Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, government-initiated lockdowns had devastating impacts, from interrupted education to drastic unemployment from shuttered businesses. One consequence was a dramatic increase in homelessness. President Biden’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development called the homeless situation in America “devastating,” adding that the country has a “moral responsibility” to address the problem.

One would think such a crisis and call to action would welcome all hands-on deck.

Of course, churches and religious ministries responded, answering the call to provide services to the most vulnerable, including the homeless. Numerous studies have demonstrated the positive contributions of faith-based organizations to the health and welfare of hundreds of millions of Americans. More efficient and effective than government agencies alone, faith-based organizations offer more than temporary assistance; they seek to address the root spiritual needs of the populations they help.

Yet, far too often, even amidst a pandemic, religious organizations serving vulnerable communities—particularly the homeless—have been targeted by the radical Left and the government precisely for their religious character. Motivated to serve by their love of neighbor, these religious ministries often hold beliefs that run contrary to the Left’s political agenda, making them a target of harassment.

First Liberty recently filed a “friend-of-the-court” brief at the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of just such a ministry: the Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission. The mission serves Seattle’s homeless population by providing necessities like food and shelter, but it goes further, assisting its clients with addiction recovery, job placement, and legal services. But the Mission was sued by Matthew Woods, an attorney, after it declined to hire him because he doesn’t share or live according to the ministry’s Christian beliefs about marriage and sexuality.

Remarkably, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled against the Mission, concluding that it is required by law to hire someone who doesn’t share or live according to the ministry’s beliefs. Under this opinion, the state can actually require houses of worship and religious non-profits to hire people expressly opposed to their religious mission!

Our brief urges the Court to take the case and make clear that the First Amendment protects the fundamental right of religious ministries to hire people who share the same religious beliefs.

A Proven Record: Helping Faith-Based Ministries Be a Light to Those in Need

This is just the latest in a string of actions taken against religious organizations seeking to care for the homeless. In 2018, the Downtown Hope Center, a religiously affiliated women’s homeless shelter in Anchorage, Alaska was accused by the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission of violating the city’s non-discrimination policy by preventing a biological male self-identifying as female from residing at the facility. First Liberty successfully defended an attorney who defended the ministry and was charged with discrimination for doing so.

Most recently, the Center filed a federal lawsuit against a city ordinance that forces it to admit transgender males and let them sleep alongside women who have suffered physical and sexual abuse. The ordinance also prohibits the Center from communicating about its religious beliefs on its website and signs posted around its center.

In Tallahassee, Florida, one faith-based homeless ministry—City Walk Urban Mission—stayed open, even expanding beyond its intended mission as a transitional housing facility to provide temporary access to the general homeless population after the city pleaded for help. But when neighbors complained about an increase in the homeless in the area, the City reversed course, began fining City Walk for violating local zoning laws, and then denied the ministry’s zoning application.

In other words, the city is using a problem it created to deny City Walk the freedom to actually help the homeless. The city was happy to drop off the homeless on City Walk’s doorstep during a crisis, but now opposes City Walk’s effort to reduce the number of homeless in the community. First Liberty is fighting on behalf of City Walk to reverse this wrong.

And in Dallas, Texas, First Liberty just won an important victory on behalf of OurCalling, a church and nonprofit ministry that provides various homeless services. OurCalling partners closely with city agencies, as well as healthcare providers and other charities. Because of its religious beliefs, OurCalling remains open 24-hours as a last resort during emergencies if homeless individuals have nowhere else to go.

But in 2018, Dallas ticketed OurCalling for keeping its doors open during dangerously cold weather. Then, when the Dallas city council created a permitting program to allow churches to provide temporary shelter in inclement weather, some on the city council added a buffer zone that excluded OurCalling from participating. Just recently, after working with attorneys at First Liberty, the city reversed course and will allow OurCalling to continue its important work.

As these cases demonstrate, religious organizations do essential work to care for vulnerable communities. Yet, the far Left is quick to weaponize the government to take aim at those ministries simply because of their religious beliefs. Sadly, it is the vulnerable among us who suffer the most when religious ministries are attacked.

With your support, First Liberty will continue to fight for religious organizations to ensure they can continue their divinely-inspired mission to serve the neediest among us.

Government’s Constant Harassment of Religious Organizations Serving the Homeless | News | First Liberty

The final sections of the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline have now been welded into place, Moscow’s state energy giant Gazprom has revealed, bringing construction of the underwater link between Russia and Germany to an end.

In a statement issued on Friday, Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Saint Petersburg-based energy giant, said that “at 8.45am this morning Moscow time, work on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline has been completed.”

Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov revealed that the laying of pipes under the Baltic Sea would be “completed in a few days and (it) will begin working.” Bloomberg reports that gas is expected to begin flowing through its network from the start of next month, and that final testing and preparations are underway. 

The final welded pipe No 200,858 before being lowered to the seabed. ©Axel Schmidt / Nord Stream 2 AG

According to Lavrov, efforts by the US government to halt construction through sanctions and political pressure have now failed. However, he added, “there is still a full-frontal attack, in spite of everything, on Nord Stream 2,”  despite the fact “everyone knows the Americans have realized [it will be completed].”

Last month, American President Joe Biden unveiled a new package of sanctions aimed at firms involved in its construction, saying that completion of the project would increase Russia’s influence in European energy markets, while weakening “Ukraine and Eastern flank NATO and EU countries.” The pipeline, the White House said, therefore threatens “the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”

ALSO ON RT.COM

Biden has promised to impose sanctions against Russian-German Nord Stream 2 pipeline if problems arise for Ukraine – Zelensky

Washington’s measures came as German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Moscow for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and despite Biden having previously admitted that it was “almost completed.”  

In May, the US President said that “to go ahead and impose sanctions now, I think is counterproductive in terms of our European relations.” Berlin and Washington had also penned a deal under which the Americans would cease to oppose Nord Stream 2, provided Germany commits to support sanctions against Moscow if it uses the pipeline for “aggression.”

Russia insists that the pipeline is a vital step to secure the continent’s energy supply and deliver low-cost gas from Siberia to consumers in Western Europe. Moscow has denied claims that it plans to use the new link to cut energy off from neighboring Ukraine.

ALSO ON RT.COM

‘Common sense has won’: Berlin lawmaker from Merkel’s party welcomes news about Nord Stream 2 pipeline nearing completion

However, Kiev insists that it stands to lose billions in gas transit fees if supplies are moved through Nord Stream 2, rather than its overground network of Soviet-built pipes, which were constructed by Moscow when both countries were members of the Soviet Union. 

In June, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told a visiting delegation from the US Congress that such a scenario would deprive Kiev of about $3 billion annually, leaving it unable to finance its armed forces. 

However, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has slammed the claims, insisting that the US “will soon demand we stop breathing immediately.” Russia “has implemented, and will continue to implement, its economic projects regardless of any sanctions,” she added, insisting that Washington and Kiev were attempting to force Western European states to make decisions against their own best interests.

Nord Stream 2 has finally been completed, Russia’s Gazprom announces, despite US efforts to block major European gas pipeline — RT Russia & Former Soviet Union

United Airlines employees who are granted a medical or religious exemption have been informed that they’ll be automatically placed on unpaid leave, a policy that one expert described as the harshest in America.

In memorandums to workers who have applied for an exemption to United’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate, workers were told that they must become fully vaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19 within five weeks if their submission is denied or they will “be separated from the company.”

Employees whose accommodation requests are granted will be placed on leave for an undetermined amount of time, the memos, obtained by The Epoch Times, added.

“Given our focus on safety and the steep increases in COVID infections, hospitalizations, and deaths, all employees whose request is approved will be placed on temporary, unpaid personal leave on October 2 while specific safety measures for unvaccinated employees are instituted,” United told workers.

“We can no longer allow unvaccinated people back into the workplace until we better understand how they might interact with our customers and their vaccinated coworkers,” the company added, citing federal statistics that show a rise throughout the summer of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, though those metrics have fallen in some areas recently.

United, based in Chicago, informed workers in early August that they would need to get vaccinated against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus unless they were approved for an exemption from the mandate.

The Air Line Pilots Association declined to comment on the new unpaid leave policy. Other airline worker unions, which have generally been supportive of vaccine mandates, did not respond to requests for comment.

Roger Gannam, assistant vice president of legal affairs at Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit legal education and policy group, said the policy is the harshest the organization has seen in the United States so far.

“It certainly appears to be a bullying tactic and a continuation of United’s policy of making a religious exemption as difficult as possible,” he told The Epoch Times.

United workers who applied for exemptions have told Liberty Counsel that United asked a multitude of questions in an apparent effort to discourage the efforts. Workers who decide to file legal challenges will have a strong argument that the company is not using the least restrictive means to accommodate exemption requests, which is required by federal law, Gannam added.

Religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccines most commonly center on objections to how aborted fetal cells were used in the testing or manufacturing process. Medical exemptions typically include a physician’s recommendation that a person not get a vaccine due to a certain underlying condition.

United Airlines Staff With Vaccine Exemptions Told They’ll Be Placed on Unpaid Leave (theepochtimes.com)

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday signed into law a bill that sets a goal for all new passenger cars and light-duty trucks to be zero-emission models by 2035, joining the state of California in attempting to eliminate gasoline-powered vehicles.

The law directs setting regulations requiring higher numbers of zero-emission vehicles with a goal of “100 percent of in-state sales by 2035,” and a similar target for medium-duty and heavy-duty vehicles by 2045 if feasible.

The U.S. government is seeking to promote the sales of electric vehicles to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and help meet global goals to slow human-caused climate change.

In August, President Joe Biden took a step toward his goal of slashing greenhouse gas emissions with an executive order aimed at making half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 electric, a goal made with backing from the biggest U.S. automakers.

But Biden has repeatedly refused to endorse proposals to phase out the sale of all new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035, despite pressure from some Democrats in Congress.

Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order that set a goal of banning the sale of new gasoline-powered passenger vehicles starting in 2035.

In April, New York, California, and 10 other states asked Biden to set standards to ensure that all new passenger cars and light duty trucks are zero-emission by 2035.

New York City said on Wednesday that to meet its climate goals it would need 400,000 of the city’s 2 million vehicle owners to switch to EVs by 2030. The city vows to install a network of 10,000 curbside charge points by 2030.

The state of New York said it was proposing regulations requiring an increasing percentage of all new medium and large trucks sold in New York to be zero-emissions beginning with the 2025 model year.

The legislation signed Wednesday also seeks to require all off-road vehicles be zero-emission models by 2035.

New York Sets 2035 Zero-Emission Passenger Car Goal (theepochtimes.com)

An increase in wages has prompted concerns about growing inflation among economists as businesses attempt to entice employees back to work amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

It comes after the Labor Department released its disappointing August jobs report which showed the U.S. economy added just 235,000 jobs during the month, versus expectations of around 750,000, while the unemployment rate declined by just 0.2 percent to 5.2 percent.

However, the report also showed that wages continued to rise, with average hourly earnings increasing to 4.3 percent on a year-over-year basis, up from 4 percent a year ago, and jumping 0.6 percent on a monthly basis, double of what Wall Street had anticipated.

In an effort to counteract shortages and attract workers amid nationwide labor shortages and hiring difficulties owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous companies, particularly those in the dining and hospitality sector, as well as small-business owners, are increasing pay for employees.

Last week, Walmart announced that it will be raising the hourly wages for more than 565,000 of its store workers by at least $1 amid fierce competition among companies for skilled workers.

The world’s largest retailer said in a memo to staff that the move marks the third investment the company has made in salaries in the past year.

Low-price retailer Dollar General Corp. also announced it is offering a $5,000 sign-on bonus to drivers as it expands its private fleet, while Rival Dollar Tree is offering a $1,000 sign-on bonus to ensure its distribution centers are sufficiently staffed ahead of the holiday season.

Target, CVS Health, and Walgreens Boots Alliance are just a handful of other companies who have all said they are boosting starting wages to $15 an hour.

However, economists fear that the sharp rise in wages versus a declining employment rate could contribute to increased levels of inflation, adding extra pressure on central bankers trying to steer their countries out of economic turmoil.

“The 5.2 percent unemployment rate and rapidly rising wages suggest building inflationary pressure that will ultimately lead to more hawkish policy,” Citigroup economist Andrew Hollenhorst wrote in a detailed analysis of the current jobs situation.

Hollenhorst noted that he expects federal officials to focus more of their attention on the high level of job openings and increasing wages in an upcoming September Federal Open Market Committee meeting, as opposed to total payroll gains.

The U.S. Federal Reserve and many economists maintain that the recent spike in inflation is “transitory,” and merely reflective of the ongoing effects of supply chain breakdowns during the pandemic and shifts in consumer demand as more activities like travel become safer again.

Still, it is expected that the Fed will likely announce the tapering of its asset purchases in November and begin the process a month later, in an attempt to address building inflationary pressures.

It comes as economic historian Niall Ferguson warned that inflation could be repeating the trajectory of the late 1960s, which set in motion sustained high inflation in the following decade.

Speaking to CNBC on Sept. 3, Ferguson said that policymakers are now facing a new challenge in the form of rising inflation after responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in a manner similar to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

He called into question the Federal Reserve’s statement regarding the “transitory” inflation spike, and noted that an “inflation lift-off would be a problem.”

“How long is transitory? At what point do expectations fundamentally shift, especially if the Federal Reserve is telling people, ‘we have changed our inflation-targeting regime and we don’t mind if inflation goes above target for a while?’” Ferguson said.

“My sense is that we are not heading for the 1970s but we could be re-running the late 1960s, when famously the Fed Chair then, McChesney Martin, lost control of inflation expectations.”

Reuters contributed to this report.

Sharp Increase in Wages Contributing to Growing Concern Over Rising Inflation: Economist (theepochtimes.com)

Private trains can’t make money and provide good service. Only the government can run trains. Give it more dollars.

That’s been the transportation bible of New York’s political/media elites going back to the early 20th century goo-goos. They opposed any private subway component. Their descendants consistently funded pricey city and state transit agencies.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is a state agency running the region’s subways, buses, and trains. The trains are a mess, state and city officials agree.

New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s 2018 report, “Financial Outlook for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority 8-2019,” (pdf) found New York’s state-run transit has “deteriorating service.” The MTA, DiNapoli wrote, “is facing its greatest challenge in decades. … Riders are abandoning the system for other transportation alternatives.”

So the state will provide more of the same. It recently approved the biggest capital plan in the agency’s history. Some $54.8 billion is allocated in the “MTA 2020-2024 Capital Program.” The Biden administration recently poured billions into the system.

Still, DiNapoli’s analysis for 2020, “Financial Outlook for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, 5-2021,” (pdf) is bleak.

“The MTA forecasts budget deficits of … $6.3 billion in 2021, $3.8 billion in 2022, $2.8 billion in 2023 and $3.1 billion in 2024,” DiNapoli wrote. “The post-2021 budget gaps as a percentage of revenue rival those during the Great Recession and are reliant on a return to 2019 ridership levels by 2023.”

DiNapoli wrote that a new plan to save the subways contained three elements: increased federal aid; consolidating administrative functions; and higher fares and tolls.

“Even if the MTA successfully implements its gap-closing program, it still forecasts budget deficits of $5.1 billion in 2021, $3.5 billion in 2022, $1.8 billion in 2023 and nearly $2 billion in 2024,” according to DiNapoli.

“Debt service is projected to reach $4 billion by 2024, an increase of 55 percent since 2019,” DiNapoli wrote.

Goo-goos said government subways would be a great deal for riders and taxpayers because the government sought no profits but only to run the system as a public service at cost.

But, over more than 80 years, government subways have never come close to breaking even. Many riders detest them. New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer says bad service hurts the area’s economy. Annual losses range from $170 million to $389 million, according to his 2017 report, “The Economic Cost of Subway Delays.”

The problem, he says in a sentiment echoed by many New York lawmakers, is too little government spending.

“There is no question our subways are in crisis after decades of underinvestment and inaction,” Stringer said in an October 2017 report. Stringer’s solution, more taxpayer dollars, is happening again.

His “underinvestment” complaints ignore disastrous government spending since the 1940 takeover.

Since then, elected officials have passed responsibility for subway operations to various authorities. They have incurred debts, financing new lines that never happened or were a fraction of projected lines.

The Second Avenue Subway was promised after the government takeover. The line was funded three times through bond issues.

It’s not nearly finished. Three stops operate out of a projected 16. It’s over budget. Still, then Gov. Andrew Cuomo, at the opening of the abbreviated Second Avenue Subway nearly five years ago, said New Yorkers should be proud of the subways.

A historian disagrees.

“Spending $4.6 billion to build a 1.5-mile subway line was not necessarily a cause for celebration,” writes Philip Mark Plotch in “Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City.”

“The final figure obscures other costs,” writes Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute in reviewing his book. “To complete these three stops by 2016, the MTA had to defer maintenance and repairs on its existing system, contributing to increasing delays starting in 2015, and higher costs later to fix them.”

She warns the MTA “now carries $44 billion in debt, giving it little flexibility to navigate even a modest recession, let alone a historic pandemic that has curtailed ridership indefinitely.”

How about a private line?

Political and media leaders summarily reject it, arguing it would never provide good service and make money. Subways never make money, says Gelinas, in dismissing private alternatives.

Although subways were never privately owned, private transportation companies operated in the first 36 years of the subways under city franchise contracts. The best of the private transportation companies, the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), generated profits over the first 20 years or so; from the time of the first IRT trains in 1904 to the 1920s.

In the IRT’s 1917 annual report, the company reported net income of $23.2 million. That was an increase of about $1.4 million over 1916. The IRT was paid some $7 million in dividends.

The IRT later had financial problems because fares were never raised in its history. Yet fares were frequently raised after the government takeover in the 1940s, with the DiNapoli report last year saying the state raised fares faster than the inflation rate.

The IRT couldn’t cope with inflation. It sold to the city for the same reason some once successful businesses fail, price controls, said a journalist, writing at the time of the sale in 1940. He said the city was finding a backdoor road to socialism.

“The City of New York has set a pattern for the nationalizing of the railroads of the country: a regulatory body, with the power to fix rates and compel unprofitable operation, squeezes the business into bankruptcy so that the owners are quite willing to sell their property to the taxpayers and the bureaucracy improves its position,” wrote Frank Chodorov in the book “The Rise and Fall of Society.”

Despite the subways’ recent disasters, they were actually once considered “an engineering marvel.” New Yorkers were once “enormously proud” of their subways, wrote Robert Caro in “The Power Broker.”

Caro wrote that “So superbly engineered and maintained had the system been previously … that it took years for this systematic neglect to take its toll.”

Most political and media elites agree about the “toll.” No state or city government or delegated state or city agency has solved the persistent post-1940 problems of poor service, a contracting system, and increasing red ink.

Historian Brian Cudahy, in “Under the Sidewalks of New York,” writes that, “If anything has emerged as a timeless and universal characterization of the New York Subway, it is the endless search for some future salvation, some not-yet-realized resolution of its difficulties and cure for its ills.” Cudahy, a former federal transit official, opposed any privatization.

So New York officials, few of whom ride the subways, generally share two beliefs: opposition to any privatization; and they take no responsibility for bad service, having set up an authority system that relieves them of accountability.

Economist Alexander Gray, writing in 1946 in “The Socialist Tradition: Moses to Lenin,” saw the same problem. He wrote of the London Tube: “[The] more and more the state ‘interferes’ or ‘controls’, … the less does it show a disposition to accept ultimate responsibility and direct responsibility for what is done.”

Failure Begets Failure in New York’s Government Subways (theepochtimes.com)

Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday returned to her home state of California to campaign for Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who faces a recall election in the country’s most populous state.

Harris appeared with Newsom in San Leandro and urged voters to vote against the recall effort. The area is not far from Oakland, where Harris was born.

Prior to her appointment as vice president, Harris was a U.S. senator representing California. Before that, she served as the state’s attorney general for six years.

She sought to portray the election as one where Democrat and Republican priorities clash, while echoing Newsom’s campaign message that the impact of the recall will not be limited to just California.

“What’s happening in Texas, what’s happening in Georgia, what’s happening around our country with these policies that are about attacking women’s rights, reproductive rights, voting rights, worker’s rights,” Harris, a Democrat, told a crowd of about 200 volunteers and labor union members in San Leandro, just six days ahead of the gubernatorial recall election day on Sept. 14.

“They think if they can win in California they can do this anywhere. Well, we will show them you are not going to get this done. Not here, ever.”

“California, let us send a message to the world that these are the things we stand for, these are the things we fight for, and we will not give up,” she added.

In her speech of just over 10 minutes, Harris praised the incumbent governor for his handling of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic.

She said that Newsom, who won in a landslide in 2018, “led with courage” during the pandemic’s early days by issuing a statewide stay-at-home order in March 2020 ahead of other states to limit the CCP virus’s spread, reported The Sacramento Bee.

Harris also mentioned Newsom’s time as mayor of San Francisco in 2004, when he issued same-sex marriage licenses at a time when same-sex unions were not recognised as marriage in any state, saying that he “has had the courage to believe in and know what is possible,” according to KGO.

The vice president praised Newsom’s stance on abortion access, saying that those who oppose him “wouldn’t be trying to recall him but for the fact that he has always stood for reproductive rights.”

At the same time, Harris criticized Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, for his comments earlier this week on a Texas law that bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected.

Abbott was asked why the law didn’t make exceptions for cases of rape and incest, to which he responded that the state “will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets.”

Harris accused Abbott of having “arrogantly dismissed concerns about rape survivors.” She attempted to draw a distinction between Abbott and Newsom, asserting that “to speak those words that were empty words, that were false words, that were fueled with not only arrogance but bravado—that is not who we want in our leaders. We want in our leaders someone like Gavin Newsom who always speaks the truth.”

Outside the outdoor venue, more than a dozen protesters loudly chanted “Free, free Afghanistan!” and “No deals for the Taliban,” reported the New York Post. Others held signs to push for Newsom’s recall, and to support Larry Elder, the leading Republican challenger in the recall election.

Elder is among 46 candidates seeking to replace Newsom if the governor is removed via the recall effort. The recall election will ask voters to decide whether Newsom should be recalled, and if so, who should replace him.

The recall election was made possible after a petition drive by a group called the Patriot Coalition. A total of 1,719,900 verified signatures in favor were gathered, which met the threshold needed to trigger the election.

Those seeking to oust Newsom from office are unhappy with a slew of issues and policies in the state, including Newsom’s handing the CCP virus pandemic. Business owners and parents have expressed disapproval over prolonged restrictions on businesses and shutdowns on in-person schooling. Others had been frustrated with mask and vaccination mandates, which Newsom has returned to embracing amid the spread of the more contagious Delta variant. Some also cite the time when Newsom attended a gathering at a Michelin-starred restaurant while telling Californians to stay home in late 2020.

Elder and other leading Republican candidates all say they would undo mask and vaccine mandates in favor of recommendations for communities to self-implement.

Residents have also expressed disapproval over Newsom’s handling of the economy. The state has some of the highest taxes in the nation and a homelessness problem that is spiraling out of control.

On June 23, an investigative report by CapRadio showed that Newsom had misled the public about his wildfire prevention efforts. The report concluded that Newsom had overstated by 690 percent the number of acres treated with firebreaks and prescribed burns. Newsom said fire prevention work was conducted on 90,000 acres, but the state’s own figures say the number was 11,399, according to the report.

Other prominent Democrats have also thrown their support behind Newsom against the recall, with Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) having campaigned with Newsom last weekend.

Former President Barack Obama released an ad on Wednesday that focused on Newsom’s actions amid the CCP virus pandemic. It urged residents to vote “no” on what it said was a partisan recall effort.

“Governor Newsom has spent the last year and a half protecting California communities. Now Republicans are trying to recall him from office and overturn common sense COVID safety measures for healthcare workers and school staff,” Obama said in the video.

An Emerson College poll in March found that 58 percent of Democrat and 55 percent of Independent voters would “be open to another Democratic candidate besides Newsom.”

President Joe Biden is also expected to campaign for the governor in California before the election.

Meanwhile, billionaire donor George Soros has given $1 million to a group called “Stop the Republican Recall of Governor Newsom.”

This is the second recall election in California’s history. The first recall election was in 2003, when Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, was replaced with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who ran as a Republican.

Ivan Pentchoukov and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Harris Rallies for California Governor Facing Recall Election (theepochtimes.com)

Newly released U.S. government documents show that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) provided funding for the gain-of-function research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) that created novel coronaviruses with the ability to infect humans, and one previously undisclosed SARS-related coronavirus engineered at the Wuhan lab was reportedly demonstrated to be more pathogenic to humans than the virus from which it was originally constructed.

The 900 pages of documents – obtained by The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit – prove that Fauci’s NIAID provided funding to EcoHealth Alliance, which in turn funded the controversial gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab that created novel coronaviruses that could infect humans.

The Intercept’s report on the documents quotes Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, who said that the viruses the Wuhan lab constructed “were tested for their ability to infect mice that were engineered to display human type receptors on their cell.” And these viruses included both SARS-related and MERS-related coronaviruses.

Ebright later posted an eight-part thread on Twitter explaining in greater detail the document’s revelations concerning the “enhanced pathogenicity” of one of the “novel, laboratory-generated SARS-related coronaviruses” created by the Wuhan lab. He noted that this particular Wuhan lab-generated SARS-related coronavirus had not been “previously disclosed publicly” and that it was found to be “more pathogenic” to humans than “the starting virus from which it was constructed.”

Ebright’s Twitter thread reads:

The materials show that the 2014 and 2019 NIH grants to EcoHealth with subcontracts to WIV funded gain-of-function research as defined in federal policies in effect in 2014-2017 and potential pandemic pathogen enhancement as defined in federal policies in effect in 2017-present.

(This had been evident previously from published research papers that credited the 2014 grant and from the publicly available summary of the 2019 grant. But this now can be stated definitively from progress reports of the 2014 grant and the full proposal of the 2017 grant.)

The materials confirm the grants supported the construction–in Wuhan–of novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses that combined a spike gene from one coronavirus with genetic information from another coronavirus, and confirmed the resulting viruses could infect human cells.

The materials reveal that the resulting novel, laboratory-generated SARS-related coronaviruses also could infect mice engineered to display human receptors on cells (“humanized mice”).

The materials further reveal for the first time that one of the resulting novel, laboratory-generated SARS-related coronaviruses–one not been previously disclosed publicly–was more pathogenic to humanized mice than the starting virus from which it was constructed…

…and thus not only was reasonably anticipated to exhibit enhanced pathogenicity, but, indeed, was *demonstrated* to exhibit enhanced pathogenicity.

The materials further reveal that the the grants also supported the construction–in Wuhan–of novel chimeric MERS-related coronaviruses that combined spike genes from one MERS-related coronavirus with genetic information from another MERS-related coronavirus.

Ebright concluded his thread by stating: “The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful.”

As The Intercept’s article noted, “The closest relative of SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19, is a virus found in bats, making the animals a focal point for efforts to understand the origins of the pandemic. Exactly how the virus jumped to humans is the subject of heated debate.”

Thus, the fact that these documents reveal the existence of a previously undisclosed “novel, laboratory-generated SARS-related” coronavirus with “enhanced pathogenicity” to infect humans should be a matter of intense interest to anyone searching for the potential origins of Covid-19.

…and thus not only was reasonably anticipated to exhibit enhanced pathogenicity, but, indeed, was *demonstrated* to exhibit enhanced pathogenicity.

— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) September 7, 2021

The fact that a U.S. government agency led by Fauci provided funding for that research should also spark a much-needed debate. Sen. Rand Paul (R-IN), a fierce critic of Fauci, has continued to call for an investigation into this funding and a ban on any future funding of the Wuhan lab.

“I forced a vote about a month ago in Senate, and we actually won unanimously no longer to fund the Wuhan Institute, no longer to fund this research in China,” Paul said in a radio interview Tuesday. “Yet it hasn’t been signed by the president; it hasn’t been passed by the House yet.”

White House Chief Medical Adviser on Covid-19 Dr. Anthony Fauci looks on as President Joe Biden tours the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, on February 11, 2021. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

As Ebright noted, the fact that the Wuhan lab was conducting gain-of-function research with coronaviruses was well established.

In an article last May documenting the evidence behind the “lab leak theory” that Covid-19 originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, New York Times writer Nicholas Wade detailed the Wuhan lab’s extensive research into genetically engineering coronaviruses that could attack human cells.

Wade explained that the Wuhan lab’s “methodical approach was designed to find the best combination of coronavirus backbone and spike protein for infecting human cells. The approach could have generated SARS2-like viruses, and indeed may have created the SARS2 virus itself with the right combination of virus backbone and spike protein.”

Wade further noted:

It cannot yet be stated that Dr. Shi [head of the Wuhan Institute of Virology] did or did not generate SARS2 in her lab because her records have been sealed, but it seems she was certainly on the right track to have done so. “It is clear that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was systematically constructing novel chimeric coronaviruses and was assessing their ability to infect human cells and human-ACE2-expressing mice,” says Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University and leading expert on biosafety.

“It is also clear,” Dr. Ebright said, “that, depending on the constant genomic contexts chosen for analysis, this work could have produced SARS-CoV-2 or a proximal progenitor of SARS-CoV-2.” “Genomic context” refers to the particular viral backbone used as the testbed for the spike protein.

Wade concluded, “The lab escape scenario for the origin of the SARS2 virus, as should by now be evident, is not mere hand-waving in the direction of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It is a detailed proposal, based on the specific project being funded there by the NIAID.”

Rebecca Mansour is Senior Editor-at-Large for Breitbart News. Follow her on Twitter at @RAMansour.

Expert: Documents Show Fauci-Funded Wuhan Lab Created Novel Coronavirus with ‘Enhanced Pathogenicity’ for Humans (breitbart.com)

Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder on Wednesday vowed to “save California” shortly after he was forced to prematurely end a walk-through of his planned campaign stop at Venice Beach, when over 10 hecklers harassed him, throwing projectiles.

Elder, who is vying to replace California Gov. Gavin Newsom if he is recalled this month, was touring Venice Beach’s homeless encampments with campaign team members when he was harassed.

Footage of the incident uploaded to social media shows two hecklers repeatedly shouting racial slurs at Elder. A lady in a pink gorilla mask, riding a bike, appeared on video throwing an egg that appeared to narrowly miss Elder’s head.

One of Elder’s security staff attempted to separate the woman from the crowd, to keep her from continuing to throw projectiles.

In videos surfacing on Twitter, the woman slapped the security staff in the face. Another protester hit the same security staff member seconds later.

A white SUV drove up to the crowd, which was walking down Hampton Drive towards Sunset Avenue.

Elder’s team escorted him to his vehicle and drove away.

“Today I kicked off the Recall Express bus tour. Before we even left Los Angeles, my security detail was physically assaulted, shot with a pellet gun, and hit with projectiles. The intolerant left will not stop us. We will recall Gavin Newsom. We will save California,” Elder said in a statement on Twitter late Wednesday, responding to the attacks.

Elder, 69, is an Epoch Times contributor and host of “Larry Elder with Epoch Times” on EpochTV.

The conservative talk radio host first announced in July that he will run in California’s recall election of Democratic Gov. Newsom, which has been set for Sept. 14.

He said in a statement on his campaign website that he’s running for governor “because the decline of California isn’t the fault of its people,” adding: “Our government is what’s ruining the Golden State.”

On his website, Elder calls for “returning to the bedrock Constitutional principles of limited government and maximum personal responsibility.”

Other top Republican candidates include businessman John Cox, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, and state Rep. Kevin Kiley. Nine Democrats are running, including financial analyst Kevin Paffrath and actor Patrick Kilpatrick.

The recall election of Newsom, a first-term Democrat, follows mounting criticism from within his party and across the aisle over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and other issues.

He faced intense backlash after he was seen dining at the French Laundry restaurant with lobbyists after telling Californians to stay home. Newsom apologized for his actions.

The last time a governor was recalled in the state was Gray Davis in 2003. Residents voted “Yes” on recalling Davis by 55.4 percent and selected one of 135 candidates on the ballot to replace him.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, California is one of 19 states where recalls are permitted.

Last month, President Joe Biden publicly backed Newsom, saying in a statement that he the Democratic governor “is leading California through unprecedented crises—he’s a key partner in fighting the pandemic and helping build our economy back better.”

“To keep him on the job, registered voters should vote no on the recall election by 9/14 and keep California moving forward,” Biden added.

The California Republican Party has declined to endorse a candidate, however, several recent polls show that Elder is in the lead.

Jack Bradley contributed to this report.

Larry Elder Responds to Venice Beach Walk-Through Assault, Vows to ‘Save California’ (theepochtimes.com)

Is this the Pot vs the Kettle? [US Patriot]

The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, on Wednesday responded to sharp criticism by billionaire investor George Soros, who took issue with the firm’s recent investments in China.

In a rare Wall Street Journal editorial published on Monday, Soros warned that pouring money into China amounted to aiding a repressive regime engaged “time of a life and death conflict” with the democratic values upheld by the United States.

“Pouring billions of dollars into China now is a tragic mistake. It is likely to lose money for BlackRock’s clients and, more important, will damage the national security interests of the U.S. and other democracies,” Soros wrote.

“The BlackRock initiative imperils the national security interests of the U.S. and other democracies because the money invested in China will help prop up President Xi’s regime, which is repressive at home and aggressive abroad.”

BlackRock responded to the critique in a statement provided to CNBC. The asset management firm said it set up its first mutual fund in China after raising just over $1 billion from 111,000 investors.

“The United States and China have a large and complex economic relationship,” a BlackRock spokesperson said. “Total trade in goods and services between the two countries exceeded $600 billion in 2020. Through our investment activity, US-based asset managers and other financial institutions contribute to the economic interconnectedness of the world’s two largest economies.”

In addition to criticizing BlackRock’s entry into China’s mutual fund market, Soros faulted the asset manager for recommending that investors stop treating China as a developing nation and triple their exposure to investments in Chinese securities.

“The Chinese market represents a significant opportunity to help meet the long-term goals of investors in China and internationally,” BlackRock Chairman Larry Fink wrote in a letter to shareholders.

In the statement to CNBC, the BlackRock spokesperson said the company could help China address its retirement crisis by providing retirement services expertise.

Soros cast BlackRock’s China ventures as a misguided move likely motivated by a fundamental misunderstanding of China’s leader, Xi Jinping.

“The firm seems to have taken the statements of Mr. Xi’s regime at face value. It has drawn a distinction between state-owned enterprises and privately-owned companies, but that is far from reality. The regime regards all Chinese companies as instruments of the one-party state,” Soros wrote.

The billionaire investor also cautioned that while pouring money into China may stave off a looming real estate crisis, it won’t address deeper signs of decline, including falling birth rates.

BlackRock Addresses George Soros’ Criticism of Firm’s China Investments (theepochtimes.com)

Reward China- the world’s largest polluter by far- by sending trillions of dollars to China for solar panels. Democrat logic. [US Patriot]

On Sept. 8, the Biden administration’s Department of Energy issued a new report, “The Solar Futures Study,” which claims solar energy could power 40 percent of the U.S. grid by 2035 and 45 percent of the grid by 2050.

The report, produced by the DoE’s Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), proposes this could be done without raising the cost of electricity, thanks to continued technological improvements and “demand flexibility.”

Expanding on what “demand flexibility” would mean, the report hints at the possibility of expanded real-time changes to electricity pricing, “enabled by Internet-of-things appliances and communications.”

Solar capacity would have to reach 760-1,000 gigawatts by 2035 to realize either of the report’s two decarbonization scenarios (the report also includes what it calls a “business as usual” scenario).

For context, the United States had installed roughly 80 gigawatts of solar capacity in 2020 according to the report.

By 2050, solar capacity would need to reach 1,600 gigawatts to achieve what the report calls a “fully decarbonized grid.” Its third and most ambitious scenario, a preliminary modeling of total energy system decarbonization, would require 3,000 gigawatts of solar power by 2050.

The report projects that its maximum deployment scenario could require up to 0.5 percent of the contiguous U.S. surface area—roughly 15,600 square miles, an area slightly smaller than the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the state of Connecticut combined.

It notes that “land acquisition poses challenges,” though it claims contaminated land, waterbodies, farms, and grazing areas could all be used.

A SETO press release on the report stated that “aggressive cost reductions” would be essential to realizing either of the two decarbonization scenarios.

The report itself argues that “soft costs,” including permitting, customer acquisition, and installation labor, are major contributors to the high cost of solar energy. The hard costs of solar power have rapidly declined, with International Energy Agency reportedly claiming that some solar power systems can now offer the “cheapest… electricity in history” in its World Energy Outlook 2020.

Notably, the report assumes that the costs of both decarbonization scenarios would be offset by benefits to air quality and avoided climate change damages, which it calculates at more than $1 trillion for both scenarios.

The report did not appear to calculate the pollution or other environmental damage associated with producing or using solar panels, which may contain lead, cadmium, arsenic, and other toxic heavy metals mined in countries with laxer environmental standards than the United States. The new solar infrastructure could potentially occupy land used by other organisms or ecological processes.

Although the report does note that producing and disposing solar power technologies could negatively impact “[low- and medium-income] and communities of color,” it asserts that such harms “are trivial relative to the existing energy system,” arguing they could be mitigated through the repair, reuse, and recycling of solar panels.

The NREL did not respond to questions about the potential environmental costs of large-scale solar deployment.

The report met with a range of reactions on Twitter.

“Ramping up clean, solar power means lower energy bills, good-paying jobs and less pollution,” wrote Rep. Kathy Castor (D.-Fla.), chair of the House Climate Crisis Committee.

“This is a terribly weak goal. Horrible,” wrote Margaret Klein Salamon, executive director of the Climate Emergency Fund and self-described “climate warrior.”

“I think solar should be a large part of the energy mix. If it gets to 20 percent, I’d be really happy. Set achievable goals and you won’t have to deal with large scale policy failure,” wrote Jeff Terry, a professor and energy researcher at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

“Utterly impossible. Let me guess, Hunter’s starting a solar panel company?” wrote conservative commentator Jon Gabriel.

“Here’s what happens: Energy costs will skyrocket. The poor will be semi-shielded by massively expanded low-income energy welfare programs. Middle class? Will be paying for drastic funding increases for those programs AND stupid-high energy bills. Intentional destruction,” wrote an anonymous Twitter user, “Oilfield Rando.”

Biden Administration Envisions Solar Power Decarbonizing the Grid (theepochtimes.com)

The COVID pandemic offered an unprecedented excuse for want-to-be authoritarians to stifle liberty.

To fight disease, once unthinkable government controls abound. Entire economies have been shut down, businesses closed involuntarily, and people thrown out of work.

Contact tracing apps were invented to alert the user when exposed to someone with the virus, but which also kept a clear record of individual movements.

Vaccine mandates enforced through phone app-facilitated “passports” are now proliferating. Soon, continued employment or ability to participate in society freely may depend on proving one has received the jab.

Ok, Wesley. That’s admittedly tough medicine, but it was necessitated as a public health measure to defeat a dangerous communicable disease. Once COVID fades away or becomes endemic like the flu, everything returns to normal. Right?

Not if the technocrats get their way. COVID whetted their appetite for power, and now they want their existing “temporary” sway over how we live to become a permanent fixture of society.

The question is how to get people to surrender more of their liberty. One potential plan would impose an international technocratic control in the name of preventing future pandemics.

One such approach was laid out last year by Dr. Anthony Fauci in a co-authored piece in a science journal advocating that the UN and the WHO be empowered to enact measures that would “rebuild the infrastructure of human existence.”

Fighting global warming presents an even more ominous pretext for establishing the system of rule by experts. Restrictions on personal liberty have long been promoted as a necessary prophylactic to prevent environment degradation. But now, they are being peddled as a means of protecting human health and wellness.

And the “good news”— from the autocratic perspective—is that unlike COVID, the goal of “net zero” carbon emissions, which we are told must be imposed to keep us from boiling like a lobster in the pot, could never be achieved. Genius! That means, the technocracy would never end.

A recent editorial in the Journal of Medical Ethics lays out the mindset. “Many governments met the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic with unprecedented funding,” the editors write. “The environmental crisis demands a similar emergency response.” See what I mean?

But it wouldn’t just be about spending more money. Only the most radical refashioning of society will do. “Governments must make fundamental changes to how our societies and economies are organized and how we live…Governments must intervene to support the redesign of transport systems, cities, production and distribution of food, markets for financial investments, health systems, and much more.” If that reads suspiciously like Dr. Fauci, that because technocrats all think alike.

The plans being laid by “the experts” would also constrain our freedom by subjecting us all to a system of high-tech surveillance—disturbingly similar to the tyrannical Chinese social credit system. An advocacy article in the prestigious science journal Nature by four environmental “experts,” lays out one such very disturbing proposal—a means of restricting individual behavior known as “personal carbon allowances,” or PCAs, for short.

They write, “A PCA scheme would be “a national mandatory policy” that would entail all adults receiving an equal tradable carbon allowance that reduces over time in line with national [carbon] targets.” Think World War II-style rationing coupons that limited individual purchases of gasoline and other commodities gone high tech, with lower allowances allowed with each passing year.

How would PCAs work? Individual allotments would be “deducted from the personal budget with every payment of transportation fuel, home heating oil fuels and electricity bills.”

But what if you exhausted your individual carbon allotment? “People in shortage would be able to purchase additional units in the personal carbon market from those with excess to sell,” the authors assure us. What that really means is that the rich could avoid giving up their private planes since they could just buy up other people’s carbon allowances.

Apps would play a central role in enforcing PCAs. “Recent studies show how COVID-19 contact tracing apps were successfully implemented with mandatory schemes in several East Asian countries such as China, Taiwan, and South Korea,” the authors applaud. “In these countries, the apps assessed the user’s travel history and health status, playing a key role in tracking infection.”

That technology would now be the means for imposing even more profoundly intrusive information gathering about our personal conduct. The authors sigh that “the many digital-tracing algorithms that were developed and tested provide initial valuable information for the design of future apps that—for example—estimate emissions on the basis of the tracking the user’s movement history.”

In other words, Big Expert would know where you have been, what you have bought, and who you have seen.

It wouldn’t just be apps. “Advances in AI…promise to improve personalized feedback and advice. Recent advances in smarter home and transport options make it possible to easily track and manage a large share of individuals’ emissions.”  (And don’t forget about facial recognition technologies!)

“AI could be especially beneficial for PCA designs that also include food-and-consumption-related emissions.” In other words, if you eat that hamburger, we will know and deduct from your PCA accordingly! Good grief.

All of this would have once been beyond belief, the authors admit. But because millions cooperated with COVID restrictions, “people may be more prepared to accept the tracking and limitations related to PCAs to achieve a safer climate.” In other words, emboldened by our compliance with supposedly temporary public health measures, our would-be technocrat overlords see a chance to seize permanent autocratic control.

Let’s not let them. We still have the power to thwart rule by experts through democratic means. But if we lack the courage, if we acquiesce—again—to significant liberty constraints in the name of protecting health, the soft totalitarianism we will have facilitated will not be their fault. It will be ours.

Award winning author Wesley J. Smith is chairman of the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism.

‘Personal Carbon Allowances’ Pushed to Fight Global Warming (theepochtimes.com)

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday warned the United States could hit its debt limit by next month, warning Congress that she will run out of maneuvering room.

In a letter to leaders of Congress, Yellen said she can’t provide a specific date for when she’ll be not able to keep the federal government funded unless the chamber raises the debt limit. Should that happen, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, funding for Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, and Medicare will likely be halted.

“Given this uncertainty, the Treasury Department is not able to provide a specific estimate of how long the extraordinary measures will last,” the secretary wrote in the letter (pdf). “However, based on our best and most recent information, the most likely outcome is that cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted during the month of October. We will continue to update Congress as more information becomes available.”

And Yellen warned that once cash on hand and other available measures are exhausted, the United States “would be unable to meet its obligations for the first time in our history.”

The U.S. debt ceiling, which reached $22 trillion in August 2019, is the legal limit on the amount of debt the federal government can borrow, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Lawmakers missed a July deadline to extend former President Donald Trump’s two-year suspension on the borrowing limit, which was reinstated in August 2021.

For months, Yellen has warned lawmakers to raise the U.S. debt limit before the end of July and warned that a delay could cause “irreparable damage to the U.S. economy and global financial markets.”

“Waiting until the last minute to suspend or increase the debt limit can cause serious harm to business and consumer confidence, raise short-term borrowing costs for taxpayers, and negatively impact the credit rating of the United States,” Yellen also wrote in her letter. “At a time when American families, communities, and businesses are still suffering from the effects of the ongoing global pandemic, it would be particularly irresponsible to put the full faith and credit of the United States at risk.”

Her letter was dated Wednesday and was sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

In response to the warning, Pelosi told reporters this week that Congress has several means to raise or suspend the debt ceiling before funds run out.

“We’d like to do it in a bipartisan way,” Pelosi said. “We don’t ever want to put the full faith and credit [of the U.S.] in doubt.

Biden Administration Warns US May Hit Debt Limit in a Few Weeks (theepochtimes.com)

Democrats in the House Education and Labor Committee revealed how their committee would use the $761 billion from the $3.5 trillion budget resolution package, saying that among other things, the money will be used to lower the cost of childcare and provide free preschool and community college.

“The Education and Labor Committee’s portion of the Build Back Better Act makes historic investments that will lower costs for nearly every family, create good-paying jobs for American workers, and provide our nation’s children the strong foundation they deserve,” said Chairman Robert C. Scott (D-Va.) in a press statement Wednesday.

The committee will begin marking up the legislation on Thursday with members offering amendments in an attempt to change how the $761 billion is spent.

The legislation would subsidize childcare programs, making it so most families would not have to pay more than 7 percent of their income for each child’s daycare. The funding would also subsidize a pay increase for childcare workers, so facilities could hire more workers.

The funding would also subsidize universal pre-K, so all 3- and 4-year-olds could go to school.

The funding allots $111 billion to provide two years of free community colleges, invest in the Pell Grant program, and fund educational institutions that cater to blacks, Hispanics, and minorities to make quality degrees more affordable for those groups.

The committee’s bill provides $82 billion to public schools for repairs and upgrades. It will invest close to $80 billion in workforce development programs including training people for climate change energy-related jobs.

The funding will also include about $35 billion for school food programs during the school year and the summer months, as well as provide money to upgrade school kitchens.

Ranking Member of the committee Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-S.C.) slammed the committee’s bill, calling it a part of Biden’s “reckless,” “partisan” spending.

“Congressional Democrats could empower individuals and entrepreneurs to make the financial, professional, educational, and parental decisions that work best for them. Instead, Democrats are pushing an irresponsible spending scheme that will double down on the inflation crisis and allow the federal government to infringe on Americans’ liberties,” Foxx said in a press statement Wednesday.

Democrats are pressing forward with their $3.5 trillion budget resolution even though there is opposition within their own party, with some moderates saying this level of spending will increase inflation and saddle future generations with federal debt.

Senators Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has repeatedly said he does not think that this level of spending is wise and his party should put a pause on the legislation until after the pandemic and after assessing the recent inflation.

Republicans have all said they will oppose the budget resolution, but Democrats do not need the GOP to vote in favor of the bill if they get all 50 Democrat senators to vote in favor of the package.

Top Democrat leaders have shared confidence that their party will rally together to pass the massive funding bill.

Schumer was asked by a local ABC news reporter on Sunday if he can convince all members of his party, particularly Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who has also said she will not support the resolution, to vote in favor of the massive spending bill.

“I’m going to do my best and you know so far, after some discussion, and some compromise they have gone along with previous bills. Let’s hope it happens again,” said Schumer. “I have a caucus that runs from Bernie Sanders on the left to Joe Manchin, on the right. How do I bring them all together when you only have 50 votes and every one of them counts?”

Meanwhile, Sanders said he speaks directly to caucus members, in an effort to further negotiations on the budget bill.

“After a lot of negotiations and pain—and I’m going to be on the phone all week—what we are going to do is pass the most comprehensive bill for working families that this country has seen,” Sanders told The New York Time

House Education and Labor Committee Reveals How They Would Spend Their Portion of the $3.5 Trillion (theepochtimes.com)

Every once in a while, I’d love to write you and just tell you about how nice of a day it was and send you pictures of my puppies, but nooo, some idiot always has to try and ruin my day. But this one is pretty funny. Rick Wilson is a co-founder of the Lincoln Project – the group of “Republicans” who spent tens of millions of dollars against President Trump and America First candidates last year. When asked about my race, here’s what this so-called “Republican strategist” had to say:  “Loomer may be vile, personally repugnant, wildly immoral and crazier than a latrine rat, but Republican primary elections now reward rather than punish that kind of behavior.” There is some truth to Wilson’s quote if you apply it to his work with the Lincoln Project. Acting vile, immoral and betraying principles for profit is ABSOLUTELY admired and rewarded on the left. Before Wilson and shady friends formed the Lincoln Project, Rick Wilson’s career was at an obvious low point. As the New York Post reported, before finding financial success stabbing President Trump in the back, Wilson owed $389k in federal taxes and in 2016, his bank started to foreclose on his home. Even American Express went after Wilson after he couldn’t pay the $25,729 he racked up on his card. I’d bet that Wilson is out of financial problems now that the Lincoln Project has raised nearly $100 million from the radical left. That’s just a guess, because the left loves and rewards a turncoat. But as they say, “easy come, easy go,” Wilson and his Lincoln Project buddies took a hard crash when one of their co-founders, John Weaver, got caught making sexual overtures to a young man. No, wait, I’m sorry. Rick Wilson’s friend and Lincoln Project co-founder was accused by TWENTY-ONE young men of inappropriate sexual conduct – even pressuring them for sexual favors in exchange for jobs! So sure, the “Republican” Lincoln Project guy can call me and any other woman a “crazy latrine rat” all he wants, it just goes to show the hypocrisy and the lack of character that has infected so many so-called leaders in our party. Many RINO turncoats like Rick Wilson have always lacked the moral foundation to lead. They’re not fit to be men, much less Republicans. Others like my oppenent Dan Webster lack the energy to fight and lead in these perilous times. They slip in, cling to power and sit back for decades or more hoping no one notices they have done nothing to protect or serve our nation. While we can’t do much for Rick Wilson except pray for the man, we can do something about the Dan Webster’s of our party . . . replace them. And you can help me with that. Thanks again for everything that you do. Respectfully, Laura Loomer Paid for by Laura Loomer for Congress IncCONTRIBUTIONS TO LAURA LOOMER FOR CONGRESS INC ARE NOT TAX DEDUCTIBLE FOR FEDERAL INCOME TAX PURPOSES. CONTRIBUTIONS FROM CORPORATIONS, LABOR UNIONS, FEDERAL CONTRACTORS, AND FOREIGN NATIONALS ARE PROHIBITED.

https://libersend.lauraloomerforcongress.com/w/N5tGKaAJQ59UnCbG05xnVA

Inflation threatens Biden’s credibility on economics as he attempts to pivot to domestic issues

President Joe Biden is working to pivot away from the Afghanistan crisis to focus on his domestic agenda, but polling suggests American voters are sensing a looming economic crisis.

Ninety percent of registered voters reported paying more for goods they regularly purchase, according to a survey of 1,200 people commissioned by Heritage Action, a conservative group. Only 29 percent said their personal finances are better off today than they were a year ago, and 65 percent believe that Biden’s multitrillion-dollar plan will worsen inflation.

The Biden administration has made a concerted effort to pivot to domestic policies this week. The White House press briefing on Wednesday opened with a discussion of plans to tackle inflation and an explanation by Biden’s top economic aide Brian Deese that the spike in grocery prices was overblown. The administration also released a plan that it said will alleviate the rising costs of meat, which it believes is driving inflation concerns.

Biden’s pivot to domestic issues comes in the wake of the administration’s bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, which left hundreds of Americans—including dozens of elementary school students—stranded. Polling suggests, however, that prioritizing trillions of dollars in social spending is already unpopular with voters, who fear it will exacerbate inflation even further.

The Heritage Action poll is one of many showing Biden faces headwinds as he seeks to pivot to his multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better agenda.

The American Action Network, a conservative outside group closely aligned with House Republicans, also polled seven swing House districts held by Democrats and found that Biden’s personal image and political agenda are deeply unpopular.

Across the seven districts, AAN found that Biden’s job approval is 43 percent. The swing-district Democrats they polled, including Reps. Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.) and Josh Harder (D., Calif.), “are all hovering at or near 45 percent in a head-to-head congressional ballot.”

The Biden administration also faces political challenges advancing the president’s domestic agenda through Congress. Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) this week repeated his opposition to Biden’s proposed $3.5 trillion in social spending, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), who crafted the spending plan, indicated there would be no flexibility on the overall price tag.

Voters polled by AAN across the seven districts opposed the spending plan by a 54 percent to 36 percent margin.

Voters Concerned Trillions in Domestic Spending Will Fuel Inflation, Polls Show (freebeacon.com)

The paths of the Senate-passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJ) and Sen. Sanders’ (I-Vt.) $3.5 trillion spending package have been fraught with difficulties since their introduction, facing pushback by moderate Democrats and conservative Republicans in the House and Senate. Now, Democrats are looking to a new strategy to pass these broad pieces of legislation: Louisiana’s humanitarian crisis in the aftermath of the Category 4 Hurricane Ida.

Both pieces of legislation are packed with new environmental programs. For example, the IIJ would direct millions towards research and development of low-emission school buses and ferries and millions more towards expanding electric car charging locations.

After the Senate’s passage of the legislation, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a press conference that the IIJ had some good provisions for addressing climate change, but that it didn’t go far enough.

Sanders’ budget resolution would indeed do much more. In total, the proposal would devote a total of $265 billion toward what Sanders called an “extremely aggressive [transformation] away from fossil fuels in the U.S.”

Sanders also proposed that with the funding in the proposal Democrats would create a “Civilian Climate Corps,” which he said would give young people the opportunity “to get decent pay and to roll up their sleeves … in order to combat climate change.” Sanders implied that this “Climate Corps” would help in the “extremely aggressive” transformation away from fossil fuels, but he did not elaborate on the way that the group would help achieve that.

Initially, Pelosi planned on bringing both pieces of legislation through the House for a vote at the same time as part of what Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has called a “two-track approach.”

This approach has met with far more challenges than Democrat leadership originally expected. While the IIJ, passed by all 50 Democrats and 19 Republicans in the Senate, has faced comparatively few challenges, this expansive budget resolution has proved far more controversial.

Throughout the August recess, the White House and Democrat House leaders were in drawn-out negotiations with a group of moderates who threatened to derail the process. They refused to vote for the budget resolution before passing the infrastructure bill, recoiling at the thought of making what they saw as a “bipartisan victory for our nation” linked to the much more partisan budget. Pelosi originally brushed off these efforts as “amateur.”

The moderates refused to relent, however, and Pelosi was forced to make an eleventh-hour deal with the moderates the morning of the House vote to advance the resolution. This deal satiated the moderates, who voted unanimously with their party to advance the resolution on the evening of Aug. 24.

But trials are not over for President Biden nor congressional leadership. Because of the deal that Pelosi made with the moderates, House Democrats now need to work at a breakneck, unheard of speed to draft legislation before Sept. 27, when Pelosi promised a vote on the IIJ. Moderates in the House still pose a challenge, as they likely will not vote for the resolution before the IIJ is passed.

Beyond this, the quickly-crafted bill must satisfy moderate members of the Senate. This will be difficult, as both Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) have emphatically rejected the huge spending package.

So Democrats are turning to a new excuse to get these new moderate holdouts on board: Hurricane Ida.

Chuck Schumer said in a press conference: “Global warming is upon us, and it’s going to get worse, and worse, and worse unless we do something about it. That’s why it’s so imperative to pass the two bills.”

On Twitter, President Biden expressed the same sentiment. Biden wrote: “The past few days of Hurricane Ida, wildfires in the West, and unprecedented flash floods in New York and New Jersey are another reminder that the climate crisis is here. We need to be better prepared. That’s why I’m urging Congress to act and pass my Build Back Better plan.”

Tuesday morning, President Biden met briefly with reporters outside the south portico of the White House on his way for a visit to New York and New Jersey.

When asked what he hopes to see on the trip, Biden said, “I’m hoping to see the things we’re going to be able to fix permanently with the bill that we have for infrastructure.”

Asked how he’s going to convince hesitant Democrats to vote for his broad policy agenda, Biden expressed optimism that both bills would pass, saying, “The sun is going to come out tomorrow.”

In spite of the president’s optimism, the challenges facing his party in Congress are great. Over the next month, Democrats will need to draft the spending and tax bill, deal with a brewing battle with Republicans over the debt ceiling, and get moderate holdouts on board. This last will be the most difficult challenge, as Manchin and Sinema have expressed opposition to the price of the bill rather than its contents. On the other hand, progressives are unlikely to support any lower than $3.5 trillion—Sanders’ original proposal was a veritable progressive wishlist, with almost $6 trillion in spending; for these progressives, accepting the lower limits of the final cut of the resolution was already a significant compromise.

It is unclear whether Manchin and Sinema will be swayed by these efforts to link the budget resolution to the ongoing disaster in the gulf coast states, but because of their expressed opposition to the price tag, the effort is unlikely to be successful.

Rather, it is likely that moderates in both chambers will join with Republicans to call for a pause on the spending bill in order to craft hurricane relief legislation. For many, especially in affected areas, immediate relief will likely seem far more pressing than efforts at long-term prevention.

Democrats Use Ida to Push $5 Trillion of Spending (theepochtimes.com)

Patriots are mobilizing all over the country to defeat Joe Biden and reverse his failed policies. As America’s Sheriff, I’m supporting Create Change Now’s nationwide effort to stop the oncoming socialism train in its tracks by educating, motivating, and mobilizing American conservative patriots. There’s too much at stake in 2022 and beyond for us to leave anything to chance. The professional progressive left spends millions of dollars organizing, training, and mobilizing their socialist foot soldiers, and we must beat them at their own game. I’m proud to support Create Change Now as I travel the country firing up American patriots. So join me by making your immediate, direct investment of $25, $50, $100, or even $1,000 toward their work today! The integrity of our elections is in question. Radical leftist politicians are loosening reasonable voter protections, and unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats are changing the rules of elections while voters are casting ballots. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have blown open the gates at our Southern Border as waves of unvetted illegal aliens stream into our country. And Joe Biden’s failed withdrawal from Afghanistan further destabilizes the Middle East and sends a poor message to our allies while emboldening our enemies. A little more than a week before the 20th Anniversary of the horrific terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. All while far-left politicians are demoralizing and defunding law enforcement in Congress and State Capitols across the nation. Failed progressive “leadership” is an absolute nightmare! Create Change Now is slamming the brakes on the far-left’s radical agenda by empowering and equipping patriots like you and me with the tools to fight and win. The radical left has an army of Saul Alinsky-inspired professional activists who mobilize voters in their communities. All too often, that organizational capacity gives them an edge over patriots like you and me. While we don’t have an army of paid, professional agitators to get out the votes of the Silent Majority, we do have an influential organization called Create Change Now that’s working overtime to stem the tide of progressivism on our shores. To save the greatest nation in the history of mankind from the clutches of radical progressives, we must organize millions of patriots and stop the left at the ballot box. I support Create Change Now’s mission, and I hope you’ll join me with your generous investment of $25, $50, $100, or even $1,000. Anything you can give would be a shot in the arm for Create Change Now’s mission to train, organize, and mobilize millions of patriots and stop socialism in its tracks. You and I have a lot of work to do between now and November 2022, and it starts with supporting my friends at Create Change Now. Join me by supporting Create Change Now before Joe Biden and the radical left drives our country off the cliff! Thank you. In Liberty, Sheriff David Clarke, Jr. American Patriot FIGHT THE RADICAL LEFT

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The Biden administration’s recent visit to China has highlighted Washington’s failure to fix the climate change problem.

Most scientists say greenhouse gas emissions (GhGs) are causing irreversible global warming, and if we don’t make changes quickly, like burning less fossil fuel, then irreversible climate catastrophe will result. China is the world’s biggest emitter by far, but shows no interest in scaling back despite abject pleas from America’s climate czar, John Kerry.

Joe Biden got elected promising to make the changes necessary to avoid that end. But he failed, and for two main reasons. First, his administration is encouraging OPEC countries to pump more oil, which will decrease its global price and increase consumption. More consumption results in more emissions.

Second, President Biden is making unilateral climate concessions that decrease American production of oil, which will let Beijing off the hook. China emits about double the greenhouse gas of America. After surrendering all of America’s bargaining leverage, the Chinese regime will be increasingly empowered to force economically-debilitating emissions concessions on other countries. America will then be too weak to force China to decrease emissions.

Thus, the main effect of Biden’s so-called environmentalism is to squelch American economic competitiveness, which we need to ease Beijing into responsible environmental stewardship, not to mention protect the world from the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) militarism and totalitarian rule. Biden is therefore not only doing too little to stop climate change, he’s making it worse by allowing Xi Jinping to increase his power. Biden’s environmental supporters should be outraged, but they are not. So Biden is responding to their false impression that if America leads through unilateral emissions reductions, the world will follow. That’s not going to happen.

Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, will eagerly fill any energy market that the United States, from the goodness of our hearts, abandons. The CCP, desperate for justificatory economic growth and in military competition with the United States, will continue in its emissions, ignoring past commitments to hit peak carbon in 2030, and neutrality by 2060.

To understand why, consider this fact: The CCP plans to race America economically, until China defeats us. America’s belief in democracy, and the CCP’s power-hungry totalitarianism, are on a collision course. Only one will survive.

The CCP commitments on emissions reductions are cheap talk, and like many of its agreements, are unworthy of the paper on which they are written. The regime’s repeated abrogation of promises include a failure to support the Paris Agreement of 2015. China has funded almost 70 percent of the world’s coal plant construction over the past decade, in 152 countries, through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also called One Belt, One Road). Building power plants is good for China’s economy, so the regime wants to continue.

Yet, America keeps returning to China, foolishly seeking engagement and cooperation, only to have its hopes dashed, again and again. The more we seek cooperation, the weaker we look, and the more latitude Xi Jinping realizes he has.

The CCP’s crushing power against Biden was on display for all to see during John Kerry’s humiliating four-day visit to Tianjin, China, from Aug. 31 to Sept. 3. The visit served as an occasion for Chinese officials, including politburo member Yang Jiechi on a video call, to publicly lecture Kerry about America’s supposed lack of cooperation with China, which he said needs to be rectified if the United States hopes for any ostensible climate cooperation in return.

On Sept. 1, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Kerry that “cooperation on climate change cannot be divorced from the overall situation of China-U.S. relations.”

Beijing is thus denying that China itself needs climate cooperation, which is a form of madman brinkmanship that walks the world to the brink of climate disaster, as if the CCP does not at all mind plunging off the climate cliff. The regime’s goal is to use environmental scare tactics to force America and its allies into yet more unilateral concessions, and in the process, to get America’s grudging acquiescence to the regime’s territorial expansion and violation of human rights.

More specifically, the CCP’s demands are an end to three American defenses of democracy. First, it wants an end to sanctions against Chinese officials, who have committed the Uyghur genocide and abrogated the rights of Hongkongers. Second, it wants the United States to ease counter-espionage against Chinese spies. And third, it wants us to abandon the defense of Taiwan and essentially surrender the island democracy over to the whims of the regime.

Concessions on any of these points would be unconscionable, and a signal to the world that America has lost in its global defense of democracy.

The CCP’s climate brinkmanship rests on the threat that America will boil from the climate change that China’s industrial growth is causing. America will choke on the smog of its own intemperate and immoral consumerism, that has long taken advantage of the cheap labor and low environmental standards to be found in China. Those low standards shaved a few pennies off the price of our Amazon packages, but at the cost of American industrial strength and jobs in the heartland. They destroyed our economic defenses against the regime’s predatory trade practices.

The CCP “hopes the U.S. is woolly-headed enough to trade away its security priorities for unenforceable climate promises,” writes the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, which was critical of Kerry’s climate negotiations.

The framing of Kerry’s visit to China illustrates America’s weak position. On Sept. 2, Kerry was photographed in Tianjin, far from Beijing, the center of power in China. He sat alone at a plain table with a modest American flag in front of a small folding screen on which was a Chinese painting of a peacock. The screen was dwarfed by a large wall made of cheap paneling. A garish blue plate gave Kerry’s name in small English letters, with larger Chinese lettering at the top.

After being lectured like a schoolboy, Kerry consoled himself to reporters, saying that most of his meetings were at a very detailed level with Xie Zhenhua. But, Xie is a relatively low-level Chinese negotiator, whereas Kerry holds a cabinet-level position. Thus already at the negotiating table, China has forced a concession onto the Biden administration. As the more senior negotiating partner, Kerry is likely to reveal America’s bottom line in Tianjin, whereas Xie must check any proposal through layers of bureaucracy, thus protecting Xi Jinping’s moving bottom line.

The Chinese regime is outmaneuvering the United States on climate negotiations, in Afghanistan, in Hong Kong, and at the United Nations, to name just a few places. America must get back on track, and quickly, or there will be no returning from the cliff over which we plunge, alone, leaving Beijing to rule this smoggy world.

Beijing Cements Washington’s Climate Fail (theepochtimes.com)

FedEx Corp shareholders should reject founder and CEO Fred Smith’s $54 million pay package because the logistics company gave him stock options after scrapping a cash bonus in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, only to reinstate it later, the Teamsters labor union said on Friday.

Smith, whose net worth is pegged by Forbes at $5.8 billion, was given a special option award “for motivation and retention purposes” in June 2020 after FedEx canceled a $3.4 million cash bonus for him, citing uncertainty around the COVID-19 pandemic.

Those options were worth $6.4 million as of the end of May, the close of FedEx’s fiscal year, more than doubling in value since Smith received them. As more people shipped and received items during the pandemic and FedEx’s business rebounded, the Memphis, Tennessee-based company reinstated Smith’s $3.4 million cash bonus in December but also allowed him to keep the special stock options.

This amounted to “double-dipping” that undercuts the pay-for-performance structure of Smith’s compensation, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which is bargaining on behalf of FedEx employees at a freight facility and is an investor in FedEx through pension and benefit funds, argued in a letter to shareholders on Friday, which was seen by Reuters.

“Having founded the company, been chief executive since 1998 and holding an 8 percent equity stake, surely CEO Smith has the appropriate incentives to drive shareholder value,” the Teamsters general secretary-treasurer, Ken Hall, wrote in the letter.

The union is urging shareholders to vote against the company’s executive pay plan at the company’s annual meeting on Sept. 27. As with most companies, the vote at FedEx is non-binding.

FedEx declined to comment beyond what it has disclosed on executive pay in securities filings. In its informational disclosure to investors, FedEx said a significant portion of executive compensation is “at risk” and dependent on the company hitting performance goals and share price targets.

FedEx Chief Operating Officer Rajesh Subramaniam, the company’s highest-paid executive after Smith, also had his $2 million cash bonus reinstated after he received a similar special option award and stock grant worth approximately $6 million at the end of May.

Many U.S. companies tweaked the pay of executives during the pandemic, easing performance targets and even giving them pay raises. Investors then voted down a record number of CEO pay packages at their annual shareholder meetings earlier this year.

Although most shareholder votes on pay are non-binding, some companies have tweaked executive pay when faced with investor opposition. For example, in 2018 Walt Disney Co renegotiated the compensation of its chief executive at the time, Bob Iger, to toughen performance targets after shareholders voted down his pay.

The Teamsters acknowledged in the letter that Smith’s options had yet to vest and that there was still uncertainty over the value of that grant. Smith also accepted a 91 percent cut in his annual salary during some of the last fiscal year. His salary was $966,125.

FedEx Faces Labor Union Challenge Over Billionaire CEO’s Pay (theepochtimes.com)

Friday’s non-farm payrolls report—a barometer of America’s labor market health—not only reflected below-expectations job growth in August but also showed unemployment rising for black workers, teenagers, and those with some college or an associate degree.

The Labor Department’s jobs report, released Sept. 3, showed that non-farm payroll employment rose by 235,000 in August, down from an upwardly revised 1.05 million jobs added in July and far below the FactSet-provided consensus forecasts of 750,000.

“With a big shortfall in jobs creation or recovery in August, it appears the Delta variant has infected the U.S. economy. Payrolls growth came in well below expectations and at the lowest level since January,” Bankrate senior economic analyst Mark Hamrick said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times.

The overall unemployment rate fell to 5.2 percent in August from 5.4 percent in July, while the total number of unemployed people edged down to 8.4 million.

“This latest employment snapshot interrupts the process of substantial further progress as called for by the Federal Reserve as it considers dialing back on boosting the economy. The unemployment rate at 5.2 percent still has some way to before matching the 3.5 percent low notched before the pandemic. Even so, it is the lowest level since the pandemic began,” Hamrick added.

Yet the decline in unemployment was not universal across all groups surveyed for the report. From July to August, the unemployment rate rose for blacks (from 8.2 percent to 8.8 percent), teenagers aged 16–19 (from 9.6 percent to 11.2 percent), and those with some college or an associate degree (from 5.0 percent to 5.1 percent), according to the report’s more granular breakdown.

While it’s normal for unemployment rates among all groups to see upward reversals amid a broader downtrend, some economists expressed concern about the latest figures.

“The rise in Black unemployment in August is certainly troubling, considering their unemployment rates were already much higher than any other group,” Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote on Twitter.

The slowdown in jobs growth was most notable in the leisure and hospitality sector, which recorded 2.1 million job gains between February and July but came in flat in August.

Retail trade led the way in employment losses, shedding 28,500 jobs, followed by temporary help services (-5,800 jobs), and health care and social assistance (-4,600).

Private-sector job growth contributed 243,000 in job gains, while the government sector shed 8,000 positions, for a net gain of 235,000 in August.

So far this year, non-farm job growth has averaged 586,000 per month and, while employment has risen by 17 million since April 2020, it remains down by 5.3 million, or 3.5 percent, from its pre-pandemic level in February 2020.

Commenting on the report, President Joe Biden said at a Sept. 3 briefing at the White House that the overall picture the report paints is one of “an economic recovery that is durable and strong.”

“While I know some wanted to see a larger number today, and so did I, what we’ve seen this year is a continued growth, month after month, in job creation,” Biden added. “We are adding jobs, not losing them.”

Biden blamed the Delta surge for why the jobs report wasn’t stronger.

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, reacted to the jobs report, writing on Twitter, “There’s more than just COVID behind this terrible jobs report.”

“President Biden’s ‘worker-less recovery’ is hammering both Main Street and families as businesses fight to fill jobs and families struggle with rising prices. No wonder the recovery is stalling, and consumer optimism has dropped alarmingly,” he stated, noting also “no progress” on lifting the labor force participation rate, which in August held steady at 61.7 percent.

The uptick in black unemployment challenges the Federal Reserve’s goal that its “maximum employment” objective also be “broad and inclusive.” The figure creates tough optics for the Fed as it considers pulling back on stimulus at its upcoming policy meeting at the end of September.

Unemployment Rises Among Blacks, Teenagers, and Those With Associate Degree (theepochtimes.com)

A coalition of Oregon police officers and firefighters have sued Gov. Kate Brown over a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for state employees.

The plaintiffs—including the Oregon Fraternal Order of Police and the Kingsley Firefighters Association—argued in a lawsuit filed Friday in a Jefferson County court (pdf) that Brown’s executive order violates a number of laws and want it blocked.

“Plaintiffs seek an order declaring EO No. 21-29 is unenforceable because it conflicts with Oregon statutes, would result in a common law wrongful discharge of the Plaintiffs, conflicts with the Oregon Constitution’s guarantee of free expression, and conflicts with the United States Constitution guarantee of equal protection, free exercise, and due process,” the complaint states.

Brown issued an executive order (pdf) on Aug. 13 that imposed a mandatory vaccine requirement on all executive branch employees. In the order, Brown said that, to date, around 70 percent of the state’s executive branch employees had taken the vaccine voluntarily, prompted in part by state efforts like organizing onsite vaccine clinics and financial incentives.

Citing the rise in COVID-19 infections and noting that both private and public employers across the United States have imposed mandates, Brown said it was time for tougher measures in Oregon.

“With the Delta variant raging in Oregon, with the state’s ability to fully return to in-person work continuing to be hampered by the risks from COVID-19, having implemented a series of incentives aimed at achieving voluntary compliance, and with full FDA approval of the COVID-19 vaccine expected within weeks, the time has come for any remaining state employees and those who work alongside them in state government to get vaccinated,” she wrote in the order.

Ten days after Brown’s order, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave full regulatory approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

The order gives Oregon state workers until Oct. 18 to provide proof of vaccination or face consequences that could include dismissal.

The plaintiffs argued in the complaint that enforcement of the order would result in wrongful termination, and they have asked the court to declare it unlawful and block its enforcement.

“The individual plaintiffs are Executive Branch employees … who want to exercise control over their own medical treatment and are being forced to choose between their rights privileges and liberties as citizens on the one hand and their employment, careers, and financial futures on the other,” the complaint states.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the governor’s office for comment on the suit.

Brown’s spokesperson Liz Merah defended the executive order in a statement to The Associated Press.

“Given the seriousness of the situation, employer vaccine requirements have become an important tool, and state government plays a part. It’s critical to protect state workers, workplaces, and facilities, as well as members of the public who use state services,” she told the outlet.

The lawsuit comes as Oregon has faced a sharp rise in COVID-19 infections in recent weeks, with a seven-day average of 2,222 daily cases on Sept. 2, compared to fewer than 500 in mid-July, according to state health authorities.

Oregon Police and Firefighters Sue Governor Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate (theepochtimes.com)

Susan Wild earned rental income through unlicensed LLC as she championed landlord relief fund

A swing-district Pennsylvania Democrat collected tens of thousands of dollars in rental income through an unlicensed corporation, an apparent violation of local law.

Rep. Susan Wild collected up to $110,000 in rental income through Casa Stimus, a corporation that lost its LLC status in 2016, according to Washington, D.C., business records. The city revoked the LLC’s entity status just one year after Wild and her sister established the corporation, as it failed to file the “periodic reports” required by local law.

Under D.C. law, a revoked entity “shall be void and all powers conferred upon such entity are declared inoperative,” meaning “entities in revoked status may not operate in the District until they are reinstated.” Wild’s congressional financial disclosures, however, show that she raked in substantial cash through the defunct company. Wild, who is listed as the registered agent of the defunct LLC, did not respond to a request for comment.

Wild pushed for taxpayer-funded relief for landlords as she benefited from the lucrative rental business. In March, the Democrat called federal assistance for landlords “a key part of our state recovery,” but failed to acknowledge her status as a landlord in public remarks. She is not the only House Democrat to conceal such a conflict of interest amid a pandemic movement to cancel rent payments. Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) reported up to $65,000 in combined 2020 rental income at the same time they backed legislation that would eliminate rent and establish a “landlord relief fund.”

Washington, D.C., law says “civil fines and penalties” may be imposed on an LLC that “does business in the District of Columbia,” but “does not have a certificate of organization filed.” The city did not return a request for comment about Wild’s financial dealings.

According to local records, Wild inherited her D.C. property from her late mother in October 2015, one month before she established the LLC, which uses the property as its business address. Wild owns a 50 percent ownership stake in the real estate—which is valued at between $250,001 and $500,000 according to her latest financial disclosure. The home’s appraised value is nearly $760,000, D.C. real estate records show.

Wild is expected to face a competitive reelection battle in the midterms after winning the state’s Seventh Congressional District by just 3 points in November. Local business owner Lisa Scheller, who lost to Wild in 2020, has announced that she will seek the GOP’s 2022 nomination.

PA Dem Collected $110,000 Through Defunct Corporation (freebeacon.com)

Joe Biden’s Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman purchased shares in a fund invested in Tencent, a tech firm flagged as a “tool” of the Chinese Communist Party and its military by the U.S. State Department, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal. 

Financial disclosures reveal Sherman purchasing up to $50,000 in shares of Matthews Asia Dividend Fund, which counts Tencent as one of its top positions, on May 7th 2021. The transaction came roughly one month after Sherman’s Senate confirmation for her critical State Department role.

A separate financial disclosure reveals Sherman purchasing additional shares in the fund, valued up to $15,000, on August 17th amidst the White House’s Afghanistan debacle.

Tencent, however, has been flagged the U.S. State Department as a “tool” of the Chinese Communist Party, counting many powerful party members among their executive ranks.

The firm has also been involved in the “research, production, and repair of weapons and equipment for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)” and has a “deep record of cooperation and collaboration” with China’s espionage operations, former Assistant Secretary for International Security and Nonproliferation Christopher Ford revealed.

The State Department has also linked Tencent to the regime’s build-up of “technology-facilitated surveillance and social control,” as the company has “no meaningful ability to tell the Chinese Communist Party “no” if officials decide to ask for their assistance – e.g., in the form of access to foreign technologies, access to foreign networks, useful information about foreign commercial counterparties, insight into patterns of foreign commerce, or specific information about the profiles, activity, or locations of foreign users of Chinese-hosted or -facilitated social media, computer or smartphone applications, or telecommunications.”

The fund, which has over 22 percent of its investments in Chinese companies, counts Tencent as one of its top five holdings in its portfolio.

The unearthed investment follows a National Pulse report exposing Sherman’s praise for Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping as “extraordinary” and participation in trips to China subsidized by communist influence groups. Her husband, former National Journal Correspondent Bruce Stokes, has also taken trips from the same Chinese Communist Party-linked group – the China United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF) – in exchange for “favorable coverage” of the regime.

EXCLUSIVE: Joe Biden’s Deputy Secretary Of State Just Invested In a Firm Flagged As A ‘Tool’ Of The Chinese Communist Party. (thenationalpulse.com)

Two weeks ago in this space, I wrote about the foolishness of a political leader like President Joe Biden who is so ideologically rigid, so thoroughly self-identified with his beliefs about the world that, when those beliefs turn out to be wrong, he can never afford to acknowledge the truth.

This week, Biden provided yet another illustration of this foolishness by an address to the nation, occasioned by what anyone could see was America’s worst military disaster in nearly half a century.

Yet not only did he fail to acknowledge the disaster, he treated it as if it were a triumph.

“Last night in Kabul,” he began, “the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan. The longest war in American history. We completed one of the biggest airlifts in history with more than 120,000 people evacuated to safety. That number is more than double what most experts thought were [sic] possible. No nation, no nation has ever done anything like it in all of history. Only the United States had the capacity and the will and ability to do it, and we did it today.”

Then he continued: “The extraordinary success of this mission was due to the incredible skill, bravery and selfless courage of the United States military and our diplomats and intelligence professionals.”

Even allowing for the fact that he knew he could rely on a sycophantic media to back up or rationalize this patently false claim to “success,” or least decline to notice its falseness, it was a powerful testimony to the capacity for self-delusion of the modern ideologue—both of him who made the claim and those millions who are presumably still willing to support him in that self-delusion.

A few weeks earlier, right around the time that Biden was assuring us that “the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely,” I also wrote of how the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the military services, General Mark Milley, had also become a prisoner of ideology, since he appeared to have acquiesced in the hard-line Democratic ideologues’ view of Trump supporters as a threat to national security.

This delusion, presumably shared by other senior officers in the armed forces, was potentially even more dangerous than that of Biden about the Taliban, but it also turned out to have foreshadowed it.

You could tell by the transparently political happy-talk briefing given by General Hank Taylor and Pentagon press secretary John Kirby a week before the curtain fell on the American military presence in Afghanistan. (We still don’t know, as of this writing, how many other Americans were left behind there when the last military transport took off.)

“I’m pleased to report our best departure results since evacuation operations began have happened in the last 24 hours,” burbled General Taylor. “Where 37 US Military aircraft, 32 C-17s, five C-130s departed from Kabul with approximately 12,700 personnel. On top of that, 57 coalition and partner aircraft left Kabul aircraft with 8900 personnel.”

He was speaking before the deaths of 13 American service personnel in the suicide bombing at Kabul Airport on Aug. 26. That tragic event caused General Milley to feel “pain and anger” but no regrets for anything he had done.

The “pain and anger,” he said, “comes from the same as the grieving families”—which seemed to rule out the possibility that some of the anger of the grieving families was directed at himself.

“This is tough stuff,” he explained. “War is hard. It’s vicious. It’s brutal. It’s unforgiving.”

No kidding! Don’t look to him to take any responsibility for those 13 deaths, however. “War” was to blame, not he.

In the olden days, losing generals would expect to be relieved of their command—and be thankful they weren’t living in Roman times when they would also have been expected to fall on their sword to atone for the dishonor of losing.

As late as 1757, the British put Admiral Byng up before a firing squad for a relatively trivial loss in the Seven Years’ War. Voltaire responded by saying that it was good to kill an admiral from time to time, “pour encourager les autres”—to instill a bit more intestinal fortitude in the surviving admirals.

Yet apparently in our age of ideology, when no one with the “right” political views can ever be wrong, no American general will even lose his job or his general’s pension over the military debacle in Afghanistan—though a lowly lieutenant colonel, who thought and said publicly that somebody higher up ought to pay a price for the disaster, was relieved of duty and forced to resign his commission.

It shouldn’t be necessary to say it, but someone who can never admit to his mistakes can never learn from them.

That’s presumably why we’ve been making the same mistake in waging our American wars since Korea—the mistake of not realizing that if you’re not winning, you’re losing.

General Douglas MacArthur warned us against this mistake when he was fired by President Harry Truman for believing that he had been put in charge of UN Forces in the Korean war to win it, not to create bargaining chips for politicians to trade away in negotiations with the enemy.

“In war,” as General MacArthur put it, “there is no substitute for victory.”

But the lesson of his dismissal for all our generals since, down to General Milley, has been that you can never get in trouble, no matter how badly you screw up, for agreeing with the civilian leadership, only for disagreeing, never for being too cautious or complacent, only for being too bold.

Only, that is, for wanting to win. For it is boldness that wins wars. Not caution. Not complacency.

With leaders who can never admit they were wrong, we can expect to do a lot more losing.

Afghanistan Brings Disaster, but no Responsibility is Taken (theepochtimes.com)

When I was at the Orange County Register writing unsigned editorials, from 1987 to 2016, we made sure always to oppose every local tax increase—including “bonds,” which I called “delayed tax increases,” because that’s where the money eventually comes from. Local and state governments can’t print their own money, unlike the federal government.

Although we sometimes lost, especially with school bonds, we usually defeated the increased levies. Even when we lost, every local government knew it would face the gauntlet of several editorials, and likely signed columns, blasting them for assaulting the taxpayers.

By contrast, the Los Angeles Times backed almost every tax increase put before it. The result is Orange County has lower taxes and is much more livable than Los Angeles.

That’s confirmed by a new study (pdf) by the California Tax Foundation, titled “Local Tax Trends in California: A Survey of Ballot Measure Elections from 2010-2010.” It found over that decade such taxes increased by $8.82 billion a year statewide. Voters rejected just $3.17 billion in tax increases.

On the positive side, Proposition 13 saved taxpayers $2.4 billion a year. The 1978 tax limitation measure requires two-thirds voter approval for taxes earmarked for special purposes. But if only a majority vote had been required, taxes would have gone up that higher amount.

I gleaned several key things from this study. Here’s some of my analysis that goes beyond their data.

Although the study does not break down the 58 counties, it does so for seven regions. The Southern California region includes Orange County and the two areas most like it: San Diego County and the Inland Empire. These areas are largely urban but more conservative and Republican than the rest of the state’s populous areas.

Hotel Tax

Consider the voter approval of hotel taxes, also called the Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT). These are popular because the locals “don’t pay for them,” only visitors who don’t live and vote there—except tourists and convention groups sure do consider price. A higher TOT means fewer people not only occupying hotel rooms, but fewer patronizing local restaurants, tourist attractions, and stores.

Here’s the tally of the seven regions for 2010-2020, from lowest passage rate to highest:

It’s a textbook in social illusions. Los Angeles and the Bay Area, with passage rates above 80 percent, are plagued with increasing homelessness and crime. They “solve” the problem with higher taxes to pay for more social programs, which don’t work. But the taxes make living there harder.

Meanwhile the Central Valley and Southern California, with passage rates around the 50 percent rate, are doing much better.

Utility Users Taxes

Another tax localities love to impose is Utility Users Taxes (UUT). Hey, it’s just a user fee. You don’t want the infrastructure to collapse so you miss the latest Netflix binge, do you?

Here’s the breakdown, from lowest passage rate to highest:

Aside from the anomaly of Northern California passing all its UUT increases, the numbers show more reluctance when a tax boost hits voters’ own pocketbooks directly. Yet the general pattern holds, with Southern California and the Central Valley more reluctant to jack up taxes than Los Angeles and the Bay Area.

Conclusion: Will It Continue?

Next year brings another election cycle. Taxes and bonds again will clog ballots. But will these high passage rates continue?

They may not. Especially after COVID-19 slammed family and business budgets, Californians seem more skeptical of taxes, and of government in general. The word also is getting out that, as Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association puts it, nowadays all tax increases go to the bloated pensions of retired government workers—that is, to those no longer performing actual services for the public.

With kids back in the classroom, school districts soon will have accurate numbers on how many kids now are being homeschooled. EdSource reported in July, “During the height of the pandemic, almost 35,000 California families filed an affidavit with the state to open a private home school,” more than double those of the previous year.

Public schools will have difficulty advancing tax increases if attendance numbers are down. And it’ll also be hard to convince homeschooling families to back tax increases for services they won’t even see.

Local Tax Increases Slam Californians (theepochtimes.com)

CHICAGO—Cook County’s latest property tax hike disproportionately affected black and Latino communities, according to the first-of-its-kind analysis under Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas published Aug. 17.

“Our research shows that inequities in the property tax system persist, particularly for businesses and Black and Latino property owners, and especially in the south suburbs. The 2020 property tax increases are exacerbating financial stresses in these communities and thwarting economic progress and generational wealth-building,” Pappas said in a written statement.

Among the top ten municipalities ranked by homeowner property tax increases, six are majority black or Latino. For example, Bellwood with the highest rate hike—at 28.5 percent—has a black population of 74 percent; Robbins, with the third-highest rate hike of 20 percent, has a black population of over 80 percent.

Across Cook County, total assessed homeowner property taxes increased by only 1.3 percent in 2020.

Among the top ten municipalities ranked by commercial property tax increases, seven have a majority of black or Latino population.

Ford Heights has the highest rate hike of 42 percent, and 88 percent of the community is black; in Posen, which has the third-highest rate hike of 23 percent, 58 percent are Latino.

Across Cook County, total assessed commercial property taxes increased by 6.2 percent.

Cook County’s 2020 total assessed property taxes—to be collected in 2021—increased by $534 million to $16.1 billion compared to the year before. Businesses shoulder nearly 80 percent of the total increase, at $410 million, and homeowners shoulder the rest.

Cook County is the second-most populous county in the United States after Los Angeles County with 5.2 million people in over 130 municipalities—Chicago being the largest.

In terms of median homeowner property taxes, two black-majority municipalities saw the highest dollar amount increases from 2019 to 2020.

In Bellwood, the median homeowner property tax jumped by $1,868—the largest in Cook County. Maywood, where nearly 70 percent of the population is black, saw an increase of $1,543.

In Cook County, the calculation of property taxes starts from the local governments in each municipality, which first figures out the amount they need to levy to cover local operations. Then the Cook County Assessor’s Office estimates the total value of properties. Lastly, the Cook County Clerk’s Office determines property tax rates based on the local government levy and assessed values.

The municipality with the highest tax rate in Cook County—at 34.89 percent—is Park Forest with a black population of 66 percent (pdf).

Black-majority municipalities in Cook County face some of the highest tax rates in the country, which causes a steady exit of residents and businesses, leaving remaining members of the community with increasingly higher property tax burdens.

Property Tax Hike Hits Black and Latino Communities Hardest in Greater Chicago Area (theepochtimes.com)

Social Security and Medicare trust funds are in dire financial condition due to rising benefit costs, but the biggest problem facing the two largest federal entitlement programs is how they’re funded, according to a nonprofit that advocates greater government transparency and accountability.

“Our bottom line is the trust funds are all a shell game, there is no money in the trust funds. As [former U.S. Comptroller-General] David Walker says, trust funds have no funds and should be distrusted,” Truth in Accounting (TIA) President Sheila Weinberg told The Epoch Times on Sept. 2.

Weinberg was referring to the fact that the trust funds receive what are in effect IOUs from the Treasury Department that are called “securities”—promises to pay a specified amount at a future date.

On Social Security, for example, the government pays interest on the securities, generally about 2 percent, and the total value of the securities is presently just less than $3 trillion. Securities are paid out of general revenues when they come due.

“We would also highlight the massive underfunding. Social Security is underfunded by $40 trillion, Medicare by $55 trillion. This represents the amount of money the government has promised in benefits, and they have no idea where they are going to get the money to pay for those promises,” Weinberg said.

The official U.S. national debt is $29 trillion, but Weinberg’s group maintains that the true amount is more than $133 trillion when the costs of benefits such as those promised by Social Security and Medicare are included in the calculation, according to the Chicago-based TIA.

Private sector pension plans are required by federal law to account for future benefits and to properly fund them. But the federal government doesn’t follow the same law for its own pensions.

Medicare has the largest unfunded benefits total at $55 trillion, followed by Social Security at $40 trillion, and government employee and retiree pensions such as the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) at $9 trillion. The official public debt and assorted other federal liabilities such as loan guarantees make up the balance.

Trustee reports made public earlier this week show that the Medicare trust fund that pays for hospitalization is due to reach insolvency in 2026, while the Social Security trust fund will reach that point in 2033, barring major reforms in how the two programs are funded and pay benefits.

Weinberg is far from alone in pointing to the unfunded debts of Social Security and Medicare.

“Yesterday’s reports on the financial status of various Medicare and Social Security trust funds once again identify unsustainable benefit promises in Medicare and Social Security programs,” Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said in a statement on Sept. 1.

“The Hospital Insurance trust fund is projected to be exhausted around 2026; there are $60 trillion of unfunded liabilities in Social Security programs; and unfunded liabilities increased by trillions of dollars over the last year alone.”

Differences in unfunded liabilities calculations are typically due to differences in the number of years covered, how future benefits are estimated, and differences in demographic assumptions.

“While bipartisan efforts are necessary to make needed changes to address Medicare and Social Security long-term financial challenges, most Democrats want only to expand benefit promises further without generating sustainable trust fund solvency,” Crapo said.

“I agree with the report’s recommendation that ‘Congress and the executive branch work closely together with a sense of urgency to address these challenges,’ and urge bipartisanship and cooperation to do so.”

Crapo is the ranking minority member of the Senate Finance Committee, which would be a major player in any congressional or presidential initiative to reform the Social Security and Medicare trust funds.

President Joe Biden hasn’t offered any proposals to reform the funding underlying either Social Security or Medicare.

Accounting Critic Says Biggest Problem Facing Social Security, Medicare Is Trillions in Unfunded Debts (theepochtimes.com)

Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate are demanding a federal investigation into unemployment benefits money lost to fraudsters, calling it the “greatest theft of American tax dollars in our nation’s history.”

The members sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office, asking the federal oversight group to investigate the fraud and arguing structural issues exist within the federal government that make the theft possible.

“It is concerning that responsibility for determining how much fraud has occurred lies scattered throughout a web of bureaucracies,” the letter reads. “The scattering of responsibilities suggests that Congress will be ill equipped to have adequate information to assess future unemployment insurance responses to large economic shocks; and, at the same time, ensure they are not plagued by gaping security holes that allow fraudsters an open window to use to unlawfully obtained taxpayer funds.”

The question of unemployment fraud takes on extra weight as lawmakers are expected to debate in the coming days whether to extend $300 weekly federal unemployment benefits, which expire Saturday.

The letter is led by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who leads Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee, and Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), the leading Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee. Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) also has been a leader on the effort.

They estimate fraudulent efforts have stolen between $89 billion to $400 billion and request GAO finds out exactly how much has been taken.

The members point out they asked the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) earlier this year to use funds to prevent this kind of fraud. Companion bills have been introduced in the House and Senate to address the issue but have not passed. Republican-led states around the country have turned away the extra federal benefits, citing evidence they have disincentivized many Americans from returning to work.

Businesses around the country have cited difficulty hiring workers despite widespread joblessness. Recent federal data showed there are more available jobs than workers in the United States.

“Yet, there is currently no federal effort in place to formally evaluate and estimate the true scope and severity of COVID unemployment fraud nationwide,” the letter reads. “We request that GAO, as part of its mission and ongoing work to reduce improper payments and safeguard federal funds, investigate, and provide a national estimate of funds lost because of fraudulent activity.”

The concern over unemployment fraud has been bipartisan. Senate Democrats expressed concern in June over a “fraudulent crime network” exploiting unemployment benefits.

“We all share a common goal of ensuring the integrity of the unemployment insurance (UI) program, and supporting a strong UI program is a critical component of the economic safety net during times of economic downturn, including during the COVID-19 pandemic,” several Democratic senators wrote in a letter to the USDOL. “Safeguarding state UI systems against unscrupulous actors who seek to exploit the current public health crisis for economic gain requires a holistic response by the federal government in partnership with states.”

The calls for investigation also come after a GAO report in July found states and territories overpaid unemployment benefits by $12.9 billion, though the GAO said most of those funds were overpayments, not fraud.

“The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, enacted March 11, 2021, subsequently provided DOL with $2 billion to detect and prevent fraud, promote equitable access, and ensure the timely payment of UI benefits,” the report said. “As of May 20, 2021, DOL officials said that DOL was working to develop detailed plans for this $2 billion in coordination with the Office of Management and Budget, and noted that developing spending plans across 53 states and territories involves complex considerations.”

Whether an investigation will occur remains to be seen.

“Unemployment fraud takes resources away from American workers who deserve assistance and puts those resources directly in the pockets of fraudsters,” the Republicans’ letter reads. “Given that roughly a year-and-a-half has elapsed since the pandemic’s onset and given what appears to be the largest amount of unemployment fraud in history since March of last year, it is concerning that some seem almost indifferent to the massive fraud that has occurred.”

Unemployment Fraud Scrutinized Ahead of Debate Over Renewing Federal Benefits (theepochtimes.com)

The fall of Kabul to the Taliban on Aug. 15 was a shock to the world, as were images of U.S. cargo planes lumbering off the runway in “defeat” at the hands of the Taliban. Yet, there was no real Taliban defeat of America, which at its core is the idea of freedom. An idea can never be defeated.

And, America continues to be the most powerful nation in the world, both economically and militarily. The Taliban will struggle to feed themselves over the coming months, and America will probably end up helping them do so. For better or worse, that’s the kind of people we are.

Rather than experiencing defeat in Afghanistan, America is pivoting to its newest, greatest threat: China. After 20 years of defeating the Taliban, and keeping down other terrorists on their own home turf, it is time to accept that the democracy we sought for Afghans has not come to pass. It’s time to move on and demonstrate the power and opportunity of democracy elsewhere.

Yet, Beijing, which supported Pakistan and their Taliban proxies throughout the war, is trying to go further and present the fall of Kabul as evidence of not only an American defeat, but of a longer-term American decline. This couldn’t be further from the truth, at least for the moment.

Look at the last decade of stock performance to see that not only is America roundly beating China, but America is beating Europe as well. Together, America and Europe are leaving China in the dust, because the Chinese Communist Party’s communism, regulatory and tax takings, and erratic governance, are scaring off smart money.

It is true that since the fall of Kabul on Aug. 15, the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) index outperformed America’s S&P 500 by about 1 percent. And, the pandemic hit American stocks harder than Chinese stocks.

But take the longer view. Since 2011, the S&P rose 260 percent, beating the SSE’s 27 percent rise by a multiple of over nine times. And by August 2020, the S&P had entirely recovered from the pandemic slump and was back to America-sized growth.

Chinese equities are bringing down emerging market (EM) indexes, which also include India, Brazil, Turkey, and South Africa. These markets trail U.S. equities, which have the advantage of existing in a mature rule of law system that respects property. People want to put their money where it is safe and can be used, and it is safer in capitalist countries with a history of wealth accumulation, than in communist countries with a history of taking capitalists hostage.

International investors only benefit when they can freely withdraw their earnings, which is not the case in communist countries like China and Venezuela. Capital controls in those countries make investments forever, or nearly so, which make them more of a donation or foot in the door than an investment. Profits typically can’t be repatriated easily from communist countries.

According to the Financial Times, U.S. stocks have returned 356 percent over the last 10 years, beating European returns of 188 percent, and the emerging market’s (MSCI EM index) 66 percent. That makes the last 10 years a lost decade for emerging markets, and in particular, for investors in China.

“After starting 2021 on a bright note as investors bet on a global economic renaissance and commodity prices rushed higher, EM equities were thrown back into reverse by China’s regulatory clampdown on industries from financial technology to education,” according to the Times. “As a result, the MSCI EM index has slipped another 1.4 per cent this year, even as most other markets have soared.”

The Times continues, “Beijing’s crackdown [on technology and education companies, for example] has sent the Hong Kong stock market down more than 10 per cent since the beginning of July and the onshore CSI 300 index has slipped 6.4 per cent.”

The CSI 300 replicates the capitalization-weighted performance of the SSE and Shenzhen Stock Exchange’s top-300 stocks.

Conversely, vaccines in the United States and Europe are allowing for economic opening and growth, possibly closing the prior gap of China’s GDP growth outpacing that of the West. Governments are increasingly concerned about allowing investment and trade with China due to its relative lack of accounting standards, as well as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) lapses. China scores badly on these metrics, to which conscientious investors increasingly pay attention.

Many investors also fear more anti-capitalist crackdowns are coming from Beijing, making Chinese equities uninvestable, and leading its already-invested cheerleaders to wake up and give a few half-hearted cheers for China.

China optimists at Goldman Sachs, Standard Chartered Bank, and BlackRock, who do plenty of business with China and so may be just a tiny bit biased on the matter, keep pumping the totalitarian country.

“There are pockets of opportunities now,” Goldman’s Peter Oppenheimer told the Times. “Given how emerging markets have derated, if concerns about the Delta variant moderate a little bit and we don’t get more significant anti-market interventions in China, I think there will be a reasonable rebound.”

Goldman is one of the top-20 U.S. investors in China, at approximately $17.4 billion according to a 2021 government document, so it’s not surprising that its analysts would be pumping the value of their own investment.

Eric Robertson of Standard Chartered said in a note, “We believe this growth pessimism is overdone and that EM assets look attractive. The timing might still be premature, but we are looking for that entry point.”

Yet as recently as Aug. 24, Standard Chartered Wealth Management’s chief information officer said they preferred U.S. and European markets to emerging markets, and within emerging markets, preferred India to China.

On Aug. 17, BlackRock’s Wei Li told the Times that “China is under-represented in global investors’ portfolios but also, in our view, in global benchmarks.” Her BlackRock Investment Institute recommended doubling or tripling allocation to Chinese assets in diversified global portfolios. In the MSCI All-World index, that would mean increasing the weighting from its current 4.2 percent, to about 10 percent.

That’s a lot of money given the totality of U.S. investments in China.

The largest American institutional investors, including private equity firms and state pensions, already have $2.3 trillion invested in China, according to the government data. Tripling that would increase American capital at risk in China to almost $7 trillion.

The more money the banks have invested in China, the more pressure they will put on Washington to go easy on the totalitarian country. Going easy means China keeps pushing its territorial boundaries against our allies, we do and say nothing, and we keep slapping China’s wrist for up to $600 billion in IP theft annually.

BlackRock is America’s biggest investor in China, according to the government data cited previously, with approximately $155 billion in the country. Could that capital at risk have something to do with BlackRock’s support for other investors doubling or tripling investment in the country? It would sure make for a smooth unwinding of its position.

Already in 2021, investors have plowed $81 billion into emerging market equity funds. That’s setting up 2021 to be the biggest for EM equities since 2010.

What these investors and big banks aren’t accounting for is the macro-political risk at the end of it all. Once China is pumped up economically through American investment and technology, their military will be stronger than the U.S. military, and at that point, China will be in a position to gradually erode American influence globally.

Democracy, freedom, and capitalism, could become a thing of the past. All those billions that the big banks thought they made from China will then belong to China. Communism will have won, and there will be no more American bankers, and no more bank accounts stuffed with their Chinese earnings.

America will have sold China the rope with which they hang us, and which will be the end of democracy and freedom.

But, I’m not sure that American bankers can see past the next few financial quarters, or coordinate sufficiently through government controls on investments in China, to act strategically and avoid that sorry eventuality.

Stop Investing in China: America Is the Better Bet (theepochtimes.com)

It’s usually a good thing when a person has leaned from an experience. While times of crisis cause damage, they also can bring about innovation and wisdom. We can come out of a struggle with insight and be stronger for it.

Considering the actions and words of some of our political leaders however, I fear that they are coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic having learned all the wrong lessons.

While it may be coincidence, the language coming from President Joe Biden’s administration and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been strikingly similar this week.

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) just launched the new Office of Climate Change and Health Equity. This wasn’t surprising as it was in response to an executive order from President Biden last January. The terminology used was interesting though. HHS claimed that it would use “lessons learned” from the COVID-19 pandemic to address climate change and health issues.

Meanwhile on Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a crowd of supporters “What we learned from this COVID crisis, we will be applying to the climate crisis, the housing crisis, to reconciliation, to making sure that everyone has good jobs and careers that carry them through and create good opportunity for their kids.”

What I fear is that the lesson these political leaders are referring to is confirmation of just how easily and willingly the populace will give up its civil rights in the face of a health crisis. Authoritarian-minded politicians now know that if they can package an initiative as a response to a public health crisis, they won’t need to bother with worrying about the individual rights of citizens when implementing it.

In referring to a “climate crisis” and in tying it to health issues, politicians are setting the stage to continue to implement policies without regard to individual rights. They just need to act under the guise of responding to an immediate crisis.

The “Great Reset” concept is often dismissed as a conspiracy theory, but it is very real. It is a plan to use a world crisis in order to implement massive changes in political policies and government structures. It wants to reconfigure capitalism, and not for the better. Proponents of the Great Reset speak to the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity rather than a crisis. Again, this is no deeply hidden conspiracy or secret. It is all laid out on the World Economic Forum website in plain text.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a supporter of the World Economic Forum and he addressed their annual conference in 2018. Last November while addressing the U.N., Trudeau said “This pandemic has provided an opportunity for a reset, This is our chance to accelerate our pre-pandemic efforts to re-imagine economic systems that actually address global challenges like extreme poverty, inequality and climate change.”

We should be very concerned when ideologically driven politicians see the COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity rather than a calamity. When leaders see times of crisis as a means to pursue radical change, they may feel inspired to drag out or even cause emergencies. It certainly is an easier way to bring the public on board than democratic exercises are.

In challenging times like now, citizens need to keep their governments in check. Constitutions and documents such as the Canadian Charter of Rights were designed specifically to protect the rights of individuals from government overreach. Section 1 of the Canadian Charter allows the government to suspend individual rights as it says our rights are subject to “reasonable limits.” Our government felt that it was reasonable to limit several our Charter rights in the name of protecting us from COVID-19. The courts and a large proportion of our citizenry agreed.

Having learned how easily the government can suspend Charter rights, we can rest assured that unprincipled and ideologically driven leaders will concoct future emergencies to bypass the rights of citizens again. We have heard everything from racism to firearm crimes to climate change being referred to as health issues now. That is no mistake. It sets the stage for state intervention that may bypass legislated rights protection.

Some of the world’s most horrific governments emerged from hard times. We saw that clearly enough just after the Great Depression. Citizens are too concerned with simply getting by to realize what their politicians may be getting up to. We always need to be vigilant and when we see world leaders referring to the pandemic as an opportunity, we need to sit up and take notice. An opportunity for whom, and at what cost?

Politicians Are Learning All the Wrong Lessons From the Pandemic (theepochtimes.com)

CalPERS has $490 million tied up in companies funding Belt and Road

California’s state pension invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Chinese state-owned enterprises linked to the People’s Liberation Army, according to records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) had more than $3 billion invested in Chinese companies, including 14 state-controlled enterprises blacklisted by the Trump administration, as of June 2020. Many of these companies are funding the Belt and Road Initiative, a massive infrastructure project Beijing is using to expand its geopolitical and military influence.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.), who recently praised a Chinese-owned media company for its “journalistic integrity,” has not commented on CalPERS’s Chinese investments. It is a notable silence from the embattled governor, who has called on CalPERS, the country’s largest public pension system, to divest from tobacco companies and companies linked to the Turkish government. Newsom faces a recall election on Sept. 14.

CalPERS had more than $450 million invested in 14 Chinese companies the Trump administration put on an investment blacklist last year because of their ties to the Chinese military. President Donald Trump’s executive order, which the Biden administration has continued, prohibited Americans from investing in companies that aid the Chinese military.

It is unclear whether CalPERS has complied with the executive order by divesting in the blacklisted companies. The pension fund declined the Free Beacon‘s requests for comment. CalPERS had more than $490 million invested in seven Chinese state-owned enterprises that, while not on the U.S. blacklist, are funding the Belt and Road Initiative, according to its 2020 investment report. CalPERS invested in some of the Chinese companies as early as 2016, records show.

Two companies in the CalPERS portfolio—China Merchants Port and CITIC—control ports in Sri Lanka and Myanmar that the People’s Liberation Army has used for military exercises. CalPERS had $3.7 million invested in China Merchants Port and $110 million in CITIC as of June 2020.

CalPERS, which has more than $400 billion in assets under management, also had $5 million invested in China State Construction Co., which has built roads and bridges in Asia, Africa, and the United States as part of Belt and Road. China State Construction is one of the firms on the Trump administration investment blacklist.

CalPERS had another $6 million invested in China Communications Construction Company, a state-owned company that U.S. officials have said is building military installations in the South China Sea in violation of agreements that China has with its neighbors. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo singled out China Communications Construction last year as one of the “weapons” Beijing uses to impose an expansionist agenda.

The pension fund has hundreds of millions of dollars more invested in some of China’s largest lenders, including $185 million invested in China Construction Bank. China Construction has invested $405 billion in 176 Belt and Road projects. China Merchants Bank and Bank of China, two other state-owned enterprises in the CalPERS portfolio, are invested heavily in Belt and Road projects.

CalPERS has come under scrutiny from state and national lawmakers over its investments in Chinese companies. The fund’s critics say the investments not only aid the Chinese Communist Party but also create financial risk for the state’s pensioners because of the lack of transparency into the operations of Chinese firms.

“CalPERS would do well on its own to reconsider some of its billions of dollars of investments in China just for the fact that immediate international turmoil produces large uncertainties for California retirees,” said Lance Christensen, the chief operating officer at the California Policy Center, a conservative think tank.

Some investment managers are reportedly reconsidering investments in China because of the government’s crackdown on tech companies and other for-profit companies. Chinese companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges lost $400 billion in value in July amid a series of regulatory crackdowns orchestrated by the Chinese government, the Wall Street Journal reported.

CalPERS’s former head under Newsom, Ben Meng, is an American citizen of Chinese origin. Prior to leading CalPERs, he worked in China as the deputy chief investment officer of China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange. In that role, he oversaw $3 trillion of foreign-exchange reserves.

During Meng’s time at CalPERS, Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.) criticized Meng’s membership in China’s Thousand Talents Program, which the nation uses for espionage. Banks wrote to Newsom suggesting the governor fire Meng, a power Newsom does not technically have.

“Governor Newsom, if it were up to me, I would fire Mr. Meng immediately,” Banks wrote in a February 2020 letter. Banks took specific issue with Chinese companies like Hikvision, for example, that are used by China to further its detention of Uyghurs. CalPERS responded by calling Banks’s letter a “politically opportunistic attempt to force us to divest, undermining our ability to perform our fiduciary duty to provide retirement security to California’s public employees.”

Last year, Banks and Sen. Rick Scott (R., Fla.) called on Newsom and CalPERS to divest from Chinese state-owned companies. CalPERS rejected the requests, saying that its portfolio largely mirrors investments in the MSCI and FTSE stock indices. MSCI has said it is divesting from the 14 companies on the federal blacklist, but it is not clear whether CalPERS plans to follow MSCI’s lead.

While Newsom does not directly control CalPERs, he has actively used his bully pulpit as a statewide elected official to force the agency’s investment decisions in the past. In 2019, he signed an executive order directing CalPERS and other state pension funds to invest in green energy companies in order to fight climate change.

In 2016, then-Lt. Gov. Newsom urged CalPERS not to reverse a decision to prohibit investment in tobacco companies. He said CalPERS would be “investing in death” if it allowed investments in Big Tobacco. CalPERS voted later that year to expand its prohibition on tobacco investments.

As a gubernatorial candidate in 2018, Newsom called on CalPERS to divest from Turkish companies because of the regime’s refusal to recognize the mass murder of Armenians in 1915.

“It is wrong of us as a state … to invest in Turkish businesses. It’s time for divestment at the [University of California] and CalPERS,” Newsom said at a rally outside the Turkish consulate in Los Angeles.

Newsom has not made a similar demand of CalPERS regarding China, even though both the Trump and Biden administrations have said that the government is carrying out genocide against Muslims in Western China.

“Gov. Gavin Newsom is quick to leverage his position on issues like climate change by outlawing gas-powered cars or other similar mandates, but slow to speak out on government investments in China, where their environmental and labor record is abysmal,” said Christensen, the official at the California Policy Center.

Newsom’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

California’s State Pension Invests Millions in Chinese State-Owned Companies (freebeacon.com)

A reconfigured global elite are shaping up around a new kind of vision for transforming our world. They’ve called their neo-socialist and multilateral vision the Green New Deal.

Joe Biden’s White House team are core players in this vision, as they seek to reinvent Roosevelt’s original 1930s New Deal into a contemporary twenty-first century Democratic Party platform.

But there are also other important players pushing this neo-socialist dream.

One has been the European Union’s large and well-organised green lobby. Another has been Klaus Schwab (economist and founder of the World Economic Forum), who has used Davos to push his vision of a “Great Reset” of the global economy.

Those getting on board with the Green New Deal are the usual advocates of state interventionism, big government, and multilateral globalism. But surprisingly this new elite is a mix of left-liberals, socialists, Greens, bureaucrats, and university researchers/experts. More surprising is that sections of the business elite are also climbing on board what they believe will be a gravy train.

It appears business is motivated by two factors. First, they are afraid of activist pressure. Second, their marketing departments are telling them there are great public relations kudos to be had in signing up to the now fashionable narratives of saving victims, saving the planet, and distancing themselves from left-leaning stereotypes of greedy uncaring capitalists.

So now we have woke businesses greenwashing their brands plus learning to make profits out of the Green New Deal’s neo-socialist strategy to tear up our old infrastructure and replace them with new ones at great expense to the taxpayer. Who knew socialism could be profitable.

But one of the most fascinating features of this trend is how enthralled legacy media journalists are with the green narratives underpinning this emergent global elite.

Journalists who would normally ask questions about self-interest, crooked narratives, and obvious propaganda now meekly buy into the trendy narratives. Indeed journalists are now being told that applying the journalistic principle of balance is a bad thing when reporting on issues like climate change.

Instead, journalists are being taught that it is fine to advocate for green climate change messages. We even have global media like the BBC instructing their journalists not to be balanced on climate change.

In a climate when green activism is now normalised in media newsrooms, it is hardly surprising that we see journalists treating green experts as media darlings, and as a result, those same green experts are no longer challenged by probing journalistic questions.

Instead, what emerges is a de facto partnership between the media, climate change scientists, and activists wherein journalists start to construct pro-green (propaganda-like) stories.

One way of explaining this partnership is to see it as part of the phenomenon of an emergent global elite for whom left-wing “progressivism” has become a kind of secularised religion, built around saving the many kinds of victims we apparently have today.

These victims can be those conventionally beloved by socialists—the poor. They can also be the new victims beloved by identity politics—LGBTQI, Indigenous or ethnic minorities. Or victims beloved by feminists—women persecuted by the patriarchy. Or the victims can now even be non-human—whales, polar bears, coral reefs, nature, or the planet.

What binds all these victims is that they need to be saved by a self-selecting elite of people who have married elements of the narratives of left-liberalism and neo-Marxism.

This elite first emerged in the United States and then spread to the rest of the western world. And now, like a virus, it is also spreading to places like the European Union (EU).

It is an elite who have proven highly susceptible to catching the green virus. Significantly, enormous progress has been made in capturing western universities, the global media, the education system, and the many bureaucracies across the Anglo world and EU.

The result has been the growth of an alliance between left-liberal, progressive politicians; academics; journalists; and bureaucrats.

Once the universities were captured by this progressive-left, universities were used to teach a new “way of seeing” and a “new way of speaking about” the world.

Thus, universities become the source of what is termed ‘woke’ and green narratives; while the media and internet are used to disseminate their tales. In addition, as universities produced more of these progressive and Green “experts,” journalists rely on them to justify their own work—creating an ongoing cycle.

Importantly, since universities teach journalism, public relations and marketing the communication industries are filled with those taught the woke discourses beloved by the globalised elite.

Not surprisingly, the resultant spread of progressivism within the communications industry means progressives are also becoming well placed—and more skilled—at spreading their own ideologies, while shutting down opposing views.

Indeed the Left are so successful that much of the world in the Biden era is starting to feel a bit like a mixture of the hard authoritarianism of George Orwell’s 1984 and the soft authoritarianism of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.”

The proliferation of both discourse around the Green New Deal, and the expanding power of a medical autocracy calling the shots over COVID-19, are two indicators of the way the global elite are becoming successful at promoting only their views while undercutting all others.

The universities have also given birth to “experts” who believe that secular science can fix everything thereby removing the need for religion or traditional knowledge.

At a deeper level, German existential philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche saw this rot beginning when Western thinkers “killed God” in the 19th century, and from that wrong turn has evolved the secularist, social engineers of today.

But at a more institutional level, I think American conservative philosopher Paul Gottfried was correct that the problem lies in today’s overly interventionist governments imposing social therapy measures upon their citizens.

His argument was that this began during the post-second World War era in the United States—specifically with Paul Lazarsfeld’s Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University in the 1940s to 1950—and in the growth of the 1960s U.S. government-led social engineering policies (for example, affirmative action new migration laws).

And today, we see the modern manifestation of such a long-running trend in state-run welfare systems, the Green New Deal, and the COVID-19 medical autocracy.

Significantly, Lazarsfeld’s behavioural science was built on the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School’s idea of an “Authoritarian Personality”—a personality type that is submissive and obedient to authority—as well as the notion that experts should learn to manage and control the population better (using psychology, behavioural sciences, public opinion research, public relations, and spin-doctoring). This, in turn, can help stop the re-emergence of “bad ideas” like nationalism or traditionalism.

Lazarsfeld founded an American tradition of academic thinking about how the media could be used to promote “good” (progressive) ideas and shut down “bad” ideas.

Lazarsfeld’s centre employed many Frankfurt School members and so opened the door to the merging of left-liberal and neo-Marxist ideas, which has further contributed to the growth of the progressive elite.

With Biden in office, this elite now has a great base to work from to disseminate their preferred ideological narratives including the virtues of big government, green activism, and multilateral interventionism to save its so-called “victims.”

And because the 2000 anti-Trump crusade helped cement the alliance between left-leaning politicians, activists, mainstream liberal media journalists, U.S.-owned tech giants; and the university sector, we can now expect to see a period of intensified dissemination of “progressive” narratives plus simultaneous attempts at discourse closure aimed at closing-down and disrupting narratives that the Left loves to hate.

Global Elite Latches Onto Neo-Socialist Vision: The Green New Deal (theepochtimes.com)

Democrats have several major crises hurting the country spinning out of control at the same time.

But what are they concerned with? Spending trillions of dollars we don’t have, and taxing Americans into oblivion.

The border is a mess, inflation is out of control, the Biden just handed Afghanistan to the Taliban on a silver platter, plus $85 billion of our military equipment.

Yet Democrats instead want to expand socialism in America. They’re even admitting that their big spending push will transform the American economy.

But they have a big problem. In order to push their radical spending, they need to raise the debt ceiling.

Obviously, taxes can’t pay for all the crazy stuff Pelosi wants. But she doesn’t want the blame for our massive national debt.

She’s pressuring Republicans to own the debt. But they are firing back, “You’re on your own.”

From Fox News:

More than 100 House Republicans signed a letter Monday promising not to vote to increase the debt ceiling under any circumstances…

“In order for this spending to occur, our nation’s debt limit will have to be increased significantly. Because Democrats are responsible for the spending, they need to take responsibility for increasing the debt ceiling.”

Republicans in the House were bypassed by Pelosi when she approved Biden’s radical $3.5 trillion expansion of the welfare state.

Not one Republican voted for this radical spending bill. Now, they are telling Pelosi they will not vote to increase the debt ceiling to make this spending possible.

It’s no secret Democrats seem to love spending other people’s money. But Biden’s radical socialist agenda is just too expensive.

Even with all the tax increases he’s planning, he can’t pay for it all.

So, Pelosi and her cohorts have to approve raising our nation’s debt ceiling. Meaning, of course, we will be spending even more money we don’t have.

The nation will have to borrow that money from global lenders, to avoid more inflation and other problems.

What happens when our credit runs dry? What if China (our biggest lender) demands we pay them back?

Democrats are running out the clock by expanding our debt, getting more Americans hooked on welfare while importing more workers from over the border.

Pelosi doesn’t seem to care. Rumors suggest she’s bailing after 2022, anyway. She did her damage to the country and will probably retire to Martha’s Vineyard or something.

The rest of us? We’ll have to live with all the damage she’s caused.

Key Takeaways:

• Over 100 House Republicans are refusing to support Pelosi’s raised debt ceiling.
• The nation’s debt ceiling must be raised to push Biden’s socialist agenda.
• Democrats wanted to share the blame with Republican lawmakers.

Nancy Pelosi Just Ran Into 100-Strong GOP Brick Wall – House Republicans Sign Letter Refusing To Raise Her Debt Ceiling (thepatriotjournal.com)

In Washington, things have gone off the rails in a hurry. Many blame an invigorated unthinking progressive agenda for broken government. And they are correct. Think about it.

How else would you characterize the utterly failed “Let’s get out of Afghanistan overnight” move by a president who seemingly had little interest in the advice of his generals or diplomats?

Speaking of which, who made the call to shut down the contractors who maintained American-made Afghan air assets?

You do not have to be a West Point graduate to question why we would give away our dominant advantage (air power) and leave the critical airbase at Bagram on a battlefield populated by seventh-century religious warriors. Or why we would leave so many military assets (vehicles, weapons, helicopters, night-vision goggles, etc.) to the Taliban. Or why our soldiers were ordered to abandon the country before every last U.S. citizen was accounted for and safe.

This last question is, of course, the most important and the most baffling.

Today, the president’s press flack won’t even admit Americans are “stranded,” but the anguished calls for help by trapped Americans and our Afghan allies in and around the Kabul airport (and Thursday’s horrific bomb attacks) speak to a terribly broken policy.

How else would one characterize the chaos at our southern border as an estimated two million people will have migrated by the end of the year?

To make matters worse, an understaffed Border Patrol and a declawed ICE are in no position to stop the tons of fentanyl, COVID-positive migrants and sex traffickers that are the tangible results of a broken policy.

Note that the person allegedly in charge of border security has been on her second foreign junket to Southeast Asia.

How else would you characterize the historic level of violence in cities that have indulged the ludicrous crime-producing “defund the police” movement?

A glance at murder and other violent crime statistics from any of these progressive cities reminds us that the suspension of enforcement against so-called minor crimes and the pro-offender mindset of so many big-city (Soros-sponsored) prosecutors has made life significantly worse off for the good and law-abiding people living in deteriorating marginal neighborhoods.

Whatever did happen to that “let’s replace the police with social workers” initiative?

How else would you characterize a president who just last week begged OPEC to increase its (fossil fuel) oil production in the face of rapidly spiking gasoline prices and increasing world demand?

This pitiful picture is juxtaposed against the greatest accomplishment of the Trump administration: an American natural gas revolution. America’s vast supply of natural gas and modern drilling techniques helped achieve independence (production of more domestic energy than we consume) by Trump’s third year in office. And all during a time greenhouse gas emissions continue to decline.Related:Dennis Prager: Who Benefits from Biden Deserting Afghanistan? America’s Enemies, That’s Who

How else would you characterize school systems that no longer care to teach the three “Rs” and no longer engage in objective measures of academic performance?

You can blame social justice warriors (and their compatriots in the teachers unions) who have infiltrated our local public school boards in order to indoctrinate our kids (as young as kindergarten age) with their unique curriculum of sex- and race-based instruction.

That their campaign is playing out against a backdrop of consistently underperforming (what used to be called “failing”) public schools in our most marginal neighborhoods is not lost on the commonsense majority.

Hence, a newly invigorated parent-teacher resistance to the woke mob’s agenda is born, as well as a new front in America’s culture wars.

How else would you characterize voting “reforms” that eliminate photo identification, scrubbing of voter rolls, signature matches on the inside and outside of mail-in ballots, and vote-counting transparency requirements?

Mistrust of our voting processes ran high among Democrats in 2016 and even higher among Republicans in 2020. Why in the world would either the states or the federal government want to further complicate the way we cast and count votes in our country?

How else would you characterize our out-of-control federal spending and the sudden re-emergence of inflation — that terrible debilitating tax on our nation’s poor that so many in Washington are soft-peddling?

There is a method to the madness, however, as today’s spiking inflation numbers bring back memories of the bad ‘ol days of the 1970s.

A bottom line emerges: What had been working during the Trump era had to be broken (such was the principle and all-consuming commitment of Biden 2020) regardless of consequence.

Indeed, from an incremental, secure withdrawal in Afghanistan to “Stay in Mexico” at the border to re-funding the police in our cities to real American energy independence from the gas fields to school choice in our classrooms, America was heading in the right direction. And then there was a worldwide pandemic — and an election. And now there are predictable short and long-term consequences.

Today, the breaking of Trump-era initiatives proceeds apace. This is what happens under single-party government. It is not a pretty sight. Broken never is.

Bob Ehrlich: We’re Suffering Because Biden Had to Reverse Every Trump Decision, Especially the Successful Ones (westernjournal.com)

U.S. consumer confidence fell in August to its lowest level in six months, driven by concerns about the spread of the Delta variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus and surging prices.

The Conference Board said in an Aug. 31 report that its consumer confidence index fell from a reading of 125.1 in July to 113.8 in August.

“Consumer confidence retreated in August to its lowest level since February 2021 (95.2),” Lynn Franco, Senior Director of Economic Indicators at The Conference Board, in a statement. “Concerns about the Delta variant—and, to a lesser degree, rising gas and food prices—resulted in a less favorable view of current economic conditions and short-term growth prospects.”

Two other gauges, one assessing current economic conditions and the other reflecting consumers’ future outlook over the short-term, also declined.

The present situation index, which measures consumers’ assessment of current business and jobs market conditions, fell from 157.2 in July to 147.3 in August. Broken down into their respective components, 19.9 percent of consumers said current business conditions were “good” in August, down from 24.6 percent in the prior month. At the same time, 24.0 percent said conditions were “bad,” up from 20.0 percent in July.

Consumers’ assessment of current labor market conditions remained largely unchanged over the month, with 54.6 percent saying jobs were “plentiful” in August compared to 55.2 percent expressing the same view in July. At the same time, 11.8 percent of consumers said jobs were “hard to get” in August, a slight drop from 11.1 percent in July.

The drop in consumers’ assessment of current labor market conditions comes despite businesses reporting difficulty hiring workers and as the number of job openings in the United States has surged to a record high. The Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), released Aug. 9, showed that the number of job vacancies jumped by 590,000 to 10.1 million on the last day of June, led by gains in professional and business services, retail trade, and accommodation and food services.

“This is by far the record amount of job openings the economy has ever had. This historically elevated level makes clear that we have a severe worker shortage that threatens what should be a prolonged economic boom,” Curtis Dubay, senior economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a note.

At the same time, the JOLTS report showed that employers hired 6.7 million workers in June, with some economists saying the mismatch between vacancies and hiring is problematic.

“The biggest problem is getting workers to fill the historically large amount of open jobs,” Dubay wrote. “The enormous number of job openings is holding the economy back from reaching its potential.”

Future Outlook

The Conference Board’s expectations index, which is based on a short-term outlook for income, business, and labor market conditions, fell from 103.8 in July to 91.4 in August. As was the case with the present conditions index, the six months hence gauge saw the biggest decline in the area of business conditions, while both the labor market outlook and that of consumers’ financial prospects ticked down by smaller amounts.

In August, 22.9 percent of consumers expected business conditions would improve in six months, down from 30.9 percent in July. Short-term labor market optimism in August fell to 23 percent, down from 25.5 percent in July. Nearly 18 percent of consumers said in August they expect their incomes to increase over the short term, down from 20 percent in July.

“While the resurgence of COVID-19 and inflation concerns have dampened confidence, it is too soon to conclude this decline will result in consumers significantly curtailing their spending in the months ahead,” Franco said in a statement.

Consumer spending is a key driver of the U.S. economy, accounting for around two-thirds of economic output.

Recent Commerce Department data showed consumer spending in July grew by a tepid 0.3 percent, a far slower pace than the 1.1 percent pace of growth in the prior month and a sign that the economic recovery may be losing steam in the third quarter.

Still, the foundation for the economic recovery appears relatively solid, with the Commerce Department report showing wages rising and a boost in savings, giving American consumers more spending potential to unlock going forward, even as the rise in infections clouds the outlook.

A separate sentiment gauge published last week echoed the Conference Board’s findings, also citing the Delta variant and inflation as factors. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index fell to 70.3 in August, the lowest level since 2011.

“Consumers’ extreme reactions were due to the surging Delta variant, higher inflation, slower wage growth, and smaller declines in unemployment,” Richard Curtin, the survey director, said in a statement. “The extraordinary falloff in sentiment also reflects an emotional response, from dashed hopes that the pandemic would soon end and lives could return to normal.”

While the spread of the Delta variant has led economists to trim their forecasts for growth in the current quarter, analysts still believe if COVID-19 cases fall in the final months of 2021, the country will experience its strongest growth this year in decades.

Consumer Confidence Falls to 6-Month Low on COVID-19 and Inflation Worries (theepochtimes.com)

How can you think straight and make rational decisions when each and everyday you hear conflicting and contradictory information from “authoritative” sources? You can’t. No one can. That’s the whole point. That’s why the powers that be are doing this. Welcome to the secular hell of a post-truth world.

We don’t need to wear masks. No wait, now we do. Hold up now we need to wear two masks. We can stop wearing masks now. Surprise, we need to wear masks again. Actually it turns out masks aren’t as effective as we thought.

We just need 15 days to slow the spread. Now we need a month. Maybe a year. Never mind, we didn’t need to lockdown at all and it caused more harm than good.

Don’t take any vaccine that Donald Trump rushed to market. You didn’t get the vaccine, are you nuts? The vaccine is highly effective. Oops it looks like highly vaccinated Israel is having a major outbreak. Get the vaccine or lose your job.

Are you keeping up? This is the reality of living in a post-truth world.

They want us shell shocked with rapidly changing information overload which leads to option paralysis and fear. When people are in a state of fear coupled with option paralysis they are very susceptible to manipulation and easy to control.

While we are all dazed and confused they are destroying families, small businesses, and entire nations. They are rigging elections, they are botching troop withdrawals to flood western countries with refugees, the American border is being invaded by hundreds of thousands of people, they are buying up single family homes and pricing you out of the market, they are printing endless money and inflating your currency.

They are transferring trillions of dollars in wealth to themselves and shutting up each and every last voice of dissent to it all while doing it.

All while the while you worry about a virus that statistically you have a 99% chance of surviving with the immune system God gave you.

It’s exhausting and impossible to keep up with by design. It’s meant to drain you mentally, physically, and spiritually so that you submit to their control. Don’t.

In the post-truth world anything goes. Chaos reigns. Those who create the chaos manifest their means of control. Do not comply. Do not give them one inch. Stand your ground. Hold the line.

Christians reject the post-truth world. We have absolute Truth in Jesus Christ and His Gospel as a firm foundation on which to stand. God is our authority. Not the CDC. Not the Biden administration. Not the WHO. Nor the talking heads on CNN and Fox News.

In the darkness of chaos Jesus is the Light that leads us to salvation. Jesus saves. That is the fundamental Truth of the Gospel. Now more then ever we need saving. We need Truth. We need Order.

The battle rages on, but the war has already been won and we must never forget that. We must cling to the cross and stand firm in our convictions. We must love one another, obey God, and humble ourselves enough to fully depend on Him in this time of great trial.

I know we can do it, because we serve the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Creator of the universe. May you find comfort in His Truth and keep the faith.

God bless you and God bless America,

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King

How To Survive In a Post-Truth World Of Chaos – Gab News

Hurricane Ida shut down more than 95 percent of the Gulf of Mexico’s oil production, said regulators, suggesting the Category 4 storm will have a significant impact on energy supply and gas prices.

The federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement confirmed the stop in oil production, with firms suspending 1.74 million barrels per day in oil production in the Gulf.

Colonial Pipeline confirmed Sunday it is temporarily shutting down two pipelines between Houston, Texas, and Greensboro, North Carolina, as a precaution due to the storm. They were shuttered “as a precautionary and routine safety measure,” the firm said a statement.

Ida made landfall on Sunday near Port Fourchon, near the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, which is the largest privately-owned crude terminal in the United States.

Around 94 percent of Gulf of Mexico natural gas production was suspended due to the storm, according to the federal regulator.

“Based on data from offshore operator reports submitted as of 11:30 CDT today, personnel have been evacuated from a total of 288 production platforms, 51.43 percent of the 560 manned platforms in the Gulf of Mexico,” said the agency in a statement on Sunday. “Production platforms are the structures located offshore from which oil and gas are produced. Unlike drilling rigs, which typically move from location to location, production facilities remain in the same location throughout a project’s duration.”

Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates in Houston, told news outlets on Saturday that if the New Orleans refineries take a direct hit from the storm, gas prices will likely rise about 10 cents per gallon in some markets.

Oil prices also rose sharply last week ahead of Hurricane Ida’s arrival.

Hurricane Ida made landfall as a Category 4 storm with 150 mph winds in southeastern Lousiana, doing considerable damage to infrastructure and causing significant flooding in the region. Hundreds of thousands of people are currently without power in Louisiana, according to Poweroutage.us.

In an update from the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters, President Joe Biden said that locals need to take heed of state and local officials’ directions.

“The storm is a life-threatening storm. … And its devastation is likely to be immense. We shouldn’t kid ourselves,” he said. “And so the most important thing I can say right now is that everyone, everyone should listen to the instructions from local and state officials, just how dangerous this is. And take it seriously. It’s not just the coasts. It’s not just New Orleans. It’s north as well. The rainfall is expected to be exceedingly high.”

Biden said he would put “the country’s full might” behind rescue and recovery efforts.

Gas Prices to Rise as Hurricane Ida Shuts Down 95 Percent of Gulf’s Oil Production (theepochtimes.com)

PUNTA GORDA, Fla. – On Thursday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sent a letter to the Biden Administration demanding transparency and that they cease sending “illegal aliens” to Florida.

“President [Joe] Biden, Vice President [Kamala] Harris, and their administration have refused to fulfill their responsibility to enforce immigration laws enacted by Congress and the resulting influx of unvetted illegal aliens endangers our national security and undermines the socioeconomic wellbeing of hardworking American citizens,” DeSantis said in a written statement. “Unfortunately, even though the federal government is responsible for immigration enforcement, it is the states who bear the brunt of this administration’s reckless immigration policies.”

In the letter (pdf) to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, the Republican governor wrote that he wanted an end to the mass resettlements of “illegal aliens” into the United States. DeSantis also urged the Department of Homeland Security to provide more transparency when it comes to the resettling of illegals in Florida and to give advance notice to “state leadership” before illegals are resettled into the state.  He called the Biden administration’s border policies “disastrous” and gave a deadline of September 30, 2021, to give the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) a long list of information and data before sending more illegals into the state.

DeSantis’ letter requested that the Biden administration disclose the following information to FDLE:

• the number of illegal aliens resettled in Florida;
• the names and destination of the illegal aliens;
• the number of illegal aliens resettled in Florida who were tested for COVID-19 and the results of such tests;
• the identities of illegal aliens who have criminal records and who have previously entered the U.S. illegally; and
• the number and identity of illegal aliens resettled in Florida who have failed to appear for their removal proceedings.

The letter went on to accuse the Biden administration of operating its own human smuggling operation.

“My office has received information indicating that ICE, sometimes with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has chartered flights transporting illegal alien adults and children to Florida,” the governor wrote. “Given the overall lack of transparency, I am concerned that the federal government is running its own massive human smuggling operation, surreptitiously resettling illegal aliens in the various states without consultation or even advance notice to state leadership.”

The governor wrote that this practice is “intolerable and unacceptable.”

DeSantis wrote that he knows “firsthand” about the border crisis as he visited the border and deployed law enforcement officers to aid Texas law enforcement and border patrol agents with the surge of migrants attempting to cross the border.

“I have been to the border, and I observed firsthand the chaos that this administration’s policies have created,” DeSantis said. To fill the void left by the federal government, Florida deployed its own law enforcement officers to the border.”

After speaking with law enforcement officers who were deployed to the border to aid Texas law enforcement, DeSantis said they have told him that many of the migrants that were apprehended at the border said they plan to come to Florida.

“Floridians welcome responsible immigration that serves the interests of our citizens, but we cannot abide the lawlessness that this administration is aiding and abetting, and frankly encouraging, on the southwest border,” DeSantis said.

Law enforcement officials, according to the governor’s office said that most of the migrants indicated their final stops were going to be larger Florida cities such as Kissimmee, Orlando, Miami, Hialeah, and Jacksonville.

In April 2021, DeSantis had written to Mayorkas’s office requesting that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) remove all illegal alien felons who had completed their prison sentences in Florida.  The governor said in his current letter that he has seen “no action” to enforce the federal immigration laws.

DeSantis wrote that it was his opinion that DHS was resettling large numbers of illegal aliens who have “no lawful status under federal immigration law from the southwest border to Florida.”

He wrote: “The Constitution charges the President with the duty to faithfully execute the laws, and with respect to immigration enforcement, the federal government, with the Supreme Court’s blessing, has assumed near exclusive responsibility. Unfortunately, President Biden and this administration refuse to fulfill their responsibility to enforce the immigration laws enacted by Congress.”

DeSantis said in his letter that the “Remain in Mexico” program that was administered under the Trump Administration was ultimately replaced with “catch and release” by the Biden administration, which he attributes to the massive influx of migrants.

“The administration’s reversal or weakening of the prior administration’s enforcement policies had amounted to an open invitation for mass illegal migration the United States, and the results have been predictably catastrophic,” DeSantis wrote. “Since this administration took office, the number of illegal aliens encountered at the southwest border has skyrocketed, increasing each month at an unrelenting pace.”

When Biden took office in January the number of border encounters was 78,417. In one month that number increased to 101,098; 173,283 in March; 178,797 in April; 180,569 in May; 188,934 in June and 212,672 in July according to figures from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.  This puts a total number of encounters for the fiscal year to be approximately 1.3 million.  In the last year of the Trump administration the total number of encounters was 458,088.

The governor ended his letter with doubts that the federal government would comply with his request and reminded the secretary that it was the states who were “saddled” with the costs of having illegals in their states.  Also, he said that massive illegal immigration increases the spread of COVID-19 and will consume taxpayer money and overload government services including the education system.

“Although I seek an immediate end to the resettlement of illegal aliens in Florida, at the very least, DHS should provide the requested information in the interest of greater transparency,” DeSantis wrote. “The State of Florida is entitled to this information to protect the health, safety, and welfare of its people.”

Efforts to obtain a response from the White House were made with no response.

Gov. DeSantis Demands Biden Administration Cease Resettlement of Illegals in Florida (theepochtimes.com)

The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, the so-called core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, vaulted in the 12 months through July to levels not seen in 30 years.

The Commerce Department said in a release Friday that core PCE rose 3.6 percent over the year in July, matching last month’s level, which was an increase from 3.5 percent in May and 3.1 percent in April.

The last time the core PCE inflation gauge saw a similar year-over-year vault was in July 1991, while the highest level the measure has hit is 10.2 percent in February 1975, when the economy was gripped in a troubling upwards wage-price spiral fueled by rising inflation expectations on the part of consumers.

The Fed looks to core PCE as a key inflation measure that informs its monetary policy, which has an inflation target of a longer-run average of 2 percent.

On a monthly basis, the core PCE gauge rose 0.3 percent between June and July, after rising 0.5 percent the prior month, suggesting inflationary pressures may have peaked.

It comes as Fed officials are meeting virtually for an annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Friday, with investors watching closely for signs of when and how the central bank may begin to roll back its extraordinary support measures for the economy. In response to the pandemic hit to the economy, the Fed last year dropped interest rates to near zero and set out on a massive asset purchasing program, buying around $80 billion in Treasury securities and $40 billion in mortgage securities per month.

In a speech Friday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell addressed inflationary pressures, acknowledging a “sharp run-up in inflation” driven by the rapid reopening of the economy while reiterating his oft-repeated view that price pressures would moderate once supply-side shortages and bottlenecks further abate.

Powell acknowledged the relatively high level of Friday’s core PCE print, noting it’s “well above our 2 percent longer-run objective” and that both businesses and consumers “widely report upward pressure on prices and wages.”

“Inflation at these levels is, of course, a cause for concern. But that concern is tempered by a number of factors that suggest that these elevated readings are likely to prove temporary,” he said, arguing that the current spike in inflation is largely driven by a relatively narrow group of goods and services that have been directly impacted by the pandemic and the reopening of the economy.

“We are also directly monitoring the prices of particular goods and services most affected by the pandemic and the reopening, and are beginning to see a moderation in some cases as shortages ease. Used car prices, for example, appear to have stabilized; indeed, some price indicators are beginning to fall,” Powell said.

Powell added that officials have not, so far, noted broad-based inflationary pressures but acknowledged that evidence of such pressures spreading more broadly through the economy would be concerning and would prompt a swift policy response.

The Fed chief also addressed wage pressures. In the 1970s, upward pressure on wages combined with growing consumer expectations of further price increases to push prices higher, prompting the Fed to raise interest rates. Powell said there is little evidence of this phenomenon today.

“If wage increases were to move materially and persistently above the levels of productivity gains and inflation, businesses would likely pass those increases on to customers, a process that could become the sort of ‘wage-price spiral’ seen at times in the past,” Powell said.

“Today we see little evidence of wage increases that might threaten excessive inflation. Broad-based measures of wages that adjust for compositional changes in the labor force, such as the employment cost index and the Atlanta Wage Growth Tracker, show wages moving up at a pace that appears consistent with our longer-term inflation objective,” he said.

Powell also noted disinflationary forces like technology and globalization, arguing that there is little evidence these have suddenly reversed or abated, arguing that “it seems more likely that they will continue to weigh on inflation as the pandemic passes into history.”

He said the baseline economic outlook is for the economy to continue progressing towards maximum employment, with inflation returning closer to the Fed’s goal of averaging 2 percent over time.

Key Inflation Gauge Posts Fastest Annual Price Gain in 30 Years (theepochtimes.com)