Jan 24

Today’s News 24th January 2024

  • Conspiracy Theorists Were Right About Climate Lockdowns
    Conspiracy Theorists Were Right About Climate Lockdowns

    Authored by Bobbie Anne Flower Cox via The Brownstone Institute,

    Well folks, I really hate to say this, but it’s another win for the conspiracy theorists. They can take off their tinfoil hats and take a deep bow. Yet another one of their outrageous “predictions” is coming true. For anyone keeping score, sadly the score card is rather one-sided. I think the count is something like Conspiracy Theorists = 1,000,000 wins vs. Logic & Normalcy = 0 wins. Boy how I wish we could win some on the “Logic & Normalcy” scale!

    So, I acknowledge that I do have a rather dry sense of humor. I throw sarcasm in there a bunch. A couple of my friends tell me they cannot always tell when I’m being serious or if I’m joking. This makes me think that quite a few of you will be wondering, “Is she serious or is she joking with the title to her article?” To that I answer, I will tell you what I know, and then you decide. (You know how I love to promote critical thinking)…

    Last week, our unfortunate Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, issued a TRAVEL BAN for an entire county. You read that correctly. No, not a travel advisory, but a full on travel ban! Meaning, New Yorkers in Erie County were forbidden from going anywhere. What’s another name for that? Well, if you live in a rural or very suburban area (which most of New York State is), where driving on a road is the way you get from point A to point B, then I would say a synonym would be “lockdown.”

    And what was Dictator Hochul’s, I mean Governor Hochul’s, reason for this lockdown of close to one million New Yorkers that live in Erie County? Wait for it. Ready? It was going to SNOW! For anyone who does not live in New York, or who has never been to Western New York in the winter, that area of our state gets a lot of snow. Often. And yet, the governor thinks (all of a sudden, out of nowhere) everyone living there is so ignorant, they must be confined to their homes until she says it’s safe for them to rejoin the world again. Either that, or she’s just testing you to see how far she can take her totalitarian desires. Or both.

    For all the keyboard critics who love to jump in and twist my words, I’ll cut you off at the pass and say that I am not admonishing a governor’s desire to keep people safe in the wake of a storm. That’s not at all what I am saying. If a natural disaster is approaching, people should be warned, emergency services ready to roll, and help made readily available. Encourage people to stock up, stay home, and hunker down? For sure! Forbid people from leaving their homes? NO.

    There is a big difference between caring about New Yorkers’ safety, and wanting to control people. Huge.

    And in fact, Hochul was banning people from leaving their homes even if it was NOT snowing! Sound unbelievable? It sure does. But remember in my article last week, I cited an ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, who fittingly said, “The truth often evades being recognized due to its utter incredibility.” 

    Put another way, when something is so outrageous, it is often cast aside as untrue. Well, here’s what comrade Kathy posted on her Twitter:

    She went on to post several other times about the snow and her travel ban. I was actually encouraged to read that most of the comments she received were negative, logical rebuttals to her power grab.

    Here are a few…

    Ok, so digging a bit into travel bans, you’ll recognize that there have been travel bans based on big storms in the past here in New York. However, those are issued by the local government (i.e. County Executive), after a state of emergency is declared. They are not issued by the Governor, nor are they issued without an emergency declaration.

    Does anyone see the correlation here between government overreach, their quest for “centralized” power, and their fear-mongering? It’s the same thing the Governor and her DOH have been doing with their hideous “quarantine camp” regulation that I have been fighting in court for nearly two years now! The name of that case is Borrello v. Hochul, and you can read the details and case history here. Connecting the dots to the analysis at hand, you will note that the quarantine camp regulation tried to take the power from (elected) judges (in keeping with our law) who have the authority to temporarily quarantine sick, dangerous people, and shift that power to unelected, statewide, DOH employees and appointees who have zero accountability to We the People.

    Under their quarantine camp reg, the Governor and her DOH would have centralized control over 19 million New Yorkers, to force you to lock down in your home, or they could force you (with the use of police) to go to a quarantine center/ facility/ camp (pick your noun), without any proof you are sick, indefinitely, with no procedure by which you can regain your freedom, and with no declared state of emergency! The fear factor used to try to justify the authoritarian power grab here is the threat of death…If we don’t lock people up who are possibly exposed to a disease, then you might die. Swap out “possibly exposed to a disease” and put in its stead “unclean.” What does that make you think of?

    My next question: do you see any similarities here to Hochul’s probably illegal climate lockdown? 

    I say “probably illegal” because I couldn’t find the supposed legal authority that she’s relying upon to prohibit people from driving. If you know what she is relying upon, feel free to post it in the Substack comment section below.

    Before you draw your own final conclusion about all this, I will add one last thing for you to consider.

    In December, a month before Hochul issued this Erie County travel ban, the (Democrat) County Executive, Mark Poloncarz, set up an online portal so residents could check and see if they would be deemed “essential workers” and thus exempt from any futuristic travel bans. Oh, and he coordinated with their “partners” in the federal government to come up with the list!

    Sound familiar, folks?!

    Remember Governor Cuomo’s C19 lockdown (“Just 2 weeks to flatten the curve”), which lasted for months, and all the “essential workers” that he exempted? Here’s an article about Erie’s coincidentally-just-in-time-for-a-travel-ban portal, “Erie County’s new online portal will identify essential workers exempt from travel bans.”

    So… after taking in all that, is it 1,000,000 to 1… or is it 1,000,001 to 0?

    *  *  *

    Republished from the author’s Substack

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 23:40

  • Kari Lake Demands Resignation Of "Corrupt" GOP Chair Caught Trying To Bribe Her
    Kari Lake Demands Resignation Of “Corrupt” GOP Chair Caught Trying To Bribe Her

    Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake called on the state’s GOP chair Jeff DeWit to resign after a recording emerged of him trying to bribe Lake to stay out of politics for two years.

    In the recording, first reported by the Daily Mail, DeWit, 51, can be heard asking lake to name her price not to run.

    “There are very powerful people who want to keep you out,” he can be heard telling her in a conversation recorded last March.

    Jeff DeWit and his wife Marina with President Donald Trump.

    He then, after asking her not to mention the conversation to anyone, makes his first offer:

    “So the ask I got today from back east was: “Is there any companies out there or something that could just put her on the payroll to keep her out?“

    Lake is taken aback.

    “This is about defeating Trump and I think that’s a bad, bad thing for our country,” she replied.

    DeWit later framed it in a different way.

    “Just say, is there a number at which –

    “I can be bought?” Lake interjected. “That’s what it’s about?”

    “You can take a pause for a couple of years. You can go right back to what you’re doing,” DeWit replied.

    Lake repeatedly shuts him down, and says she wouldn’t pull out for a billion dollars.

    “This is not about money, it’s about our country,” she says (one her own recording, we’re guessing).

    Listen (via Collin Rugg):

     Following the report, Lake called on DeWit to resign.

    “He’s gotta resign. We can’t have somebody who is corrupt and compromised running the Republican Party,” she told an NBC reporter during Trump’s New Hampshire primary victory party.

    Just one question…

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

    What say you now Eric Garcia, senior Washington Correspondent of The Independent?

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

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 23:20

  • Oklahoma Bill Seeks To Criminalize Sexting Outside Of Marriage
    Oklahoma Bill Seeks To Criminalize Sexting Outside Of Marriage

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    It appears that Anthony Comstock is having something of a revival in Oklahoma. The founder of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice fought to criminalize the mailing of any obscene work, a broadly define category that included protected political speech. Now, a  bill not only contains an expansive definition of lewd material but would criminalize even the viewing “obscene materials” by unmarried individuals.

    Oklahoma Senate Bill 1976 would also make posing or exhibiting such images illegal. The law would define unlawful depictions as including “lewd exhibition of the uncovered genitals, buttocks, or, if such person is female, the breast, for the purpose of sexual stimulation of the viewer”; any depiction of “physical restraint such as binding or fettering in the context of sexual conduct”; and the undefined category “sadomasochistic abuse.”

    The range of that definition would cover not just porn but personal images sent between consenting adults. However, it is expressly not meant to “prevent spouses from sending images of a sexual nature to each other.” So what about consenting unmarried adults? They have a right to intimacy, privacy, and expression.

    Moreover,  it would be a crime to “buy, procure, view, or possess” any “obscene materials.” Thus, you could receive a lewd image from your lover and be criminally charged for viewing it?

    In a 2002 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against a provision of federal law that banned computer simulations and virtual pornography under the first amendment. In Ashcroft v. The Free Speech Coalition, Justice Kennedy in a 6-3 decision found that the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 was “overbroad” and swept within its prohibitions many valuable and artistic works.

    “Pictures of what appear to be a 17-year-old engaging in sexually explicit activity do not in every case contravene community standards . . . The (Act) also prohibits speech having serious redeeming value, proscribing the visual depiction of an idea — that of teenagers engaging in sexual activity — that is a fact of modern society and has been a theme in art and literature for centuries.”

    The bill is presumptively unconstitutional in my view, but the Court made an unholy mess of this area in its rulings on obscenity. That lunacy was summed up in the ridiculous statement of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in the case of Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964): “I shall not today attempt further to define [it] … But I know it when I see it.”

    As written, this bill is too vague and too broad to pass constitutional muster under existing precedent.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 23:00

  • US Gun Demand Hits Highest Level In Eight Months As Protection Needs Persist
    US Gun Demand Hits Highest Level In Eight Months As Protection Needs Persist

    Fears over the continued lawlessness in Democrat-run cities, President Biden’s southern border invasion, Democrats’ crusade in attempting to ban firearms, criminal gangs targeting neighborhoods nationwide, and, of course, mounting geopolitical risks with threats of major conflict, could be some of the reasons why Americans continue buying guns. 

    According to data from the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), unadjusted criminal background checks rose 2.9% to 2.73 million in December, the highest in about eight months. However, compared with a year ago, gun buying has slumped 10% from 3.04 million. 

    Seasonal NICS data shows gun-buying remains well above a two-decade average; an indication gun buying remains elevated in a dangerous world where threats of war linger abroad and domestic policies, such as social justice, have backfired in recent years, igniting a crime wave across liberal cities. 

    Recall that NICS data is a proxy for gun sales because there is no national database tracking firearm purchases. Also, a background check doesn’t necessarily mean a gun sale occurred. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 22:40

  • The Bitcoin Halving: Why This Time Could Be Different
    The Bitcoin Halving: Why This Time Could Be Different

    Authored by ‘Shinobi’ via BitcoinMagazine.com,

    The fourth Bitcoin halving is almost upon us, and this one has the potential for some very interesting surprises. This halving marks the reduction of the Bitcoin supply subsidy from 6.25 BTC every block to 3.125 BTC per block. These supply reductions occur every 210,000 blocks, or roughly every four years, as part of Bitcoin’s gradual, disinflationary approach to its final capped supply in circulation.

    The finite supply of 21 million coins is a, if not the, foundational characteristic of Bitcoin. This predictability of supply and inflation rate has been at the heart of what has driven demand and belief in bitcoin as a superior form of money. The regular supply halving is the mechanism by which that finite supply is ultimately enacted.

    The halvings over time are the driver behind one of the most fundamental shifts of Bitcoin incentives in the long term: the move from miners being funded by newly issued coins from the coinbase subsidy — the block reward — to being funded dominantly by the transaction fee revenue from users moving bitcoin on-chain.

    As Satoshi said in Section 6 (Incentives) of the whitepaper:

    “The incentive can also be funded with transaction fees. If the output value of a transaction is less than its input value, the difference is a transaction fee that is added to the incentive value of the block containing the transaction. Once a predetermined number of coins have entered circulation, the incentive can transition entirely to transaction fees and be completely inflation free.”

    Historically the halving has correlated with a massive appreciation in the price of bitcoin, offsetting the impact of the miners’ subsidy being cut in half. Miners’ bills are paid in fiat, meaning that if the price of bitcoin appreciates, resulting in a larger income in dollar terms for the lower amount of bitcoin earned per block, the negative impact on mining operation is cushioned.

    In light of the last market cycle, with not even a 4x appreciation from the prior all time high, the degree to which price appreciation will cushion miners from the effects of the halving is an assumption that might not consistently hold true. This coming halving, the inflation rate of bitcoin will drop for the first time below 1%. If the next market cycle plays out similarly to the previous one, with much lower upwards movement than seen historically, this halving could have a materially negative impact on existing miners.

    This makes the fee revenue miners can collect from transactions more important than ever, and it will continue to become more central to their sustainability from a business perspective as block height increases and successive halvings occur. Either fee revenue has to increase, or the price needs to appreciate at a minimum by 2x each halving in order to make up for the decrease in subsidy revenue. As bullish as most Bitcoiners can be, the notion that a doubling in price is guaranteed to happen every four years, in perpetuity, is a dubious assumption at best.

    Love them or hate them, BRC-20 tokens and Inscriptions have shifted the entire dynamic of the mempool, pushing fees from somewhere in the ballpark of 0.1-0.2 BTC per block prior to their existence, to the somewhat volatile average of 1-2 BTC as of late — regularly spiking far in excess of that.

    THE NEW FACTOR THIS TIME

    Ordinals present a very new incentive dynamic to the halving this go around that was not present at any prior halving in Bitcoin’s history. Rare sats. At the heart of Ordinals Theory is that satoshis from specific blocks can be tracked and “owned” based on its arbitrary interpretation of the transaction history of the blockchain, based on assuming specific amounts sent to specific outputs “send that sat” there. The other aspect of the theory is assigning rarity values to specific sats. Each block has a coinbase, thus producing an ordinal. But each block is different in importance to the scheme. Each normal block produces an “uncommon” sat, the first block of each difficulty adjustment produces a “rare” sat, and the first block of each halving cycle produces an “epic” sat.

    This halving will be the first one since the widespread adoption of Ordinal Theory by a subset of Bitcoin users. There has never been the production of an “epic” sat while there was material market demand for it from a large and developed ecosystem. The market demand for that specific sat could wind up being valued at absurd multiples of what the coinbase reward itself is valued at in terms of just fungible satoshis.

    The fact that a large market segment in the Bitcoin space would value that single coinbase drastically higher than any other creates an incentive for miners to fight over it by reorganizing the blockchain immediately after the halving. The only time such a thing has happened in history was during the very first halving, when the block reward decreased from 50 BTC to 25 BTC. Some miners continued trying to mine blocks rewarding 50 BTC in the coinbase after the supply cut, and gave up shortly after when the rest of the network ignored their efforts. This time around, the incentive to reorg isn’t based around ignoring the consensus rules and hoping people come along to your side, it’s fighting over who is allowed to mine a completely valid block because of the value collectors will ascribe to that single coinbase.

    There are no guarantees that such a reorg will actually occur, but there is a very large financial incentive for miners to do so. If it does occur, the length for which it will go on ultimately depends on how much that “epic” sat could be worth on the market to pay for the lost revenue from fighting over a single block rather than progressing the chain.

    Each halving in Bitcoin’s history has been a pivotal event people watch, but this go around it has the potential to be much more interesting than past halvings.

    HOW AN EPIC SAT BATTLE COULD PLAY OUT

    There are a few ways this could play out in my opinion.

    • The first and most obvious way is that nothing happens. For whatever reason, miners do not judge that the potential market value of the first “epic” sat mined since Ordinals adoption took off is worth the opportunity cost of wasting energy reorging the blockchain and foregoing the money they could make by simply mining the next block. If miners do not think the extra premium the ordinal can fetch is worth the cost of giving up moving on to the next block, they simply won’t do it.

    • The next possibility is a result of nuanced scales of economy. Imagine a larger scale mining operation can afford to risk more “lost blocks” engaging in a reorg fight over the “epic” sat. That larger miner with more capital to put on the table can afford to take a larger risk. In this scenario, we might see a few odd reorg attempts by larger miners with smaller operations not even trying, and essentially minimal disruption. This would play out if miners think there is some premium they can acquire for the ordinal, but not a massive premium worth serious disruption to the network.

    • The last scenario would be if a market develops bidding for the “epic” sat ahead of time, and miners can have a clear picture that the ordinal is valued massively above the market value of the fungible sat itself. In this case, miners may fight over that block for an extended period of time. The logic behind not reorging the blockchain is that you are losing money, you are not only forgoing the reward of just mining the next block, but you are also continuing to incur the cost of running your mining operations. In a situation where the market is publicly signaling how much the “epic” sat is worth, miners have a very clear idea of how long they can forgo moving onto the next block and still wind up with a net profit by attaining the post-halving coinbase reward with the ordinal. In this scenario the network could see substantial disruption until miners begin approaching the point of incurring a guaranteed loss even if they do successfully wind up mining this block without it being reorged.

    Regardless of which way things actually play out, this is going to be a factor to consider each halving going forward unless the demand and marketplace for ordinals dies off. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 22:20

  • Trudeau's Orwellian Attack On Canadian Truckers Declared Unconstitutional
    Trudeau’s Orwellian Attack On Canadian Truckers Declared Unconstitutional

    Canada’s Federal Court ruled on Tuesday that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act in 2022 to punish protesting truckers was both unreasonable and unconstitutional.

    “I have concluded that the decision to issue the Proclamation does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness — justification, transparency and intelligibility — and was not justified in relation to the relevant factual and legal constraints that were required to be taken into consideration,” wrote Justice Richard G. Mosley in his ruling.

    The decision follows an application for judicial review requested by the Canadian Constitution Foundation, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and various other applicants who cried foul over the use of emergency measures to quell Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa, which allowed the government to freeze the bank accounts of protesters,  conscript tow truck drivers, and arrest people for participating in assemblies deemed illegal by Trudeau’s government.

    According to Mosley, Trudeau’s regulations had violated Charter rights – particularly against freedom of thought, opinion and expression. The Emergencies Act order was also found to infringe on the right to security against unreasonable search and seizure.

    “It is declared that the decision to issue the Proclamation and the association Regulations and Order was unreasonable and ultra vires the Emergencies Act,” reads the ruling.

    “It is declared that the decision that the Regulations infringed section 2 (b) of the Charter and declared that the Order infringed section 8 of the Charter and that neither infringement was justified under section 1.”

    The Canadian Constitution Foundation had initiated the judicial review, expressing concerns over what they deemed as a severe example of government overreach and violations of civil liberties during the pandemic.

    “The Trudeau government’s use of this extraordinary law may be the most severe example of overreach and violations of civil liberties that was seen during the pandemic,” said Van Geyn at the time. 

    “The use of this powerful law was unauthorized because the legal threshold to use the law was not met. The Emergencies Act contains a last resort clause: it can only be used when there is a national emergency and there are no other laws at the federal, provincial and/or municipal levels which can address the situation. Parliament cannot use the Emergencies Act as a tool of convenience, as it did in this case.” –TNC.news

    The government plans to appeal the ruling.

    Things are going great for Trudeau, eh?

    Read the entire ruling below:

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 22:05

  • Utility Bill Debt For Americans Hits Record As Heating Homes Now Seen As Luxury
    Utility Bill Debt For Americans Hits Record As Heating Homes Now Seen As Luxury

    The Biden administration has whined for months about the public’s negative views on the economy, arguing that people are operating on “false perceptions influenced by right-wing media.”

    Most Americans have figured out that government officials and the corporate media have a habit of misrepresenting economic data to convince the public that the economy has never been better. 

    Last June, the White House unleashed a media campaign with corporate media to blast out the message that “Bidenomics” worked and the economy has never been better. But polling data from Real Clear Politics shows that despite the PR blitz, the president’s polling data went down. 

    People know when their wallets are hurting, and gaslighting them has not been effective. 

    Yet another data point released Tuesday supports the public’s position that the nation is less prosperous than the government would like us to believe.

    Bloomberg cites a new report from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association that reveals US household utility debt hit a record as an alarming number of Americans can no longer afford heating and cooling their homes. 

    NEADA said one out of every six ratepayers is behind on energy bills, adding residential utility debt hit a new record last year of $20.3 billion. 

    The group, representing state-level directors of low-income utility assistance programs, pointed out household heating costs have soared 20% since the start of Covid. 

    Folks in New York and Michigan have been impacted the most by soaring energy bills, the report said. As of Sept. 30, there were more than 7 million households on utility bill assistance. 

    Looking at the US CPI Northeast Urban Household Energy index, a basket of household fuels, such as propane, kerosene, and firewood, as well as electricity prices, remains near record highs. 

    Meanwhile, more than 60% of Americans reported that their wages were lagging well behind inflation.

    People are voting with their empty wallets – and are not thrilled with lies coming from the White House.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 22:00

  • Feds Spent $20 Billion On Migrant Refugee Assistance
    Feds Spent $20 Billion On Migrant Refugee Assistance

    By Adam Andrzejewski of OpenTheBooks substack

    The U.S. border patrol made 2.5 million migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2023, an all-time high.

    Congressional budget justification FY2022 and FY2023 (numbers in the thousands) for Refugee and Entrant Assistance, The Administration of Children and Families (ACF).

    There seems to be no end in sight, or meaningful plan from the Biden administration to stop or slow the number of people coming over the border. Meanwhile, federal funds flowing to migrants are growing at an exponential rate.

    Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com looked at just one federal office to get an idea of how much spending is going towards accommodating, transporting, and providing migrants with various other services.

    The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), a part of Health and Human Services, is a major vehicle for migrant-related spending. Congress appropriated $20 billion in just two years on “refugee and entrant assistance.”

    Background

    Last year, we published an oversight report on the unaccompanied children program run by the agency: up to 85,000 minors were lost after “sponsorship” with a “vetted” guardian. The New York Times found credible allegations of child labor law violations and congressional whistleblowers detailed large-scale child trafficking.

    Now, our investigation into the agency reveals new oversight: 1. billion-dollar spending spikes in the adult refugee programs; and 2. potential conflicts-of-interest between agency leadership and its largest grant recipients. In fact, for decades, agency director Robin Dunn Marcos was employed in executive positions by two non-profit organizations that are among the agency’s largest grantees.

    Here is a five minute interview describing the big issues in our reporting:

    $20 Billion For Refugee Care (2022-2023)

    Refugee and entrant assistance totaled a stunning $20 billion over the last two fiscal years. The costs rose from $8.925 billion (FY2022) to $10.928 billion (FY 2023).

    Across all programs, the Administration of Children and Families (ORR’s parent agency) received funding of $2.94 billion in Afghanistan Supplemental Appropriation and additional supplementals just in fiscal year FY2022 (P.L. 117-43 and P.L. 117-70). Ukrainian refugees cost taxpayers $900 million in FY2022 and $1.775 billion in FY2023 (P.L. 117-128 and P.L. 117-180).

    In its latest Congressional Budget Justification, the agency suggested expanding its mandate still further by providing more services to a broader range of applicants, advocating that:

    • “Special Immigrant Juvenile Minors” within the “Unaccompanied Refugee Minor” program access the same benefits as refugees, which include access to Medicaid and the same foster care services as American children.
    • Legal assistance to Ukrainian and Afghan children and other URM-designated youth to legal assistance ensuring permanent residency.
    • Cash assistance to full-time college or technical school students for refugees.
    • Removing the need for refugees to obtain economic self-sufficiency “as quickly as possible.”

    All aspects of programmatic activities—from who is eligible to how much is spent—is authorized by Congress.

    An Explosion In Funding For Refugee And Entrant Assistance Discretionary Grants

    The Refugee and Entrant Assistance Grants are just one of many refugee-focused programs offered by the Administration for Children and Families.

    These grants are intended to serve those with the following legal status: asylees, refugees, survivors of torture, victims of trafficking, special immigrant visa holders (such as those from the Afghanistan Operation Allies Welcome) and entrants from Cuba and Haiti.

    The grants cover a wide variety of programs, such as the Individual Development Accounts program, which helps eligible people save for asset purchases like a car or a house, and the Refugee Microenterprise Development program, which helps qualified people build credit through business and personal loans.

    From 2013-2023, ORR doled out over $1.5 billion in grants under the Discretionary Grants category. But much of this spending occurred in 2022 and 2023.

    Between 2021 and 2022 grant spending went from $33 million to over $400 million. In 2023 this spending was $615,601,449.

    The “Preferred Communities Program” within the Refugee and Entrant Assistance category accounted for over half of all spending for this category in 2022: $275,949,105. In 2023 that spending was up to $436,247,481.

    These funds were split between just seven organizations.

    A summary of the benefits of ORR’s Preferred Communities Program reads: “offers intensive case management to overcome barriers” to “extremely vulnerable individuals.”

    One grantee lists the program’s benefits:

    • Emergency housing support (if necessary)
    • Work authorization application
    • Public benefits application 
    • Medical screening 
    • School enrollment 
    • Referrals to employment programs
    • Cultural orientation 
    • Mental health referrals 
    • Legal assistance referrals

    New Director From Big Grantee Organization

    Robin Dunn Marcos joined the agency as director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement in September 2022 with a base salary of $180,000.

    Dunn Marcos came to ORR after eight years with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) rising to their Senior Director for Resettlement, Asylum, and Integration.

    Previously, Dunn Marcos served as executive director of the International Rescue Committee Phoenix branch for fifteen years, for a total of 23 years with the nonprofit. She spent four years at Church World Service between her IRC stints.

    Both IRC and Church World Service have been some of biggest recipients of Refugee and Entrant Assistance Discretionary Grants over the years.

    From FY 2013-2023 IRC received over $180 million in these grants from ORR, and Church World Service received nearly $125 million.

    Top 5 Refugee and Entrant Assistance Discretionary Grants Recipients 2013-2023

    IRC is a huge international nonprofit, collecting over $924 million in contributions and grants in 2020, according to tax documents.

    That same year IRC executive director David Miliband earned a salary of over $1 million. (Interns, however, are never paid.)

    IRC provides several services related to ORR’s mission. In 2020 the organization claimed to have served 45,000 individuals in the United States with food, shelter, English classes, and legal advice.

    In 2023, IRC received funding for the first time from ORR’s Unaccompanied Children program: $13,005,424 for “home studies and post-release services”

    But even before then, the nonprofit worked in some capacity with unaccompanied children.

    According to one article “IRC Los Angeles…[provides] assistance with school enrollment, acquiring state medical insurance, and obtaining pro bono legal services from local partner organizations.”

    As spending at ORR swelled to new heights, IRC benefitted handsomely. The organization received over $235 million in spending in FY 2023 compared to $22 million in FY 2021.

    When reached for comment, a spokesperson for ORR said:

    “Consistent with the Ethics Pledge, Robin Dunn Marcos is recused from participating in particular matters involving specific parties in which IRC is or represents a party. That recusal obligation lasts for two years from her date of appointment, which was September 11, 2022.”

    Our auditors filed a Freedom of Information Act request for emails between Dunn Marcos and IRC officials in May 2023. We have not yet received a response.

    In April 2023 Dunn Marcos came under fire during a Congressional hearing regarding the 85,000 children the agency placed that are now unreachable, as reported in the New York Times.

    During questioning Dunn Marcos said she did not believe the sponsor vetting system was inadequate and would not state whether the 85,000 number is accurate. She also did not know what the rejection rate of sponsorship applications is.

    In June 2023 the HHS released an audit of ORR to investigate these and other allegations. The HHS found ORR went “above and beyond” its statutory requirements, although stated ORR would launch several initiatives to “enhance ORR services and supports,” such as a new “Program Accountability Team.”

    By The Numbers

    As reported by the Administration for Children and Families in their Fiscal Year 2024 Budget Justification, the number of people entering the U.S. under the ORR’s purview has increased tremendously in 2022, particularly under the category “Cuban and Haitian entrants” and “Unaccompanied Children.”

    “Afghan Humanitarian Parolees” is a new category created after the U.S. ceded Afghanistan to the Taliban in 2021. 

    Haitian and Cuban migrants receive an array of nationality-specific ORR benefits, including cash assistance and health insurance similar to Medicaid.

    Critical Quote

    Roger Severino, former HHS director of the Office of Civil Rights, wrote in a recent report:

    “HHS and ORR have forgotten their original refugee-resettlement mission and instead have provided a panoply of free programs that incentivize people to come to the U.S. illegally.”

    Conclusion

    The Office of Refugee Resettlement is just one office in one agency, and this report focused primarily on just a few major grant programs within the office. The universe of taxpayer spending is so much larger, especially when including state and local funds as well.

    As funding, mandates, and the overall number of entrants—legal and illegal—increases dramatically, American citizens and lawmakers would be wise to examine the web of incentives between the agency, nonprofit contractors, and the individuals eligible for these programs.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 21:40

  • 2024: The Super Election Year
    2024: The Super Election Year

    According to the Anchor Change Election Cycle Tracker and additional research from Statista, 2024 is seeing national elections in more than 60 countries worldwide.

    Around 2 billion voters – approximately a quarter of the world’s population – are expected to be heading to the polls this year.

    As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, 2024 has been dubbed a super election year or even the biggest election year in history – aided by closely watched elections in populous countries like United States, Mexico, India and Indonesia, among others, that will be going ahead this year.

    Infographic: 2024: The Super Election Year | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Two widely reported elections have already happened in January. 

    Taiwan elected a new president, Lai Ching-te, but stuck with the party formerly in power, the center-left Democratic Progressive Party. 

    Bangladesh, where President Sheikh Hasina was reelected, was criticized for irregularities on election day and and the previous arrests of thousands of opposition members, leading to the conclusion that the elections were not free and fair. According to Anchor Change, only 38 percent of elections listed for 2024 carry this label. 75 percent are classified as free or partially free.

    The narrative-shapers of the world have proclaimed that some countries with upcoming elections are also at risk from misinformation and disminformation (the latter referring to the deliberate spreading of false information for political or other gain). The issue was voted the biggest threat for India out of 34 risks by a panel of more than 1,000 experts surveyed by the World Economic Forum.

    It was identified as the 6th biggest risk out of 34 in the U.S., and the 11th highest in Mexico and the U.K., where elections are scheduled for 2025 but would be brought forward to this year.

    Other elections are at risk altogether.

    In Burkina Faso, recent coups have called into question if the planned general election will go ahead.

    Parliamentary elections in Chad have already been rescheduled several times before the current date was set for October 2024. The accompanying presidential election would see the son of deceased President Idriss Deby Itno – who had come to power in a coup – face off against opponents.

    Mali’s presidential election is also on its second attempt and has again been postponed slightly. 

    While parliamentary elections didn’t place last year as planned, a new constitution passed via a referendum.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that he would not hold elections as admissible by martial law which the country has been under since the Russian invasion.

    Also going to the polls in a supranational election this summer are residents of the 27 European Union countries to pick a new European Parliament.

    A notable subnational election is taking place in Somaliland, a autonomous and relatively stable part of Somalia.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 21:20

  • California Landscapers Brace For Gas-Powered Lawn Equipment Ban
    California Landscapers Brace For Gas-Powered Lawn Equipment Ban

    Authored by Ethan Brown via RealClear Energy,

    For Jazz Montgomery, it was a new career path. After opening Heavenly’s Lawn Care in 2020, he built a four-person crew, offering residential lawn care, pruning, and yard maintenance to customers in Costa Mesa, California.

    “But ever since that stupid rule change…”

    Montgomery wasted no time in our phone conversation addressing the elephant in the room. On January 1, 2024, California Assembly Bill 1346 took effect, banning the sale of gas-powered leaf blowers, lawn mowers and other small off-road engines across the Golden State. These engines do present real concerns for air pollution, noise pollution, and climate change. But for a small growing business like Heavenly’s Lawn Care, the regulation has proved crushing.

    “I actually scaled down my crew,” Montgomery told me. “It used to be four of us. And then I scaled it down to two because I had to try to make up the cost to be able to get the equipment.”

    Heavenly’s Lawn Care isn’t alone. Per the California Air Resources Board’s own estimates, the cost of transition for professional users is expected to reach $1.29 billion. The state government only set aside $30 million to help cover transition costs. With nearly two million pieces of professional gas-powered equipment in use across the state, these funds amount to a mere $15 per piece of equipment.

    “What if one of us doesn’t get qualified for one of those programs?” said Montgomery. “That’s over $30,000, $40,000 [for an electric riding mower]. That’s coming out of our pockets. And there’s no work around.” 

    Moreover, according to the California Landscape Contractors Association (CLCA) website, zero emission technology is improving, but not yet able to handle the workload of a full workday. CLCA members report issues with short battery life, availability of extra batteries, and lack of sufficient resources to repair zero emission equipment. In Montgomery’s experience, using battery-powered equipment can sometimes take twice as long.

    But many environmental and public health advocates support regulations like California’s.

    “The push mowers and the handheld equipment are so egregiously polluting,” said Kirsten Schatz, Clean Air Advocate for CoPIRG Foundation. “Ultimately, we should just not have those on store shelves.”

    Working on air quality in Colorado last year, Schatz was surprised to learn that gas-powered lawn and garden equipment is a top contributor to the state’s major ozone problem, second only to the oil and gas industry. After diving into the issue, Schatz co-authored a report published in October which found operating a commercial lawn mower for just one hour produces as much ozone-forming pollution as driving 300 miles in a car. Worse yet, a commercial leaf blower emits as much ozone-forming pollution in an hour as driving 1,100 miles in a car — about the length of a trip from Los Angeles to Denver. Ground-level ozone is the main ingredient in smog, and has been shown to reduce lung function, worsen asthma, and even lead to premature death.

    In 2020, lawn and garden equipment in the U.S. also emitted more than 21,800 tons of fine particulates — equivalent to the pollution from 234 million typical cars. Short-term exposure to fine particulates can trigger cardiovascular events, hospitalization episodes, and mortality, while long-term chronic exposure can increase risk of strokes, coronary heart disease, and premature death.

    According to a 2016 American Thoracic Society (ATS) report, California and Los Angeles are the worst state and city in the nation for ozone and fine particulate health impacts, with 3,632 excess mortalities, 7,686 excess morbidities, and 6,741,955 adverse impact days across the Golden State annually due to these pollutants. If Los Angeles attained ATS recommendations for ozone and fine particulate concentrations, the city would avoid 1,341 deaths, 3,255 morbidities, and 2,892,029 impacted days each year.

    Tony Dutzik, Associate Director and Senior Policy Analyst at Frontier Group and a co-author on Schatz’s report, explained why lawn equipment spews such high quantities of these pollutants.

    “With two-stroke engines, in particular, incomplete combustion is a big issue. They are just not burning the fuel as efficiently or completely.”

    Two-stroke engines, favored in handheld equipment due to their light weight, are the worst polluters, especially as it pertains to fine particulates. Increasingly, lawn equipment manufacturers have opted for more efficient four-stroke engines, but these engines still lack the advanced emissions controls that reduce pollution from automobiles.

    “The emissions control technology that we enjoy on our vehicles and has helped reduce some emissions in the cars and trucks we drive is just too expensive and doesn’t make sense to put on handheld lawn tools,” said Schatz.

    These inefficiencies illuminate the large climate impact of gas-powered lawn equipment as well. In the United States, lawn and garden equipment powered by fossil fuels released more than 30 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2020 — more than the annual greenhouse gas emissions from the city of Los Angeles. Carbon dioxide is the primary driver of human-caused global warming.

    Critics of gas-powered lawn equipment have also voiced frustration with noise pollution. Dr. Erica Walker, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Brown University, performed an experiment in Lincoln, Massachusetts, measuring noise from two backpack leaf blowers and one hose vacuum at 0, 50, 100, 200, 400, and 800 feet away. The study, published by Environmental Toxicology in 2017, found that even at 800 feet away (nearly three football fields), sound from this equipment exceeded the World Health Organization’s outdoor daytime standard of 55 decibels.

    “The sounds did decrease the further we moved away from the leaf blower activity, but not by much,” recounted Walker. “It gave me profound appreciation for what people go through when that leaf blower activity is happening because it’s annoying.”

    Walker clarified that nuisance is not just an inconvenience, but a serious health concern.

    “That feeling of annoyance sets off a stress response in your body that’s very similar to the stress response you would have if you were walking down a dark alleyway, and out jumps a ferocious pitbull. It’s your body telling itself to either prepare to fight that threat or flee that threat. […] Consistent stimulation of that stress response can lead to increased risk for some pretty serious cardiovascular related illnesses like hypertension or cardiovascular related mortality.”

    In a community setting, Walker added that noise pollution contributes to disrupted sleep, mental health issues, and decreased quality of life. And for workers who use this equipment, Walker contended that hearing protections have been insufficient remedies.

    “The hearing protection doesn’t mitigate that vibrational component, which is a significant part of leaf blower activity.”

    The problems with gas-powered lawn equipment are grounded in science. But the path forward — particularly the viability of electric alternatives — remains up for debate.

    According to George Kinkead, President of Turfco Manufacturing — a small landscape equipment manufacturing company in Minnesota — the electric technology isn’t proven out for commercial use yet.

    “We’ve spent six figures developing an applicator that was run electrically, and it simply wouldn’t be up to our standards of what we’d sell to any customer. It doesn’t last long enough. There’s questions on reliability.”

    Kinkead also draws a distinction between smaller handheld equipment such as leaf blowers, and larger riding equipment that requires more power.

    “I think the technology on smaller stuff is more credible… but the stuff where you’re riding on it, and it’s doing applications, I don’t think they’re there yet,” said Kinkead. “Unfortunately, we all got kind of grouped in as a bunch of leaf blowers.”

    Kinkead shared that California’s new ban will prevent Turfco from selling equipment in the state at this time. However, he did express optimism that viable electric equipment is not far away.

    “I think we’re five years out before they have some credible solutions for people,” said Kinkead. “I’d feel a lot better if it was phased in, kind of like, percentages of your fleet, allow us to put prototypes out there. And then they run and then we find out what’s wrong. And then we bring in another batch.”

    Kinkead maintained that a more gradual phase-in would also help businesses set up infrastructure to charge their equipment, allow opportunity to purchase higher quality equipment that comes out a few years down the line, and alleviate unforeseen strains on California’s electric grid.

    Yet not everyone shares that perspective.

    “We can’t afford to wait,” said Dutzik. “Sitting around and waiting for the perfect technological gizmo to come out of the lab is not really how any of this tends to work. It works by getting good, beneficial equipment out there into the world as quickly as we can and learning from that experience.”

    Schatz agreed with that viewpoint. She discussed a variety of policy options beyond California’s ban that could accelerate a transition, including seasonal or geographical use restrictions, financial incentives to discount cleaner and quieter equipment, or vouchers for individuals or businesses who make the switch.

    Schatz and Dutzik’s report did acknowledge commercial users have different needs than homeowners, pointing out that homeowners may even save money in the long-run due to the change. However, even on the commercial side, they argued electric equipment was up to the task. As one example, Schatz pointed to Clean Air Lawn Care, a company with franchises nationwide offering lawn mowing and landscaping services with electric and biodiesel powered equipment.

    “The gap with gas has really closed within the last five years,” said Kelly Giard, CEO of Clean Air Lawn Care. “In terms of the operation, we use a solar system on our truck. […] We have two batteries per piece of equipment. One battery is used and the other one is getting charged on the solar as we move around during the day.”

    Giard acknowledged some downsides to the approach — some equipment such as gas-powered aerators can’t be replaced yet, and the battery-powered leaf blowers make fall cleanups take significantly longer. But he also recounted a variety of benefits, including no fuel expenses, healthier environments for employees, and fulfilling customers’ desire for cleaner, quieter lawn care.

    “You go down a street on a Tuesday afternoon in a residential neighborhood and you’re going to see all kinds of work trucks, and the neighbors pay attention to what’s going on. When they see somebody’s doing it quieter, cleaner, I think that’ll pique their interest, and the business doing it that way would benefit from the word of mouth.”

    Of course, most small businesses don’t have the capacity to immediately replicate Clean Air Lawn Care’s solar-powered generator setup. That’s why Giard says time and sensitivity are key in creating legislation.

    “We’re working with different people like Kirsten on legislation, and I think that these are small business owners and it needs to be sensitive to their [needs], giving them time to transition if they’re going to be asked to do that. I think time is the most critical thing.”

    Despite backlash from many landscaping professionals, California’s ban on the sale of gas-powered lawn equipment took effect on January 1, 2024. The ban only applies to new purchases; homeowners and businesses can continue using their gas-powered equipment until the end of its life.

    Kinkead told me that he’s all for change, but he worries about how aggressive policies like California’s could hamper aspiring entrepreneurs looking to enter the industry.

    “Landscaping could be a gateway for someone without a college education. [With] one truck, the guy could have a business. He could grow that business to five, ten trucks. It’s kind of a gateway to American prosperity. Whereas some of these technological changes all of a sudden cut that off. Now, only big companies can afford to do this. And it’s kind of unfortunate because in our industry, we see a lot of first generation immigrants. You know, they’ve gotten into this business, they’ve built a successful business, but they didn’t need a lot of capital to do that.”

    As for Heavenly’s Lawn Care, Montgomery anticipates that the coming months will be tough. But letting out an exasperated chuckle, he assured me that he’ll find a way forward.

    “One thing about being a lawn care tech is that you gotta adapt to every scenario, and we’ll adapt to it. It’s a pain in the butt, but we’ll adapt to it.”

    Ethan Brown is a Social Mobility Fellow for Young Voices with a B.A. in Environmental Analysis & Policy from Boston University. He is the creator and host of The Sweaty Penguin, an award-winning comedy climate program. Follow him on Twitter @ethanbrown5151

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 21:00

  • "Only A Matter Of Time" Before US Troops Are Killed In Iraq & Syria, Biden Officials Say
    “Only A Matter Of Time” Before US Troops Are Killed In Iraq & Syria, Biden Officials Say

    White House officials were cited in a New York Times piece describing that it’s “only a matter of time” before American troops are killed in Iraq or Syria as Iran-linked militant groups continue launching rockets and drones on US bases and positions. The report begins with this: “Another day, another barrage of rockets and another spark that American officials fear could set off a wildfire of violence across the Middle East”—and then transitions to the following astounding and frank admission:

    The latest attack on American troops in the region over the weekend resulted in no deaths, but President Biden and his advisers worry that it is only a matter of time. Whenever a report of a strike arrives at the White House Situation Room, officials wonder whether this will be the one that forces a more decisive retaliation and results in a broader regional war.

    Al Asad Air Base/US Army National Guard

    The report goes on the suggest that Iran could be hit hard in a direct US response in the scenario of American troops being killed. This would of course raise the likelihood of broader regional war, and an expanse of US intervention in the Middle East.

    Speaking of the internal Biden administration debate, the Times report says, “They (admin officials) do not want to let such attacks go without a response, but on the other hand do not want to go so far that the conflict would escalate into a full-fledged war, particularly by striking Iran directly.” However, “They privately say they may have no choice, however, if American troops are killed.”

    And then this surprise emphasis: “That is a red line that has not been crossed, but if the Iranian-backed militias ever have a day of better aim or better luck, it easily could be.”

    As of last weekend, international reports tallied that already at least 140 attacks have been launched on US troops in Iraq and Syria since the start of Israel’s Gaza offensive. Further this has included “nearly 70 U.S. personnel wounded, some of them suffering traumatic brain injuries”—but the majority of cases are considered minor.

    On the question of whether the White House might give the order to attack Iran directly, this is anything but clear give it would be unprecedented. So far both sides have been fighting via proxy, for example in the context of the Syria war.

    The US might instead choose to continue conducting airstrikes or major missile attacks on either locations in Iraq or Syria, targeting ‘pro-Iranian groups’, such as the Iraqi popular mobilization units.

    Regardless, as the developing crisis in the Red Sea demonstrates, at this point a mere tit-for-tat slow escalation scenario is unlikely to deter the ongoing attacks on US positions in Syria and Iraq. However, a tiny minority of Congressmen have pointed out that the problem won’t exist at all in Iraq and Syria if Washington brings the troops home.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 20:40

  • Appeals Court Denies Rehearing For Trump Gag Order
    Appeals Court Denies Rehearing For Trump Gag Order

    Authored by Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has denied former President Donald Trump’s request for a rehearing in the appeal of his federal gag order.

    Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald J. Trump speaks at a rally in Laconia, N.H., on Jan. 22, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    A panel of three judges issued the order on Jan. 23. President Trump had also requested the appeal be heard by the whole bench of 11 judges, but that was also denied.

    “Upon consideration of appellant’s petition for panel rehearing filed on December 18, 2023, and the request for administrative stay, it is ORDERED that the petition be denied,” it reads.

    Prosecutors had argued against President Trump’s petition for a rehearing, stating it was “unwarranted” because he did not show the court erred.

    In the now-paused federal criminal case in which President Trump was charged for obstruction and conspiracy for his actions related to Jan. 6, 2021, he was gagged by a broad order that the appeals court later narrowed.

    Timeline

    On Oct. 17, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a gag order that prevented President Trump from making statements that would “target” several parties related to the case, including prosecutors and potential witnesses or the substance of their potential testimonies.

    The order came after prosecutors filed a motion to prohibit President Trump from making certain “inflammatory” statements about the case, which they argued could sway potential jurors to his side.

    The judge later briefly lifted the gag order when President Trump took the issue to the appeals court, only to reinstate it days later. She clarified in the subsequent order that the word “target” was meant to prevent both criticism or praise of potential witnesses, which may sway them in their testimony.

    On Nov. 3, the appeals court temporarily lifted the gag order, scheduling a hearing for Nov. 20.

    During the hearing, a panel of three judges pressed both sides to present a useful test for whether the defendant’s statements would cross a line and cause harm and received none.

    On Dec. 8, the court reinstated a narrowed gag order, finding that Judge Chutkan had erred in using the word “target,” which made the gag order too broad.

    Under the amended gag order, President Trump is prohibited from “making or directing others to make public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses concerning their potential participation in the investigation or in this criminal proceeding.”

    The new order would, for example, allow him to accuse the prosecutors of bias or allege they are politically motivated, which was unclear before, and name public figures in a campaign speech even if they may be related to his case.

    Threats?

    Three days after President Trump was indicted, he posted on Truth Social, “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!” Prosecutors took this to be a “public threat“ and made more than one request for a protective order regarding President Trump’s speech or use of social media.

    “Similar attacks continue to this day in other pending cases involving the defendant,” the prosecutors argued in opposition to President Trump’s petition for a rehearing.

    The defense team maintains that prosecutors have not shown any basis for a gag order on President Trump, who also happens to be the likely Republican Party nominee and faces a busy campaign schedule. They have argued that prosecutors have not produced threats linked to President Trump’s speech, nor any witness who has suffered intimidation due to President Trump’s speech.

    Prosecutors argued that special counsel Jack Smith, his family, his staff members, and trial witnesses have been targeted in President Trump’s speech and there is a “pattern stretching back years” which links his speech to harassment by his supporters.

    President Trump’s attorneys, meanwhile, argue that he cannot be held liable for the actions of third parties unknown to him, including many who are anonymous.

    Appeals court judges agreed in part, noting that public figures, including Mr. Smith, generally understand that public criticism comes with the office and a gag order should not be used just to shield them from criticism.

    The judges showed a concern for staffers who were not public figures, however, pointing to a New York gag order that prohibited President Trump from making any statements about a judge’s staff. The judge and clerk had produced hundreds of threatening voicemails they alleged were linked to President Trump’s speech, and that gag order had been upheld by a state appeals court.

    Referencing these threats, the federal appeals court found a gag order necessary, and kept much of it intact after altering the language to limit only speech directly related to the case.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 20:20

  • AP Calls New Hampshire Primary For Trump
    AP Calls New Hampshire Primary For Trump

    Update (2002ET): With just under 20% of the votes counted, the Associated Press has called the New Hampshire primary for Trump – who so far has 54.2% of the vote to Haley’s 44.8%. The former president is performing roughly in line with expectations, and the former UN Ambassador doing better than expected so far.

    0.6% of voters crossed their arms and voted for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis anyway, despite his dropping out of the race and endorsement of Trump.

    According to AP:

    The result was a setback for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who invested significant time and financial resources into winning the state. She was the last major challenger in the race after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ended his presidential bid over the weekend, allowing her to campaign as the sole alternative to Trump. Haley intensified her criticism of the former president, questioning his mental acuity and pitching herself as a unifying candidate who would usher in generational change.

    The appeals failed to resonate with enough voters. Trump can now boast of being the first Republican presidential candidate to win open races in Iowa and New Hampshire since both states began leading the election calendar in 1976, a striking sign of how rapidly Republicans have rallied around him to make him their nominee for the third consecutive time.

    Biden ‘insurgent’ rival and Bill Ackman pick Dean Phillips is garnering a shocking 20.4% vs. the sitting president, with thousands of write-in votes uncounted, Bloomberg reports.

    Phillips, a US representative from Minnesota, told Bloomberg News Monday that anything less than 80% for the president would signal weakness for Biden as he appears headed for a rematch with former President Donald Trump.

    Biden allies noted that the president didn’t campaign in the state, and that any win by a write-in candidate is extraordinary.

    And what’s this?

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

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

    *  *  *

    With record turnout expected in New Hampshire’s COP Primary, and despite the on-the-ground polls saying otherwise, the ‘uniparty’ and its establishment media puppets continue to push Haley as a potential spoiler of Trump’s triumphant return.

    One member of the Washington elite (thouhg he’d likely not appreciate that association) who won’t be supporting her is Senator Rand Paul who appeared on Tucker Carlson tonight to make his feelings clear.

    “…it’s one thing to find Nikki Haley distasteful, to acknowledge that she’s a bloodthirsty feminist harpy who should be nowhere near power. Most reasonable people have reached that conclusion. But to start a website: Never Nikki, suggests a level of anti-Nikki commitment that’s interesting and worth talking about,” Tucker Carlson says to Paul.

    His response pulled no punches:

    “Well nobody ever accused me of going halfway into anything. And it really, it gets to me at a very basic level, it gets to me when I see people who I think care more about the borders of Ukraine than they care about our own southern border.

    And I see these people every day because they’re the entire Democrat caucus up here. But they’re half of my caucus, half of my Republican caucus is, as we speak, ready to sell out. And they’re ready to sell out fake border reform in exchange for what they really want, which is to send more of your tax dollars to Ukraine. I think Nikki Haley fits right in that camp.

    I think she’s from the McConnell-Dick Cheney wing of the party. And this is the antithesis of everything I believe in. I’ve spent a few years trying to promote the ideals of liberty. There is a wing of the party that believes in that, and I wanted to make sure anybody that follows what I do knows that there’s no way, shape or form I could support Nikki Haley.”

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

    And we suspect Paul won’t have to worry for long. Following Trump’s convincing 30-point win in last week’s Iowa caucuses and Ron DeSantis’ decision to drop out of the race and endorse the former president, it looks like tonight’s Republican presidential primary in New Hampshire is Trump’s to lose.

    According to the latest polls (via RealClearPolitics), Trump holds over 55 percent support among likely GOP voters in the state, leading his closest competitor and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley by 1around 20 percentage points.

    Florida Gov. DeSantis stood at just 6 percent in the poll, which was conducted before he announced the end of his presidential bid on Sunday. Assuming that many of his supporters follow his endorsement and support Trump going forward, the former president’s lead could be even bigger than the latest poll indicates.

    As Statista’s Felix Richer notes, if the results from New Hampshire actually go Trump’s way, he would be the first non-incumbent Republican candidate to win in Iowa and New Hampshire, two states often considered crucial in the presidential primaries as they host the first contests in the nomination process.

    Winning in Iowa and/or New Hampshire can make or break a candidate’s momentum and many presidential bids have hit an early wall in either of the two states.

    As Statista shows in the chart below, the majority of Democratic and Republican candidates who won in Iowa and/or New Hampshire went on to win their party’s presidential ticket.

    Infographic: How Decisive Are Iowa and New Hampshire in the Primaries? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Since 1972, 9 out of 13 Democratic winners in the Iowa caucuses won the nomination, while 7 out of 12 Republican winners did the same.

    New Hampshire appears to be even more decisive in the race for the Republican candidacy, as 11 out of 13 Republican winners in the state’s primary elections won the nomination since 1972.

    Trump remains the strong favorite to win the Republican party nomination…

    For Democratic candidates, the New Hampshire results aren’t quite as important, with “just” 7 out of 13 winners ending up winning the Democratic nomination.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 20:03

  • Toyota Chairman Says Electric Cars Will Never Dominate Global Market
    Toyota Chairman Says Electric Cars Will Never Dominate Global Market

    Toyota’s chairman and former CEO, Akio Toyoda, is at it again: providing the public with a dose of reality that electric vehicles will never dominate the global car market.

    Toyoda, grandson of the founder of the world’s largest car manufacturer, expressed at a business event this month, as reported by The Telegraph, that EVs will never capture 30% of global market share. 

    Toyota President Akio Toyoda gestures at a briefing on electric vehicle battery strategies at the company’s showroom in Tokyo, on Dec. 14, 2021. (Behrouz Mehri/AFP via Getty Images)

    He explained that petrol-burning vehicles and hybrids, along with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, will dominate. 

    Toyoda made the point: How can EVs be the future when a billion people on Earth have no electricity? 

    Data from Statista shows nearly a billion people in the world are living without electricity.

    He noted: “Customers — not regulations or politics — should make that decision.” 

    Over the years, Toyota has openly demonstrated defiance against governments and NGOs pushing for 100% EVs in just a few decades, if not earlier. 

    In October, Toyoda told reporters at an auto show in Japan that EVs aren’t the silver bullet against the supposed ills of carbon emissions they’re often made out to be.

    Toyota has a history of being at the forefront of adopting new technologies. However, its slow EV adoption is because of its mistrust of lithium-ion batteries, and it has positioned itself to be a leader in hybrid vehicles.  

    Perhaps Toyoda has been vindicated to some extent as EV demand slumps. 

    In recent days, Ford announced plans to slash production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning in April “to achieve the optimal balance of production, sales growth and profitability.” 

    For those who purchased EVs during the Covid mania, the average price of a used Tesla has collapsed. 

    And used Tesla prices are likely to slide more as rental car company Hertz Global Holdings has decided to dump 20,000 EVs onto the already sliding used car market.  

    BloombergNEF data shows prices of EVs that were part of rental car fleets have also crashed. 

    Toyoda concluded: “Engines will surely remain.”

    Will Elon Musk respond to Toyoda’s comments?

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 20:00

  • In Early 2020, A Chinese Source Trusted By FBI Said COVID Leaked From Wuhan Lab, Sources Say
    In Early 2020, A Chinese Source Trusted By FBI Said COVID Leaked From Wuhan Lab, Sources Say

    Authored by Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag via Public subsatck,

    FBI’s entire 25-person Chinese intelligence squad knew of reliable human intelligence that SARS-CoV-2 Covid leaked from a lab…

    Over the last several months, Public has reported on a growing body of evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the Covid pandemic escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China. Last year, Public and Racket were the first to report that US government officials had identified that the first patients to become sick with Covid worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

    Now, Public has learned from multiple sources that the FBI knew since at least March 2020 that Covid was the result of a lab leak. A Chinese national from Wuhan, working as a confidential human source (CHS) for the FBI, told their handler at the FBI’s Chinese Intelligence Squad. The sources said it was probable that the whole squad of 25 people knew.

    “A person working at the Virology Institute lab in Wuhan, China was infected, left the building, and spread the virus outside the lab in Wuhan,” the CHS told the FBI, according to a source.

    “It didn’t have anything to do with the wet market or the bat soup story they were going with.”

    The sources asked Public to protect their identities and those of their colleagues. The sources say they are speaking up now out of concern over abuses of power within the FBI. They reached out to Public after seeing our story yesterday about how scientists, who Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) had in the past funded, sought to insert a furin cleavage site right where it exists on SARS-CoV-2.

    The sources added that the FBI trusted the CHS because the person’s information had been corroborated at least three times previously.

    “The CHS was from Wuhan, had been vetted, and the person had provided information on three prior occasions that they were able to corroborate as true and reliable.”

    Another source said the FBI had considered the information “good intel.”

    …

    Two sources said that the CIA may have been conflicted in investigating its origins because it didn’t want to compromise investigations of the Wuhan lab that predated the outbreak of Covid-19.

    “There was a clear lack of interest in a robust analysis of Chinese military connections to WIV research, connections between Chinese military and civilian research, and connections that could be drawn between US research and WIV activity,” the whistleblower said.

    Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe suggested that there could be additional reasons behind the CIA’s lack of disclosure about COVID’s origins. 

    …

    Fauci may have also tried to influence the FBI. 

    …

    ‘Public’ subscribers can read the full report here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 19:40

  • 21 Israeli Soldiers Killed In Single Deadliest Incident Since Gaza Offensive Began
    21 Israeli Soldiers Killed In Single Deadliest Incident Since Gaza Offensive Began

    Israel’s military has suffered its single deadliest incident of the Gaza war, which left twenty-one soldiers killed after they came under attack by (presumably) Hamas militants who fired a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) which triggered a bigger detonation.

    It happened Monday but what was made public Tuesday, resulting in the Israeli defense ministry raising the official death toll from the ground offensive to 219 (though some analysts believe the true figure could be much higher). According to Israeli media, “The buildings were being rigged for demolition by troops when Palestinian gunmen fired an RPG at a tank securing the forces.”

    Images source: Anadolu/IDF

    “A second blast then occurred in the buildings, possibly as a result of a second RPG, leading to their collapse,” The Times of Israel (TOI) continued.

    It happened very close to Israeli territory in northern Gaza. The IDF noted of the troops laying explosives to the building, “They were destroying structures and Hamas sites as part of the army’s efforts to establish a buffer zone to allow residents of Israeli border communities to return to their homes.”

    Initially two IDF soldiers standing ground level beside the tank were killed directly by the RPG fire, but the majority of soldiers were apparently killed when the larger explosions in the building were detonated and the entire structure came down. “Rescue forces described the scene as reminiscent of the aftermath of an earthquake,” TOI noted.

    Fighting across the Gaza Strip resulted in a total of 24 IDF troops deaths on Monday, which includes the building collapse incident. A separate attack incident saw three officers killed.

    Currently, the heaviest fighting is still focused on the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. Israel’s military says it has completely encircled the city, and its three hospital have been crowded with displaced Palestinians seeking shelter and safety.

    Some commentators say the IDF unit was rigging explosives to Palestinian homes when the RPG attack occurred, but it remains unclear what particular buildings detonated and collapsed…

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    Bodies are said to be piling up, and it appears that another siege situation is emerging, akin to what happened earlier in the conflict when hospitals in Gaza City become a focal point of fighting and ground operations. Palestinian sources were quoted in BBC as saying that “Israeli blockades and the storming of hospitals since Monday had left the wounded and dead beyond the reach of rescuers.”

    “The dead were being buried inside the grounds of Nasser hospital because it has been unsafe to leave in order to reach the cemetery,” the eyewitness accounts said.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 19:20

  • Public Education's Alarming New 4th 'R': Reversal Of Learning
    Public Education’s Alarming New 4th ‘R’: Reversal Of Learning

    Authored by Vince Bielski via RealClearInvestigations.com,

    Call it the big reset – downward – in public education.

    The alarming plunge in academic performance during the pandemic was met with a significant drop in grading and graduation standards to ease the pressure on students struggling with remote learning. The hope was that hundreds of billions of dollars of emergency federal aid would enable schools to reverse the learning loss and restore the standards.

    Four years later, the money is almost gone and students haven’t made up that lost academic ground, equaling more that a year of learning for disadvantaged kids. Driven by fears of a spike in dropout rates, especially among blacks and Latinos, many states and school districts are apparently leaving in place the lower standards that allow students to get good grades and graduate even though they have learned much less, particularly in math.

    It’s as if many of the nation’s 50 million public school students have fallen backwards to a time before rigorous standards and accountability mattered very much.

    “I’m getting concerned that, rather than continuing to do the hard work of addressing learning loss, schools will start to accept a new normal of lower standards,” said Amber Northern, who oversees research at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a group that advocates for academic rigor in schools.

    The question is—why did the windfall of federal funding do so little to help students catch up?

    Northern and other researchers, state officials and school leaders interviewed for this article say many districts, facing staffing shortages and a spike in absenteeism, didn’t have the bandwidth to take on the hard work of helping students recover. But other districts, including those that don’t take academic rigor and test scores very seriously, share in the blame. They didn’t see learning loss as a top priority to tackle. It was easier to spend the money on pay rises for staff and upgrading buildings.

    The learning loss debacle is the latest chapter in the decade-long decline in public schools. Achievement among black and Latino students on state tests was already dropping before COVID drove an exodus of families away from traditional public schools in search of a better education. Although by lowering standards and lifting the graduation rate districts have created the impression that they have bounced back, experts say that’s the wrong signal to send, creating complacency when urgency is needed.

    “There is a lot of fatigue among educators in looking at this issue and how to deal with it,” says Karyn Lewis, a research director at assessment group NWEA. “But if we just accept this as the new normal, it means accepting achievement gaps that have widened exponentially. That is what’s most concerning.” 

    The Depths of Learning Loss

    Test scores in 2022-23 resembled those of the 1970s, before the era of education accountability.

    The Nation’s Report Card/National Center for Education Statistics

    During COVID all types of students fell behind, partly because of chronic absenteeism of more than 25% that persisted even after they returned to in-person schooling. On average, students fell behind by the equivalent a half year’s worth of learning in math and a bit less in reading, while those in high poverty cities like St. Louis regressed three times that much, according to a joint Harvard-Stanford study. Reading scores in 2022-23 resembled those of the 1970s, before the era of school accountability.

    What’s even more worrisome is that students have not been recovering. NWEA has examined the test scores of 6.7 million students since the fall of 2020 when all schools resorted to remote learning. Researchers found that after an initial drop off in performance when compared to pre-pandemic scores, the pace of learning returned to normal in 2021-22. That seemed like good news. But then learning slowed again the next year. This means students have been losing more ground even after returning to classrooms, lacking the skills to keep up with a curriculum that keeps advancing.

    “It’s alarming to us that the academic growth in 2022-23 was actually more sluggish than the previous year,” said Lewis, co-author of the study.

    “The students are missing those building blocks in their skills that allow them to understand grade level content.”

    The consequences for students with learning loss could be serious, affecting everything from lifetime earnings to incarceration rates. In a paper co-authored by Harvard’s Thomas Kane, researchers estimate that K-12 students on average face a drop in lifetime earnings of almost 2 percent, totaling $900 billion.

    As learning declined, so did academic standards. More than 40 states eased requirements beginning with the class of 2020, according to a report in Education Week. Graduation tests and required courses were eliminated, and the number of credits needed to graduate was reduced. Schools also backed off on standard grading with credit-no credit scores, limits on low grades and more.

    “I had a high schooler during COVID who was told that she just needed to show up to class and turn in assignments that were less intense than before,” said Douglas Harris, a Tulane professor who focuses on the economics of education.

    Open-book tests “made it easy to get good grades,” he said. “It required almost no effort to pass classes.”

    A Gusher of Federal Funding

    COVID rescue spending may be the single largest investment ever in public education … 

    John Guccione www.advergroup.com

    The federal government’s COVID rescue spending made what may be the single largest investment ever in public education. The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds provided almost $190 billion to schools, starting in March 2020 and ending this September. That amounts to an average annual funding increase of about 6% for each school district over four years, according to University of Chicago researchers.

    … but that money is running out.

    ESSER FAQ’s (Page 3, Question 7)

    Researchers say the problem is that districts were given almost free rein in how they spent the money with little accountability. For example, the final batch of ESSER funding approved in March 2021 only required that at least 20 percent of the funds be spent on learning loss. That percentage, set by Democrats in Congress, seems remarkably low given that researchers had revealed five months earlier, in November 2020, that a significant learning deficit, particularly in math, had already set in nationwide.

    No one knows exactly how districts have been spending the money. State officials are supposed to oversee and report on their districts’ spending. But like other COVID spending programs that have been plagued by fraud and waste, ESSER reporting rules are vague. As many as 20 states either don’t know, or haven’t revealed, how their districts spent the money beyond the total amount deployed, says Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown’s Edunomics Lab.

    How much districts have deployed to address learning loss is also unclear, although they submitted plans to devote only about a quarter of the ESSER total to the problem, according to an analysis of 5,000 districts and charters by FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown. That’s about the same amount that they planned on spending on facility upgrades, from improving ventilation systems, a worthy repair during a pandemic, to new athletic fields and tracks, a low priority when students are falling behind in class.

    Roza says that while reversing learning loss is a priority in some districts, in others it isn’t. Some school leaders simply aren’t worried about plunging test scores of their students, reflecting today’s dismissive view of high academic standards and accountability.

    “It has become very fashionable to poo-poo state assessments and student outcomes as not being valuable,” Roza said.

    “Some districts might not even track how big a hit their students took. That’s the mood right now in some states.”

    In states that do report how their districts used the money, almost half of it went to staffing, making it the largest category of spending, Roza says. Many planned to hired new staff, including math and reading specialists, to help students catch up. They also planned to give salary increases and retention bonuses to existing teachers.

    Education Secretary Miguel Cardona called on districts to devote ESSER funding to pay raises for teachers to address staffing shortages in some parts of the country, a position also promoted by the National Education Association, the large teachers’ union that supports President Joe Biden’s re-election bid.

    “If districts are doing across the board pay rises, including for senior teachers, I don’t know if students suffering learning loss are getting much value out of that,” Roza said.

    Learning Loss Programs Flop

    “Our everyday learners are really suffering. I don’t know if they will ever catch up.”

    Andrea Piacquadio

    More concerning, experts say, is that many of the targeted efforts to address learning loss were ineffective. An assessment of districts in 10 states by CALDER, a group of education scholars at many universities, concluded that “recovery efforts often fell short of original expectations for program scale, intensity of treatment, and impact.”

    A widespread problem is that most of the programs have been voluntary and held after school or in summer. Although this approach is easier for schools because classroom space is available and the sessions don’t disrupt the daily schedule, the downside is that most kids who need extra help don’t show up, reflecting the continuing crisis in classroom absenteeism.

    Parents haven’t been much help. Most of them are not getting the message about the dive in test scores or just don’t care, according to a University of Southern California study. Parents focus on grades, and today’s inflated scores may give them the impression that their kids are doing fine and don’t need to attend recovery programs.

    The low turnout in Connecticut’s Waterbury School District, with many of its 19,000 students from low-income families, is typical of programs across the country. Only 551 high school students took part in the Waterbury summer learning program.

    “I consider this to be low,” says Tom Van Stone, a Waterbury school commissioner.

    “Our everyday learners are really suffering. I don’t know if they will ever catch up.”

    Intensive Tutoring Gets Results

    Experts favor “high-dosage tutoring,” if it’s part of the regular school day. Otherwise, it’s foiled by absenteeism.

    John Schnobrich

    It is possible for students to recover at least some of what they lost. Experts have rallied around small group tutoring, in which instructors can customize lessons to target their students’ deficits, as a very effective approach. But for it to work, tutoring must be integrated into the school day so it’s taken seriously and occur at least three times a week. Hence the name – “high-dosage tutoring.”

    A decade ago, public schools in Chicago, in collaboration with the University of Chicago Education Lab, rolled out high dosage tutoring for ninth grade math in 12 high schools. Some 2,000 students received small group tutoring in an elective class during the school day. Researchers found that they learned twice as much math over the course of a year compared with their peers who didn’t receive the extra help. The results were replicated the following year.

    “We saw really impressive gains,” said Monica Bhatt, senior research director at the university lab. “It was very heartening.”

    When the pandemic hit, the Chicago school district eagerly expanded the program to 200 schools and hire 800 tutors with the help of $50 million in ESSER funding.

    For high-dosage tutoring to be effective, administrators and teachers must be willing to put in the hard work to change business as usual. The daily schedule must be revamped to accommodate a fleet of newly hired tutors and find classrooms to add hundreds of tutoring sessions. Teachers and tutors have to coordinate instruction and track progress of students.

    Districts in Connecticut are making the effort, supported by $11.5 million in ESSER grants from the state. More than a third of the state’s 200 districts applied for funds to deploy high dosage tutoring, a sign that they will do what it takes to follow best practices, says Ajit Gopalakrishnan, chief performance officer at the state education department. If the program lifts math performance, then the state plans to support other districts in adopting the model.

    But so far, high dosage tutoring hasn’t caught on nationwide. In the wake of the pandemic, only 2 percent to 10 percent of students received it, said USC’s Amie Rapaport, adding that the number should be “significantly higher” given all the ESSER money districts received.

    University of Chicago researchers say some schools lack the will to make the big changes that the practice requires. Inertia is a powerful force.

    “When schools are faced with the possibility of change, they tend to do fewer of the hard things that will help students and more of the easier things that are likely to have fewer learning benefits for children,” wrote Chicago’s Jonathan Guryan and Jens Ludwig.

    A New Normal in Academic Standards

    Lowering the bar: Most states now offer flexibility for high school graduation. See interactive map.

    Education Week

    With students far behind, districts have opted to keep academic standards depressed in what some experts fear could become a lasting change.

    “COVID triggered the lowering of standards, but there have been other concerns like equity in education and mental health that make it hard for districts to go back to the pre-pandemic standards,” said Tulane’s Harris.

    Researchers are sussing out the new normal in academic standards by comparing grades with state test scores over time. Before the pandemic in Washington, grades in a variety of subjects rose a little, along with a corresponding general increase in test scores, according to a CALDER study. It makes sense that the two measures would move more or less in tandem. 

    But after the pandemic in 2021-22, they diverged. While grades were slightly elevated over pre-pandemic levels, test scores were well below them. That means students had learned much less but were getting better grades. Other studies, including one in North Carolina, reveal a similar divergence, suggesting that the grading bar remains low in many states.

    The high school graduation rate, a marker of a school’s performance, is even more startling. A falling rate is bad optics for district officials and a bad outcome for students. As with grades, the drop in test scores hasn’t harmed the graduation rate. In fact, it rose to an all-time high of nearly 88% in 2022, based on state reported figures from schools, says Harris, who will publish the finding in coming months.

    Districts treat the graduation rate as a balancing act between the need to maintain challenging standards and the desire keep poorer performers in school where they still can learn. Had administrators not lowered graduation requirements, Harris says, there would have been a “precipitous drop” in the rate.

    But lower standards may not be doing any favors to the at-risk students they are meant to help. To some degree, students’ performance will rise or decline based on the expectations set for them.

    In a recent study of ninth graders in North Carolina, lower performing students exposed to easier grading responded by showing less effort in school. They had an increase in absences but no boost in grade point average, despite the fact that the lenient policy automatically provided such a lift. On the other hand, top performers had no jump in absences and a higher GPA, widening the achievement gap between the two groups.

    It’s the opposite outcome that lowering standards is meant to achieve.

    “I worry about this. You want students to be challenged,” Harris said. “If schools keep going down this route, there is a point where it’s no longer helping.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 19:00

  • "Rural Renaissance": Venture Fund Plans New Community In Appalachia To Escape Soros-Enabled-Hellhole Cities
    “Rural Renaissance”: Venture Fund Plans New Community In Appalachia To Escape Soros-Enabled-Hellhole Cities

    A majority of Americans are fed up with imploding progressive metro areas transforming into violent crime hellholes because Soros-backed District Attorneys refuse to enforce common sense law and order. Americans are tired of radicals in the Biden administration who knowingly push for open southern borders. At the same time, tax-payer-funded non-governmental organizations facilitate the greatest invasion this nation has ever seen of unvetted individuals – some of whom are on the FBI’s Terror Watch List. The president’s collapsing polling data is a symptom the American people have rejected this mumbling, silent generation president who should be in a nursing home or on a La-Z-Boy recliner at his beach house in the elite-only beach town of Bethany.

    In recent years, the tyrannical overreach of government during Covid, BLM riots, and nationwide violent crime eruption, plus the 30-year fixed mortgage rate under 3%, unleashed the greatest-ever exodus of Americans from Demcorat-controlled states and metro areas for safer areas in red states. 

    The migration trends of the Covid period are still happening today, just less because of housing affordability woes. 

    However, an entirely new trend is emerging: a venture fund in rural Kentucky is building a new community for folks who want to escape all the chaos of progressive cities. 

    Called the “Highland Rim Project” (HRP), venture fund New Founding is developing “rural towns and communities nestled in the bucolic hills of the Eastern Highland Rim area of Tennessee and Kentucky.” 

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    HRP’s website stated, “Our nation is in the midst of a generational people movement to small towns and rural areas.” 

    “Remote work enables a revolution in where people live and how they organize themselves into communities. People are, especially since Covid, proactively seeking communities that align with their values and way of life. The knowledge economy worker can now work and live in a small town, uplifting areas that have struggled with economic depression for decades,” it pointed out.  

    The firm said HRP is a partnership with “business owners, pastors, and other community leaders.”

    Joshua Abbotoy, Managing Director of the New Founding organization, said the community’s leadership would be predominantly Protestant Christians. 

    “The whole point of it is to plant a flag and say this small town is where our people are gathering. And the question is: who is going to grab the land? Is it going to be good, based people who want to build something inspiring that’s culturally authentic to the region’s history? Or is it going to be Bill Gates and BlackRock and hippies from California?” Abbotoy said in a video. 

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    Leftist corporate media outlets called Abbotoy’s HRP a place for the ‘far-right community’. 

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    Abbotoy said on social media platform X that HRP has “struck a nerve” with corporate media. 

    He said the number of people signing up to be on a waiting list for HRP is “overwhelming.” 

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    How can progressive media be mad at HRP for wanting to build a “Rural Renaissance” for families when far-left Democrats build trash-covered ‘autonomous zones.’ 

    To sum up, Americans who are sick of progressives destroying cities and the nation should keep voting with their feet. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 18:55

  • Why Walmart Pays Its Truck Drivers 6 Figures
    Why Walmart Pays Its Truck Drivers 6 Figures

    By Rachel Premack of FreightWaves

    One Walmart truck driver says he has 15 years left of working, and he intends to spend them hauling loads for Walmart. “Barring a lottery win or marrying a sugar mama, I don’t see myself going anywhere,” said the Texas-based driver, who asked not to have his name included as he is not authorized to speak on behalf of the company.

    Such loyalty to a single company is unusual in trucking, an industry notorious for massive turnover. And the Texas trucker isn’t alone in his dedication to Walmart. One of the best jobs you can get in trucking is at Walmart. The uber-retailer says truck drivers can make up to $110,000 in their first year at the company. That’s twice the nationwide median pay of a truck driver, and certainly above the $17.50 an hour that the average Walmart associate earns. Home time, paid vacation and good health insurance are also guaranteed for Walmart company drivers. These offerings are elusive in the trucking world.

    It’s not out of the goodness of Walmart’s corporate heart that it pays truck drivers a truckload. Rather, truckers are key to Walmart’s retail dominance — and they have been from the start. Without a highly engaged trucking workforce, it’s not likely that the company would have flourished in the way it has. The Fortune 1 company prioritized supply chain long before it became a buzzword.

    “At Walmart, we believe in offering our drivers a competitive compensation package to attract the best drivers in the industry,” a Walmart spokesperson told FreightWaves in an emailed statement.  

    Walmart employs some 14,000 drivers, which makes it comparable to some of the largest for-hire fleets in the U.S. It’s added 5,800 drivers to the company in the past five years alone. 

    Recently, Walmart has shifted some of its strategies around recruiting those new drivers. In 2018, Walmart changed its truck driving recruitment program to allow more drivers to pass its program. A senior vice president at Walmart told Yahoo! Finance at the time it was because of a “shortage” of truck drivers. (Those who study the trucking industry dispute that such a shortage exists, concluding that drivers leave the industry for jobs with better pay and hours.)

    Last year, Walmart announced another key pivot. The company said in January 2023, building on a pilot it launched the year before, that it would allow Walmart associates living in participating locations to apply to a 12-week CDL program. For perhaps the first time, a Walmart company driver doesn’t need years of experience to get behind the wheel of its branded 18-wheelers. It may be that Walmart’s tack on trucking is changing. 

    Operating in the boondocks forced Walmart to become a distribution whiz

    Decades before Walmart became the biggest company in the world — raking in $611 billion in revenue last year — its leadership team couldn’t find anyone to haul freight to its first stores. Walmart operated mostly in the boondocks, far from where most trucking companies wanted to go.

    “We couldn’t find anybody who wanted to run their trucks 60 or 70 miles out of the way into these little towns where we were operating,” Don Sonderquist, an early Walmart executive, explained in an interview published in 1992. “We were totally ignored by the distributors and the jobbers. That’s not only how we came to build our own distribution system, it’s also how we got used to beating the heck out of everybody on prices.”

    This forced founder Sam Walton to build up his own network of suppliers, too. Walmart elected to work directly with the brands it sells in-store, which still allows the company unusual control over the minutiae of the products of some very large companies, according to journalist Charles Fishman, the author of the 2006 book “The Wal-Mart Effect.”

    Walmart employed 2.1 million associates, per its 2022 financial statement. It’s the largest private employer in the world. (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

    This hyperfocus on supply chain and distribution shaped key decisions from the top to the bottom of Walmart’s operations. That’s according to two people who have closely studied Walmart: Fishman and historian Nelson Lichtenstein, author of the 2006 book “Wal-Mart: The Face of Twenty-First-Century Capitalism” and professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

    When Walmart sought to open a new store, Fishman and Lichtenstein explained, it built the distribution center. Then, it built stores within a one-day drive of that distribution center. This might seem like an obvious strategy in 2024, but it was somewhat revolutionary in the mid-20th century. Kmart, for example, targeted the same blue-collar Americans that Walmart did. However, Kmart would simply plop stores into suburbs that had plenty of customers. Distribution was an afterthought.

    “Walmart has become the largest company in human history by doing something that was already being done, better than anyone else did it,” Fishman said. “Logistics and transportation is one of the things that made Walmart, Walmart, and allowed them to outcompete.”

    So … why is Walmart so obsessed with its truckers?

    Kroger, Home Depot, Target and the like all operate huge supply chains and obviously manage to get their shelves robustly stocked — without the front-and-center obsession on supply chain. Walmart’s supply chain, though, is different for a few key reasons. Professor Brian Gibson, executive director of the Center for Supply Chain Innovation at Auburn University, laid it out:

    • Walmart is just, well, bigger than any other retailer. It has 4,616 stores, compared to fewer than 2,000 for Target, around 2,200 for Home Depot and 2,750 for Kroger. Walmart also has a larger average square footage per store, too.
    • Walmart has a mix of grocery and general merchandise, which adds complexity to its trucking network.
    • As a result of its large, private fleet, Walmart has unusual clout among equipment manufacturers and other trucking service providers. It’s the type of status that’s usually reserved for companies that only do trucking.

    “Walmart’s mission is to save people money so they can live better,” the Walmart spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “Managing our own distribution and trucking networks helps us better serve our customer and manage costs.”

    The importance of distribution is perhaps incredibly obvious. If stuff is not on the shelves, customers aren’t going to be buying that stuff. Customers would ultimately buy less during that visit and, if they get fed up by a consistent lack of stuff, eventually not at all. The stuff has to be moved safely and on time across the country. If paying top dollar makes that happen, then it’s sensible for Walmart to agree to do that. 

    “They wanted to pay them good money because it was the absolute core of their, of their business — to get this stuff from the distribution center to the store at precisely the right time with no screw-ups,” Lichtenstein said. “That was crucial.”

    Paying truck drivers top dollar also makes sense because Walmart doesn’t employ that many of them. The company has about 14,000 truck drivers and 1.6 million associates. Each of those truck drivers holds a lot of power over the shopping experience of a Walmart store.

    “One associate here or there can have a positive impact, but it’s not going to change the economics of the store,” Fishman said. “A truck driver is going to really matter. They have an outsized impact on the way the company runs.”

    Paying six figures to 14,000 employees may seem reasonable enough for Walmart. “It’s not even 1% of their staff,” Fishman said. 

    Walmart is remodeling some of its trucker policies 

    Walmart is now changing its truck driver hiring policies. Until 2022, the company required 30 months of driver experience before one could be considered for the company driver role. That year, the company began piloting a program that allowed Walmart associates to go to a 12-week driver training program and become fleet drivers. Walmart expanded the program nationwide. (Outside applicants still need 30 months of training, and not every associate who applies is admitted to the program.)

    “We started the Associate-to-Driver program because we wanted to tap into our own talent pool of incredible associates and give them opportunity to develop their career,” the Walmart spokesperson said in a written statement. “It’s been a great opportunity for our associates to continue to grow their careers without having to leave the company.”

    The spokesperson said the company requires all trainees to pass the same skills assessment as external hires. Then, they’re partnered with a mentor for six weeks of continued training.

    It’s a sensible move for Walmart to train from within; its current CEO, Doug McMillon, started as an hourly associate. “I think it’s a recognition that [you value] your own employees better than somebody walking in off the street,” GIbson said.

    The truck driver shortage debate appears… again

    Some Walmart drivers aren’t delighted. 

    The Texas-based Walmart truck driver, who joined the company two years ago, said the retailer could attract more drivers by raising its pay. “Raise the driver’s pay and you’ll retain and attract [experienced drivers],” he said.

    Another Texas-based truck driver, who joined Walmart seven years ago, said he fears it’s a sign that Walmart is approaching trucking in the same way as large for-hire fleets, which see typical turnover rates around 94%.

    “Back in the day, you used to need a decade before you’re even looked at to get on with Walmart,” he said. (The driver asked not to have his name included as he is not authorized to speak on behalf of the company.)

    Both complaints get at the heart of an ongoing debate in the trucking industry: the so-called truck driver shortage. Trucking employers maintain that they’re unable to hire drivers due to a persistent shortage — caused largely by demographic issues and the lifestyle of trucking. However, researchers (and truck drivers themselves) disagree. Studies suggest the massive turnover seen by large fleets keeps them scrambling to hire new workers; one March 2019 study published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics concluded that “price signals” would lead to a more stable trucking workforce.

    A company, like Walmart, that pays six figures and offers good benefits should not struggle with turnover. On the other hand, Walmart needs to hire more drivers as the retailer expands operations and current truckers retire. Walmart has hired nearly 6,000 new drivers in the past five years. 

    Experts believe Walmart wants more control over training its truckers

    From the perspective of these supply chain experts, it doesn’t seem like the associate-to-driver program is necessarily a way to cut costs. Gibson said Walmart has been “very aggressive” in recruiting drivers in recent years. It may have simply tapped out of the current supply of drivers. 

    “I think this is just the latest in the evolution of the hiring process for Walmart,” Gibson said. “Going internal has been proven to be a good strategy by other organizations.”

    Many trucking fleets hire new drivers to save money on wages, but that might not be Walmart’s tactic here. (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

    What’s more, the associate-to-driver program could be a way to better mold the Walmart truck driver. 

    “You take somebody who’s been with another company, they’ve developed habits, they’ve developed styles, they know certain systems –  for the good and the bad,” Gibson said. “If they’ve developed any bad habits over time, you can train your new drivers the way you want, the way you need on your systems and try to focus on the skills, capabilities and safety issues that are directly of importance to your organization.”

    Fishman agreed. An associate-turned-driver might not bring years of trucking experience, but they certainly get Walmart. 

    “It’s possible in this wave of hiring that [outside trucking hires] are diluting this Walmart culture,” Fishman said. “Truck drivers are famously independent.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 18:20

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