Data suggests ‘economic weakness will intensify and spread more broadly’

America’s recessionary drumbeat just got louder as a key economic gauge from the Conference Board dropped for the fifth month in a row, weighed down by a slowing job market, weak manufacturing new orders, and deep consumer pessimism.

The Leading Economic Index (LEI) for the United States, which is a forward-looking gauge designed to predict business cycle shifts including recessions, fell by 0.4 percent in July, following a 0.7 percent drop in June, the Conference Board said on Aug. 18.

“The U.S. LEI declined for the fifth consecutive month in July, suggesting recession risks are rising in the near term,” Ataman Ozyildirim, senior director for economics at the Conference Board, said in a statement.

While the U.S. economy met the common rule-of-thumb definition for a recession when gross domestic product (GDP) printed negative for two quarters in a row earlier this year, recessions are formally called by a panel of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). They use a broader definition than the two-quarter rule, relying on a wide range of indicators, including the labor market, which has remained on a relatively solid footing.

The Biden administration has seized on the NBER’s criteria for declaring a downturn, insisting that the economy isn’t in a recession, with White House officials often citing labor market strength—though there are signs that it’s cooling.

Even though unemployment is at 3.5 percent and the latest non-farm payrolls report showed U.S. employers adding a forecast-beating 528,000 in July, a growing number of U.S. corporations have announced hiring freezes or layoffs, while the number of Americans filing for unemployment insurance has been slowly trending up.

Mild or Severe Recession?

The slowing labor market was one of the factors singled out by Ozyildirim in his comments on the LEI’s fifth consecutive monthly slump.

“Consumer pessimism and equity market volatility as well as slowing labor markets, housing construction, and manufacturing new orders suggest that economic weakness will intensify and spread more broadly throughout the US economy,” he said, adding that the Conference Board projects that the U.S. economy won’t grow in the third quarter and “could tip into a short but mild recession by the end of the year or early 2023.”

While the view that America’s recession will be short and mild has its advocates, economist Nouriel Roubini, who got the nickname “Dr. Doom” after correctly predicting the 2007–08 financial crisis, calls that view “delusional.”

Roubini said in a recent interview on Bloomberg TV that he believes persistently high inflation will force the Fed to keep monetary settings tight, which will tip the U.S. economy into a “severe recession and a severe debt and financial crisis” that will be long-lasting.

Similarly, former President Donald Trump recently warned that, unless the country changes course in key areas—including energy policy—he believes something worse than a recession is on the horizon.

“Not recession. Recession’s a nice word. We’re going to have a much bigger problem than recession,” Trump said at a rally in Arizona at the end of July. “We’ll have a depression.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

After criticism from conservative lawmakers and backlash from citizens nationwide, the Fargo Board of Education on Aug. 18 voted to reverse course on its previous week’s decision to stop reciting the Pledge of Allegiance before its meetings.

On Aug. 9, seven of the board’s nine members, including four newcomers who took office in June, voted to cancel a previous board measure that was instituted in March before the election.

Board vice president Seth Holden said at the Aug. 9 meeting that the Pledge of Allegiance was contrary to the district’s diversity, equity, and inclusion priorities.

“Given that the word ‘God’ in the text of the Pledge of Allegiance is capitalized, the text is clearly referring to the Judeo-Christian God, and therefore, it does not include any other faiths such as Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism,” Holden said, adding that this made the pledge of allegiance a “non-inclusionary act.”

Reciting the pledge is a “non-inclusionary act” and there is text within the pledge that is “simply not true,” Holden added.

“The statement that we are ‘one nation under God’ is simply an untrue statement,” Holden said. “We are one nation under many or no gods.”

Tracie Newman, who is board president, recommended that a member recite “a shared statement of purpose that would bring us all together” at the start of the meetings instead of the pledge, adding that it would be “unifying.”

“I’m just not sure that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is a useful way to begin every one of our board meetings,” Newman said at the Aug. 9 meeting.

North Dakota’s Republican Party called the board’s Aug. 9 vote “laughable” and an “affront to our American values.”

Republican State Sen. Scott Meyer told North Dakota media outlets last week that he would start work on a school voucher bill draft to allow public money to pay for private school tuition.

“These positions like by the Fargo School Board just don’t align with North Dakota values,” he said. “The logical solution is to just give parents that option to help educate their kids.”

Robin Nelson was one of two board members who voted on Aug. 9 to keep the pledge.

“It was a very easy ‘no’ vote from me from the get-go. I knew right away it would be controversial,” Nelson told Fargo’s Valley News Live.

“Our focus should be on our great students and teachers and education, but this is going to detract from that and really shed more negative publicity on the Fargo school district, and quite frankly, we don’t need that.”

Nelson’s words were proved correct. The decision prompted an outcry across the country, which led the board to hold the Aug. 18 meeting to discuss reinstating the pledge.

“That is perpetuating Critical Race Theory, which is against the law in North Dakota,” Fargo parent Jake Schmitz told Fox & Friends last week following the initial vote to ban the Pledge of Allegiance.

“The next logical step in the progression is [they’ll] want to remove it from schools because it’s a non-inclusionary act which is a bunch of [expletive].”

At the special meeting on Aug. 18, the board discussed the volume of angry emails and voicemails directed at members.

Nyamal Dei, a refugee from war-torn Sudan, was among those who received messages from irate citizens.

Dei was one of the seven members who voted on Aug. 10 to eliminate the pledge. At the special meeting, she was the only board member to vote no on reinstatement.

“We won’t be rewarding our children or students in our district for acting in this way,” Dei said at the special meeting.

“But know that this moment will pass. Let’s get back to the work that we are elected to do and that is to find a solution to our teacher shortages, mental health issues, and academic achievement for our students.” (Sounds like you must miss Sudan. Can I buy you an airplane ticket to the toilet from which you came? [US Patriot])

Greg Clark, who also serves on the board, said that less than 20 percent of the “angry messages” were from Fargo residents.

He admitted that his vote to reinstate the pledge was influenced by people who do not live in the district.

“But I hope you’ll forgive me because I truly believe it is in the best interest of our schools to do so,” Clark said.

“The disruptions and the threats must end so that we can have a successful start to our school year.”

Holden voted to bring back the pledge, but not before expressing reluctance.

“Do you concede the battle to win the war?” Holden said.

“I’m also concerned about what might happen to this board in the future because we’re going to have to probably be prepared to take more heat than we normally do for decisions that we make because that there may be a perception of success.”

David Paulson, a former board member who proposed that the pledge be recited before meetings in March when he was still in office, said that the current board members were “misinterpreting” what the words mean.

The March motion passed 6-2. Holden was one of the two who voted no.

“We are misinterpreting the Pledge of Allegiance,” Paulson said at the Aug. 9 meeting.

“The pledge isn’t a show of our patriotism; it’s an affirmation of our commitment and our loyalty to the greater cause, and that greater cause is freedom.”

Fargo Public Schools begins a new school year on Aug. 25.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The legislation would allow states and districts to use unspent funds from the American Rescue Plan to issue scholarships directly to parents

VIDEO: Fox News

EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Burgess Owens and Sen. Tim Scott introduced legislation in the U.S. House and Senate this week to combat learning loss incurred during COVID.

Owens, R-Utah, introduced the Raising Expectations with Child Opportunity Vouchers for Educational Recovery (RECOVER) Act in the House on Friday, which would allow unspent funds from the American Rescue Plan to be used to issue child opportunity scholarships directly to parents. 

Owens told Fox News Digital there is a “group who has been really negatively impacted by the last two years, and those are the low-income and minority students.” 

“It allows parents to take scholarship funds… and use it, so their kids can catch up,” he said. “Whether it be tutoring, whether it be books — whatever it takes to make sure their kids are able to catch up is what this is being used toward.”

$15M IN AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN FUNDS WENT TO ‘ANTI-RACISM,’ ‘SOCIAL ACTIVISM’ PROGRAMS FOR KIDS

Elementary students wearing masks in the classroom (iStock)

These scholarships can be used by low-income families for qualifying educational opportunities, including tutoring services, private school tuition, testing fees, educational therapies for children with disabilities and books or other curriculum materials.

Districts have yet to spend 93% of the $122 billion allocated for K-12 education in the American Rescue Plan, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education.

Owens predicted the legislation will encounter opposition from the unions, but said parents have become more involved in their kids’ education in the past two years, and begun pushing back on unions. 

“The key point is this, we have an educational system that is not trying to rescue our kids, is not trying to educate our kids,” Owens said.

Rep. Burgess Owens. Photographer: Dylan Hollingsworth/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Photographer: Dylan Hollingsworth/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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The federal funds have already been allocated, meaning the legislation includes no new spending, and gives school districts and families flexibility in how the funds are spent, Owens noted.

“The key point is, this is a bipartisan conversation,” he added. “All of us want to make sure our kids are taken care of, and educated, and competitive. We need to have educational freedom, and we’re now seeing the places that lack it most are those who are at risk most.”

Scott, R-S.C., who introduced companion legislation in the Senate on Thursday, told Fox News Digital “while kids struggle to recover from months of learning loss, school districts continue to sit on billions of dollars in federal funding.” 

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The legislation, Scott added, gives the unused funds to parents “who won’t let a penny go to waste.” 

“They’ll use every resource to ensure their kids live up to their God-given potential — just like my mom did for me,” he said.

(Tim Scott, REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/Pool)

Students performed lower in the 2021–2022 school year when compared to the 2020–2021 school year, according to a report from education software company Renaissance. 

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For students in first grade or below, reading results were “concerning,” according to Renaissance, which noted that school closures might have disrupted foundational reading skills for students around the ages of 5 and 6. Early literacy scores for pre-readers at this grade level were 19 points lower on average during fall 2021 and 17 points lower over the winter, the study showed. 

SOURCE: Fox News