage has teamed up with the electrification brand Qmerit to guarantee you get the best price on home battery storage solutions. Those who want a small-scale backup option, Pila is worth checking out. Its plug-and-play batteries are priced at a fraction of what whole-home backup systems cost.

For homeowners, battery storage is one of the best tools for riding out blackouts because it can keep critical equipment such as lights, refrigerators, medical devices, and internet service operating when grid power fails.

Batteries can also trim power bills by saving solar energy or low-cost electricity for use later, and they can help households move closer to off-grid living or rely less on their utilities.

As opposed to large power plants, VPPs let utilities and grid operators draw on many smaller devices at the same time. That can ease pressure on a grid during peak-demand periods and reduce pollution derived from fossil-fuel-based plants.

The BPU said any program should be guided by principles including fair design, technology-neutral rules, equal access for aggregators, and coordination among programs so participants are not compensated twice for the same service, Utility Dive reported.

The straw proposal carries out a directive in Executive Order No. 2, which Gov. Mikie Sherrill issued in January. It called for a VPP program to be created within 180 days and pushed for broader participation by distributed energy resources in the PJM Interconnection capacity market. At a July 30 stakeholder meeting, Tim Fagan, manager for planning and evaluation at Public Service Enterprise Group New Jersey, said the utility is developing a VPP offer that would include an upfront incentive of roughly $5,000 for an 8-kilowatt residential battery.

Participants could cover the remaining installation cost through an on-bill repayment program if they agree to allow a battery to discharge during peak-shaving events, Utility Dive reported.

Andrew Bayne, manager for energy efficiency programs at Pepco Holdings, said Delmarva Power's Delaware "bring your own battery" pilot is providing participants with an estimated $1,080 per year in performance payments sent by direct deposit instead of bill credits.

Such programs are examining how often batteries can be dispatched, which compensation level is enough to keep customers enrolled, and how straightforward the signup process must be for household participation.

Bayne said utilities still need to know whether "that juice [is] worth the squeeze for the customer — is that $1,000 a year worth it? … These devices behave differently when you call upon them."

In the latest update, UtilityDive reports that eligible customers of Atlantic City Electric, Jersey Central Power & Light, Public Service Electric & Gas and Rockland Electric could receive up to $200/kW per year over a 10-year term to dispatch energy stored in small-scale batteries during periods of grid stress under the procurement proposed last week by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

The proposal targets up to 150 MW of behind-the-meter energy storage capacity that can reliably discharge during dispatch events called by the four electric distribution companies, which will administer capacity enrolled in their service territories. The BPU will host a virtual stakeholder meeting on Sept. 3 to solicit feedback.

The procurement is the first capacity block of the second phase of the Garden State Energy Storage Program, a statutory framework that requires New Jersey to deploy 2 GW of bulk and distributed energy storage capacity by 2030. The BPU is halfway to meeting that goal after procuring a combined 1 GW of transmission-connected storage in the program’s two-block first phase earlier this year.

In a statement, BPU President Ben Hertz-Shargel tied the Aug. 17 proposal to an executive order signed by Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill shortly after taking office on Jan. 20. It directed the BPU to issue solicitations for new solar and storage capacity and to begin developing a virtual power plant program open to third-party energy suppliers.

“The Garden State Energy Storage Program advances Governor Sherrill’s Executive Order No. 2 by growing energy storage deployments in-state to meet growing energy demand while improving affordability and resilience,” Hertz-Shargel said.

Residential and small commercial batteries would be eligible to participate in a temporary, technology-neutral VPP program that will begin next year and run for two years before transitioning into a market-based, open-access VPP tariff in 2029, the BPU said last month in a separate straw proposal. 

The BPU refers to the capacity discussed in last week’s straw proposal as “Distributed Storage Capacity Block 1.” Its primary objective is to reduce peak demand on New Jersey’s electric distribution system through coordinated discharge, which “will help avoid future capacity obligations and system costs, thereby accruing savings to all residential customers,” according to the straw proposal.

The proposal envisions the four electric distribution companies calling dispatch events to mitigate local congestion, distribution-level thermal constraints and other abnormal grid conditions. The BPU said it looked at similar programs in other states and conducted its own gap analysis to arrive at the $200/kW maximum annual incentive, which it said factors in “the private resilience value of residential energy storage systems.”

“This decision reflects [BPU staff’s] assessment that many consumers have some willingness to pay for resilience and thus do not require an incentive high enough to render the net cost of battery back-up power [to] zero,” the BPU said.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 14:40

Follow The Risk

Via SchiffGold,

Tracing the distribution of risk is an important method that is helpful for understanding the trade-offs of any government action. Almost every government action reduces risk for some group and repackages the risk and forces another group to bear it. The government often serves as a hedge against risk, but it is important to understand who the payer is and what the costs are before blindly signing off on state control. The most common form of risk relates to the concept of "concentrated benefits, dispersed costs." Small groups like farmers or steel producers can hedge against industry risk by receiving benefits that are spread across the entire American tax base. The inverse of this problem is when small groups must make large sacrifices to reduce the overall risk of the total population. There are few situations where government risk management is worth it, and most of them are when the repackaged risk is paid fairly by those who receive the benefit. Growth in government risk management both incentivizes more risk and particularly damages those who avoid creating risk.

"Concentrated benefits, dispersed costs" is a phrase that describes the incentives behind targeted government industry policy. Because some groups are compact and organized with a compelling reason to coordinate, they are able to present their story clearly and effectively to government actors. The taxpayers who will pay for the benefits transferred to the special interest groups are not able to easily coordinate and they have no compelling reason to, as the burden of each individual is relatively small when compared to the cost of coordination.

When industries like banking or agriculture face large risks and can convince the government that it is needed to protect them, the industries are able to turn their risk into a guaranteed cost for taxpayers. This makes businesses less responsible, increasing the risk, and putting them into conflict with the people who involuntarily bear their risk. This problem only continues to worsen over time as the government grows and more industries recognize the benefits of state protection. Particularly when industrial failures already damage the nation, forcing taxpayers to insure them even in times of stability only deepens the problem.

Another form of risk redistribution is when many individuals shift their risk to smaller groups. One obvious example of this is when equity investors and businesses advocate for lower interest rates at the expense of those with heavy positions in bonds and cash. Inflation simply turns the risks of those with higher demand for present consumption into a guaranteed cost for those with a preference for future consumption. Many regulations make producers responsible for any problems with their products, which reduces customer risk, but damages customers in the long run as producers on the margin often leave the market. Although some of these government actions might make a specific problem better in the short term, they are extremely dangerous, as they put the few at the mercy of the many. Although this occurs most saliently with financial and economic risk, the expansion of the state may take risk redistribution to areas of life with much more troubling consequences.

An expanded welfare state may lead to the promotion of assisted suicide, and other violations of life, for those with a high risk of large medical costs. Risks are best borne by those who create them, as they have enough information to take on risk intelligently. While the voice of the majority can call for government-funded insurance in all areas of life, they cannot change the nature of risk.

The fundamental purpose of government is to create institutions that manage the existential risks that no set of private individuals would be interested in or able to manage. Most of the risks that the government manages against are far from existential, and even more of them would be solved by the market if given enough time and institutional stability. The government is most capable when it manages risks that are experienced by all and turns them into a financial burden shared by the same group. National security and the protection of property rights are two examples of risk prevention where something borne by every citizen is turned into a financial cost for the tax base. While not every citizen contributes equally to the prevention of these risks, every American benefits from them. Whenever a new risk concerns the public, examine how quickly it becomes a government responsibility to fix it.

Evaluate to whom the proposed solution is shifting the risk. Is the benefit of risk prevention worth the guaranteed cost? Do those creating the risk contribute fairly, or will they merely be incentivized to create more risk?

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 14:20

Qatar And Kuwait Restore 70% Of Pre-War Oil Exports Through Hormuz

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

Qatar and Kuwait have managed to boost their crude oil exports from the Strait of Hormuz to 70% of pre-war levels as they followed the United Arab Emirates in shuttling oil through the chokepoint and using ship-to-ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman, anonymous traders told Bloomberg on Thursday.

Before the Middle East conflict, Qatar and Kuwait collectively exported about 2 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil via the Strait of Hormuz.

They don't have alternative routes as Saudi Arabia and the UAE do, and struggled to ship oil out of the Persian Gulf in the first couple of months of the conflict.

But around June, Kuwait and Qatar began shuttling crude out of Hormuz and offered it for transfers outside the chokepoint in the Gulf of Oman.

The increasing Kuwaiti and Qatari oil volumes add to the barrels that Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been sneaking through the Strait of Hormuz and on routes bypassing it since the start of the war.

The UAE has managed to boost its oil exports to pre-crisis levels as early as June, as it has kept pushing crude through the Strait of Hormuz and beyond. It has been shuttling crude through the chokepoint to load it on larger vessels outside the Strait, maximizing the use of its onshore pipeline to ship crude from the west to the east of the country, bypassing Hormuz, and shipping tankers through the Strait in dark mode.

Saudi Arabia, for its part, has also started offering STS transfers of Gulf crude outside Hormuz, and has been using the Red Sea and Egypt's Mediterranean ports to bypass the Persian Gulf's chokepoint.

Thanks to the shuttle services and dark activity, total oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz have now risen to about 7-8 million bpd, up from about 4 million bpd in the middle of July, according to Bloomberg's trading sources.

The under-the-radar operations and the Gulf states' creative solutions to the threats in the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea have helped keep oil flowing, even if at much reduced rates compared to February levels.

The higher oil volumes exiting the Persian Gulf have kept benchmark crude oil futures in check despite the tightening global fuel markets.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 13:40