Former President Donald Trump has warned Americans to brace for something “a lot worse than a recession” while blaming the Biden administration’s poor stewardship of the economy for soaring inflation and denouncing the tax hikes in the latest Democrat spending bill.

Trump made the remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas on Saturday, where the former president raised the alarm on the state of the union.

“Our country is being shot. It’s being destroyed,” Trump told attendees, while touting his administration’s record on the economy and national security.

Trump spoke of “creating the most secure border in American history, record tax and regulation cuts, $1.87 gasoline, no inflation, low interest rates, record growth in real wages, record growth in our economy.”

Soaring Inflation, Recession

During Trump’s tenure, the highest the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation gauge came in at was 2.9 percent in July 2018, while in his final month in office, January 2021, inflation clocked in at 1.4 percent.

Under Biden, inflation has climbed steadily, soaring 9.1 percent year-over-year in June 2022, a figure not seen in more than 40 years.

In his speech, Trump drew a contrast with the economy under Joe Biden, blaming the president for the highest inflation in decades that Trump estimates is costing American families as much as $7,000 a year.

“After the pandemic, we handed the radical Democrats the fastest economic recovery ever recorded, the history of our country, ever recorded,” Trump continued. “They’ve turned that into two straight quarters of negative economic growth, also known, despite their protestation to the contrary, as a recession.”

Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth are a common rule-of-thumb definition for a recession, although recessions in the United States are officially declared by a committee of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) using a broader definition than the two-quarter rule.

Despite a number of economists arguing that the United States is in a recession based on the two-consecutive-quarters rule, the Biden administration insists that the economy isn’t in a recession, citing NBER’s consideration of a broader range of indicators.

A key argument against recession made by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and others in the Biden administration is that the U.S. labor market remains tight, with unemployment at 3.5 percent and, at 10.7 million, the number of job openings remaining well above the 6 million or so people classified as unemployed.

Worse Than Recession

In his CPAC speech, Trump then issued an ominous warning that, absent a course correction, the recession could spiral into something even worse.

“Just hope that the recession doesn’t turn into a depression, because the way they’re doing things, it could be a lot worse than a recession,” Trump said, echoing similar remarks he made at a rally in Arizona at the end of July, where he warned that “we’re going to have a serious problem” unless political change takes place.

“We got to get this act in order, we have to get this country going, or we’re going to have a serious problem,” Trump said at a rally in Arizona, warning that “we’re going to have a much bigger problem than recession. We’ll have a depression.”

During his appearance at CPAC, Trump issued a call for urgent action at the polls in the upcoming midterms.

“The future of our country is at stake. We don’t have time to wait years and years. We won’t have a country left. What I used to say about Venezuela is true. We have to save the economy, defeat the Biden, Pelosi, Schumer tax hike, which is happening right now tonight,” Trump continued, referring to the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” that cleared the Senate not long after his speech.

Senators passed the sweeping bill, estimated at $740 billion, in a 51–50 vote on Aug. 7, with the package next going to the House for consideration.

During the deliberations, Senate Democrats rejected an amendment offered by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) that sought to ban any of the $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from being used to target Americans making less than $400,000 per year.

“My colleagues claim this massive funding boost will allow the IRS to go after millionaires, billionaires and so-called rich ‘tax cheats,’ but the reality is a significant portion raised from their IRS funding bloat would come from taxpayers with income below $400,000,” Crapo said in a statement.

Crapo’s amendment was rejected on a party-line vote, with the Democrat bill including softer language that features a non-binding statement of intention not to squeeze more revenue from America’s middle class.

Tax Hikes

According to an analysis by Americans for Tax Reform, a U.S. advocacy group, the spending bill includes a number of tax hikes on American households and businesses.

This includes a $6.5 billion natural gas tax that ATR says will increase household energy bills, a $12 billion crude oil tax that will end up being passed on to drivers in the form of higher gas prices, and a $52 billion income tax hike on mid-sized and family businesses.

In a separate analysis, ATR said that the Democrat bill’s changes to the book tax threaten small businesses.

Elaborating on that theme, economist and author Antonio Graceffo wrote in an op-ed for The Epoch Times that the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” would drive up prices for American households.

“Nearly half of these new taxes will be paid by manufacturers, creating disincentives to produce. Diminished industrial output will drive up the cost of goods and reduce the variety and quantity of goods available on store shelves,” Graceffo wrote.

“Beyond the manufacturing sector, the act increases taxes on businesses in general, which, combined with higher interest rates will decrease new investment and hamper job creation. Ultimately, these increased costs will be passed on to customers,” he added.

‘We Have to Win’

During his CPAC speech, Trump revealed what he sees as the key to bringing the country and its economy back on track.

“We have to win an earth-shattering victory in 2022. We have to do it, coming up in November,” Trump said.

“This election needs to be a national referendum on the horrendous catastrophes the radical Democrats have inflicted on our country,” he continued.

“The Republican party needs to campaign on a clear pledge that, if they are given power, they’re going to fight with everything they have to shut down the border, stop the crime wave, beat inflation, and hold the Biden administration accountable. They have to hold it accountable. Job number one for the next Congress,” Trump said.

The national midterm election takes place on Nov. 8, with 34 Senate seats and all 435 House seats up for grabs.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

It’s all part of the script of The Great Reset – just look at who invested a half-billion dollars into this major online grocery retailer as government prepares to radically restrict livestock farming and meat production.

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

• In early June 2022, the government of The Netherlands announced it would cut the size of livestock herds in the country by 30% to meet European Union nitrogen and ammonia pollution rules
• According to Dutch Parliament member Thierry Baudet, the government is following the script of The Great Reset, which requires weakening the country, making it more dependent on food imports, and diluting nationalism by taking in more immigrants. To make room for immigrant housing, they need to take land from the farmers
• The newly assigned Minister for Nature and Nitrogen Policy, Christianne van der Wal-Zeggelink, is married to Piet van der Wal, who together with his brother are heavily invested in the major online grocery retailer Picnic. In September 2021, Bill Gates invested an estimated half-billion dollars into Picnic, thereby becoming one of its lead investors. Gates’ involvement has raised questions about government corruption
• At the same time the Dutch government is preparing to radically restrict livestock farming and meat production, Gates is gobbling up farmland back home. Despite land prices being at a record high, Gates purchased a 2,100-acre potato farm in North Dakota in June 2022, bringing the total land share held by the Gates’ Red River Trust above 270,000 acres
• Gates claims he intends to lease the farmland to farmers. Viewed from the perspective of The Great Reset, it would then appear Gates may be engaged in the same kind of wealth-shift scheme as BlackRock and other investment groups that are buying up single-family homes and turning them into rentals. The end goal is to eliminate all private ownership and turn the population into serfs

In early June 2022, the government of The Netherlands announced it would cut the size of livestock herds in the country by 30% to meet European Union nitrogen and ammonia pollution rules.^1,2 As a result of this “green” policy, many farmers will be driven out of business³ and they have gathered in protest across the country.

This is important because many may not realize that even though The Netherlands is a small country, it’s the second-largest exporter of agriculture in the world, after the United States.⁴ As with current energy shortages, the forced reductions in farming and food production are said to be an “unavoidable” part of the Green Agenda to improve air, soil and water quality.⁵

In a public statement about the new emissions targets, the Dutch government even admitted that “The honest message … is that not all farmers can continue their business.”⁶ Those who do continue will have to come up with creative solutions to meet the new emissions restrictions.

A Clear Case of Corruption?

The restrictions on nitrogen for livestock farmers have befuddled many. Why would government restrict farming at a time when food shortages and famine loom on the horizon worldwide? Some claim to have discovered conflicts of interest within the Dutch government that can help explain this irrational move.⁷

The newly assigned Minister for Nature and Nitrogen Policy (who created the nitrogen regulations and is responsible for overseeing the cuts to farming), Christianne van der Wal-Zeggelink, is married to Piet van der Wal, who together with his brother, Bouke van der Wal, own a massive supermarket chain called Boni.

As noted by The Conservative Treehouse,⁸ “when Dutch farmers sell product to Boni they are directly funding the wealth of the government minister who seeks to destroy their livelihoods.”

The van der Wal family is also heavily invested in a major online grocery retailer called Picnic. Picnic buys food at wholesale prices directly from Boni, which minimizes its operational costs. Picnic basically functions as a home delivery service for Boni.

In September 2021, Bill Gates entered the Dutch enterprise. He invested an estimated half-billion dollars into Picnic, thereby becoming one of its lead investors.⁹ Not surprisingly, Picnic focuses on selling the fake “food” that Gates is invested in and promotes, imitation beef in particular.

The CEO of Picnic, Michiel Muller, a Dutch climate change activist, has also publicly vowed to “change the entire food system” to be in line with sustainable goals,¹⁰ which falls right in line with Gates’ agenda.

The strong recommendation to replace beef with fake meat was made in Gates’ book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need,” released in February 2021.¹¹ In an interview with MIT Technology Review, he also suggested that people could learn to like fake meat and, if resistance continues, regulations may be needed to force the switch.¹²

According to The Countersignal,¹³ “many participating in the ongoing farmers’ protests in Holland have openly stated they believe Gates may be partly responsible for pushing additional climate laws.” Curiously, July 10, 2022, a large Picnic delivery facility in Almelo, Holland, burned to the ground under mysterious circumstances.^14,15,16

Why Get Rid of Farmers Amid Rising Food Insecurity?

https://www.bitchute.com/embed/IiyQrr5wOyc/

The attempt to rid The Netherlands of livestock farmers really only makes sense if seen from the globalists’ point of view, with an eye on The Great Reset, the Green New Deal, Agenda 2030 and related Sustainable Development Goals.

According to Dutch Parliament member Thierry Baudet, the Dutch government is following the script of The Great Reset, which requires weakening the country, making it more dependent on food imports, and diluting nationalism by taking in more immigrants. To make room for immigrant housing, they need to take land from the farmers.

Indeed, according to Dutch Parliament member Thierry Baudet (video above), that’s really what the nitrogen restrictions are all about. The Dutch government is following the script of The Great Reset, he says, which requires weakening the country, making it less independent and more dependent on food imports.

The Great Reset script also calls for diluting nationalism and weakening borders by taking in more immigrants, and to make room for immigrant housing, they need to take land from the farmers. So, the new nitrogen rules are basically a precursor to a land grab. They intend to put farmers out of business so they can take their land and stack it full of low-income, government-assistance apartment buildings.

Aside from that, farmers also pose a threat to the technocratic elitists because they don’t need to rely on government for basics such as food and shelter, and they can allow those who buy their food to maintain their independence as well.

The globalists’ plan is to eliminate access to as much real food as possible, and replace natural foods with patented foodstuffs so that the population becomes entirely dependent on them for survival. At that point, they are easily controlled. Eliminating independent food producers — farmers — is therefore a key to the globalist cabal’s eventual success.

Gates Gobbles Up Farmland While Pushing Fake Foods

At the same time the Dutch government is preparing to radically restrict livestock farming and meat production — likely with Gates’ blessing, if not due to his influence — Gates is gobbling up farmland back home.

Despite land prices being at a record-high, Gates purchased a 2,100-acre potato farm in North Dakota in June 2022, bringing the total land share held by the Gates’ Red River Trust above 270,000 acres — up from about 242,000 acres in mid-September 2021.

The following map, from AgWeb,¹⁷ shows the distribution of his land holdings prior to his North Dakota acquisition. As you can see, the vast majority is farmland.

Gates Plan: Turn Farmers Into Modern Serfs

However, as reported by AgWeb at the end of June 2022, Gates didn’t get a warm welcome:¹⁸

“North Dakota hosts ‘corporate farming laws’ that barres [sic] corporations and limited liability companies from owning and leasing farms and ranches. With the Gates’s new $13.5 million farmland purchase, North Dakotans — including the attorney general — are concerned the sale violates the state’s law. The North Dakota attorney general’s office sent a letter to the Red River Trust on Tuesday, alerting the trustee of the North Dakota land law.

‘Our office needs to confirm how your company uses this land and whether this use meets any of the statutory exceptions, such as the business purpose exception,’ wrote Drew Wrigley, North Dakota attorney general.”

MoneyWise¹⁹ followed up on the story, reporting that by July 5, 2022, Gates had secured legal approval for his farm purchase — a decision that has raised the ire of many North Dakotans who don’t believe Gates has good intentions.

According to MoneyWise, “The anti-corporate farming law does allow individual trusts to own farmland if it is leased to farmers — and that’s what Gates’ firm plans to do.” Viewed from the perspective of The Great Reset, it appears Gates may be engaged in the same kind of subversive wealth-shift scheme as BlackRock and other investment groups that are buying up single-family homes.

They buy them, often sight-unseen and at above-market prices, with the intent of turning them into rentals. This too is part and parcel of The Great Reset and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The intent is to eliminate all private ownership and turn the population into modern serfs. “Serf” is a term that describes people who are required to work for the “lord” who owns the land they live on, or who are otherwise underpaid, overworked or exploited in some way.

That’ll be all of us, one day, if the world doesn’t wake up and refuse to go along with the globalist cabal’s Great Reset plans. The plight of the Dutch farmers is just the beginning.

Originally published July 22, 2022 on Mercola.com

Sources and References

• ¹ Substack, The Freedom Corner with PeterSweden July 1, 2022
• ² Reuters June 10, 2022
• ³ Bloomberg June 28, 2022
• ⁴ WEF. November 27, 2019
• ^5, 6 Indian Express July 3, 2022
• ^7, 8, 10 The Conservative Treehouse July 12, 2022
• ⁹ USSA News July 10, 2022
• ¹¹ Market Watch February 16, 2021
• ¹² MIT Technology Review February 14, 2021
• ^13, 14 The Countersignal July 11, 2022
• ¹⁵ Newspunch July 11, 2022
• ¹⁶ Sott.net July 11, 2022
• ^17, 18 AgWeb June 28, 2022
• ¹⁹ Moneywise July 5, 2022

Source: The Epoch Times

‘Freedom is under attack everywhere’: CloutHub CEO

Jeff Brain, CEO of the CloutHub social networking application, told The Epoch Times that freedom and liberty are being crushed in the United States, the Netherlands, Australia, and other countries across the planet.

“There are those that want to push for socialism and tyranny against those that believe in individual freedom and liberty. And that’s the struggle we live in right now,” he said in a July 21 telephone interview.

Spurred by a shadow ban

Brain was inspired by his own frustrations with social media to start a new platform.

Like many other users, he suspected he was being shadow-banned. In other words, his posts were partly or completely concealed from other users.

“I was being censored, and I just found that outrageous,” he said.

Even apart from censorship, Brain saw many problems with existing social media platforms.

“Many people acknowledge that they’re toxic. They invade people’s privacy, and they’re addiction mills,” he said.

Brain thinks that many alternatives to Big Tech share those same flaws. He wanted CloutHub to be different.

For one, when you click on a CloutHub user’s profile, you can’t see how many friends and followers it has. In addition, the site does not show how many views a user’s post has received.

Articles in its “News” section do, however, display views. (Full disclosure: The Epoch Times’ articles appear in the app’s news section, alongside sources ranging from The New York Times and Vox to The Washington Times and Breitbart News.)

Brain believes the constant exposure to metrics like post views can make people anxious while undermining civil conversation.

He aspires to create a “virtual kitchen table”—a network of Facebook Group-like Hubs where users can forge deep bonds around common interests.

Groups are organized into categories such as Faith, Politics, Music, Technology, and Health.

What Brain sees as a less-addictive design may translate to less user engagement. But, in his view, that is not necessarily a weakness.

“On our platform, people experience a little less interaction, but they’re doing real things,” he said.

CloutHub’s Google Play app ranks 4,316 in usage among all apps and 87 among social apps, according to SimilarWeb. (There is an iOS version as well.)

Brain said CloutHub has 4.5 million total users.

The platform, though open, is not wholly unregulated.

CloutHub prohibits doxing, harassment, and hundreds of words and phrases—mostly racial slurs and crude sexual language.

“We all know that the intention of Facebook and Twitter is not really about those [community standards]. It’s just a façade to silence people. But on my platform, hate is hate,” Brain said.

Users can also join anonymously, though they must prove their identity to become “Verified” users.

“We don’t believe in cancel culture, and we have to recognize that people are concerned, so if people want to use pseudonyms, they can use pseudonyms as their name,” Brain said.

Standing behind ‘global freedom coalition’

Brain says he connected Canadians protesting against COVID-19 mandates to GiveSendGo, an alternative to GoFundMe, because of the possibility that GoFundMe would not disburse donations to those protesters.

On Feb. 4, 2022, GoFundMe seized C$10 million ($8 million) in donations, stating that the fundraiser violated its Terms of Service. It pledged to “work with organizers to send all remaining funds to credible and established charities chosen by the Freedom Convoy 2022 organizers and verified by GoFundMe.”

Ontario’s government moved to freeze millions in donations to the truckers through GiveSendGo on Feb. 10.

GiveSendGo’s website was hacked on Feb. 13, and the group Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS) leaked a list of donors.

On Feb. 14, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act against the protests, the first use of that law in that country’s history.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland announced the same day that the government would freeze bank accounts and halt crowdfunding linked to the protests through “anti-money laundering and terrorist financing rules.”

After the GiveSendGo hack, Brain has started to build an alternative to the alternative: FundFreely.com, which he sees as “the counter to George Soros.”

He has also connected with farmers protesting climate mandates in the Netherlands.

Brain estimates he has spoken with 18 farm leaders on the phone, warning them that “the opposition is plotting against you while you’re sleeping, and you need to move fast, faster than you think.”

Canada and the Netherlands are just the start of what Brain sees as an emerging “global freedom coalition,” modeled on the non-violent resistance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

He ticks off other examples: in Brazil, leftist factions in the government, the opponents of President Jair Bolsonaro, making it impossible for their enemies to get jobs or even to travel; in Portugal, Italy, and Germany, farmers rising in solidarity with the Dutch; in Australia, truckers slow-rolling in protest of vaccination mandates.

The Canadians have regrouped to continue their fight. On July 23, they will join a global protest in solidarity with the Dutch, including through a demonstration at the Consulate General of the Netherlands in Toronto.

“I believe that people everywhere should unite. I think freedom is under attack everywhere, including the United States,” Brain said.

Yet for all his concern about incursions on liberty, Brain radiates optimism about the future.

“I think they [the other side] overreached. I think you’re going to see the biggest push for individual freedom around the word that we’ve ever seen.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

‘We now treat farmers as polluters … which is a very strange perspective’

Jaap Hanekamp is skeptical of the received wisdom in science. He won’t stop asking a simple question: “But, is this true?”

When it comes to the Dutch government’s calculations of ammonia and nitrogen oxide deposition—the basis of climate mandates that would slash livestock numbers and put many farmers out of work—Hanekamp is especially critical of “the science.”

He thinks it relies on vague definitions, excessive deference to expert judgment, and a narrow focus on costs rather than both costs and benefits.

“We now treat farmers as polluters, end of story, which is a very strange perspective,” he said.

Hanekamp, an associate professor of chemistry at University College Roosevelt in the Netherlands, made the comments in an interview with Roman Balmakov, host of EpochTV’s “Facts Matter.”

A 2019 Dutch court decision that hindered the construction of livestock facilities triggered an earlier round of protests by farmers.

A Science article on the protests described some of the harms attributed to nitrogen emissions: “In 118 of 162 Dutch nature reserves, nitrogen deposits now exceed ecological risk thresholds by an average of 50 percent.

“In dunes, bogs, and heathlands, home to species adapted to a lack of nitrogen, plant diversity has decreased as nitrogen-loving grasses, shrubs, and trees move in.”

“Nitrogen chemicals are nutrients—you need them for growing plants,” Hanekamp said.

Hanekamp believes the government has focused on nitrogen almost to the exclusion of other factors that affect nature, such as the location of groundwater relative to the surface.

He also questions whether the ecosystem shifts prompted by greater nitrogen deposition can be properly defined as “damage.”

“Is a change in biodiversity bad in itself, or is it just change?” he asked.

He pointed out that the Netherlands is far from pristine wilderness. Much of the land is artificial, reclaimed from the sea over recent centuries thanks to the ingenuity of man.

Hanekamp has scrutinized a term used in government ecological research: “nitrogen critical load.”

Below its “critical load,” a substance is not thought to pose a significant environmental threat.

In a recent paper, Hanekamp and coauthor William Briggs described some problems with the evidence used to define nitrogen critical loads in the Netherlands.

For one thing, they do not believe the definitions of nitrogen critical loads are sufficiently precise. In addition, they think there have not been enough large-scale, long-term studies on nitrogen deposition.

Hanekamp stressed that models can be useful—taking 100,000 measurements across the country wouldn’t exactly be easy or cheap.

Yet modeling uncertainty makes it challenging to translate activity on a particular farm to exact patterns of nitrogen flow.

That hasn’t stopped the Dutch nitrogen minister from unveiling detailed, area-specific nitrogen reduction targets in June of this year.

The release was the impetus for the latest round of protests by farmers.

One dairy farmer interviewed by The Epoch Times would have to cut his livestock numbers by 95 percent—so much that he expects he will need to shut down.

“We have created the illusion of certainty with respect to emission and deposition. That’s definitely a mirage of policymaking,” said Hanekamp.

“The problem is that the Dutch government decided that these critical loads are definitive with respect to the quality of the habitats we have. And that’s a very strange approach to this issue.”

Hanekamp worries that a comprehensive, societal risk-benefit analysis has not occurred. He thinks the ultimate outcome of the government’s climate proposals remains deeply uncertain.

“If we would implement these and we would kick out, say, one third of the farmers, we still don’t know what the result would be related to these critical loads, which doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

“Yeah, we [would] know that one third of the farmers [are] gone, and that basically, we’re reducing production and income as a country, but the return of investment in the focused nature? We have no idea.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

‘I can’t run a farm on 5 percent’

In the Netherlands, dairy farmer Martin Neppelenbroek is near the end of the line.

New environmental regulations will require him to slash his livestock numbers by 95 percent. He thinks he will have to sell his family farm.

“I can’t run a farm on 5 percent. For me, it’s over and done with,” he said in a July 7 interview with The Epoch Times.

“In view of the regulations, I can’t sell it to anybody. Nobody wants to buy it. [But] the government wants to buy it. And that’s why they [have] those regulations, I think.”

Neppelenbroek made the remarks while speaking with Roman Balmakov, host of “Facts Matter” on EpochTV, during Balmakov’s recent trip to the Netherlands.

Neppelenbroek pointed out that not all farmers are required to get rid of so many of their cattle.

People living further from areas protected under Natura 2000, a European Union (EU) agreement for species and habitat preservation, can own more cattle.

That’s because the Dutch government’s regulations on nitrogen oxides and ammonia emissions are tied to sites’ proximity to those protected areas.

Farmers, truckers, and others across the Netherlands have led nationwide protests against that vision, partly spurred by a June 10 national and area-specific plan for curtailing nitrogen greenhouse gas emissions.

There’s a sword of Damocles hanging over them: the possibility of compulsory seizure of property by the government.

NOS Nieuws reported that Christianne van der Wal, the country’s minister of nature and nitrogen policy, has not ruled out expropriating land from uncooperative farmers.

According to a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agriculture Service, the Dutch government has said its approach means “there is not a future for all [Dutch] farmers.”

For now, Neppelenbroek’s 170-acre-plus property is home to roughly 130 milking cows. It’s been in his family for half a century.

“I’m the second generation,” he said, adding that many farms in the Netherlands have been in families for much longer.

The Netherlands punches well above its weight in agriculture. The small, coastal country is one of the world’s top 10 food exporters.

“When you have not a lot of space, you have to use it as effectively as possible,” Neppelenbroek said.

“It’s a delta, and the climate is not too hot, not too cold. It’s an ideal place to grow.”

Cows, Neppelenbroek acknowledged, produce lots of ammonia through their bodily waste.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times