- USAID, Soft Power, And How Solzhenitsyn Predicted This Crisis
USAID, Soft Power, And How Solzhenitsyn Predicted This Crisis
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) existed to fan America’s post-World War II brand as the guardian of democracy in the world. It was mostly an info-op euphemistically called soft power.
The mission meant that it occasionally helped people, because that made America look good. The “AID” moniker was a rhetorical trick, though. USAID handled some of the dirtiest jobs of American hegemony, like union busting, censorship, and election fixing.
Assassinations were left to the CIA, for the most part.
Last week, USAID was shut down and everyone except a skeleton staff was laid off. Its employees emerged from the woodwork, quite offended. Shutting down the agency hit a lot of Washingtonians right in their “I’m important and the world needs me!” glass jaws.
If you are a certain kind of mediocrity who has known only the circle of money and influence Washington provides, there are oodles of self-regard when a great and grand wizard at the Department of State confers on you the title Doctor of Thinkology.
“Now go, therefore, and topple the government of Bangladesh!” – is a fair summary of the valedictory. That is not an exaggeration. Soft power did that recently.
Americans are marinated from their infancy in movies, media, and television. The foreign policy establishment occupies the Walter Mitty role in the American empire. Since at least 1948, Washington bureaucrats have been on a hero’s journey built around the conceit that the United States exercises power always and only to save the world.
Having a steel desk in a stone building with discretionary control over a budget line item made you a Star Trooper wherever the Empire decided to strike back. Then 2016 happened.
Trump won the presidency on the promise that he would destroy Washington’s permanent bureaucracy – calling it the deep state. Minor state functionaries responded by saying Vladimir Putin was behind him.
In the clown cuckoo land of Washington, the Star Troopers needed to be fighting a diabolical mastermind with a Russian accent, or it was just not self-affirming. Getting mean-tweeted at by a reality show host with a wild haircut threatened their delusions of grandeur more than losing wars, which they had been doing regularly for 70 years.
The FBI officially launched Crossfire Hurricane on July 31, 2016. A few days later, the secret agent who opened the investigation texted his secret agent lover, “We’ll stop” Trump. Out of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, Trump and Putin had to walk into Peter Strzok and Lisa Paige’s.
And, too, “It’s Putin and we’ll get him,” sounds better whispered over a pillow at the Fairmont Hotel in Gaithersburg, Maryland than, “people in mesh hats are exercising their democratic prerogative to stop funding our pretend world, and we may want to stay out of this one.”
At one point last week, Mike Benz – who has inhabited X for years as the bugle blowing Gunga Din of USAID’s mendacity – connected nepo baby turned playground mean girl Liz Cheney to USAID. Elon Musk retweeted Benz.
To which Liz Cheney herself responded:
Damn right, @Elon. I’m proud of what America did to win the Cold War, defeat Soviet communism, and defend democracy. Our nation stood for freedom. You may be unfamiliar with that part of our history since you weren’t yet an American citizen.
Uh-huh. After she graduated from college, Liz Cheney’s then Defense Secretary dad got her a job at USAID in Washington, and she thinks she ended the Cold War.
She went from there to law school and then in 2002 her Vice President dad got her appointed deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, where she and her dad proceeded to wreak havoc.
She now adorably thinks that starship lassoing Elon Musk lacks street cred because his daddy never got him a job where he stopped communism.
The fake world where Dick and Liz defend democracy, and Peter Strzok and Lisa Paige bang to Putin fantasies – the world of the Washington beltway – was hatched in the aftermath of World War II.
It is an odd mix of propaganda, media, technology, and the storytelling method known as the hero’s journey.
The info-op was run out of USAID and other federal agencies, and it was meant to convince the world that the United States is a force for good that opposes tyranny wherever it finds it. In some ways, it worked.
For all anyone knows, Western Europe would have turned Communist if America did not present a “shining city on a hill” alternative. And, okay, fix elections and control information.
Meddling in other countries was only ever meant to win the peace, though.
When the peace was finally won in 1991, the minor functionaries started hatching new villains, disputes, and even viruses just so they could fight them.
Washington turned into a Cold War LARP.
The result:
- Ukraine is destroyed.
- The Taliban is governing Afghanistan and ISIS has taken Syria.
- The pipeline that supplies Germany’s energy supply has been blown up, tanking its economy. And you know what happened last time the West’s guardian of democracy project tanked the German economy. Just sayin’.
- Ancient Christianity has been expelled from every place in the Middle East where American soft power has meddled. They have set their sights on destroying Catholic-Lebanon (by law, the president of Lebanon must be Catholic – did you know that?) in a proxy war with Iran.
- Most wildly, perhaps, American bureaucrats are responsible for the greatest pandemic since the Spanish Flu. They will deny it, and say it came from a rando bat. But the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming that the virus emanated from gain of function research on Coronaviruses the American bureaucracy was funding at that very moment in the very lab in the very town where COVID originated.
Which provides a helpful metaphor.
Creating a virus to fight that virus is the definition of gain of function research. Similarly, Peter Strzok fabricated Putin in the Trump campaign just so he could fight him. Washington is a gain of function experiment wrapped in hero’s journeys draped in delusions of grandeur.
Too many in Trump-world think the problem will go away if the institutions are dismantled.
Get rid of USAID and The Department of Education, and Liz Cheney gets a job at her local Walmart, where she belongs.
It is not an institutional problem, though, so much as thousands of individual pathologies.
The problem is that Liz Cheney really thinks she is important.
That is the tumor that needs to be excised.
Removing soft power’s influence on the American psyche is the most delicate surgery of all, because it slices into the sacred beliefs of everyone, including (maybe especially) Republicans. Surgery is only successful when enough people reach the conclusion, “I am being manipulated.”
This moment was predicted.
In 1978, Soviet dissident in exile Alexander Solzhenitsyn addressed the graduating class of Harvard University. He was expected to provide a stemwinder against Communism and at least an implied tribute to America.
Instead, he issued a criticism of the West, based on the narrative control exercised over people. He called it “fashion” and blamed the media:
There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the East, where the press is rigorously unified. One gradually discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole. It is a fashion; there are generally accepted patterns of judgment; there may be common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. Enormous freedom exists for the press, but not for the readership because newspaper[s] mostly develop stress and emphasis to those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and the general trend.
Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day….This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, to blindness, which is most dangerous in our dynamic era…. It will only be broken by the pitiless crowbar of events.
Soviet Communism has fallen. Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia and lived happily under Putin’s rule. His books are required reading in Russian schools. The state paid tribute to him and other Russian writers in the closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics held in Sochi, Russia.
America’s control of human behavior by fashion has not yet collapsed.
Today the West is facing a “pitiless crowbar of events.” Public policy could not even be formulated for a pandemic without casting every prescription as a political choice, resulting in collective behavior that have less to do with rigorous causal connections than with tribal adherence.
Politics is no longer judged by whether it serves the greater good, but by how dutifully it bows to the information regime. It resembles 14-year-old girls in the schoolyard, requiring mimesis in manner of dress and behavior under threat of bullying. In Solzhenitsyn’s word, fashion.
The availability of information on the internet means the state cannot impose its approved narrative outside of America’s groupthink urban enclaves where status is highly staked to fashion. The only way to control non-status people is to control information itself, with censorship, prosecution, and entire bureaucracies dedicated to curbing “misinformation” – i.e., alternative views that do not agree with the state.
Solzhenitsyn would eventually encounter reactions to his Harvard speech from ordinary Americans along the lines of “we know in our hearts he is right.” This led him to distinguish between what he called “the arrogant stance of the America of New York and Washington” and what he observed elsewhere:
Gradually another America began unfolding before my eyes, one that was small-town and robust, the heartland, the America I had envisioned as I was writing my speech, and to which my speech was addressed.
He expressed “a glimmer of hope” that opposition to the dictatorship of fashion could spring from the place he called “another America.”
The needless wars will not go away until both Democrats and Republicans realize that some of what emanates from the American empire are soft power seeded lies. The truth is a greater medicine than any change in policy could ever be.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 – 23:35 - Charting America's Single Mothers By Ethnicity
Charting America’s Single Mothers By Ethnicity
There are 7.3 million single mothers in the U.S., as well as 1.9 million single fathers. Single parents often face the dual challenge of being both the primary breadwinners and caregivers for their families.
This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, represents the percentage of mothers in the U.S. who are single, by race/ethnicity, in 2023.
The data comes from the Center for American Progress.
21% of All Mothers Are Single
In 2023, single-mother families accounted for 1 in 5 families with children under 18.
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47% of Black mothers were single mothers.
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25% of Hispanic mothers were single mothers.
The majority of single mothers are in their 30s or 40s and do not have a college degree. Overall, single mothers face a 28% poverty rate.
Changes in Family Structure Over Time
According to the Center for American Progress, family structures in the U.S. have changed significantly over the past five decades.
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In 1970, 67% of adults (ages 25 to 49) lived with a spouse and at least one child.
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By 2021, that number had dropped to 37%.
Marriage rates have also declined:
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In 1970, 69% of adults were married, compared to 50% in 2021.
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Meanwhile, the percentage of adults who have never been married rose from 17% to 31% over the same period.
If you enjoyed this topic, check out this graphic that shows the distribution of wealth in the United States from 1990 to 2023 by generation.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 – 23:10 -
- US-Backed Kurdish SDF Agrees To Integrate Into Jolani's Syrian Army
US-Backed Kurdish SDF Agrees To Integrate Into Jolani’s Syrian Army
Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,
A major agreement has reportedly been reached between the Kurdish SDF and the post-Assad Syrian government, which will reportedly include the full integration of SDF fighters into the national army. The deal also is said to have included the civil leadership in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).
Details are still emerging about a lot of exact specifics beyond the SDF integration into the military, which has been sought since the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) took over Syria and ousted the former Assad government. The deal is expected to increase the integration of AANES territory into national government institutions at least to some extent.
Members of the US-backed SDF, file image It is an open question, however, how much autonomy the Kurds in that territory might retain. Some of the HTS leaders have ruled out the idea of giving any autonomy to the Kurds, and suggested that any role in the national government requires them to first totally disarm and submit.
Integration into the Syrian Army seems well short of that position, and raises the question of how Turkey will respond to the announcement. Turkey has insisted they would invade if the SDF weren’t eliminated, and integration might be short enough of that goal that Turkey close partnership with the HTS could be impacted.
SDF leader Mazloum Abdi has made comments about the potential for a deal just a day prior to these announcements. Abdi said that he was hopeful for the new HTS-led government in Syria, and promised SDF support for national stability and unity.
Turkey isn’t the only potential objector here. The Kurdistan Syria Front (KSF) issued a statement very critical of SDF and the AANES deal, even though its exact terms still aren’t public.
They warned that the deal undermines the legitimate rights of Kurds in Syria, and complained of a “path of compromise” the SDF and their associates have been on since October.
The KSF was particularly critical of the lack of consensus with other Kurdish groups before making the deal, saying that they were undermining the appearance of a unified Kurdish stance in regional and international negotiations.
Welcome to the Syrian Republic
— Rojava Network (@RojavaNetwork) February 18, 2025
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
It’s also not certain what the US position on this SDF deal is. The US has long supported the SDF, but in recent weeks has talked of withdrawing from Syria. The SDF says they have not been informed about any planned US withdrawal, and the US stance toward the HTS government remains uncertain.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 – 22:45 - Visualizing Every US State Resized Based On Population
Visualizing Every US State Resized Based On Population
The U.S. is the world’s fourth-largest country by total area, third by land area, and is home to around 340 million people.
But nearly one-third of those people live in just three states: California, Texas, and New York.
This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, reimagines the usual U.S. map with the states resized based on their populations. Data is from the Census Bureau, as of 2024.
Alaska Isn’t the Largest Anymore
If sized by population, Alaska would be the third-smallest state (fourth if counting D.C.) in the country.
This is a far cry from its top of the rankings as America’s largest state by area (665,284 sq. miles).
Rank States State Code Population (2024) 1 California CA 39.4M 2 Texas TX 31.3M 3 Florida FL 23.4M 4 New York NY 19.9M 5 Pennsylvania PA 13.1M 6 Illinois IL 12.7M 7 Ohio OH 11.9M 8 Georgia GA 11.2M 9 North Carolina NC 11.0M 10 Michigan MI 10.1M 11 New Jersey NJ 9.5M 12 Virginia VA 8.8M 13 Washington WA 8.0M 14 Arizona AZ 7.6M 15 Tennessee TN 7.2M 16 Massachusetts MA 7.1M 17 Indiana IN 6.9M 18 Maryland MD 6.3M 19 Missouri MO 6.2M 20 Wisconsin WI 6.0M 21 Colorado CO 6.0M 22 Minnesota MN 5.8M 23 South Carolina SC 5.5M 24 Alabama AL 5.2M 25 Louisiana LA 4.6M 26 Kentucky KY 4.6M 27 Oregon OR 4.3M 28 Oklahoma OK 4.1M 29 Connecticut CT 3.7M 30 Utah UT 3.5M 31 Nevada NV 3.3M 32 Iowa IA 3.2M 33 Arkansas AR 3.1M 34 Kansas KS 3.0M 35 Mississippi MS 2.9M 36 New Mexico NM 2.1M 37 Nebraska NE 2.0M 38 Idaho ID 2.0M 39 West Virginia WV 1.8M 40 Hawaii HI 1.4M 41 New Hampshire NH 1.4M 42 Maine ME 1.4M 43 Montana MT 1.1M 44 Rhode Island RI 1.1M 45 Delaware DE 1.1M 46 South Dakota SD 0.9M 47 North Dakota ND 0.8M 48 Alaska AK 0.7M 49 District of Columbia DC 0.7M 50 Vermont VT 0.6M 51 Wyoming WY 0.6M N/A U.S. USA 340.1M Note: Population figures are from July 1st, 2024.
On the other hand, a big gainer from putting people in perspective is Florida which is 22nd by size, but third by population.
The benefit of redrawing the map with population in mind, is that it’s easier to see where people actually live.
Several big states towards the west of the country, (Wyoming, the Dakotas, Montana) are actually home to less than four million people collectively. Most of the land is taken up by parks and farmland.
In fact New York City alone has more people (8.5 million) than 38 states.
Land Doesn’t Vote, People Do
This redrawing is also particularly useful in the context of the U.S. specifically.
Rural areas with low populations can sometimes have outsized political influence due to structures like the Electoral College or the Senate.
And when densely populated urban areas often lean one way politically, and sparsely populated rural regions lean another, then the gap between population-based representation and geographic-based influence is even more pronounced.
Not only is Texas the second-most populous state, it’s gaining people from the rest of the country. Check out: Net Migration Between States to see how many moved people to the Lone Star State in 2023.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 – 22:20 - Why Stablecoin Growth Thrives Globally… And Will US Now Follow Under Trump?
Why Stablecoin Growth Thrives Globally… And Will US Now Follow Under Trump?
Authored by David Feliba via CoinTelegraph.com,
While the Trump administration lays the preliminary groundwork for crypto industry regulations in the US — with the White House’s new crypto czar expected to set the course in the coming months—these digital assets are already thriving in emerging markets. For precisely the good reasons.
Pegged to fiat currencies, stablecoins are becoming an important financial tool for many in the developing world, fueling remittances and cross-border trade, bridging financial inclusion gaps, and offering a hedge against inflation in countries where traditional banking often falls short, and millions are left with little to no access to financial services.
Stablecoins — mostly pegged to the US dollar — have seen explosive growth in recent years, with real-world use cases expanding rapidly across Africa, Latin America, and parts of developing Asia. While the US is still figuring out how to apply this technology beyond the crypto space, emerging markets are already proving why stablecoins matter.
In these regions, they’re not just a financial experiment — they’re a solution.
Stablecoins as a hedge against inflation in South America
In inflation-ridden economies like Argentina and Venezuela, stablecoins offer a dollar-pegged refuge from depreciating local currencies, especially where access to foreign currency exchanges is tightly controlled. Throughout Africa and Central America, they serve as a cost-effective tool for remittances and cross-border payments, while in places like Indonesia, they can provide a more accessible alternative to traditional USD banking, which can involve complex requirements.
While in richer, more advanced economies, stablecoins are primarily used in decentralized finance and as a bridge between traditional banking and DeFi, in emerging markets with limited financial infrastructure, their role is more fundamental yet essential, Cornell University Trade Policy professor Eswar Prasad said:
“In low and middle-income economies with underdeveloped financial systems, they can play a useful role in providing citizens and businesses easy and widespread access to a low-cost digital payment system.”
Access to the US dollar — widely seen as a global store of value — has been a key driver of stablecoin adoption in emerging markets. Designed to offer stability in contrast to the volatility of early cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, most stablecoins are dollar-pegged, with Tether’s USDt leading at nearly 60% of the global market, followed by USD Coin, another dollar-backed asset.
Stablecoin supply by issuer. Source: Castle Island Ventures.
“There are problems in the world that need to be solved by a cryptocurrency that doesn’t constantly fluctuate in price,” Julián Colombo, senior director at Bitso, a Mexican crypto exchange with an official presence in Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, said in an interview with Cointelegraph.
“Stablecoins offer a way to bring all the benefits of crypto to real-world use cases—not just the potential to get rich off Bitcoin.”
Stablecoins are a priority for Trump’s crypto czar
Momentum is growing in the United States around stablecoins, as a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation on Feb. 4 to establish a regulatory framework. In his first address to the industry, White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks emphasized that stablecoin regulation is a top priority for the administration, with the former venture capitalist leading a task force set to draft key policies over the next six months.
At any rate, stablecoin growth has been nothing short of spectacular. In the past year alone, they’ve tacked on a staggering $100 billion in market value, soaring to a total of $225 billion as of February 2025, according to DelfiLlama. USDt still reigns supreme, commanding over 60% of the market, but challengers — including those backed by financial powerhouses like PayPal— are rapidly gaining ground.
“Stablecoins — tokenized representations of fiat currencies circulating on blockchains 1 — are unambiguously the “killer app” of crypto so far,” a report authored by Castle Island Ventures and sponsored by Visa mentioned.
“We believe stablecoins represent a payment innovation that has the potential to expand access to secure, reliable, and convenient payments to more people in more places,” Cuy Sheffield, Global Head of Crypto at the US payments giant, said.
“While they initially emerged as a crypto-native collateral type and settlement medium for traders and exchanges, they have crossed the chasm and have found wide adoption globally in the ordinary economy,“ it was argued in the report.
“Based on the divergence between stablecoin activity and crypto market cycles, it is evident that stablecoin adoption has moved beyond merely serving crypto users and trading use cases.”
Spot crypto trading volume vs stablecoin monthly sending addresses. Source: Castle Island Ventures.
Seen as a store of value, a hedge against inflation, and a tool for cross-border transactions, stablecoins have gained significant traction in emerging markets. A recent Chainalysis report found that in regions like Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia, stablecoin adoption far outpaces that of Bitcoin, accounting for nearly half of all crypto transactions in some cases.
In contrast, the US and North America have the lowest adoption rate for stablecoins in North America, though it still holds a notable share.
Share of regional transaction activity: stablecoin and Bitcoin. Source: Chainalysis.
In places like Brazil, a Latin American powerhouse with a population of 216 million and a $2.2 trillion GDP, the use of stablecoins has surged wildly in recent years, its central bank governor Gabriel Galipodo said. As much as 90% of the entire crypto flow is linked to stablecoins, the economist said while speaking at a Bank for International Settlements event in Mexico City on Feb. 6.
“Most of that is to buy things and to shop things from abroad,” said Galipolo, emphasizing that this novel trend brought with it intense oversight challenges regarding taxation.
But nowhere in Latin America have stablecoins found greater adoption than in Argentina, Julián Colombo, who leads the local operation at regional exchange Bitso, said. Amid the country’s chronic inflation and economic instability, they offer a vital financial refuge for citizens.
“In Argentina, as in other high-inflation countries, stablecoins have emerged as a solution to a very real and pressing problem,” Colombo told Cointelegraph.
“Argentines don’t trust the local currency and prefer to save in dollars, but government-imposed exchange controls and restrictions make access difficult. Stablecoins have filled that gap, providing a way to hold and transact in USD.”
In Argentina, he says, roughly two out of every three crypto purchases through the exchange are made in dollar-pegged assets. While Argentina’s financial indicators have improved under pro-crypto President Javier Milei’s market-driven administration, inflation remains high at 84.5% year-over-year.
Though recent monthly data shows a downward trend, rebuilding trust in the local currency will take time in a country long plagued by triple-digit inflation and severe currency devaluations, ensuring sustained demand for stablecoins pegged to the US dollar.
Similarly, the adoption of such digital assets has been significant as well in Venezuela, which suffers from chronicle inflation as well as a myriad of regulations that make access to foreign currency like the USD highly convoluted. In emerging markets with somewhat more stable currencies like Brazil or Mexico, they can serve a different but equally important purpose: enabling fast, low-cost money transfers without the volatility of traditional cryptocurrencies.
Businesses use them to pay for international services, hire remote employees, send dividends, and facilitate remittances, making cross-border transactions more efficient and accessible.
“In contrast to other crypto assets, stablecoins come with a promise of stability,” the Bank of International Settlements said in a report about stablecoins. “Due to this potential, they are increasingly entering mainstream finance, and a number of jurisdictions have developed regulatory approaches for issuers of stablecoins pegged to a single fiat currency.”
Stablecoins fuel remittances in Central America and Africa
One of stablecoins’ most powerful use cases comes in the form of cross-border transfer and remittances, particularly in Central America and Africa, with these digital assets providing an alternative for cheaper and faster money flows across international borders. Migrants working in the United States have often found in stablecoins a vehicle for more convenient transfers to families back home,
“Stablecoins are getting some traction for both domestic and cross-border payments,” Prasad, who teaches Trade Policy at US Cornell University, said to Cointelegraph. “They are already playing a particularly useful role in overcoming the inefficiencies, high costs, and slow processing times for cross-border transactions conducted through traditional payment channels.”
Referencing the popularity of stablecoin use in remittances, Colombo said:
“Before crypto, remittance services could charge up to 10% in fees just to send money from one country to another. With crypto, you might have some extra money to send to Mexico, and the transfer could cost just a cent—arriving in minutes instead of hours or days.”
Cases for non-crypto use of stablecoins grow
In the Visa-sponsored report, researchers conducted a survey of approximately 500 crypto user individuals in Nigeria, Indonesia, Turkey, Brazil, and India for a total sample of 2,541 adults. While access to crypto remains the most popular motivation to use them, non-crypto uses such as access to dollars, generating yield or transactional purposes are highly popular.
Stablecoin questionnaire results. Source: Castle Island Ventures.
The survey revealed that Nigerian users have the strongest affinity for stablecoins compared to other countries surveyed. Nigerians transact with stablecoins the most frequently, have the largest share of stablecoins in their portfolios, use them for the widest range of non-crypto purposes, and report the highest self-reported knowledge of stablecoins. Saving money in dollars was their top priority.
Across Africa, stablecoins have become the “holy grail” for cross-border trade, international remittances, and value transfer across the continent, according to Zekarias Dubale, co-founder of the Africa Fintech Summit. He argued that these digital assets could offer the necessary financial infrastructure to facilitate global trade.
The case for stablecoins, however, is not without risks. While the most widely used stablecoins have largely maintained their peg to the strong fiat currencies they are designed to mirror, the market is expanding rapidly, with hundreds of digital assets now in circulation. Many of these assets, however, lack transparency about the reserves backing them, and instances of stablecoins depegging and, in some cases, collapsing have occurred.
Despite this, stablecoins are gaining momentum in the United States under the Trump administration and across emerging markets, where they are proving to be powerful tools that can help citizens overcome challenges related to financial inclusion and underdeveloped infrastructure.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 – 21:55 - Trump, Musk To Discuss Sending US Taxpayers $5,000 Checks Using DOGE Savings
Trump, Musk To Discuss Sending US Taxpayers $5,000 Checks Using DOGE Savings
Billionaire Elon Musk said on Feb. 18 that he will discuss with President Donald Trump a proposal to send U.S. taxpayers rebate checks representing a portion of the money saved by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Musk is spearheading the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the federal government and reduce wasteful spending.
The DOGE leader took to his social media platform, X, to say he would check with Trump regarding the possibility of introducing a “DOGE Dividend.”
The SpaceX and Tesla founder made the remarks in response to a suggestion from James Fishback, CEO of investment firm Azoria, that a “tax refund check” be sent out to Americans after DOGE completes its work in July 2026.
The refund would be funded “exclusively with a portion of the total savings delivered by DOGE,” according to Fishback’s proposal.
As Katabella Roberts reports for The Epoch Times, DOGE aims to deliver $2 trillion in federal spending cuts during its 18-month lifespan.
Fishback’s proposal calls for 20 percent of the $2 trillion in savings—approximately $400 billion—to be returned to 79 million tax-paying households via direct payments.
That would amount to roughly $5,000 being returned to each of those 79 million households, according to Fishback.
He said the rebate “compensates American taxpayers for the egregious misuse and abuse of their hard-earned tax dollars that DOGE has uncovered,” and encourages them to report “instances of waste, fraud, and abuse” to DOGE, thereby increasing the total amount that DOGE saves.
In addition, Fishback said the rebate would help “restore public trust between taxpayers and their government” and increase “tax morale.”
It would also incentivize labor force participation, the investor said, noting that the rebate would be available only to net payers of federal income tax in 2025.
Musk responded to Fishback’s proposal, saying he “will check with the president.”
The entrepreneur also responded to another post on X regarding the potential tax refund, writing: “Obviously, the President is the Commander-in-Chief, so this is entirely up to him.”
DOGE Says Billions Saved Amid Cost-Cutting Efforts
DOGE said its cost-cutting efforts across several federal agencies had saved an estimated $55 billion as of Feb. 17.
The savings came from a combination of fraud detection and deletion, contract and lease cancellations and renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings that have been implemented across federal agencies, according to DOGE’s official website.
DOGE stated that contract cancellations alone accounted for approximately 20 percent of the overall savings amassed since the department was established by Trump in January.
The top 10 agencies with the highest total contract savings include the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), responsible for administering U.S. foreign aid and development assistance; the Department of Education; the Office of Personnel Management; the Department of Health and Human Services; and the Department of Agriculture, according to the DOGE website.
Many Republicans have long seen many of the agencies currently targeted by DOGE as pushing liberal agendas that are detrimental to U.S. interests.
However, the agencies account for just a small fraction of the overall federal budget, which is projected to reach $7 trillion this fiscal year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
For example, USAID disbursed about $72 billion in aid in fiscal year 2023, Reuters reported, citing government figures. That amounted to about 1 percent of total federal outlays, according to the news agency.
Musk is also facing criticism from Democrats and other groups over his role with DOGE and possible conflicts of interest.
The White House has previously said that the Space X and Tesla founder is a “special government employee” under the Trump administration and acts as an adviser only.
While speaking to reporters alongside Trump in the Oval Office on Feb. 11, Musk defended his position as an unelected official while vowing to remain transparent with the American public.
“You can’t have an autonomous federal bureaucracy,” Musk said. “You have to have one that’s responsive to the people.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 – 21:30 - Conspiracy Theorists Were Right About Everything – Now What?
Conspiracy Theorists Were Right About Everything – Now What?
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,
For many years alternative economists and “conspiracy theorists” have argued that, according to the evidence, there has been an organized criminal cabal operating a long running agenda to exploit and eventually destroy western culture. We have suggested that much of this agenda was being funded with our own tax dollar while using government institutions and NGOs as vehicles for social engineering.
In the 20 years since I started work in the liberty movement (or patriot movement), I have seen corruption beyond imagining and it all culminated in 2020-2023 when many of us battled against the imposition of total medical tyranny and mass woke indoctrination. Even after that startling Orwellian period we were still called conspiracy theorists, but public awareness is changing rapidly.
I’ve see enough to know that what is happening today is truly unprecedented. We have entered a crossroads; a time when reality is no longer discarded for the sake of collective comfort and “conspiracy” becomes historic fact. It’s an exciting time to be alive, but also potentially hazardous.
My running theory has always been that once the house of cards came crashing down and the truth was revealed to the wider public, a whole lot of skeptics that used to call us “fringe crazies” and “tinfoil hatters” would suddenly claim they “saw it coming all along”. Yes, the conspiracy theorists were right, about EVERYTHING. The truth is coming to light in a big way, but what does this mean for the future?
Can America Handle The Truth?
The recent dismantling of USAID and the open investigations into numerous federal agencies has opened a Pandora’s Box; the covert funding that these institutions are involved in (including millions in pay-offs to various news media outlets and propaganda platforms) is, I believe, just the tip of a massive iceberg that could very well sink the US system faster than the Titanic.
Elon Musk’s DOGE group has only just begun dipping their toes into the dark waters of the Treasury, Medicaid, Social Security and the Defense Department. We all know there are some horrifying monsters lurking in those depths. This doesn’t even take into account the hidden activities of the controllers of the Federal Reserve.
The establishment media argues that USAID represents only 1% of the total federal budget, as if that makes the budget waste acceptable. But if there is that much mismanagement and gerrymandering in a smaller organization like USAID, imaging how much fraud there is in the rest of the federal government? .
Over the years many of us in alternative economics have wondered if our nation would be able to handle the revelation that almost everything about our system is fake. Half the country has suspected as much, but what would happen if we had hard proof – A smoking gun?
USAID is that smoking gun, the proof of death, but it’s only one of many buried bodies that are about to be uncovered. The real revelations will come when DOGE discovers how much US policy is directed and controlled by entities OUTSIDE our own country.
What happens when they investigate the numerous financial and political networks connected to the WEF, DAVOS, World Bank, the IMF, the BIS, and international think tanks like the CFR, Tavistock, the Atlantic Council, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Open Society Foundations? What about the investment influences of Black Rock,Vanguard, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, etc.?
When the globalist hand behind the revolving door of cash is revealed, when the shadow government becomes a concrete and undeniable fact, is the public going freak out?
The political left is an enemy of freedom and morality, yes, but the greater issue is that they are a useful tool for more powerful elitist interests. It’s a cartel, an oligarchy working together to bring down the west from within and replace it with something new. A new ideology and a new economy that would effectively turn the majority of the population into unwitting serfs.
Only four years ago the WEF was boasting about the coming of the “4th Industrial Revolution”, the rise of the “cashless society”, the “Fifteen Minute City” and the “Sharing Economy”. And, as we now know, many of those projects were being paid for with our tax dollars. The globalists were so convinced that they had the populace dead to rights. They thought they had won.
It was only through the tireless efforts of liberty movement activists and conservatives around the world that the plan was disrupted and the globalists were sent into retreat. However, the fight is far from over. There are some important problems that need to be addressed as we enter the era of transparency. Here’s what will probably happen next…
Rabid Sabotage By The Political Left
The government is effectively being audited by the Trump Administration, and the Democrats are enraged. Why? Because they (and a handful of Neo-Cons) know full well what that audit is going to find. Activist judges and progressive politicians are going to obstruct and interfere with the process as much as they can. Their entire power structure depends on the steady embezzlement of tax dollars and the constant churning of the fiat printing press.
For those people who don’t understand what the big deal is with USAID, I suggest they research ESG programs and what they do. USAID was basically a vehicle for global ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance; a meaningless acronym designed to hide a program for global socialism) and it was spending incredible sums of money to spread woke propaganda into every facet of our society.
Leftist legal actions won’t make much difference in the long run, but they’ll still try to delay. These delays will be used to buy time for media spin. They’re going full force to misrepresent DOGE as some kind of totalitarian entity “destroying democracy”, however, authoritarians have never and will never pursue government transparency; this is not a thing. Authoritarians ALWAYS pursue obscurity and occult secrecy around their activities. The leftists, by their own actions, are exposed as the true totalitarians.
Democrats and establishment NGOs will continue trying to foment civil unrest and they will use woke dupes as cannon fodder in this fight. Anything to distract the public from the evidence of their criminality. Violence and terrorism should be expected.
Economic Downturn Is Inevitable – Trump Will Be Blamed
Broad budget cuts are essential to saving the economy in the long term, but they are also a double-edged sword in the short term. For example, US GDP stats rely greatly on government spending in their calculations (they shouldn’t, but they do). Government spending accounts for around 36% of our nation’s GDP – It’s a methodology used in recent decades to make our economic health look stronger than it really is.
As Trump executes extensive cuts to government spending, this will in turn make it look as if GDP is plummeting. Leftists will claim that Trump’s policies are crashing the financial system.
On top of this, I’ve been warning for some time that the Biden Administration has been engaging in complex data manipulation. Now that Biden is gone the real data is already coming out and it’s not good. Inflation numbers and employment numbers from the Biden era are being “adjusted”, as I predicted, showing a much weaker economy than originally reported. Retail stats and GDP are next.
The American public will need a crash-course in how the economy works and who is behind the downturn, or the leftist media will have a field day with the revised stats.
Can The Investment World Handle The Truth?
When the level of fraud within the US system is fully exposed, will the investment world panic? Will they pull their money out of US markets that have long been supported artificially by government funds and central bank intervention? These are valid questions we need to consider. The truth needs to come out regardless; nothing can be fixed until the source of the rot is uncovered. That said, the mantra “ignorance is bliss” is one that America has been living by for a long time.
I think Americans are desperate for the truth and desperate for reform, but change on the scale we are facing always brings chaos with it. I suggest that conservatives and patriots prepare accordingly.
Cutting Ties With Globalist Run Governments
As the process of transparency moves forward in the US we have to take into account that Europe, the UK, Australia and Canada are all still well under the hypnosis of the cabal. Things are changing overseas; the UK, Germany and France are starting to see conservative movements blossom, but globalists are determined to stop them from gaining political traction.
I suspect we will see strained or broken ties with many former allies in the coming years as they crack down on their own citizens and show their true authoritarian colors. We’re already seeing this happening in the UK, Germany, France and Romania among others.
The Most Dangerous Time Is When You Think You Are Winning
Establishment elites are like vampires. In fact, I suspect the whole mythology of vampires from centuries ago is actually based on the very real and evil crimes of the elites of the past. They use their wealth and influence to gain a foothold in your country, city or village. They use subterfuge to gain trust and exert authority. They spread darkness and corruption like a cancer, then they feed on the population at will while pretending to be benevolent leaders.
But these parasites must be invited in by the people. The public has to, in some ways, give consent to their own victimization. We have to willfully ignore their activities; our apathy is seen as consent. Sunlight is the primary remedy and the vampires flee when it’s unleashed. Finally, if all else fails a stake through the heart is required to end them. It could be a proverbial stake, or a very real one.
Audits of the corrupt system are the sunlight. Independent patriot rebellion is the stake through the heart if all else fails.
Just because the evil is exposed does not necessarily mean it will stop or disappear. Often these cornered creatures fight even harder and their mission is to take you down with them. Great truth often precedes the darkest of days and the collapse of epochs. As the shadow government faces uncertainty for perhaps the first time ever, who knows how the leviathan will react?
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Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 – 21:05 - US Designates Mexican Cartels As "Foreign Terrorists," Signaling Financial Warfare Looms
US Designates Mexican Cartels As “Foreign Terrorists,” Signaling Financial Warfare Looms
The US State Department has designated eight Latin American drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, setting the stage for a series of legal and financial measures aimed at paralyzing command structures and financial networks of cartels to stop the drug death catastrophe in the US.
“Foreign Terrorist Organization Designations of Tren de Aragua, Mara Salvatrucha, Cartel de Sinaloa, Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, Carteles Unidos, Cartel del Noreste, Cartel del Golfo, and La Nueva Familia Michoacana,” a notice issued by Secretary of State Marco Rubio read earlier this month.
Rubio said in the notice that these cartels contain individuals who “have committed or have attempted to commit, pose a significant risk of committing, or have participated in training to commit acts of terrorism that threaten the security of United States nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.”
“I have determined that no prior notice needs to be provided to any person subject to this determination who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, because to do so would render ineffectual the measures authorized in the Order,” Rubio added.
The designation comes about a month after President Trump issued an executive order on his first day of office to evaluate whether Mexican drug cartels could be designated as terrorist groups.
“The cartels have engaged in a campaign of violence and terror throughout the Western Hemisphere that has not only destabilized countries with significant importance for our national interests but also flooded the United States with deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs,” Trump wrote in his order.
In recent weeks, we have incrementally reported USAF spy planes that conducted signals intelligence operations along the US-Mexico border, Green Berets from the US Army’s 7th Special Forces Group deployed on a training mission in Campeche—a Mexican port city on the Gulf of Mexico, and CIA reportedly flying MQ-9 Reaper drones over regions of Mexico dominated by heavily armed drug cartels.
Analysts told Epoch Times that designating cartels with FTO paves the way for the US government to unleash financial sanctions to disrupt the command and control centers of these cartels. Then, after financial networks are disrupted, strike cartel-operated facilities…
“You could go after people trafficking firearms to the cartels; you could arrest them for providing material to a foreign terrorist organization,” Ioan Grillo, a Mexico-based journalist, told Epoch earlier this month.
Human traffic investigator François Cavard said the Trump administration’s FTO designation would “make it clear to the high-level corrupt accomplices these criminals may have within the United States and in US government offices and agencies … that they’re going after them also.”
Here’s the latest reporting:
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USAF Spy Plane Runs SIGINT Operation Near Cabo As US Preps For Potential Cartel Fight
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USAF Spy Jet Flies Second SIGINT Operation On US Border With Focus On Narco Hub
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Border Czar “Expects” Kinetic Warfare Between US Troops & Mexican Drug Cartels
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CIA Reportedly Flying MQ-9 Spy Drones Over Mexico As Cartel Fight Nears
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Designating Cartels As Terrorists Will Have Huge Consequences, Say Analysts
Readers should understand that the disrupt-and-dismantle strategy is broad, targeting not only Mexican cartels but also transnational criminal organizations spanning from Canada to China.
This is what ‘America First’ looks like. It’s time to stop the drug death overdose crisis in America that kills 100,000 per year.
We must caution that the fight against cartels could get messy, considering the Biden-Harris regime flooded the nation with thousands of Tren de Aragua terrorists.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 – 20:40 -
- Will China Throw BRICS At The Dollar?
Will China Throw BRICS At The Dollar?
Authored by Jame Gorries via The Epoch Times,
As the Trump administration’s America First policy continues to unfold, the globalist policies of the prior administration are rapidly disappearing.
To no one’s surprise, the America First policies include imposing tariffs on Chinese goods aimed at reducing the U.S. trade deficit with China and Europe, as well as broader policies prioritizing U.S. interests over international cooperation.
Trump’s Tariffs Trigger Trade War?
But that’s not the whole story. The administration’s high tariffs, specifically on Chinese imports, are not only meant to protect U.S. industries but are also intended to pressure China economically. By extension, as the Chinese economy continues to struggle, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will be under pressure at home.
Predictably, U.S. tariffs have led to retaliatory tariffs from China against American products. Initial actions by Beijing include levying 15 percent tariffs on imports of U.S. liquid natural gas (LNG) and coal, as well as 10 percent tariffs on oil, farm equipment, and certain automobiles.
Tension Escalation and BRICS
The immediate effect has been escalating tensions between the two nations across geopolitical and economic spectrums. If the trade war continues to ramp up, the friction between Washington and Beijing will likely increase, with potentially more provocative actions and responses to follow.
One specific response could be for China to find a quicker path toward a BRICS-based trading system. BRICS, which is an acronym for the first five participating countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—was founded in 2009 and is currently considering an alternative currency that would be used primarily to replace the dollar for trading between member countries.
No actual BRICS currency yet exists.
Establishing a functioning BRICS-based trade bloc isn’t a new proposal; it’s been talked about for years or even decades. Avoiding U.S. financial dominance is the reason the BRICS nations came together in the first place. The idea has always been to insulate BRICS economies, which constitute 35 percent of global GDP, from U.S. financial pressures.
But skeptics point out that there’s no substitute for the dollar, at least not from Europe, Japan, or China. By some estimates, the U.S. dollar is used in 84.3 percent of international trade—compared to just 4.5 percent for the Chinese yuan.
BRICS: A Valid Challenge to the Dollar Dominance?
Still, the push for de-dollarization among BRICS nations has gained momentum in response to Washington’s weaponization of the dollar through sanctions and trade policies against nations it disagrees with. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Iran’s proxy wars against Israel are two prime examples of the United States imposing crippling sanctions and freezing the national assets of adversaries, but they’re not the only ones.
Now, with the Trump administration threatening the Chinese economy, the CCP views the need to launch a BRICS currency and trading system as “pressing.” They’re not alone. The other BRICS nations, especially Russia, are also very interested in forming a new currency to compete with the U.S. dollar and recently announced plans for a BRICS blockchain-based payment system.
However, achieving true currency diversification against the dollar won’t be easy. The dollar has been widely used since the end of World War II, and the entire global financial system is dollar-based. Furthermore, the dollar network is well-established and functions better than any other.
The dollar network includes the U.S. economy, which remains the biggest and most productive and innovative in the world; the U.S. financial markets; the banking and exchange system (SWIFT), which is the world’s largest, most reliable, and most liquid; and the U.S. legal system, which is the most reliable and transparent. Finally, the U.S. military remains the most lethal and effective enforcement agency on the planet.
In soft power terms, American culture has global recognition and appeal. Neither China’s nor Russia’s cultural appeal is anywhere close. Given these factors, no other country, or even 10 nations (the number of BRICS members today), can replace the dollar’s place and power in the world.
Can China Create a BRICS-Based Trading System?
How would China and BRICS overcome these obstacles?
Various strategies have been considered. One is to conduct trade in individual currencies of BRICS participants. Another would be to form a new BRICS currency based on a basket of currencies that could be backed by gold or create the aforementioned blockchain-based currency. Discussions at BRICS summits have seen China lead these discussions.
China has also proposed a new payment system to bypass the dollar-based SWIFT system, called “BRICS Pay.” This would use blockchain-based or other innovative payment systems that enable transactions in local currencies and reduce dollar dependency. China is also building an international financial infrastructure to support BRICS members, which includes the New Development Bank to finance development projects using BRICS currencies.
As the expansion of BRICS participants continues, its chances of success will improve. With 120 nations that count China as their largest trading partner, broadening the participation and influence of this alternative economic bloc could be easy and may pose a more serious challenge to the dollar.
Impact of BRICS-Based System on the World
Some observers say that BRICS countries would regain sovereignty over their financial policies, freeing them from U.S. economic sanctions and giving them greater control over their financial policies.
That may be true. But it may also result in participants finding themselves under the heavy yoke of the CCP. Beijing’s history of saddling Belt and Road Initiative “partners” with crippling debt and military domination is well known.
Given the nature of the CCP and China’s economic and military superiority, it’s unlikely to expect Beijing to be a benevolent leader. See, for instance, how once-free Hong Kong is doing now, or for that matter, the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, or even China’s minority populations like the Uyghurs.
As a financial hegemon, China has already shown how it will behave.
As for bringing more balance to global trade, a successful BRICS could lead to a bipolar or multipolar world in terms of finance, trade, and currencies, where nations can choose which system to use or be forced to choose. But exchanging a dollar-based system for a BRICS-based one doesn’t necessarily mean more freedom or control.
The geopolitical impact of a successful BRICS system would certainly weaken U.S. influence in global economic governance and strengthen communist China. That, of course, is the whole point. Developing nations may not like how the United States handles some situations, but they’ll be much worse off under the bootheel of the CCP.
Challenges and Obstacles to BRICS
But today, BRICS members have conflicting economic systems, political goals, and levels of development, which makes reaching a consensus on a new currency or payment system complex.
India, for example, is an economic, political, cultural, and regional rival to China. Live fire border skirmishes between the two are common, and China supports Pakistan, India’s prime adversary.
Will New Delhi be willing to take financial orders from communist Beijing?
As the world’s largest democracy with the highest population on Earth, India is a nuclear power, enjoys a rapidly growing economy, and has a young, dynamic population that starkly contrasts China’s shrinking economy and rapidly aging population.
It’s also difficult to believe that the United States will sit back and allow BRICS to happen without a fight. The Trump administration is quite willing to use tariffs up to 100 percent against BRICS members if they try to replace the dollar.
The bottom line?
China, Russia, Iran, and South Africa need BRICS more than their trading partners do. With a surging America and a powerful dollar, if and when a BRICS currency emerges, it may resemble the old Soviet trading bloc that couldn’t compete with the West, which is really what BRICS is all about.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 – 20:15 - Paging DOGE: Study Finds 28% Spike In Corruption When Feds Shower Local Governments In Cash
Paging DOGE: Study Finds 28% Spike In Corruption When Feds Shower Local Governments In Cash
Federal grants are a crucial funding source for local governments, growing from $135 billion in 1990 to an astounding $1.2 trillion in 2022. However, a new study reveals that sudden surges of federal money – so-called “windfalls” – increase local corruption by up to 28%. This research underscores the urgent need for stringent oversight mechanisms, particularly at the federal level, to ensure these funds serve their intended purpose rather than lining the pockets of corrupt officials.
Federal Windfalls: A Breeding Ground for Corruption
The study reveals that local governments experiencing sudden increases in federal grants witness a 28% rise in corruption-related charges. This trend is not surprising given that rapid financial expansion often outpaces the development of adequate oversight structures.
Examples abound of public officials exploiting these funds for personal gain. One such case involved the mayor and accountant of Stonecrest, Georgia – Jason Lary, who pleaded guilty in 2022 to defrauding local churches, businesses and nonprofit organizations out of hundreds of thousands of dollars – out of a $6.2 million federal grant for COVID-19 relief.
In October of 2021, the DOJ seized roughly $480,000 of fraud proceeds from Lary – who was sentenced to nearly five years in prison.
Former Stonecrest Mayor Jason Lary The principal-agent problem exacerbates this issue. While the federal government provides funds with the expectation that local governments will use them appropriately, local officials—acting as agents—sometimes operate contrary to these expectations, exploiting gaps in oversight and enforcement.
The Role of Federal Oversight Agencies
Given the lack of oversight at the local level, federal oversight agencies, like the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), are vital in curbing these abuses. According to the study, federal oversight of ‘windfall’ grants rely on ‘Single Audits’ – the impact of which is “surprisingly limited and mixed. According to a 2021 study (Brumley et al.), when Single Audits do find corruption, there is usually no subsequent reduction in federal grant awards.
State oversight mechanisms offer some deterrence, particularly when state auditors hold Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) credentials. However, their effectiveness is inconsistent across jurisdictions. While states with more fraud auditors experience lower corruption levels, the overall impact is relatively weak compared to federal intervention.
Federal Windfalls Enable More than Just Grant Fraud
Extra federal money doesn’t just lead to fraud in grant programs it spills over into other types of financial crime. More cash = more opportunities for mismanagement. (6/8)— Kyle Welch (@Prof__Welch) February 19, 2025
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At the local level, the situation is even more dire. The study highlights that poor audit outcomes—such as material weaknesses, questioned costs, and audit findings—exacerbate corruption. Local governments with a history of financial mismanagement are particularly vulnerable when receiving windfall grants, as they lack the necessary controls to prevent misuse.
Not All Audits Are Created Equal
Some audit findings (like questioned costs) exacerbate corruption risks, while others (like modified opinions) do nothing. What we measure and act on matters. (7/8)— Kyle Welch (@Prof__Welch) February 19, 2025
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The Power of the Press: An Unofficial Watchdog
In addition to formal oversight mechanisms, a strong local press plays a crucial role in exposing corruption. The study demonstrates that local corruption spikes when newspapers shut down. This finding aligns with broader research showing that the media acts as an informal check on government misconduct by increasing transparency and public accountability. Unfortunately, the decline of local journalism in recent years has weakened this crucial line of defense.
Policy Implications and Recommendations
To combat the corruption linked to federal windfalls, policymakers must strengthen oversight at multiple levels:
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Enhance Federal Oversight: Agencies like DOGE should increase their scrutiny of windfall grants, particularly in municipalities with a history of financial mismanagement.
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Mandate Independent Federal Audits: Rather than relying on local and state audits, federal agencies should conduct independent, randomized audits to deter misconduct.
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Strengthen State Fraud Detection: States should require their auditors to hold CFE credentials and allocate more resources to fraud detection.
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Support Local Journalism: Given its deterrent effect, federal and state governments should explore initiatives to sustain local investigative journalism.
Until then, politicians gonna politician…
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Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 – 19:50 -
- Arizona Governor Vetoes Bill To Expedite Ballot Counting In Swing State
Arizona Governor Vetoes Bill To Expedite Ballot Counting In Swing State
Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs on Tuesday vetoed a bill aimed at speeding up ballot counting in the state, citing concerns that it would make voting more difficult.
House Bill 2703, introduced by Republican state Rep. Laurin Hendrix, would have changed Arizona election laws by eliminating emergency voting centers and setting a new deadline for voters to drop off early ballots.
Hobbs said earlier this month that she would veto the measure amid concerns it could create difficulties for voters, leading to negotiations with lawmakers that ultimately stalled.
In a Feb. 18 statement posted to the social media platform X, Hobbs said she had offered compromises that would have sped up election results in the state while also protecting voting rights.
Those compromises were ultimately rejected, prompting her to veto the measure, the governor said.
Hobbs said she was concerned that the legislation restricts late-early ballot drop-offs and effectively ends Arizona’s Active Early Voting List, therefore “gutting the vote by mail program that countless Arizonans rely on.”
“I offered compromises that include that change, but also policies like same day voter registration, cross-county portability of registration, and more assistance for eligible voters to return their ballots to protect voter access,” Hobbs stated.
“Compromise was rejected.”
Election results in Arizona tend to come in later than in other states, in part because of a state-mandated signature verification process for mail ballots and a surge in emergency voting during the weekend before Election Day.
Under current law, voters can drop off their mail ballots at polling places until 7 p.m. on Election Day. As a result, the state has taken close to two weeks to report its results in recent elections.
Veto a ‘Huge Mistake’ Senate President Says
The legislation rejected by Hobbs would have prohibited many voters from dropping off their mail-in ballots on Election Day, moving the deadline to the Friday before instead.
Doing so would have allowed election officials to collect the majority of mail ballots before election night and begin the time-consuming signature verification process earlier.
The measure would also have required voters to go to specific voting locations—depending on where they lived—over the weekend before an election to show identification and sign an early voter affidavit in order to drop off their ballot.
The measure stated that Arizona’s delayed results are “sometimes perceived as evidence of election worker incompetence or inefficiency or as an opportunity for unscrupulous participants to affect the ballot tabulation process improperly.”
Due to delays in reporting final results, public confidence in Arizona’s voting system has declined, the measure stated.
“By decentralizing and streamlining the process for confirming voter identity associated with late early ballots and eliminating emergency voting during the days immediately before election day, Arizona can substantially reduce administrative burdens, speed up the ballot tabulation process and increase confidence in the electoral system,” the legislation noted.
Senate President Warren Petersen, who sponsored the measure, called Hobbs’ veto “a huge mistake,” and “a missed opportunity to increase voter confidence and reduce frustration on election night.”
In a Feb. 18 statement, Peterson said lawmakers remain committed to making “commonsense and proven changes” to the state’s election processes.
“Arizona should never again be the laughingstock of the nation for its woefully slow election reporting,” he said. “Our caucus will be discussing a path forward on this issue in the days and weeks ahead.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 – 19:25 - "We Are The Last Humans In World History Who Remember What Life Was Like Before" AI
“We Are The Last Humans In World History Who Remember What Life Was Like Before” AI
Oliver Anthony, a former factory worker who emerged from the woods of Virginia, gained national attention in the late summer of 2023 with his song “Rich Men North of Richmond.” The song became the No. 1 song on iTunes for weeks, resonating as an anthem for over 80 million Americans who have been smeared, ignored, mocked, slandered, and robbed by the Deep State that President Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE are firing in mass. Now, Anthony has elevated his message, warning about the dangers of the technological society.
On Tuesday, Anthony spoke at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship event in London. The big question is: Why was this internet-famous singer invited to speak at a conference with world leaders? And how do his credentials compare to those of others in the room?
Maybe ARC’s founder, Jordan Peterson, a Canadian author and former psychology professor, is behind the invite.
Besides that… Anthony warned:
And in my unprofessional opinion neuroplasticity has made us increasingly digitally proficient but at a cost of being digitally dependent, and if being hired on as a London cab driver can change your brain on an MRI scan and if life experiences like PSD can alter the DNA and sperm what irreversible alterations will 30,000 hours of staring into algorithmically fed into a state of hypnosis due to the human mind or to their offspring.
In this short breath of time, we live in a state of existence that quite possibly no one else in world history has. We have both access to instant global connectivity, infinite information, and consumer-level access to artificial intelligence, but we are the last few humans in world history who remember what life was like before it. We are the last living people in history to have experienced life before the digital age.
I fear that it may become nearly impossible for younger generations to even differentiate the digital world from the real one before the end of my lifetime. There is nothing inherently wrong with technology. There is nothing wrong with instant connection, and there is nothing intrinsically bad about access to abundant information, but what is bad is the lack of control and agency that we have over these systems and without realizing it we are being programmed and our culture is becoming commodified therefore, the more time we spend on these digital information systems the more we revert to the mean of one of a fixed set of broad internet cohorts – in other words the more time we spend online the more commoditized our culture, the more tribal our psychology, and the more vulnerable we become.
…
I’m just here to remind you that we don’t need our false Idols. We should no longer rely on politicians who bow down to money to manage our city or our states. We need to find the real leaders everywhere and empower them Western North Carolina was proof to me that there is an army of good people left in this world who want to do good things. We just have to give them places to gather and give them the ability to act, and so I close with this do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong for like the grass, they will soon wither like green plants they will soon die away trust in the Lord and do good dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture take. Delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. So I’ll see you on April the 5th in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, for the first official gathering.
It is now my life’s mission to revive Rural America one town at a time. It’s called the Rural Revival Project, so thank you for for listening.
Listen here:
What hits hard in Anthony’s speech is this line: “We are the last few humans in world history who remember what life was like before it. We are the last living people in history to have experienced life before the digital age.”
We will have great stories for the grandchildren about life before AI…
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Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 – 19:00 - Trump Could Be About To Ban COVID Vaccines; Report
Trump Could Be About To Ban COVID Vaccines; Report
Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,
Trump health officials could be about to recommend a complete stop to covid vaccines for all age groups in the US, according to a report.
The move would effectively ban the vaccines amid widespread suggestions that they are having expansive side effects and causing a spike in excess deaths.
The Daily Mail outlines how Dr Jay Bhattacharya, President Trump’s nomination to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has backed a petition calling for the mRNA vaccines to be paused and retested.
Covid vaccine faces ban for all Americans in radical U-turn by Trump team https://t.co/1rnPceYzbL
— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) February 19, 2025
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Bhattacharya, an Infectious diseases expert, has signed on to the Hope Accord, which claims there is a ‘casual link’ between the mRNA shots and an alarming rise in excess deaths worldwide, the report further notes.
For too long important voices have been silenced.
Slowly that is changing.
Add your name to The Hope Accord and help them be heard: https://t.co/jL8eIoTO1v pic.twitter.com/r0SylR76JF
— The Hope Accord (@TheHopeAccord) November 8, 2024
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The report also asserts that new Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr is ready to axe the shots if the data supports such a move.
RFK previously petitioned the FDA to revoke emergency authorisation of the shots six months after they were rolled out, citing a lack of data for their effectiveness or safety.
Kennedy has since said that while he wouldn’t have directly blocked the vaccines if he was in government, “I would have made sure that we had the best science, and there was no effort to do that at that time.”
Dr Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist who is being considered for a health advisory role in Kennedy’s team, has also called for the jabs to be suspended and reassessed.
Bhattacharya was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration in which thousands of scientists called for a policy of herd immunity over lockdowns and vaccinations.
He was also one of the many experts who was censored and attacked during the pandemic for challenging the orthodoxy.
Bhattacharya previously warned that “When you take a position that is at odds with the scientific clerisy, your life becomes a living hell.”
Speaking at the Academic Freedom Conference at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, Bhattacharya, who previously described lockdowns as the most catastrophically harmful policy in “all of history,” and “the single worst public health mistake in the last 100 years,” noted “we have a clerisy that declares from on high what is true and what is not true.”
He added that he has come to the conclusion that “academic freedom is dead.”
The most recent CDC data shows that 45 percent of adults over 65 years old have taken the most recent Covid booster shot, while 23 percent of Americans over 18 years of age have gotten it.
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Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 – 18:35 - Putin: 'I Will Meet Donald With Pleasure'
Putin: ‘I Will Meet Donald With Pleasure’
“I will meet Donald with pleasure” – that’s what President Putin expressed Wednesday in a brief televised interview with RT. He further outlined some conditions for such a meeting, saying that it can’t just involve sitting for some tea or coffee, but both the Russian and American diplomatic teams which met in Riyadh the day prior must thoroughly prepare to negotiate issues most important to each, particularly the Ukraine crisis.
Interestingly, Putin described that Trump’s timetable for achieving peace in Ukraine changed and this was inevitable and ‘natural’ – given that upon entering office he was able to see the fuller scope of intelligence information, and the greater complexities of the conflict. Putin made mention of the potential for peace within six months (referencing the White House change), in contrast to Trump on the campaign trail talking just ‘days’.
‘I will meet Donald with pleasure’ – Putin
Putin lays out the conditions for meeting https://t.co/lICjGuSqrf pic.twitter.com/4UxB7rzLtm
— RT (@RT_com) February 19, 2025
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Putin also called the Trump team ‘completely different’ in terms of positive openness and willingness to work with Moscow, in contrast to the prior Biden administration, and given the Riyadh meeting took place without bias and on “friendly” terms, and with no “condemnation of what had been done in the past” – meaning the two sides showed willingness to move forward and not rehash a blame-game.
Of the Tuesday Saudi-hosted talks, which lasted four-and-half hours, Putin described: “It is impossible to solve many issues, including the Ukrainian crisis, without increasing trust between Russia and the United States” – and stressed that the process is about restoring this trust, toward a resolution of the conflict.
He was further quoted in Interfax saying of the talks: “Yes, I have been informed. I rate them highly, there are results.”
As for Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, his follow-up assessment after leading the delegation in Riyadh was as follows: “Moscow and Washington need to clean up the legacy of former US President Joe Biden’s administration, which ruined the foundation of long-lasting cooperation between the two countries.”
“For now, it is necessary to clean up the legacy of the Biden administration, which did everything to destroy even the first hints at, the very foundation of long-term partnership between our countries,” Lavrov added.
Meanwhile, without doubt Kremlin leaders are enjoying Trump’s fresh blasting of Zelensky. Trump in a Wednesday post on Truth Social called the Ukrainian President a “modestly successful comedian” who essentially tricked the US into spending hundreds of billions for a war that “couldn’t be won” and should have never started. Trump further referenced “A Dictator without Elections” said the Ukrainian leader “better move fast” or he “won’t have a country left.”
Trump team ‘completely different’ in positive openness to work together — Putin pic.twitter.com/SsaS5JCRBZ
— RT (@RT_com) February 19, 2025
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Likely this will only add to Putin’s willingness to meet with Trump, which would be a first since 2021. Putin’s spokesman on Wednesday remained cautiously optimistic:
“Maybe. Or maybe not,” Peskov said, responding to a question about the possibility of the Trump-Putin summit in February.
Peskov described the meeting in Riyadh as a “very, very important step” toward resolving the Ukraine conflict, while emphasizing that “naturally, it’s impossible to fix everything in a day or a week. There is still a long road ahead.”
But Trump said after the Riyadh talks that he feels “much more confident” about brokering a deal to end the Ukraine conflict. Additionally, goodwill and trust was build when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made clear while in Germany last week that Ukraine will not be joining NATO, which has been a crucial request of Moscow from the start.
At the G20 summit in Buenos Aires in November 2019, via Reuters Given that Trump is now outright personally insulting Zelensky for mismanagement of the war and of his country, this could actually serve to hasten a face-to-face Putin-Trump meeting. Both sides have signaled it could happen by month’s end. Peskov has affirmed both sides are preparing for the bilateral presidential summit.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 – 18:10 - "We're Winning Across The Board": Raskin Takes Premature Victory Lap Just Before Slew Of Court Losses
“We’re Winning Across The Board”: Raskin Takes Premature Victory Lap Just Before Slew Of Court Losses
On CBS’s Face the Nation, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) repeated the talking point of Democratic politicians and pundits that the courts are stopping President Donald Trump’s lawless actions taken after his inauguration. Raskin declared “we’re winning in court…we’re winning across the board.”
The boast was dubious at best on Sunday given earlier losses, but became embarrassing on Monday and Tuesday as additional courts ruled in favor of the Trump Administration in major cases.
For weeks, some of us have expressed confusion over the basis for some of the Democratic challenges and initial injunctions in court. President Trump clearly has the authority to designate federal officials to look at the books and track expenditures in the executive branch. After losing both houses and the majority vote, Democratic groups sought to use the courts to block such executive actions.
There was obvious forum shopping as these groups went to many of the same courts and judges for relief.
However, even judges viewed as decidedly hostile to Trump like Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington ultimately balked at the demand for an injunction and allowed the access and actions to continue.
On Monday, Judge Randolph Moss, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia delivered a blow to groups seeking to block the Department of Government Efficiency from gaining access to data from the Department of Education on student borrowers.
Judge Moss found in his ruling that the University of California Student Association failed to show sufficient irreparable harm to receive such immediate relief.
He, however, left the door open a crack: “The Court leaves for another day consideration of whether USCA’s has standing to sue and has stated a claim upon which relief may be granted. Those questions are less clear cut and are better answered on a more complete record.”
Judge Chutkan also refused to grant the plaintiffs’ request to issue a temporary restraining order of Doge, again citing the failure to demonstrate evidence of “irreparable harm.”
There was a palpable sense of reluctance, even regret, in the opinion by Chutkan who noted that “Plaintiffs legitimately call into question what appears to be the unchecked authority of an unelected individual and an entity that was not created by Congress and over which it has no oversight.”
This, of course ignores the “elected individual” in the body of the President who is allowed to delegate such responsibility to subordinates. Chutkin would have been reversed by the higher courts if she had issued the requested TRO as demanded by the coalition of 14 Democratic state attorneys general.
Even before Raskin’s boost, U.S. District Judge John Bates also rejected a request to block DOGE from accessing records of three government agencies, writing in his own opinion Friday that plaintiffs “have not shown a substantial likelihood that [DOGE] is not an agency.”
Likewise, challengers thought that they had a victory in hand when U.S. District Court Judge George O’Toole enjoined the buyout offer by the Administration. Some of us criticized the injunction as lacking any cognizable basis given the clear authority of the President to make such an offer. Then, as many were citing the victory as proof of the Trump Administration’s unlawful actions, Judge O’Toole lifted the injunction on the buyout program, agreeing to allow the buyouts to go forward.
Then Judge Randolph Moss (D.D.C.) in Doe v. Office of Personnel Mgmt. rejected another challenge to testing by the Office of Personnel Management (“OPM”) of a new email system. The federal employees argued that the move violated federal law including privacy protections. The court, however, ruled that the “Plaintiffs have failed to carry their burden of demonstrating (1) that they likely have standing to bring this action, and (2) that they are likely to suffer irreparable injury in the absence of emergency relief.”
These and other setbacks do not mean that new cases cannot be brought with new records and parties. However, it is a far cry from the claim of Democrats “winning across the board.”
Of course, Raskin is not alone in the perils of premature celebration:
For those members like Raskin opposing the freeze on hiring and payouts, there is even an example of losing to the Freeze due to a premature celebration:
The race is far from over so both sides may want to stay focused on the finish line in the ongoing litigation.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 – 17:50 - India's Tata Consultancy "Gaming The US Visa System" And Falsifying Applications, Former Workers Allege
India’s Tata Consultancy “Gaming The US Visa System” And Falsifying Applications, Former Workers Allege
In 2017, as Donald Trump took office with a crackdown on employment visas, former Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) IT manager Anil Kini alleges he was ordered to falsify internal organizational charts to make the company appear more manager-heavy.
Kini claims this was a cover-up to evade scrutiny over TCS’s use of L-1A manager visas, which have fewer restrictions than H-1B visas and lack minimum pay requirements, according to a new feature by Bloomberg.
Kini and two other former TCS employees filed whistleblower lawsuits under the False Claims Act, alleging the company used L-1A visas to bring in non-managerial workers. However, the cases were dismissed before the visa fraud claims were examined, with Kini’s still under appeal. He says he resisted altering the charts and was fired in 2018 after filing his lawsuit.
Federal data reviewed by Bloomberg indicates that TCS has received more L-1A approvals than the number of managers it disclosed to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, suggesting possible misuse of the visa program. TCS, which serves major U.S. tech firms, has secured more L-1A visas than any other employer in recent years.
The company denies any wrongdoing, stating that courts have already dismissed these allegations.
While Trump initially opposed employment visas, arguing they undercut American workers, his stance has shifted, now expressing support for such programs. This has created tensions between his traditional nationalist base and newer tech-industry allies. Meanwhile, legal experts note that gaming the L-1A program is common, with federal authorities uncovering nearly 200 cases of misuse in the past decade.
The Bloomberg feature says that False Claims Act lawsuits let whistleblowers sue companies on behalf of the U.S. government, often alleging corporate fraud against taxpayers. These cases gain traction when the Justice Department joins, but the DOJ declined to back any lawsuits against TCS over L-1A visa misuse, including Anil Kini’s.
TCS stated in legal filings that an internal review found “most of the issues raised” by Kini were unsubstantiated and claimed it had “already taken corrective action” on those that were. However, the company did not disclose what its inquiry revealed. A federal judge dismissed Kini’s case in February, ruling he failed to prove how TCS’ visa practices violated financial obligations to the U.S. government.
Kini, who appealed the decision, says he refused to alter organizational charts and filed two internal complaints before suing in 2017. He was fired the following year, which he calls retaliation. TCS did not comment on his dismissal. “I was proud to be working for TCS,” he said. “But then some things in life, there should be integrity in what you do.”
In another case, Vinod Govindharajan, an Indian national, alleges TCS falsely claimed he was a manager in 2013 to secure an L-1A visa, bypassing stricter H-1B rules. He says the company brought him to New Jersey, where he worked a sales job with no subordinates and was paid half of what American colleagues earned. Frustrated, he filed a 2018 complaint with the EEOC, which later found “credible documentary evidence” that TCS “frequently falsifies documents in support of L-1 visa applications.” The agency also determined Indian visa workers were underpaid and that TCS retaliated against Govindharajan for speaking out.
However, the EEOC lacks authority over immigration or employment visa wage laws, which fall under separate federal agencies. There’s no indication it shared its findings with them. An EEOC spokesperson cited confidentiality rules in declining to comment. “It was a dream of mine to move to the U.S.,” Govindharajan said. “But I was doing a sales role, nothing to do with management.”
You can read the full writeup here.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 – 17:30 - American AI Should Be Quintessentially American
American AI Should Be Quintessentially American
Authored by Richard Porter via RealClearPolitics,
The United States and Europe have long shared a common political culture rooted in the ideals of the Enlightenment. These include the primacy of personal freedom; individual autonomy; the inherent equal moral standing of human beings; acceptance of diverse viewpoints; and the use of logic, intellectual rigor, and critical thinking to understand the world. The Western alliance’s raison d’etre is protecting those ideals – and the societies built on the foundation of these ideals – from authoritarian regimes.
J.D. Vance restated our commitment to these ideals in two powerful speeches last week – to a Paris conference on artificial intelligence and then to the Munich Security Conference. America’s newly installed vice president directly challenged European political elites who, fearing freedom, are drifting away from these ideals as they seek to squelch popular political movements while becoming autocratic themselves. For some reason, leaders in the audience were visibly stunned. They shouldn’t have been.
Vance’s rhetorical fluency was his ticket into politics. Both his recent speeches were deftly crafted and temperately delivered. They accurately reflected MAGA’s disgust over reflexive regulation by self-loathing elites who limit freedom in the name of “democracy,” and who seek to cover up government incompetence and dishonesty by deconstructing Western culture as somehow inherently racist.
In Munich, the vice president made it clear that our shared Enlightenment ideals are central to the Trump administration’s security policy and our ongoing commitment to the alliance. In Paris, Vance proclaimed that less government interference is essential to winning the AI race, and that AI should remain free from the ceaseless demands of woke culture:
Number one, this administration will ensure that American AI technology continues to be the gold standard worldwide, and we are the partner of choice for others, foreign countries, and certainly businesses as they expand their own use of AI. Number two, we believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off, and we’ll make every effort to encourage pro-growth AI policies. And I like to see that deregulatory flavor making its way into a lot of the conversations at this conference. Number three, we feel very strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship.
This third point is not aimed at Europe alone, or China, for that matter. The context here is that AI is being created by human beings who have political perspectives. AI will always have an ideology or ethic. So, let’s talk directly about the perspective that will make AI as useful (and humane) as possible.
Extrapolating on Vance’s point, U.S. companies and software engineers could adopt this refrain: “Embracing the goals of the Enlightenment, American AI must avoid bias and authoritarian censorship. It must pay homage to the primacy of personal freedom, individual autonomy, and the inherent equal moral standing of human beings. It must also celebrate diverse viewpoints while also elevating the use of logic, intellectual rigor, and critical thinking to understand the world.”
Because Western elites now doubt this ideology, the Trump administration should explicitly endorse these ideals in its AI policy as emphatically as it does in its security policy.
American-developed AI should be humane, pragmatic, logical, and possess common sense, so that AI actually advances and spreads knowledge instead of being a tool for propagating dogma, stifling intellectual curiosity, or advancing creeping European-style authoritarianism.
Google’s generative AI tool, which now provides the “top” response for most queries, shows how urgently we need to reframe the AI already in the marketplace. While earlier versions of Google’s AI product were mocked for producing ahistorical imagery, the current version is still infused with a left-wing, anti-analytical, anti-American perspective. This matters because Google’s AI is now the primary source of information for the entire world.
For example, consider how Google’s generative AI answers these queries.
Is the U.S. structurally racist?
Yes, the United States is structurally racist. Structural racism is a system of policies, practices, and norms that create and maintain white supremacy. It affects the health, education, employment, and economic status of people of color and others marginalized in society.
Does DEI make companies more profitable?
According to research from McKinsey and other studies, yes, implementing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices can generally make companies more profitable by fostering a wider talent pool, boosting innovation, and leading to better decision-making within diverse teams, ultimately improving financial performance; companies with higher diversity in their leadership tend to outperform their peers financially.
(One of the citations actually states that the results of the McKinsey studies could not be replicated, a fact the AI ignores.)
Is healthcare ever free?
Yes, healthcare is free for everyone in some countries, but not in the United States.
(Obviously healthcare is never free – someone needs to pay the doctors and build the hospitals.)
Of course, today’s AI will be seen as primitive in just a few years, but it should be worrisome not just to the Trump administration, but to all free-thinking Americans that AI’s first draft was written by left-wing activists. AI must instead be designed to question, consider, and analyze different alternatives and express uncertainty when appropriate; AI won’t be useful, and could even be dangerous, unless it’s programmed to actually be thoughtful.
Also, American AI should be quintessentially American, reflecting the best of the culture that produced our exceptional nation. We will ultimately fail in our common cause of making America great again if U.S. history is written by its haters, its economics are explained by Marxists, and “the science” is allowed to replace the scientific method.
Richard Porter is a lawyer in Chicago and an advisor to the Alfa Institute, a policy and idea accelerator founded by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 – 17:10 - Trump Praises $4.5 Trillion Tax Cut In House Budget, Wants Senate R's To Get With The Program
Trump Praises $4.5 Trillion Tax Cut In House Budget, Wants Senate R’s To Get With The Program
President Donald Trump threw his support behind a House budget plan calling for a $4.5 trillion tax cut, and encouraged Senate Republicans to abandon a short-term funding effort and coordinate with the House to implement “my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it.”
“The House and Senate are doing a SPECTACULAR job of working together as one unified, and unbeatable, TEAM, however, unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important Legislation currently being discussed, the House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“We need both Chambers to pass the House Budget to “kickstart” the Reconciliation process, and move all of our priorities to the concept of, “ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL.” Trump continued.
The “Lindsey Graham version” refers to a vote scheduled this week in the Senate that would add $150 billion to military spending and increase immigration and border enforcement by $175 billion – which some Republicans say they want to move on quickly, while waiting to resolve contentious disputes over tax cuts and raising the debt ceiling.
House Speaker chimed in on X, saying that Trump “is right,” adding “House Republicans are working to deliver President Trump’s FULL agenda – not just a small part of it.“
.@realDonaldTrump is right!
House Republicans are working to deliver President Trump’s FULL agenda – not just a small part of it.
Let’s get it done, @HouseGOP! pic.twitter.com/Hw32oLAl0z
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) February 19, 2025
Trump’s comments have complicated efforts by Senate Republican leaders to drum up support for this week’s budget vote, while the House – which is taking a one-week break for the President’s Day holiday, is struggling to come up with enough votes for the budget plan because of the party’s narrow majority, Bloomberg reports.
Adopting the budget is the first step in a special process Republicans intend to use to bypass minority senate Democrats on tax and spending legislation. A budget plan would allow Republicans to overcome procedural obstacles in the Senate with a simple majority rathe than the 60 votes it would otherwise take.
The House has drafted a plan to allow $4.5 trillion in tax cuts in exchange for $2 trillion in spending cuts and a $4 trillion increase in the debt ceiling. The House plan would direct $300 billion to military and border spending but the larger bill is expected to take months to hash out.
The plan which includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts was approved in committee ahead of possible floor votes later this month. According to House leaders, their slim majority makes it easier to pass one bill vs. breaking it into several pieces.
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Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 – 16:50 - RFK Jr. Lays Out His HHS Agenda: 'Nothing Is Going To Be Off Limits'
RFK Jr. Lays Out His HHS Agenda: ‘Nothing Is Going To Be Off Limits’
Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,
In his first address to staffers at the Department of Health and Human Services, HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. promised that “nothing is going to be off limits” in his pursuit to reduce the chronic disease epidemic.
“Some of the possible factors we will investigate were formerly taboo or insufficiently scrutinized,” Kennedy told HHS staff, Tuesday morning. “I’m willing to subject them all to the scrutiny of unbiased science.”
Some of these previously taboo concerns, he said, include “the childhood vaccine schedule, electromagnetic radiation, glyphosate, other pesticides, ultra processed foods, artificial food additives, SSRI and other psychiatric drugs, PFAS, PFOAs, microplastics.”
RFK Jr. reminded HHS staff that an “overwhelming majority” of our Founding Fathers were “citizen scientists,” including “Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, a physician, Julian Bartlett, a physician, Matthew Thornton, a physician, and Oliver Wolcott, a physician.”
HHS Secretary announces the MAHA Commission will study scientific topics critics have labeled “taboo.”
– Childhood vaccine schedule
– Electromagnetic radiation
– Glyphosate & other pesticides
– Ultra-processed food
– Artificial food additives
– SSRIs & antidepressants
– PFOAs and… pic.twitter.com/cLBLXzW3Fw— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) February 19, 2025
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“Science and democracy were born together during the enlightenment, and they share the same ideals for openness, for public access, and for transparency,” he said.
No one trusts science that isn’t transparent about its research hypothesis, its raw data, or its conflicts of interest. No one trusts a government built on lies, on secrets, on cover ups, and propaganda. That’s why my uncle famously observed that the word secrecy is repugnant to a free and open society.
RFK Jr. told the bureaucrats at HHS that a key “reason why our agencies have lost public trust is that they have become too politicized,” and that “there’s no such thing as Democratic children or Republican children.”
“Science gets politicized when power and profit are involved, and power and profit are blind to compassion,” he continued. “Reducing the influence of money, therefore, goes hand in hand with depoliticizing HHS.”
Kennedy lamented that a “fog of narrative warfare” had left Americans with a warped view of his character and beliefs.
“Let’s start a relationship by letting go of any preconceptions that you may have about me,” he stated. “I’m going to keep asking questions but hold my preconceived answers lightly. I’m willing to be wrong,” Kennedy said.
“I’m not going to impose any of my beliefs over yours,” he added. “Instead, we’re going to launch a new era of radical transparency. Only through radical transparency can we provide Americans with genuine informed consent, which is the bedrock and foundation of Democracy.”
RFK Jr. continued: “It’s no secret that many of our institutions of our Democracy, and even of science and medicine, are no longer transparent.”
Because of this, he argued, these institutions “have become inefficient, dysfunctional or corrupt,” and in some cases, become “captive to profit-making industries and stagnated in bureaucratic secrecy.”
Kennedy acknowledged however that the majority of people in our public health agencies have good motives and are “competent, ethical, caring and idealistic.”
“I believe that most of you here are not here for the money,” he told his HHS audience.
“My goal as Secretary here at HHS will be to create a culture of competency, of ethics, of openness, of transparency, of caring, and of pride so that individuals who share these ideals can flourish and thrive,” Kennedy said. “Those who are unwilling to embrace those kinds of ideas can retire,” he added.
RFK Jr. vowed to “remove conflicts of interest” at HHS whenever possible or “balance them with other stakeholders,” and to shut the revolving door to outside companies “to restore public trust.”
“We will make our data and our policy process so transparent that people won’t even have to file a FOIA request,” he promised.
RFK Jr. also pledged to bring Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) into HHS to make Medicare and Medicaid more efficient.
“The same DOGE technology that has uncovered vast amounts of waste and fraud can be used to better serve our fellow citizens who depend on these programs to make sure that no one is left behind and no one is left out,” he said. “We will aim to set a standard of courtesy, efficiency, professionalism, and integrity that will make HHS again the envy of the world.”
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MAHA: Pick up some pure, potent, organic supplements at ZH Store!
Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/19/2025 – 16:30
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