Today’s News 23rd August 2024

• Kiev's Plan To Ban The Ukrainian Orthodox Church Shows How Insecure It Is About National Identity
  Kiev’s Plan To Ban The Ukrainian Orthodox Church Shows How Insecure It Is About National Identity

  Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

  Kiev hates that a significant share of the population refuses to conform with the “negative nationalism” that they’ve aggressively enforced upon them since 2014 by continuing to worship at the Ukrainian Orthodox Churches’ sites instead of the government-backed Orthodox Church of Ukraine’s.

  

  The Rada passed a law earlier this week for banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) by the middle of next year if it doesn’t sever all ties with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). Kiev has accused the UOC of being under the ROC’s sway even though the UOC declared full autonomy from the ROC in early 2022. The authorities envisage replacing the UOC with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) that was controversially recognized as autocephalous by the Ecumenical Patriarchy in 2019.  

  Readers can learn more about this complicated subject in RT’s detailed article from last August about “The Last Crusade: How the conflict between Russia and the West has fueled a major split in the Orthodox Christian Church”. All that’s sufficient for average folks to know though is that the OCU is part of post-2014 Ukraine’s Western-backed efforts to craft an anti-Russian national identity, which includes restricting Russian-language rights and arbitrarily persecuting those who still speak it in public.

  Putin’s magnum opus from summer 2021 “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” is worth reading for those who’d like to understand how Ukraine’s separate, though originally not radically anti-Russian, identity came to be. In brief, it was largely the result of the erstwhile Kievan Rus’ collapse, after which its heartland that’s nowadays known as Ukraine fell under Lithuanian and then Polish influence. This was then followed by some Austrian, Imperial German, Nazi, and now American influences too.

  Throughout the centuries, linguistic differences developed between the indigenous inhabitants from this part of that former civilization-state and its northeastern reaches from where the future Russian Empire emerged, and these paired with different historical experiences to form a separate Ukrainian identity. Instead of celebrating its closeness with Russia’s due to their shared roots, ultra-nationalists became hellbent on exaggerating and even manufacturing differences in order to form a “negative nationalism”.

  What’s meant by this is that Ukrainian identity, both on its own due to some local demagogues but also especially as a result of the aforementioned foreign influences, came to be defined by how different it supposedly is from Russia’s. That trend turned Ukraine and those of its people who adhered to this particular form of identity into foreign powers’ geopolitical proxies against Russia, with the associated process unprecedentedly accelerating with American support in the aftermath of “EuroMaidan”.

  To be clear, Putin isn’t against a separate Ukrainian identity per se as proven by what he wrote in his magnum opus about this:

  “Things change: countries and communities are no exception. Of course, some part of a people in the process of its development, influenced by a number of reasons and historical circumstances, can become aware of itself as a separate nation at a certain moment. How should we treat that? There is only one answer: with respect!”

  He immediately added though that this newly formed identity mustn’t be weaponized against Russia, though that’s regrettably what happened with Ukraine’s. The latest example of this is the law that was described at the beginning of this analysis about banning the UOC by the middle of next year on the false pretext that it’s operating as the ROC’s proxy inside the country. The real reason, which the reader can now better understand after the preceding paragraphs’ worth of background, is Ukraine’s insecurity.

  Its leaders hate that a significant share of the population refuses to conform with the “negative nationalism” that they’ve aggressively enforced upon them since 2014 with American support by continuing to worship at the UOC’s churches instead of the OCU’s. They accordingly suspect that their ideological mission hasn’t been anywhere near as successful as they’ve publicly presented it as being and fear that everything that they did over the past decade could be reversed if they lost power.

  Basically, a large portion of Ukrainians don’t believe in obsessing over their identity differences with Russia, which doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re “pro-Russian” in a political sense but they’re also not ethnic Russophobes like the Azov Battalion is either. They might disapprove of the special operation while also disliking their post-2014 regime. These so-called “moderates” don’t want to fight for Ukraine against Russia, but they also don’t want to engage in sabotage against their government either.

  Some might secretly hope that Russia overthrows Zelensky, but they’ve also reconciled themselves with living under him and his successors if that doesn’t happen. Their government considers them a threat precisely because they don’t hate Russia, which the authorities suspect is due to the UOC allegedly being under the ROC’s influence and therefore indoctrinating them with “Kremlin propaganda”. The reality though is that these people independently arrived at their views.

  Nevertheless, Kiev is hellbent on destroying the UOC in order to then force those of its citizens who worship at its churches to do so at the OCU’s, from where they’d then be exposed to anti-Russian propaganda in the expectation that they’d eventually come to hate Russia. If this plan doesn’t succeed, then Kiev will remain paranoid that these “moderates” might one day be radicalized by their regime’s forcible conscription policy, deteriorating economic conditions, and “Kremlin propaganda” into rebelling.

  What Zelensky and his clique can never accept is that these “moderates” embrace the original Ukrainian identity, which considers itself separate from Russia but still friendly with it, while their regime espouses the weaponized version that was artificially manufactured under demagogic and foreign influences. The very fact that the UOC remains the country’s largest in spite of everything that Kiev has done over the past decade proves how genuinely popular the “moderate” version is compared to the radical one.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/23/2024 – 02:00

• Defense Budget Talks Reignite Debate Over Military Draft For Women
  Defense Budget Talks Reignite Debate Over Military Draft For Women

  Authored by Michael Washburn via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Provisions in the fiscal year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would require women to register for the military draft, while carving out an exemption from serving in front-line roles, have sparked vigorous debate among combat veterans and enlisted personnel about the wisdom of such changes and their likely impact on the armed forces.

  

  Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) announced the filing of the bill, S. 4638, last month. On Aug. 1, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted unanimously, 28–0, to move its version forward for a full Senate vote in the near future. The House of Representatives approved its own version of the bill on June 13.

  The 607-page bill authorizes topline funding of $911.8 billion for the military and contains a number of provisions aimed at improving military life. They include an increase in monthly pay for junior enlisted personnel, housing allowances for junior personnel on sea duty, extensions of bonus schemes that were set to expire, and making promotions that were subject to delays in Senate confirmation effective retroactively.

  The bill also pushes back slightly against the efforts of the Biden administration, often through executive orders, to bring the military into line with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals by amending the United States Code to forbid use of Department of Defense money and facilities for gender alteration surgeries.

  In other ways, the bill dramatically widens the front of the Biden administration’s push for inclusivity and diversity by revising selective service requirements to include women.

  Subtitle J of the bill reads, “The committee recommends a series of provisions that would require women to register for selective service under the same conditions as currently applied to men.”

  Section 529B of the bill contains an exemption that would, in theory, limit the impact of the proposed change.

  It states, “The committee recommends a provision that would specify that women drafted into service under the Selective Service System may not be compelled to join combat roles that were closed to women prior to December 3, 2015, train or become qualified in a combat arms military occupational specialty, or join a combat arms unit.”

  This stipulation notwithstanding, members of the military community are sharply divided on what effect the bill will have if passed in its current form.

  Upholding Standards

  The impact of gender integration on physical fitness requirements and standards in the military has been a source of controversy for years.

  Even after President Barack Obama’s Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, announced in December 2015, that previously all-male combat positions would be open to women, the number of women seeking entry to the Marine Corps was small and the number who passed fitness tests was even smaller.

  

  As of August 2017, nearly two years after Carter declared the far-reaching policy change, fewer than one percent of female inductees into the corps sought out combat roles, and of the number who did, only 25 percent met the physical requirements, according to a Marine Times report citing Training and Education command data. Fully 96 percent of male Marines who took the same tests passed, the report said. Those women who did not pass had to seek out noncombat roles.

  Given these realities, and the exemption from combat roles in the new NDAA bill, some observers do not see the change to the selective service criteria as especially significant.

  “There are plenty of noncombat and support roles in the U.S. military, and expanding the draft to include women does not mean putting women in the infantry or the Rangers,” Keith Naughton, the principal of Silent Majority Strategies, a Germantown, Maryland-based consultancy, told The Epoch Times.

  “When conservatives slap the DEI label on everything they don’t like, it loses its effect and makes it more difficult to stop the growth of DEI where it matters.”

  Recruitment Challenges

  The danger of aggression from Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, various terrorist groups, and other hostile powers pushes the Department of Defense to ensure a large enough military to protect American interests.

  In fiscal year 2023, the Department of Defense missed its recruitment goals by no fewer than 41,000 personnel.

  “The Military Services continue to face unprecedented recruiting challenges,” the department’s recruiting and retention report for the year ending in May 2023 states.

  As interest in national service dwindles among the younger population, the danger of an understaffed military incapable of carrying out its functions grows, said Scott McQuarrie, a former officer in both the Army and the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, who now works as an attorney.

  

  “We must have a sufficiently sized, adequately trained and equipped military in order to deter potential adversaries from drawing us into what would be a devastating conflict or, in the event of a conflict, to protect and defend the homeland and our national security interests,” McQuarrie told The Epoch Times.

  “If we cannot fill the ranks with volunteers and/or afford a volunteer force, what are the alternatives? The American people must answer that difficult question,” he said.

  McQuarrie said trying to maintain military readiness while relying exclusively on the pool of young men who volunteer for service might lead to an unpalatable outcome: lowering the standards and requirements for male inductees.

  The armed forces took such a course during the Vietnam War under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in a program known as Project 100,000. McQuarrie described Project 100,000 as nothing short of a disaster for the military and the country.

  He suggested that drafting a small number of women to serve in noncombat roles could be one way to address the personnel shortfall and maintain the highest standards for men who do take on frontline combat roles.

  

  “I believe the political climate today is conducive to addressing these questions, but it will happen only if enough leaders have the political will and moral courage to put the issues on the table for the American people to discuss and decide,” McQuarrie said.

  Maintaining Cohesion

  Others who are familiar with the realities of training and combat are sober about the practical challenges of upholding standards while incorporating larger numbers of women into the armed forces.

  If the NDAA passes in its current form, it is not impossible to envision a near future where more women seek entry to—and are granted—frontline combat roles.

  But given time-tested differences between the sexes’ physical aptitudes, this is all but certain to require adjusting physical standards, they say.

  “I think the message that citizenship sometimes comes with an obligation to one’s country is an entirely healthy message to send to both sexes, not just young men,” Sebastian Junger, a journalist and documentarian who spent years embedded with U.S. forces in combat zones in Afghanistan, told The Epoch Times.

  But there can be no illusions about the arduous nature of frontline duty and the immense physical exertions it involves, he stressed. Junger drew an analogy between the U.S. military and fire departments, which are subject to calls for diversification, often from people who have never been firefighters themselves.

  “Combat, like firefighting, is incredibly rigorous and demanding, and efforts to integrate fire departments with women have found themselves at a kind of crossroads. Do you scale down the physical requirements in order to get more women into firehouses, or keep the number of pull-ups you have to do exactly the same and have virtually no women passing?” he said.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/22/2024 – 23:25

• America's Energy Divide: How Democrats And Republicans Feel
  America’s Energy Divide: How Democrats And Republicans Feel

  Energy and climate issues have long been a point of division in American politics, with Democrats generally believing in investing in renewable energy sources while Republicans are more supportive of expanding energy production more broadly, including the use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy.

  This visualization, via Visual Capitalist’s Kayla Zhu, shows the portion of Democrat (and Democrat-leaning) and Republican (and Republican-leaning) U.S. adults who favor expanding various energy sources in the United States.

  

  The figures come from a Pew Research Center survey of over 8,500 U.S. adults conducted in May 2024.

  Which Energy Sources Do Democrats and Republicans Support?

  Nuclear energy has the smallest partisan gap out of any energy source (18 percentage points). Around two-thirds of Republicans support expanding nuclear energy compared to roughly half of Democrats.

  

  In total, 56% of U.S. adults surveyed are supportive of expanding nuclear power in America.

  Democrats are far more supportive of expanding renewable energy sources like solar and wind compared to Republicans, while Republicans are more supportive of fossil fuels like oil and coal.

  Coal mining has the greatest partisan gap at 48 percentage points, with only 16% of Democrats favoring coal expansion compared to 64% of Republicans.

  2024 U.S. Presidential Candidates’ Energy Policies

  This energy divide is reflected in the 2024 presidential candidates’ positions on energy policy, which largely fall along party lines.

  Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump has vowed to issue rapid approvals for nuclear power plants, while focusing on energy independence and stopping energy-based inflation through increased fossil fuel use.

  Democrat candidate and current Vice President Kamala Harris has historically been a strong supporter of transitioning to clean energy and was a early co-sponsor of the Green New Deal when she was a senator.

  Energy isn’t the only topic Democrats and Republicans are divided on. Check out this graphic to see how the two parties feel about industries like mining, oil and gas, higher education, news media, and more.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/22/2024 – 23:00

• Vo-Tech Education Is Taking Off, And It's Not Your Dad's Shop Class Anymore
  Vo-Tech Education Is Taking Off, And It’s Not Your Dad’s Shop Class Anymore

  Authored by Vince Bielski via RealClearInvestigations,

  Jon Graft is on a mission to reignite the passion for learning by pushing a long-denigrated  classroom practice: vocational education.

  

  The superintendent of the Butler Tech District of high schools in Ohio is a leader in the growing movement to revive public education, marred by low test scores and high absenteeism, through a hands-on approach to learning that prepares students for careers in today’s tech-driven economy. Traditionally a means of funneling disadvantaged kids into outdated shop classes and dead-end jobs, vocational education is being reimagined by Graft and others in sophisticated career and technical education (CTE) programs nationwide, offering high school students of all academic abilities training in healthcare, computer science, engineering, skilled trades, and even the arts.

  Butler Tech and other state-of-the-art CTE programs strive to keep students engaged with career-relevant coursework, apprenticeships, and internships, giving them direction and excitement about their futures. “We are changing the mindset of our communities,” Graft said. “They see that CTE is the way public education should be delivered to all high school students, not just a narrow demographic. It leads to a much higher trajectory in life, whether they go off to university or directly into the workforce.”

  Big ideas to improve public education come and go like the flu, but CTE has established a notable track record, boosting student engagement, graduation rates, employment outcomes, and income, according to several studies. Butler Tech’s graduation rate of 98% is well above the average for Ohio and the nation, with 64% of graduates enrolling in two- and four-year colleges and other training.

  As a new school year begins, the results explain why Butler Tech and programs in Connecticut and other states have waitlists while many traditional schools struggle to fill seats. Despite the demand, advocates say, programs are struggling to expand because the traditional school system continues to underfund CTE. Parrticularly in many wealthier districts, school leaders still consider career training as a less worthy Plan B for students who can’t handle the rigors of college. 

  The views of families, however, are changing. CTE is part of an ongoing sea change in education, which has seen a decade-long decline in college enrollment, particularly in the liberal arts. Some education scholars question the wisdom of having high schoolers focus on careers rather than the fundamental truths found in Great Books. But families that are switching to CTE say there’s no greater truth than a good job. 

  The soaring cost of college is helping drive the demand for career education. Families are rejecting the proposition that spending as much as $350,000 on a four-year degree is the only path to promising careers. Some CTE students have no desire to go to college and instead seek hands-on training in fields like manufacturing and auto repair that provide stable jobs. They prefer learning by doing, such as building an AI-powered robot, over reading a textbook about the birth of modern science in the 17th century. An increasing number of students are college-bound, using CTE to explore pathways in the biosciences and engineering to help make smarter financial decisions about their choice of universities and majors. 

  “In some places, CTE has been attracting a larger share of students who previously would have only taken conventional college preparatory coursework,” said Boston College’s Shaun Dougherty, a leading expert in the field. “They recognize that CTE is a chance to learn about applied pathways and can be a springboard to four-year colleges.”

  That’s the case for Alliyah Newsome. Unhappy at her traditional high school, she transferred to Butler Tech near Cincinnati as a junior to figure out if nursing was the right path for her. 

  Her human-body systems and patient-care classes in the school’s healthcare science program, one of 31 career areas of study, were valuable. But the clincher for Newsome was the field experience: working in a hospital in her junior year, obtaining a nurse’s aide credential and then getting a job immediately after graduation at the prominent Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. 

  Newsome is now a nursing student at Miami University in Ohio with plans to get a master’s degree. “Butler confirmed for me that I want to become a nurse and spend thousands of dollars to get my degree,” she said. “This wouldn’t have happened without Butler.”

  CTE’s Second-Class Status

  The participation rate in CTE remains relatively low. In 2022, about 2.8 million secondary students, or 16% of the total, enrolled in a concentration of career courses, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Many students took these classes in their traditional high schools, which typically don’t offer the intensity and breadth of programs found in dedicated CTE centers like Butler Tech.

  CTE advocates say the biggest challenge is that funding has not kept pace with demand. As many as 50% of all high schoolers would concentrate on CTE if more programs were available in their districts, estimates Catherine Imperatore, research and content director at the Association for Career and Technical Education. Her estimate is supported by a 2021 survey showing that 70% of Americans now have a positive view of vocational education.

  Yet CTE remains on the sidelines because the traditional public school system continues to prioritize sending students to college, Imperatore says. The college-for-all mantra took hold in the 1980s as an idealistic response to the landmark “A Nation at Risk” report, which called for higher standards to fix the failing school system. 

  Since then, soaring student debt has made the push for a four-year degree harder to justify. As of July, 43 million borrowers held more than $1.6 trillion in outstanding federal student loans, or double the amount in 2010, according to the Education Data Initiative. That averages about $37,000 per student, not a small sum for a 22-year-old college graduate.

  In recent years, lawmakers have buttressed career education as the need for skilled employees grows in healthcare, manufacturing, and other industries. New laws aim to improve the uneven quality of programs, requiring districts to report on student performance and making work-based learning, an essential piece of CTE, more accessible and credit-bearing. 

  But direct federal and state funding has only increased marginally over the last decade. Funding through the Perkins Act, the main source of federal support, has remained relatively flat since the 1990s and now sits at $1.44 billion, or about $100,000 per school district, enough to hire one or two teachers. When adjusted for inflation, the funding is below the 2004 level, according to Advance CTE, a non-profit that represents state leaders in the field. 

  “There’s always a push for increasing the investment,” said Emily Passias, the deputy executive director of Advance CTE. “We continue to see little baby-step increases over time that in no way outpaces the cost increases due to inflation.”

  Most funding comes from states, which vary greatly in their support for career education. Although at least 27 states have boosted high school CTE funding in the last decade, the total investment was only $5.9 billion in 2022. That amounts to less than 1% of total state funding for K-12, well below the percentage of students who participate in career programs, according to the nonprofit group. 

  A handful of states, including Maryland, Oregon, and Wisconsin, provide no direct continuous support, leaving it to districts to decide if they want to run programs, sometimes with the aid of state grants, according to an Advance CTE report. But districts find expanding career education is a tough sell in many communities where families want to protect college-prep programming.

  “School district budgets are typically a zero-sum game,” Boston College’s Dougherty said. “They have a fixed budget to work with. So choosing to add CTE programs invariably means cutting arts or world language programs. And that can be contentious.”

  Ignite Pathways Takes Off

  Ignite Pathways, a dedicated CTE school in Iowa, found a way to open in 2021 without the financial backing of nearby districts. Ignite rallied the support of rural Woodbine residents who wanted an alternative to traditional public education. They overwhelmingly passed a $3 million bond measure, and businesses in search of employees tossed in $9 million to help finance a new high-tech school building for Ignite. 

  “These are hardworking people who want education to be more relevant to give students skills that quickly make them productive members of society,” said Ignite Superintendent Justin Wagner. “The potential for students to be adrift after high school is a concern.”

  Like many CTE schools, Ignite operates hand-in-hand with local businesses. The school set up programs in aviation, healthcare, business, and agricultural science after a feasibility study showed that these industries needed employees. 

  Students must take all the state-required core classes in math, English, and other subjects to graduate. But business leaders helped create new curricula that customized these courses to the needs of each program and also formed advisory committees to better link the school to the job market. 

  Wagner says an even bigger challenge was overcoming inflexible federal regulations that undermined the exploration of different careers by forcing students to make long-term commitments to a single apprenticeship. “We have challenged the system at every turn on behalf of the kids,” said Wagner, who expects at least 50% of his students to engage in some form of work-based learning in the new school year. 

  The superintendent says Ignite has given students a greater sense of purpose and self-direction, with about 60% of its graduates continuing their education at technical schools or colleges and 40% getting jobs. 

  Jordan Kerger is one of them. While a junior at a traditional high school, Kerger says he felt pressure to go to college, but then he enrolled in Ignite’s aviation program, with coursework in the flying environment, aircraft systems, and a flight simulator to teach the basics of flying.

  Kerger was hooked. Next came live flight lessons to get a private pilot’s license and then two commercial licenses. He did enroll at the University of Nebraska for a semester but found he wasn’t interested in non-aviation coursework. So he went to Florida to train as a flight instructor, which will help him accumulate enough flight time to become a commercial airline pilot, an in-demand profession. 

  “Ignite gave me an early start right out of high school on what I really want to do, and that’s been great,” Kerger said. “I know others from school who still to this day don’t know what they want to do.”

  CTE Waiting Lists Grow

  In Oklahoma, career-based schools have to turn away hundreds of students like Kerger each year. The state is CTE-friendly, with a separate education department to oversee and fund its 29 dedicated centers, which also get support from traditional districts and local taxpayers. Yet at centers like Francis Tuttle, the waiting list to enroll is growing.

  For the upcoming school year, Francis Tuttle will seat about 2,000 high school students and place 400 others on a waiting list even after recently expanding its automotive, medical, and cybersecurity programs and adding one for teacher preparation, says Superintendent Michelle Keylon. What’s also noteworthy is that most of the students are coming from wealthier suburbs, showing the changing demographics of CTE. Only about 40% of students are from low-income families, well below the state average. 

  Keylon says the sky-high cost of a college degree has made Francis Tuttle a better option for many families with high-performing kids. While college used to be the default plan for 90% of students in the area, she says, now families focus on what their kids want to do after high school and the best way to get there. 

  For college-bound students, Francis Tuttle lets them try out engineering, bioscience, and computer science to see what inspires them. Others opt for the school’s popular advanced manufacturing program, in which professionals from industries serve as guest lecturers and mentors and often offer students internships and jobs after graduation. 

  Among recent Francis Tuttle graduates, 74% continued to post-secondary education, and 22% found jobs. “I would love more funding because we can see results from the programming we already have in place,” said Keylon. “But our politicians don’t think that all students need access to CTE, so they don’t provide enough funding.”

  CTE schools in Massachusetts and other states are also producing strong results. Boston College’s Dougherty co-authored a large study of Connecticut’s 16 dedicated CTE high schools where students take several career-focused courses over four years. Researchers found “robust positive effects” for male students of different socioeconomic backgrounds and abilities. They were 10 percentage points more likely to graduate and had 44% higher total earnings after graduation compared to a control group. 

  This year, a broader meta-analysis of CTE involving 28 studies across multiple states and types of programs also revealed benefits to students. Co-author Katherine Hughes of the CTE Research Network says their analysis showed large positive effects, particularly on high school graduation, two-year college enrollment, and employment, hammering home the point that CTE programs are a bright spot in the beleaguered public education system.

  Where Career Ed Falls Short

  To be sure, plenty of lackluster programs still exist that continue to give CTE a bad name. Researchers say some programs lack a sequence of courses that allow students to build skills in a particular field and don’t offer pathways that go beyond the basic trades. Others don’t provide work-based learning and connections to nearby college programs. 

  In New York City, a hotbed of CTE, Dougherty found “considerable variation” in the quality of the dedicated schools. Two high schools offered fewer than 4 CTE credits, and six failed to provide work-based learning in at least one grade. 

  “Overall, CTE programs may be more than halfway in their evolution to providing a high-quality education,” said Hughes. 

  Another concern is that the early focus on career skills denies students the chance to build more fundamental knowledge in math, science, and English that may be more helpful to their careers in the long term. CTE students fill their elective slots with career training rather than classes that develop basic analytical skills like classical philosophy or advanced math. 

  The risk is that CTE students are less adaptable to significant changes in the labor market, says Eric Hanushek, a prominent scholar of the economics of education at the Hoover Institution. His research of apprenticeship programs in Europe found that graduates eventually dropped out of the labor market a few decades later when their skills were no longer in demand. 

  “CTE makes the transition from high school to a job easier, but the concern is that they will have more difficulty adjusting to changes later in their careers,” Hanushek said. 

  Career education, however, might be just what traditional high schools need to bring students back to the classrooms and motivate them, says Dougherty. The strong demand from families is perhaps the best sign that CTE can provide a much-needed fix.  

  “The established evidence that CTE can engage students suggests that expanding high-quality programs could meet this need to reengage learners,” he said. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/22/2024 – 22:35

• Are Co-Ops Two Blocks From Central Park Really Selling For $174,000?
  Are Co-Ops Two Blocks From Central Park Really Selling For $174,000?

  That does, in fact seem to be the case. The city of New York is selling apartments on the Upper West Side, two blocks from the park, for as low as $173,801, according to a new report from Bloomberg.

  There are seventeen studio and one-bedroom units in a pre-war walk-up with hardwood floors and air conditioning, according to the report. They will be sold via lottery to New Yorkers earning under 120% of the area’s median income and with assets under $280,000.

  The deadline to apply is August 27 and so far over 10,000 people have applied. 

  The Upper West Side building on West 80th Street is near the American Museum of Natural History, Zabar’s, and the subway. Nearby, a four-bedroom condo is listed at $7.8 million, while studios start at nearly half a million dollars.

  

  One woman who walked by to check out the building said: “It seems too good to be true. This is almost what I bought my house for in 1991.”

  Bloomberg reported that for the West 80th Street building, households of two earning up to $149,160 or three earning up to $167,760 can apply for a one-bedroom unit. The apartment must be the buyer’s primary residence, with a 5% down payment required and resale restrictions in place.

  NYC Housing Connect’s lottery allows eligible applicants to apply once per development. The program includes buildings on city-owned land or those benefiting from affordable housing subsidies or tax exemptions, the article notes. 

  Units are priced as low as $340 per square foot, a bargain compared to Manhattan and cities like Austin and Santa Monica. The city is also raffling homes in high-end areas like Hudson Yards, with two-bedroom rentals at $3,861 per month for families of four earning up to $194,125, as well as properties in Astoria and the Upper East Side.

  The Department of Housing Preservation and Development placed a record 9,550 households into affordable units last year. Mayor Eric Adams is pushing for more residential construction, including 7,000 new homes in the Bronx through rezoning.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/22/2024 – 22:10

• The Tale Of Two Conventions: Gingrich
  The Tale Of Two Conventions: Gingrich

  Authored by Newt Gingrich via RealClearPolicy,

  Historians will look at the 2024 Democratic and Republican national conventions as harbingers of profound changes in American politics and government.

  

  Callista and I participated in the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, so we got a good sense of who was there and what was happening in the GOP. When we watched the opening night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the contrast between the two was overwhelming.

  The Republican National Convention was shaped by the reality of the Trump revolution. President Trump miraculously survived an assassination attempt the Saturday before, and the convention simply added to the sense of drama. After nine years of campaigning (starting with the trip down the Trump Tower escalator in June 2015) Trump steadily gained support across the entire GOP.

  Trump’s emergence and dominance changed the fabric of the Republican Party. This was illustrated by who was not in Milwaukee. President George W. Bush and Vice Presidents Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle, and Mike Pence were absent. Former Republican presidential nominee and current Sen. Mitt Romney was missing. Former Speaker Paul Ryan announced that he would write in an alternative candidate rather than vote for President Trump.

  The 2024 Republican National Convention was proof of the profound, wrenching shift in the power base of the Republican Party. The old guard was gone, and a new movement was emerging. Importantly, this change had been initiated by Republican voters.

  The MAGA movement is the core of the Republican Party. It’s leader, President Trump, is now the central figure in a party which dates to 1854.

  Consider the contrast with the Democrats in Chicago.

  The leftwing establishment, which traces its dominance of American politics and government back to the election of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was in full force.

  Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton were there – along with former Secretary of State and Sen. Hillary Clinton, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, and the entire hierarchy of the Democratic Party.

  The Republican convention in Milwaukee represented a party reflecting its voters’ wishes. The Democratic Party in Chicago represented a party firmly controlled by its leaders and focused on continuity of power.

  Just think about the processes of Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and 2024.

  In 2020, Democrat voters wanted a change from the establishment. There was a real possibility that self-proclaimed Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders could become the nominee. He was building momentum after a strong race against Hillary Clinton in 2016.

  The senior leadership maneuvered to work against Sanders and ensure that Biden would be nominated. This was an amazing considering Biden had come in fifth in Iowa and New Hampshire. Then-House Democratic Whip James Clyburn delivered the Democratic Primary in South Carolina. After that, Biden gained momentum. Suddenly, Biden’s other establishment opponents began to drop out and endorse him. Sanders – and the will of many Democrat voters – were blocked in a beautifully executed campaign behind the scenes by the Party’s bosses.

  This year, the Democrats faced a new dilemma. After President Biden fell apart in his June 27 debate with President Trump, the Democratic Party leadership concluded that Biden could not win. The prospect of a second Trump presidency was so horrifying to them they decided to push Biden out.

  An amazing pressure campaign was undertaken to force Biden’s withdrawal. It was instigated by the Democratic leadership and executed by their media allies. Day-by-day, new pundits came out calling for Biden to step aside. Various members of Congress followed suit. Finally, it became obvious that Biden was a no-go, and donors started to voice their concerns.

  Biden had won 98 percent of the delegates. No serious candidate entered the primaries against him. The party that preached saving democracy had a choice: principled defeat or hypocrisy with a chance to win. The Democratic Party power brokers forced Biden to retire without defeating him in a single caucus or primary. It was an astonishing example of top-down political power.

  More impressive than Biden’s ouster was the instantaneous shift to Vice President Kamala Harris. She never won a primary. In 2019, she was such a bad candidate she dropped out before a single vote was cast.

  So, in the name of supposedly saving democracy, the Democrats now have a candidate for whom no one voted.

  Here’s what this means to voters. The Democrats’ backroom politics guarantee a continuity of the same failed policies that have frustrated Americans and made life harder. They are the same policies which led to the current populist uprising in America.

  The Republican Party is listening to people and changing. The Democratic Party is using machine tactics to avoid change and maintain power.

  That’s the tale of the two conventions.

  For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com. Also, subscribe to the Newt’s World podcast.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/22/2024 – 21:45

• China Steel Mill Profits Collapse, Goldman Issues: "Bleak Outlook" For Iron Ore 
  China Steel Mill Profits Collapse, Goldman Issues: “Bleak Outlook” For Iron Ore 

  The global commodities market peaked in early 2022 and stumbled ever since. China’s property sector remains in a multi-year slump, resulting in soft demand for base metals like iron ore and copper. Last week, Baowu Steel Group Chairman Hu Wangming warned that the economic conditions in the world’s second-largest economy felt like a “harsh winter.”

  

  As the world’s largest steel producer, Baowu Steel’s chairman warned that the steel industry’s downturn could be “longer, colder, and more difficult to endure than expected,” potentially mirroring the severe downturns of 2008 and 2015. This should serve as a major wake-up call for macro observers that a recovery in China isn’t imminent; in fact, Beijing might not unleash the monetary and fiscal cannons until after the US presidential elections. 

  Commenting on Chinese iron ore markets is a team of Goldman analysts led by Aurelia Waltham and Daan Struyven. The analysts provided a very straightforward note to clients on Thursday, pointing out that iron ore’s “fundamental outlook remains bleak” as prices trade below $100/ton level. 

  Here are the highlights from the note:

  • The fundamental outlook remains bleak, in our view. While both port and in-plant iron ore stocks declined this week, visible stocks remain elevated compared to ‘normal’ August levels and mills’ destocking (despite the drop in iron ore prices) could be an indication of a negative production outlook. This would not be surprising given only 1% of Chinese steel mills are currently profitable, according to a Mysteel survey.

  • Meanwhile, our China property team have cut their forecasts for gross floor area starts and completions for 2024, and our China economists have highlighted rising downside risk to Chinese growth, both of which could have negative implications for steel demand, discussed in this week’s Macro Highlight.

  • In the absence of a hot metal output recovery, continued strong iron ore supply means that we maintain the view that iron ore needs to remain below $100/t for long enough to trigger a sufficient supply response to re-balance the market.

  The analyst said macro data in China printed on the soft side in July. They were worried about “continued weakness across property sales, new starts and completions.” Also, they pointed out that Goldman’s property team slashed forecasts for the second half of 2024.

  Here’s more from the note: 

  With continued weakness across property sales, new starts and completions, our China Property team have cut their forecasts for H2 2024. The new 2024 full year base case is a YoY contraction in gross floor area (GFA) sales of -20% (prev. -12%), new starts of -22% (prev. -15%) and completions of -13% (prev. +3% YoY). The team’s forecast for property FAI remains unchanged at -12% YoY for 2024. While the new base case does imply some sequential improvement in GFA completions (currently at -22% YoY for Jan-July 2024), the expectation is that new starts (the more steel-intensive stage of property construction) continue to trend substantially below last year’s level (already a low base) over the remainder of the year, diminishing hope for any substantial pick-up in long steel demand, which is down 21% YoY YTD, according to Mysteel data, with output down by the same percentage. Also relating to Chinese long steel demand, our China economists have noted that after years of rapid infrastructure building (which has helped to put a floor under long steel consumption despite very weak property new start data over the past two years), finding new projects with decent return profiles has become increasingly challenging, posing further downside to steel demand in coming years.

  However, as we have noted previously, more concerning for iron ore consumption are the growing risks to flat steel demand (used in manufacturing and for exports) due to the strong correlation with hot metal output and iron ore consumption. With export growth expected to moderate, our China economists state that higher domestic demand growth is needed to fill the gap in order to achieve the 2024 growth target of “around 5%”. Likewise, we argue that stronger domestic demand will be necessary in supporting flat steel production, and therefore iron ore consumption, in the scenario that steel exports, either direct or indirect via manufacturing, fall. This is a scenario that looks increasingly likely.

  However, we are doubtful of the extent to which domestic demand will be able to pick up any slack. In the near term, our China economists believe that the downside risk to China growth is rising, and private demand appears to be weakening in the data. Urban unemployment rates appear to be increasing, which could have a negative impact on household consumption in H2 (for example, potential further weakness in retail sales following declines in June and July), and corporate demand deposits dropped 18% YoY, suggesting that corporates do not plan to increase investment in the near term. Alongside potentially weaker demand, destocking could also trigger a further reduction in flat steel output in H2. Mysteel-reported flat steel stocks are significantly above August levels of previous years on record (Exhibit 19), concentrated in traders’ holdings (mills’ stocks are within a normal range). Today’s data showed the biggest WoW drop in traders’ flat steel stocks since the post-Lunar New Year destock in March, and we will be keeping an eye on whether this trend continues over the coming weeks.

  Beyond this year, our China economists expect GDP growth to slow from a nearly 7% average in the 5 years before the pandemic to 3% by 2034 on weakening demographics, the prolonged property downturn, and global supply-chain de-risking. This will likely have mostly negative effects on global commodity demand growth, including for steel, for which we estimate global demand growth falls by 1.4pp when China growth slows by 1pp.

  This is the most stunning chart from the report, showing that only 1% of steel mills are profitable in the world’s second-largest economy. As profitability collapses, hot metal output declines. 

  

  Iron ore prices in China have slid to a 21-month low. 

  

  Metal stocks are high at ports and steel mills. Reports have surfaced that producers are flooding the world with cheap iron ore. 

  

  Global supplies are still elevated. 

  

  And consumption is soft. 

  

  Meanwhile, JPM Global Manufacturing PMI has slid (<50) into a contraction. 

  

  While the property market slowdown continues in the world’s second-largest economy, in the US—the world’s largest economy—there are new fears that government statisticians may have overstated the economy’s strength (read here), influenced by the White House in an election year, leading to concerns that the economy may be much weaker than cheerleaded by VP Harris and President Biden.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/22/2024 – 21:20

• FBI Chief Warns Of Unprecedented Rise In Security Threats
  FBI Chief Warns Of Unprecedented Rise In Security Threats

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

  The United States is facing an unprecedented confluence of security threats, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray, who said the agency is deeply concerned about the simultaneous rise in terrorism, cybercrime, foreign election interference, and espionage activities by adversarial powers.

  

  Speaking to reporters from The Associated Press at the FBI’s Minneapolis field office on Aug. 21, Wray said he’s “hard-pressed to think of a time” in his career “where so many different kinds of threats are all elevated at once.”

  “I worry about the combination of that many threats being elevated at once, with the challenges facing the men and women in law enforcement more generally,” Wray said, pointing out the stark statistic that law enforcement officers are being killed in the line of duty in the United States at a rate of about one every five days.

  Wray declined to go into detail about any specific investigation or threat but noted that the FBI is concerned about Chinese espionage and intellectual property theft, foreign election interference, artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled threats, and terrorism.

  He said better cooperation between law enforcement agencies is a key part of confronting the unprecedented security landscape.

  Wray added that he hopes that the U.S. tech industry, in particular its developments around cutting-edge AI, can also play a role in helping protect Americans from AI-enabled threats coming their way.

  The FBI director’s latest remarks build on his previous warnings, including that China-sponsored hackers are poised to hit U.S. infrastructure at any time with a “devastating blow” to induce panic and that the FBI is increasingly concerned about the potential for a coordinated terror attack on the U.S. homeland.

  From the specter of terrorism to the growing menace of cyberattacks, Wray’s warnings reflect the findings of several key national security reports, including a 2024 White House report of the Cybersecurity Posture of the United States and the Director of National Intelligence’s 2024 annual threat assessment and its National Counterintelligence Strategy.

  Foreign intelligence threats to the United States are unprecedented as foreign adversaries deploy various tactics to focus on a range of possible targets, according to the counterintelligence strategy report.

  It warns that the Chinese communist regime and the state of Russia pose “the most significant intelligence threats,” adding that these leading adversaries are working together more often to amplify threats to the homeland.

  “An expanding array of actors are attempting to steal national secrets, sensitive data, intellectual property, and technical and military capabilities, and undermine and disrupt U.S. foreign policy and intelligence operations,” the strategy document warns.

  Foreign intelligence entities are actively trying to compromise U.S. infrastructure crucial to health, safety, and the economy, per the document. They also aim to influence U.S. policy and public opinion, targeting government, commercial firms, defense contractors, think tanks, and academic institutions to obtain sensitive information.

  The report on the cybersecurity posture of the United States identifies five key trends, each posing distinct challenges to national security and the country’s broader digital ecosystem.

  “Nation-state adversaries” have increasingly targeted critical infrastructure, not just for espionage but as a strategic leverage point, per the report. Ransomware attacks have also grown more sophisticated, posing ongoing threats to national security and economic stability as attackers refined their tactics to outmaneuver defenses, it adds.

  Moreover, the exploitation of complex supply chains, the rise of commercial spyware, and the rapid advancement of AI presented new risks, the report warns, while highlighting the need for robust cyber defense strategies.

  The intelligence community’s annual threat assessment additionally highlights the ongoing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear threats from North Korea, as well as the potential for interstate conflicts in regions including the South China Sea.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/22/2024 – 20:55

• This Is The Chart That Keeps Japanese Policymakers Up At Night
  This Is The Chart That Keeps Japanese Policymakers Up At Night

  Japan has a demographic crisis that started in 2017 and picked up steam in 2020 and will accelerate from there into at least 2050… as a high life expectancy and a low birth rate has created an unprecedented aging population.

  

  As a simple and effective measure of that ‘crisis’, we look at the old-age dependency ratio measures the number of people over the retirement age of 65 for every 100 working-age people.

  The higher dependency ratio means fewer workers are supporting a growing number of retirees, which strains social security systems, healthcare, and pension funds. This situation could lead to economic stagnation or decline unless addressed through policy changes like increasing immigration or boosting birth rates.

  In charts by creator Preyash Shad, Visual Capitalist looks at old-age dependency ratios of the top 10 economies based on data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

  

  Japan in Trouble

  Japan has had a rapidly rising old-age dependency ratio for several decades and has the highest ratio currently at 54.5.

  

  Meanwhile, Germany is the runner-up in the top 10 economies with a distant second-place dependency ratio of 41.4.

  At the same time, the United States maintains a relatively low old-age dependency, with a ratio of 31.3, which places it seventh among the top 10 economies.

  India, now the world’s most populous country, has the lowest ratio of 11.6, in large part because it also has the youngest population.

  Projections for 2050

  By 2050, Japan will maintain the highest old-age dependency ratio of the group, moving from 54.5 to a staggering 80.7.

  In an effort to head-off such a high ratio, Japan is has put policies in pace to attract young immigrants and migrant workers.

  However, despite government incentives, cultural shifts towards later marriages, fewer children, and more women entering the workforce have not significantly reversed the trend in Japan (or many other nations).

  Italy, which is facing similar demographic pressures, will move from distant third to a close second, moving from a ratio of 40.9 to 74.4.

  China, because of the results of the one-child policy and low immigration, could surpass the U.S. by 2050 with a ratio of 47.5.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/22/2024 – 20:30

• The Perpetual Struggle Of Libertarian Candidates: Why They Face An Uphill Battle
  The Perpetual Struggle Of Libertarian Candidates: Why They Face An Uphill Battle

  Authored by Conor Sanderson via The Mises Institute,

  The Libertarian Party was assembled in 1971 and has proven throughout its history to be a resoundingly-unsuccessful third-party venture in American politics. While libertarians are outspoken in their advocacy for individual liberties, limited government, and free markets, their presidential candidates have proven largely unsuccessful throughout history.

  Why have they not experienced greater success in the face of confronting what has become two ideological extremes?

  Further, if a “protest vote” for the libertarian candidate isn’t sitting well with you, which party is more aligned to libertarian policies?

  Libertarians face an eternal uphill battle in the face of American politics.

  

  As it stands, third party campaigns are almost entirely funded by grass-root donations, which pale in comparison to the millions of dollars that special interest groups and corporate donors pour into Democratic and Republican campaigns.

  Mainstream media tends to focus on the two major parties; hence, very little exposure and airtime is given to third party candidates.

  Even though libertarianism primarily focuses on individual freedoms of its citizens, most voters have associated the party with the “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” views. This allows for common ground to alienate voters on both sides of the perceived party lines.

  No matter the reasoning, it’s undeniable that a Libertarian candidate for president is a pipe dream. As a libertarian who considers the reality we face, which party is most aligned with our shared values?

  The Republican leans more towards libertarianism than the Democratic party.

  Here’s how:

  Republicans have traditionally garnered the mantle of limited government spending and limited levels of taxation. The most were during the Reagan era and, therefore, it appealed to libertarians. Though this line is blurred more and more as each day passes, Republicans still hold the torch in this arena.

  Free market economics is another plane where traditional Republicans have shown their affinity with libertarians, though this interventionism has been tempered in the cases of healthcare, education, monetary policy, and the military.

  In many cases, Republicans oppose excesses of regulation by the government—a general reflection of the libertarian disdain of a creeping bureaucracy.

  Caveats apply, though: Republicans are more socially conservative than libertarians, and the agendas inherently clash with each other.

  Republicans have also frequently supported military intervention and “national security” over the libertarian principle of non-interventionism.

  In the end, the winning combination of libertarian candidates is to rise above both structural and ideological obstacles.

  While the Republican Party is part libertarian when it comes to economic and fiscal issues—having manifested itself in this way—its social conservatism and an interventionist attitude in some aspects create a dichotomous relationship between the two ideologies.

  Ultimately, however, libertarians will have to moderate their message and otherwise change stratagems to capture more mainstream voters, or else find places to build coalitions with other, like-minded organizations interested in making their policy preferences a reality.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/22/2024 – 20:05

• Taxpayer-Funded Oregon Group Offers $30,000 To Home Buyers… As Long As They're Not American Citizens
  Taxpayer-Funded Oregon Group Offers $30,000 To Home Buyers… As Long As They’re Not American Citizens

  Only days after it was announced that California will be pushing a bill to give illegal aliens access to zero down, no payment home loans, it has been revealed that a taxpayer-funded group out of Oregon called Hacienda CDC is already offering non-citizens a $30,000 home assistance loan for new homebuyers through a program called Camino a Casa.  

  Screenshots from the Hacienda website posted by X user Oregon Citizen note:

  “Only for people who are not American citizens…”

  “Clients work closely with financial coaches and HUD-certified housing counselors throughout the entirety of the homebuying process. In addition to mortgage readiness and financial fitness workshops, we provide various opportunities for down-payment assistance…”

  What do you think Oregon friends? Should non citizens and undocumented citizens be given $30,000 for down payments to buy a home here in the state of Oregon? Check out the requirements! ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/riGm6AuMGJ

  — Oregon Citizen (@oregoncitizen_) August 9, 2024

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  Hacienda CDC is funded in part by Business Oregon, which is a state institution that manages state and federal tax dollars for economic development in Oregon.  Business Oregon’s director is Sophorn Cheang, who is also a coordinator for the Oregon governor’s “Racial Justice Council.”  As Business Oregon mentions in her bio:

  “Prior to her work with the Governor’s Office, Cheang served as Senior Community Development Manager and Director of the Asian Family Center for the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization, where she developed and directed culturally specific programs and services for immigrants and refugees; mobilized diverse community leaders across the state to address social and racial injustices; and performed other strategic planning and advocacy work…”

  The funding is funneled through the Economic Equity Investment Program (EEIP), an equity-based beneficiary project established through the Economic Equity Investment Act (SB 1579), which the Oregon legislature passed in 2022. The organization receives millions in Oregon state taxpayer money and federal taxes through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), according to its recent annual report.

  Hacienda CDC works with credit unions that offer mortgage loans for non-citizens who cannot get a social security number. Instead, these credit unions use an IRS loophole by processing the mortgage with Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs).

  As Fox News argues, programs like these appear to be an attempt by progressive institutions and politicians to buy a new voting base.  They offer vast incentives to illegals, give them special treatment through a two-tier system (as we have seen in the UK), eventually secure their citizenship through sweeping amnesty bills and then register them to vote Democrat. 

  Oregon is offering $30,000 for illegal aliens to buy homes. This program is not open to American citizens. Only illegals.

  They hate you. pic.twitter.com/XhQB8UdvVa

  — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 22, 2024

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  If this trend continues it could be less than a decade before legal citizens and conservative are completely sidelined within their own country by an army of foreign mercenary voters, mostly from third-world countries.  Good luck winning local and state elections let alone federal elections ever again. 

  

  Beyond the election issue, there is the ongoing problem in US housing.  Millions of illegal migrants pouring into the US under the Biden Administration have escalated a housing shortage and exacerbated an already existing inflation crisis.  With upwards of 2 million (or more) migrants crossing the border illegally every year, there is an endless supply of non-citizens trying to access welfare programs and housing programs they have never paid a cent into.  Meanwhile, real American citizens are struggling with a 30% increase in home and rental costs in the past four years.  

  Bringing home prices down would be a matter of increasing supply without building new homes with inflated material costs.  The easiest way to do that would be to either kick out as many illegal immigrants as possible, or force international corporate buyers like Blackstone to dump their distressed mortgage holdings (or do both). 

  However, as long as blue states continue to incentivize illegals with access to welfare programs and easy money and as long as the federal government continues to refuse to do it’s duty and protect the southern border, there is little chance of stopping the steady flood on non-citizens.  The “great replacement” continues.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/22/2024 – 19:40

• Fast-Food Restaurants Fight To Keep Customers As Food And Wage Costs Spike
  Fast-Food Restaurants Fight To Keep Customers As Food And Wage Costs Spike

  Authored by Kevin Stocklin and Andrew Moran via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Fast-food restaurants survive by providing affordable, quick, and convenient meals, but cost inflation is now pushing their business models to the brink.

  

  It has become more expensive to eat out over the past five years, with food away from home increasing by 30 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In just the past year, the cost of eating at a fast-food restaurant has increased by more than that of a full-service restaurant.

  Within the consumer price index, the limited-service meals category (food that is ordered at a counter and taken to go) rose by 4.3 percent year over year in July. By comparison, full-service meals (sit-down restaurants with wait staff) increased by 3.8 percent over the same period.

  Mcdonald’s was recently stung by reports that it was charging $18 for a Big Mac, prompting the company’s president to issue an open letter in May.

  “I can tell you that it frustrates and worries me, and many of our franchisees, when I hear about an $18 Big Mac meal being sold—even if it was at one location in the U.S. out of more than 13,700,” McDonald’s USA President Joe Erlinger wrote, noting that the average price of a Big Mac across all U.S. franchises had gone up by 21 percent since 2019, from $4.39 to $5.29 today. 

  According to a McDonald’s “myths vs. facts” sheet, the company increased average menu prices by about 40 percent over the past five years, which is in line with the increase in the firm’s costs. Employee salaries have gone up by 40 percent since 2019, and food and paper costs went up by 35 percent during the same period, the company stated. 

  At some point, however, customers will question the value of fast food, compared to alternatives such as full-service restaurants or eating at home, industry experts say. 

  “People like going to Subway to grab lunch. It’s cheap, it’s quick, it’s easy, it’s good. But they question whether they want to pay $12.99, or $14.99, for what used to be an $8.99 bundled meal,” Gary Pryor, a former owner of restaurants and food production companies and a business consultant at Waters Business Consulting Group, told The Epoch Times.

  According to a May survey of 2,000 U.S. adults by Lending Tree, price hikes have caused 78 percent of Americans to view fast food as an increasingly unaffordable luxury. And while three-quarters of Americans say they typically eat fast food at least weekly, nearly two-thirds say they are now eating it less due to rising prices.   

  Chipotle increased menu prices four times between 2021 and 2023, according to an American Institute of Economic Research report by economists Thomas Savidge and Andrew den Boggende, prompting a backlash from customers who also accused the chain of reducing portion sizes. Viral complaints by diners circulating the internet prompted then-CEO Brian Niccol to assure customers in a Fortune interview in May that portion sizes had not changed. 

  Niccol left Chipotle on Aug. 13 to take the helm at Starbucks, which is also struggling. Starbucks reported in its third-quarter fiscal 2024 results that sales were down by 3 percent, driven by a 5 percent decline in the number of customer transactions, although there was an average 3 percent increase in what each customer paid at the coffee chain. 

  McDonald’s reported in July that its quarterly sales were down by 1 percent worldwide and by 0.7 percent in the United States. At the same time, its operating income decreased by 6 percent, indicating the company’s difficulties with both income and expenses.

  Getting Squeezed

  “Restaurant owners are really stuck between a rock and hard place, whether it’s Chipotle, which doesn’t franchise, or McDonald’s, which does,” Thomas Savidge, a research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, told The Epoch Times.

  “The last thing they want to do is raise menu prices any more than they have over the past couple of years. But ultimately, there’s going to have to be some painful choices made.”

  The more obvious options for fast-food restaurants are higher prices, smaller portions, or less staff, which often means longer lines and a less pleasant dining experience, he said. 

  The industry is currently racing to figure a way out of the current situation.

  McDonald’s CFO Ian Borden said on the company’s April 30 conference call that “everybody’s fighting for fewer consumers or consumers that are certainly visiting less frequently.”

  “We’ve got to make sure we’ve got that street-fighting mentality to win,” he said.

  Cratering sales led Subway last week to call what was reported to be an “emergency meeting” of the 19,000 franchisees of its North American sandwich shops to discuss price promotions, discounts, and other ways to increase customer traffic.  

  The industry is at a “crossroads,” according to Michael Podolsky, CEO and co-founder of an online review platform and consumer advocacy group.

  “While these brands remain strong players, consistent issues with customer service, food quality, and pricing are causing consumer dissatisfaction,” Podolsky told The Epoch Times. “Addressing these concerns will be critical for staying strong on the market, otherwise, consumers might switch to a better quality dining experience at similar or slightly higher prices.”

  Searching for Solutions

  Some restaurants are getting creative in their search for solutions.

  This includes Taco Bell offering Happier Hour, when drinks are discounted to bring more customers in during slower hours. It includes customer loyalty programs such as MyMcDonald’s Rewards, which can award frequent customers points toward free meals.

  Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner told investors in February that the fast-food chain was considering instituting a “flexible pricing” system, which would adjust menu prices based on customer demand, similar to “surge pricing” spikes charged by Uber during rush hour. This sparked protests from customers, as well as accusations from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) of “price gouging,” prompting Wendy’s to issue a statement saying it wouldn’t implement the practice. 

  While the fast-food industry looks for solutions to remain profitable as its costs continue to rise, restaurants are being hit by not only escalating costs for food, energy, and materials but also by wage hikes. Wage expenses are typically between 25 and 30 percent of total costs for fast-food restaurants. 

  On April 1, California increased the state minimum wage to $20 per hour for fast-food employees, in a growing trend of states mandating higher labor costs. Currently, 29 U.S. states now have a minimum wage at or above $10 per hour, according to data collected by the Economic Policy Institute. This compares to the national minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, which has not increased since 2009.

  In addition, 15 states now have a minimum wage above $14 per hour, or approximately double the federal rate. Seven states—Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wyoming—have no state minimum wage, although in those states, the federal minimum applies. 

  Many restaurants unable to pass these costs on to diners simply close. 

  Based on data collected from Google maps and tracking the number of locations that were listed as “permanently closed,” a restaurant services company called Snappy calculated that 1,040 fast-food restaurants had closed in California in the four months since the state’s $20 minimum wage took effect, compared to 315 that had closed in 2024 prior to the wage hike. 

  Other restaurants are looking to invest in automation to increase worker efficiency and cut staffing levels. According to a February 2023 survey by the National Restaurant Association, 58 percent of restaurant operators said they intended to rely more on automation in the coming years to reduce the need for human workers.

  Entry-Level Jobs Going Away

  For many lower-skilled or entry-level workers, however, restaurants often provided an entry point into the labor market, allowing them to build skills and experience toward higher-paying jobs.

  “Employers are going to be hesitant to take on an unskilled employee and bear the cost of teaching them a skill,” Savidge said. “They’re going to be less willing to take a risk on those new, inexperienced employees who are looking to build up job experience and enter the job market.”

  While the inflation growth rate has slowed over the past year, price pressures remain throughout the food industry, which is now also facing an increasingly cost-conscious consumer.

  “They’re spending money on their vacations or things, but eating out at fast food is not a valuable proposition for a family of five people when it’s costing $100,” Pryor said.

  And beyond the struggle to keep menu prices down, there is the pressure on fast-food restaurants to provide meals with the same speed and efficiency, even as they try to cope with staffing issues.

  “Costs don’t always get translated in menu prices,” Savidge said. “Sometimes, the cost is sitting in a really long drive-through line, waiting 20 minutes to just take your order there.

  “That in itself is a cost—the value of your time.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/22/2024 – 19:15

• Thanks, Biden-Harris: Map Shows Worst Housing Affordability In America
  Thanks, Biden-Harris: Map Shows Worst Housing Affordability In America

  Buying the average American home today involves a much larger slice of people’s income—mainly realized under the Biden-Harris administration. Shortly after the Biden-Harris team took office in 2021, housing affordability began to slide, then collapse. 

  Now at record lows.

  

  The biggest theme in the real estate market in the last 3.5 years has been high mortgage rates and record-high home prices, which have kept home ownership out of the reach of millions of Americans—stuck in the renting economy.

  Tight housing supplies have driven up housing prices across the country. However, failed Bidenomics unleashed an inflation storm, which forced the Federal Reserve into an interest rate hiking cycle that was one of the driving forces behind the affordability collapse. 

  Even as overall inflation moderates, the latest data from the National Association of Realtors shows affordability conditions have yet to improve, still trending at record lows. The Biden-Harris team spent the last 3.5 years championing Bidenomics.

  Kamala Harris 367 days ago: “That is called Bidenomics! Ha ha ha! That is called Bidenomics and we are very proud of Bidenomics!” pic.twitter.com/gOxPZvxTCk

  — Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) August 5, 2024

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  Fast forward to today, Harris admits Bidenomics has failed. 

  KAMALA: “We believe in a future where we lower the cost of living.”

  She has been in office for 3.5 years — over which the average American family has lost an extra $26,000 paying for the increased cost of living. pic.twitter.com/NfQtLIpn4s

  — Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) August 10, 2024

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Meanwhile, the Biden-Harris team offered no real solutions to cushion Americans in some of the worst housing affordability conditions in a generation.  

  But last week, Kamala Harris unveiled her housing plan. Given the continued affordability crisis, this is just a few years too late for Democrats.

  Anyway, the think tank Hoover Institution pointed out that Harris’ housing plan “does not address the most important reason why housing is expensive: high construction costs. Instead, the plan significantly subsidizes housing demand, which will put upward pressure on housing costs.”

  “One of the biggest demand subsidizers in the proposal is to provide $25,000 to first-time home buyers,” the think tank said, adding, “Based on the information Harris provided, I expect about 20 million US renters would be eligible and apply for this program if Harris wins the presidency.” 

  As Hoover pointed out in the note titled “The Unpleasant Arithmetic of Kamala Harris’s Housing Plan,” Harris’ plan concentrates on subsidizing demand, not improving supply. Thus, government subsidies would only supercharge demand and worsen the unaffordability crisis by sending prices higher.

  This leaves us with Nick Gerli, CEO of research firm Reventure, who showed on X what prospective buyers need regarding salaries for the most basic homes on a state-by-state level today. 

  Not surprisingly, Californians must earn more than $200,000 annually to afford the average home. 

  Housing affordability in California has become so bad that the typical buyer now needs to earn over $200,000/year just to afford a basic house.

  That’s by far the worst affordability in America.

  Interestingly, prior to the pandemic, you only needed to make $93k in order to buy… pic.twitter.com/R7eBh8kxBx

  — Nick Gerli (@nickgerli1) August 20, 2024

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  The affordability gap for Californians is shocking and happening under left-wing Gov. Gavin Newsom. 

  2) What’s alarming is how much worse this affordability has become in recent years.

  Back in 2019, a California buyer needed to make $93k to afford a house.

  Now it’s over $200k.

  And the median income (grey line) hasn’t come close to keeping up. pic.twitter.com/ssw1qzA8N2

  — Nick Gerli (@nickgerli1) August 20, 2024

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  “But don’t sleep on a state like Massachusetts. It’s lack of affordability is right up there with California,” Gerli said. 

  3) But don’t sleep on a state like Massachusetts.

  It’s lack of affordability is right up there with California.

  Homebuyers in Massachusetts now need to make $173k in order to buy a house.

  Compared to a Median Income of $99k.

  Meaning the cost to buy is almost 2x the median… pic.twitter.com/7NVsH5jfRq

  — Nick Gerli (@nickgerli1) August 20, 2024

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Gerli provided an informative graphic on a state-by-state basis of the incomes needed to afford basic homes. 

  

  The focus here should be on the collapse of housing affordability under Biden-Harris’ watch. The administration offered zero policies to address the crisis effectively. Yet Democrats under Harris want to address the crisis by subsidizing housing demand, which would only worsen the situation by sending prices higher. This is clown world. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/22/2024 – 18:50

• Judge Dismisses Lawsuit From Disabled Workers Against Elon Musk's X
  Judge Dismisses Lawsuit From Disabled Workers Against Elon Musk’s X

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

  U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin on Aug. 21 dismissed a lawsuit against social media platform X brought by people with disabilities who were fired by the company after Elon Musk bought it.

  

  Dmitry Borodaenko, an engineering manager who was with X until late 2022, said the firings violated the Americans With Disabilities Act by treating disabled workers differently from others.

  Borodaenko did not provide evidence to support this position, Martinez-Olguin ruled.

  “Borodaenko fails to show how employees with disabilities were treated differently by Twitter’s broad return-to-the-office policy and increased workload,” she said.

  “Borodaenko’s theory improperly relies on the assumption that all employees with disabilities necessarily required remote work as a reasonable accommodation.”

  Borodaenko brought the case, and two other disabled former employees were later named as additional plaintiffs.

  Arguments against X, formerly known as Twitter, partly rested on the experience of Hana Thier, one of the additional plaintiffs. According to the new ruling, Thier was improperly added after a different judge permitted Borodaenko to file an updated complaint.

  Plaintiffs had alleged that Musk was “openly hostile towards disabled employees and insinuated that they were lazy,” and that he had “tweeted that a disabled former Twitter employee used his disability as an excuse not to work.”

  Musk later apologized to the worker, who has muscular dystrophy, “for [his] misunderstanding of [the employee’s] situation.”

  The plaintiffs also highlighted how Musk quickly reversed previously broad work-from-home policies after buying X, and said any employees who remained with the company would have to be exceptional people and work long hours.

  While Musk’s comments “may contribute to a showing of animus, they fall short of illustrating how the new return-to-the-office and increased workload policies treated employees with disabilities differently than similarly-situated employees,” Martinez-Olguin said.

  Accusations that Musk’s policies significantly discriminated against disabled workers and are not justified by business necessity also fell short, the judge said.

  The allegations presented in the updated complaint “are nothing more than conclusions devoid of factual support,” she said, adding later that “the new allegations fail to move the needle to plead a plausible disparate impact claim.”

  The earlier version of the suit had been dismissed but Borodaenko was allowed to file a new version.

  The claims “were previously dismissed by the court because plaintiffs failed to allege facts to plausibly state a claim for relief under a theory of either disparate treatment or disparate impact disability discrimination,” X lawyers said. “These same defects remain in the” updated complaint, they said.

  The judge dismissed the lawsuit but said that Borodaenko could file an amendment complaint that adequately fixes the failings within 28 days.

  Lawyers for X and the plaintiffs did not respond to requests for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/22/2024 – 18:25

• Supreme Court Allows Arizona To Require Proof Of Citizenship For State Votes, But Not For Congressional Or Presidential
  Supreme Court Allows Arizona To Require Proof Of Citizenship For State Votes, But Not For Congressional Or Presidential

  Today the Supreme Court cleared the way for a provision of Arizona law that requires proof of citizenship to register to vote in state rolls, the first time the high court has weighed in on a voting dispute in the run-up to the presidential election.

  

  The order means Arizona election officials must reject state registration forms if voters don’t provide documentation of citizenship.  In other words, Arizonans newly registering to vote for the coming election will have to provide copies of one of several documents, including a birth certificate or a passport, in order to prove their citizenship.

  However, the justices kept on hold provisions of the law that could have disqualified voters who register separate federal forms from casting ballots in a presidential contest in person or by mail. In other words, Arizona voters can still register using a federal form, without proof of citizenship, and vote in the presidential contest.

  Which, in light of recent revelations about noncitizens voting in various elections, and the Democrats’ push not to require voter id for presidential elections, is downright bizarre.

  The high court’s 5-4 action, split along gender lines with men voting for and the women against, follows an emergency appeal by the Republican National Committee and lawmakers in Arizona, which is considered a key swing state in the election.

  Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, along with liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, said they would have denied the request from Arizona lawmakers. What is notable however, is that Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch said they would have gone further and allowed the federal-form provisions of the 2022 law to take effect.

  In other words, another SCOTUS appeal may be all it takes to prevent widespread cheating in the Nov presidential elections.

  The decision did not include any legal reasoning, which is common in such emergency applications. But there were signs that the court was divided over the issue, and that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh may have split their votes between two factions.

  Republicans have made noncitizen voting a focus in 2024, amid revelations that it is increasingly prevalent. They are pushing a national proof of citizenship bill, and a handful of states have measures related to noncitizen voting on November’s ballot.

  Why is this such a critical issue? As noted on X, over 40,000 people have registered to vote in federal elections in Arizona without providing proof of citizenship. In the 2020 election, Joe Biden narrowly defeated Donald Trump in Arizona by just over 10,000 votes. In other words, in the handful of swing states that will decide the outcome of the Electoral College, where the margin of victory can be in the thousands or even hundreds of votes – every single illegal vote matters, which is why Democrats are fighting tooth and nail to preserve the ability for non-citizens to keep picking the next president!

  While Republicans say the measures are necessary to prevent cheating and allowing noncitizens to cast ballots for Democrat candidates who allow millions of illegals to enter the country no questions asked, Democrats have decried the efforts arguing that they are intended to preemptively question the legitimacy of the upcoming election.

  The efforts could result in eligible voters being removed from voting rolls, Democrats argue, which of course is idiotic since one needs an id for virtually any activity in the US, yet somehow voting should be excluded. They say the measures are ultimately about revving up conservative voters on the hot-button issues of immigration and voter fraud.

  Speaking to the deep-left Washington Post, Richard Hasen, a UCLA law professor and alleged election law “expert”, said the court’s action would “make it moderately more difficult” for some voters and “for no good reason, because noncitizens are not voting in large numbers.” Well, if they are not voting in large numbers then it’s not an issue, and requiring those who do vote in large numbers to present an id is hardly a problem in a country where one needs an ID to enter a nightclub, buy a drink or drive a car.

  Sensing which way the wind is blowing, Democrats are scrambling to make a huge issue out of the long overdue requirement to show some proof of citizenship when voting for, well, anything. Wendy R. Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice’s democracy program said the change in registration requirements three months before the election will result in a scramble for voters, election officials and voting rights groups.

  “There needs to be a massive education effort for people who do not have documentary proof of citizenship for them to understand the correct way to register to vote if they want to be able to vote in the federal elections,” Weiser said. “There’s a real risk of confusion when there are two different voter registration forms.”

  Well, Wendy, if people do not have documentary proof of citizenship – say a driver’s license – by voting age, one can safely say they are illegal aliens and have been carted into the US, mostly likely in the deep of night on Biden airlines, for one purpose and one purpose only: to cheat in the November election.

  Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) agreed. He emphasized that state election officials would abide by the court’s decision and “implement these changes while continuing to protect voter access.”

  Gina Swoboda, chair of the state Republican Party praised the decision, calling it a “tremendous victory for every Arizona voter who demands confidence that our elections are protected from non-citizen interference. The Supreme Court’s ruling ensures that Arizona can uphold the integrity of its elections.”

  The Biden administration and a number of Arizona groups sued to block the law in July 2022, arguing that the federal National Voting Rights Act of 1993 and a 2018 consent decree between the state and the League of United Latin American Citizens, preempts the Arizona law’s requirements related to the federal voter registration form. The act requires voters to attest they are citizens under penalty of perjury but does not require them to submit proof.

  Under that agreement, applicants who cannot show proof of citizenship on their state forms would still be registered to vote if their citizenship could be proved through documents from Arizona’s Transportation Department.

  Those challenging the law also pointed to a 2013 Supreme Court ruling that said states violate the Voting Rights Act if they reject a federal voter registration form by requiring a person to submit proof of citizenship. Republicans argued that the ruling does not apply in the current case.

  A trial court judge blocked the Arizona law in 2023, citing the rationale put forward by the Biden administration and the state groups. The Republicans then asked the Supreme Court to put the district court’s decision on hold pending an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. They also requested a prompt ruling, saying the state has an Aug. 22 deadline to resolve litigation related to the election because counties need to begin printing ballots.

  “The district court’s injunction is an unprecedented abrogation of the Arizona Legislature’s sovereign authority to determine the qualifications of voters and structure participation in its elections,” the Republicans wrote in their filing.

  U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar argued on behalf of the Biden administration that “judicial intervention at this stage would undermine the orderly administration of the election.”

  In a hilarious attempt to downplay the risk of millions of illegal aliens illegally voting in the November election, the abovementioned socialist rag Washington Post said that “noncitizen voting is illegal in federal elections and allowed only in some local municipalities and jurisdictions.”  Oh, so it’s only “some” then… and since it is illegal to do something, well clearly nobody will do it. Might as well avoid double checking. And while we are at it, we should also allow everyone to drive a car on the honor system, just tell the cop you have a driver’s license somewhere, just not with you.

  Trump has repeatedly claimed, not without justification, that noncitizen voting cost him the 2020 election and narrowed his margin of victory in the 2016 presidential contest.

  The punchline: a handful of cities, including that socialist hellhole Washington, D.C., allow noncitizens to vote in municipal elections. And since nobody checks if those same noncitizens also vote in presidential elections (because “it is illegal to do so” so may as well trust them), it is guaranteed that millions of unqualified votes are cast each and every year for Democrat candidates, which is also why Democrats are doing everything in their power to allow half of Latin America in the US so actual legal votes are forever drowned out by the army of “free shit” illegals coming here for the promise of a better life, funding by other honest working taxpayers and legal American citizens, as long as they vote for Kamala.

  The good news: this fall, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kentucky and Idaho will vote on ballot measures to enact constitutional bans on noncitizen voting. How these measures are not ironclad in every state, boggles the mind.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/22/2024 – 18:00

• Quinn: They've Selected Kamala & This Is Their Plan
  Quinn: They’ve Selected Kamala & This Is Their Plan

  Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

  “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” ― H.L. Mencken

  The Powers That Be/Deep State have gone to Plan B, since Plan A was a dementia ridden, pants shitting, child sniffing, corrupt, global embarrassment. Everybody knows Kamala Harris is an extremely unlikable, vacuous, commie, diversity shill, Obama puppet. She couldn’t get above 2% support in the 2020 Democrat primaries and had the lowest popularity rating of any VP in history, because she is an honest to goodness moron. She was selected because she can read a teleprompter better than the shuffling cadaver in the White House. Every time she is stumped by a question, she cackles like a hyena, so she cackles a lot.

  

  She hasn’t had an original thought or idea in her entire worthless, sleeping up the ladder, life. But, suddenly she is the toast of the town and the regime media has gone into full propaganda mode to elevate her as the joyful diversity queen who will lead us to the promised land. It is beyond laughable, but have you observed the ignorant masses and their immense gullibility and lack of critical thinking skills? The Deep State engineers have, and they know they can place her in the oval office. The propaganda media machine is in full “elect Kamala” mode, as can be seen in the graphic below.

  

  The plan to place this low IQ diversity puppet into the White House is multi-faceted.

  • First, they will flood the airwaves with negative ads about Trump, because her record is non-existent/disastrous. They have hundreds of millions to do so.

  • Second, they will have their regime media outlets heap praise upon her glorious rise against all odds through her joyful brilliance, while scorning Trump as a criminal, white supremacist, Putin puppet.

  • Third, they will try to duplicate the “Basement Biden” strategy of 2020 by never letting her speak off the cuff, do interviews without having the questions a week in advance, or god forbid do a press conference. They will make up reasons why she won’t debate Trump, and then blame Trump for not debating. They cannot allow her to talk, because it will immediately reveal she is one of the dumbest human beings on the planet.

  • Fourth, they will conspire with their regime media partners to rig the polls, showing Kamala leading on a national level and either leading or very close in the seven swing states that matter. Absolutely nothing has changed regarding mail-in ballots since the 2020 stolen election. The Dems continue to register illegals as voters. With the cover of fake polls showing a close race, they will cheat again in all the Democrat controlled urban shitholes to win again. The left wing governor of PA, who isn’t Kamala’s VP because he is a Jew and was nixed by her handlers, has already announced the PA results will not be final on election night. They need to see how far behind they might be to get just enough additional votes from Philly to win the state. Remember the left wing media polls in 2016? Their game plan hasn’t changed.

  

  • Fifth, the Deep State will continue to try and drum up a new pandemic (Monkeypox, Bird Flu, New Covid strain) in order to drastically reduce or eliminate in-person voting, so they can commit more mail-in ballot fraud. They also have the old electronic ballot machine manipulation as a back-up plan.

  If this multi-faceted plan does not seem to be doing the trick, they will take more extreme measures, as desperation will creep in, knowing their wealth, power and control over the country is in jeopardy. They already tried to assassinate Trump and missed by inches. They will try again and make it look like Iran was the culprit. It isn’t a coincidence they keep pushing us closer and closer towards war with Russia and Iran. As a last resort, they will create a false flag incident designed to start WW3 and rally the country behind the existing regime. They will declare a national emergency and declare it too dangerous to hold elections, so they will be suspended.

  No matter how the next three months play out, there will be blood.

  

  They will do anything to place that cackling diversity drunk into the White House, and if they fail, all hell will be unleashed, as their BLM, Antifa, and illegal immigrant hordes are activated and instructed to burn it all down. Buckle up. A shit storm is coming.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/22/2024 – 17:40

• Spot The Odd One Out: EV Adoption By State
  Spot The Odd One Out: EV Adoption By State

  In 2023, sales of electric vehicles (EVs) passed the 1.6 million mark.

  To visualize where EVs are the most popular, Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti maps the number of registered EVs per 100,000 people by state as of June 2024.

  

  The vehicle registration data is sourced from the U.S. Department of Energy, while population data is from the U.S. Census Bureau.

  Only all-electric vehicles are included on the map.

  California Leads EV Adoption

  California has the highest number of electric vehicles, with 1.1 million. Florida follows with 231,000 EVs, and Texas ranks third with 210,000.

  When considering EVs per 100,000 people, California also leads with 3,026 cars per 100,000 people, followed by Washington, Hawaii, and Oregon.

  U.S. State	EVs per 100k people
  California	3026
  Washington	1805
  Hawaii	1686
  Oregon	1422
  Colorado	1405
  Nevada	1379
  New Jersey	1349
  Arizona	1139
  Vermont	1129
  District of Columbia	1115
  Utah	1078
  Maryland	1050
  Florida	1024
  Massachusetts	983
  Connecticut	818
  Georgia	771
  Delaware	745
  Illinois	741
  Texas	690
  New Hampshire	660
  New York	622
  Minnesota	591
  North Carolina	589
  Oklahoma	564
  Rhode Island	542
  Pennsylvania	499
  Maine	489
  Michigan	454
  New Mexico	452
  Tennessee	428
  Idaho	406
  Missouri	398
  Ohio	391
  Montana	373
  South Carolina	358
  Kansas	354
  Indiana	350
  Alaska	346
  Nebraska	319
  Iowa	260
  Kentucky	238
  Alabama	232
  Arkansas	214
  South Dakota	169
  Louisiana	165
  North Dakota	112
  Mississippi	110

  Mississippi has the fewest electric vehicles proportionally, with only 110 EVs per 100,000 people. North Dakota has a similar lack of EVs, with 112 per 100,000 people in the state.

  Additionally, California has the highest number of EV charging stations, with over 15,000, making up 29% of all charging stations in America. As of 2022, the Golden State had nearly double the number of chargers compared to the next three states combined: New York, Florida, and Texas.

  If you liked this post, check out Ranked: The Top 10 EV Battery Manufacturers in 2023. In this graphic we rank the top 10 EV battery manufacturers by total battery deployment (measured in megawatt-hours) in 2023.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/22/2024 – 17:20

• Life In A Sound-Money World
  Life In A Sound-Money World

  Authored by John Rubino via Substack,

  Pretend, for a moment, that it’s 1971 and you’re President Richard Nixon (admittedly disturbing fantasies, but bear with me). You face the perennial government income/outflow dilemmas, and other countries, noting your struggle, are trying to cash their dollars in for your limited pile of gold bars.

  But this time around you don’t cave and “close the gold window,” ushering in the Age of Fiat Currencies. Instead, you cut spending and raise revenues however you have to. You balance your budget and convince your trading partners that the dollar remains “good as gold.”

  Thanks to you, the US and by extension the world remains on the post-WW II Bretton Woods quasi gold standard. And what follows is very different.

  But how different, exactly? How would a sound-money world depart from the financial train wreck that we’ve come to accept as the new normal?

  One way to find out is to calculate asset prices in terms of gold rather than dollars and see what kind of price action the past half-century would have experienced under a gold standard.

  Stocks: Only Dividends Matter

  Let’s start with stocks. When valued in real money (i.e., gold) the S&P 500 is virtually unchanged since 1971. The following chart ignores the dividends paid by public companies, so let’s give stocks a positive real return of maybe 2% a year, all of it from profitable companies returning cash to shareholders.

  

  Share prices still rise and fall, but the fluctuations are more muted and less disruptive than the serial bubbles of the past five decades.

  GDP: The Long Depression?

  When priced in gold, the US economy (measured by gross domestic product, or GDP) is actually smaller than it was in 1971, giving credence to the people who claim we’ve been in a “capital D” depression since 2000 if not 1971.

  

  Oil: Life Keeps Getting Cheaper

  As the saying goes, “energy is life, life is energy.” In dollar terms, oil and its distillates like gasoline are far more expensive these days, as is life in general. But priced in gold, oil is actually down by almost two-thirds since 1971.

  

  In our hypothetical gold standard world, energy is making life easier and more manageable instead of harder and more stressful.

  Houses: Our Kids Get Their Starter Home

  Housing might be the part of life where inflation has been most debilitating, with two entire generations now priced out of home ownership. What would it be like under a gold standard? US houses would be about as cheap as they’ve been in the past century.

  

  Rents would be lower, and our kids and grandkids would own their own homes rather than renting (or staying with us).

  Life In a Sound Money World

  What a difference a single policy decision can make. Had the US just gotten its act together in the 1970s and maintained sound money, today we’d be buying stocks for their 2% dividend yield rather than betting our life savings on never-ending boom/bust cycles. We (and more important, our kids) would be living in affordable houses. We’d have no trouble filling the gas tank to get to work. And the Aristocracy wouldn’t be feasting on the peasants and shredding the fabric of society.

  

  A gold-standard world would, in short, be a saner and more sustainable place in which we’d be a lot less worried about the chaos to come.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/22/2024 – 17:00

• Get Woke, Go Broke: Disney Cancels Gay Star Wars Show After One Season
  Get Woke, Go Broke: Disney Cancels Gay Star Wars Show After One Season

  In the past 10 years Disney has generated a magnificent reputation for failure.  Consider for a moment the overwhelming catalog of marketable properties the company has purchased through its acquisition of companies like 20th Century Fox and Lucasfilm – The possibilities for profits are endless.  Star Wars itself was long considered to be a bulletproof brand, a beloved franchise that had hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) of fans attached to it due to sheer nostalgia alone. 

  It would take a screw-up of epic proportions to take a loss on Star Wars.  Or, maybe a deliberate agenda to deconstruct and destroy the very foundations of the story that made it so popular in the first place.

  The Acolyte, directed by Harvey Weinstein’s former assistant Leslye Headland and produced by Steven Spielberg’s former assistant Kathleen Kennedy, is the pinnacle of this agenda.  Kathleen Kennedy’s notorious ‘Story Group’ set out to fundamentally change Star Wars from the very beginning with the increasing injection of third-wave feminism, woke ideology and ultimately sexual fetishism. 

  

  They first tested the waters through a bizarre series of young adult novels called ‘The High Republic’, which ended up on clearance shelves within a year.  The Acolyte was an attempt to double down on the High Republic in television/streaming format.  The goal?  To turn a story about the basic roots of love, friendship, responsibility and good and evil into a degenerate tale of moral relativism and identity politics.  Headland was given a $180 million budget and an incredible amount of creative control by Lucasfilm.

  In the Acolyte, the Jedi are the bad guys (and they are all murdered in the end), the Sith are portrayed as relatable and justified, lesbian space witches reproduce through immaculate conception and high concept adventure takes a back seat to talking, talking, talking.  The original audience for Star Wars has always been predominantly male.  The new audience was intended to not just be female, but feminist females.  It was a recipe for financial disaster.

  The Acolyte has now officially been cancelled with Disney and Lucasfilm announcing they have no intention of pursuing a second season.  Though Disney initially boasted about the series being the “most watched” on Disney Plus in 2024 (because there was very little competition), Nielsen numbers for streaming originals indicated the show did not make the cut for the top 10 most viewed streaming originals during four of the seven weeks it was on the air. 

  Not surprisingly, woke activists are in an uproar.  They claim that the show was sabotaged by the “review bombing” of “racists and misogynists”.  In reality, there is no such thing as “review bombing.”  Either a show has a large audience, or it doesn’t.  Either it appeals to a wide group of consumers, or it doesn’t.  If most people hate a show that’s not review bombing, that’s the free market (which leftists despise).  A show does not deserve to remain on the air simply because it has the “right politics”.  

  A small compilation of TikTok reacting to The Acolyte being canceled. Enjoy🩷 pic.twitter.com/MjYwSChzw5

  — Steph Anie (@mynerdyhome) August 21, 2024

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Activists claim the cancellation of the show is the same as “letting the bigots win.”  The bigger question that leftists need to ask themselves is this:  Where were they?  If this show has such a large audience, why didn’t they show up and fight the “bigots” themselves?  

  The reason companies like Disney often hide the real numbers is not only because of financial optics – They also know that the woke left is a paper tiger, an astroturf movement based mainly on social media and college campuses with barely a footprint in the real world.  The more these shows and films bomb, the more that fact becomes apparent and the con game is exposed.    

  George Lucas’ space opera extravaganza started out as a love letter to the sci-fi and adventure serial shows of the 1940s and 1950s.  It was combined with a homage to Akira Kurosawa’s film ‘The Hidden Fortress’ and, most importantly, it followed the story beats of Joseph Cambell’s study on inherent symbology titled ‘The Hero’s Journey.’  The archetypal nature of Star Wars, its clear delineations on good and evil, the path to the dark side and the existence of the Jedi (the ultimate good in the universe) appeals to the human subconscious in a way that Hollywood did not understand at first.

  They tried many times to copy the formula to no avail, because, frankly, Hollywood is not run by normal humans, it’s run by narcissists and psychopaths.  They aren’t going to get it because they are incapable of relating to it.  But since Star Wars made loads of money, Lucas was left to his own devices. 

  In our current cultural dark age, however, money is not as important to the ideologues as it used to be.  They see profits as secondary to propaganda and if a film or streaming series does not convey the proper messaging it is unlikely to be made at all.  On the other hand, if a production has all the right rhetoric, the correct ethnic pie chart of people and sexual orientations then it will probably be made even if it’s terribly written and the creators are incompetent.  The multicultural cult of globalism must be front and center in the public mind at all times; it doesn’t matter if they are entertained or not.

  The thing is, the woke cultists made a faulty assumption:  They believed that if they saturated the market with woke imagery and messaging that eventually the public would give up, submit, and consume whatever products they were fed without question.  In other words, Disney and their ilk believed the populace could be brainwashed into compliance over time.

  This has not happened.  In fact, audiences have become more discerning and savvy.  And, you can’t feed a vast corporation on ideology, eventually you have to start bringing in profits again.  This is why The Acolyte was canceled and why this event likely heralds the beginning of the end for woke content in general.       

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/22/2024 – 16:40

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