“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer,” wrote Henry David Thoreau in Walden. “Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
In a profoundly important sense, no two human beings ever step to the music of life in identical ways. That’s because each one of us is his or her own uniquely singular amalgam of ideas, thoughts, traits, responses, and endless other elements that comprise our personalities. No evidence in history exists to suggest that the same person lived twice, a further testimony to the differences that make each one of us incomparable and unequaled.
When I study history, I focus on biography. I want to know who the notable people were who inspired movements, left remarkable impacts, even changed history itself. Not all those movements and impacts were positive, so I study bad people as well as good ones. In this anthology, the good outnumber the bad but we can learn from them all.
From Roman history, you will read here about the evil of Caligula and the good of Telemachus. From the British experience, you will be entertained by the beer maker Arthur Guinness, uplifted by female abolitionists and nurses like Edith Cavell, educated by theologian C.S. Lewis, and inspired by liberty-loving statesmen such as Edmund Burke and Robert Peel. From the French Revolution, you will be heartened by the courage of Olympe de Gouges and appalled by the lunacy of Francois-Noel Babeuf. You will find Russia’s Solzhenitsyn to be as exhilarating as the Peróns of Argentina and Abimael Guzman of Peru and Che Guevara of Cuba are depressing.
More than half of the 33 people I write about in this anthology were Americans—from the days of the nation’s founding to the 20th century. Some are genuine heroes, like aviator Bessie Coleman, musician Nat King Cole, entrepreneur Milton Hershey, economist Pelatiah Webster, and FEE’s founder, Leonard Read. I managed to work in Ralph Lazo, Rube Foster, Diamond Jim Brady, John Stetson and Calvin Coolidge too.
Fascinating people from other countries are to be found herein as well—notably, Jenny Lind from Sweden and Melitta Bentz from Germany.
In every case, the good and bad people in this book made a mark. Their lives teach lessons. We can learn from them even though separated by time, miles and culture. Ultimately, this is what history should be: People today being informed by people who came before.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2021-12-21 18:27:342021-12-21 18:28:37Mavericks and Misfits: Non-Conformists Who Changed the World for Better or Worse
California legislators have not only cut ties with reality—failing to see that they’re heading for ever more blackouts—they also want to cut their citizens’ last lifeline to reliable power when blackouts inevitably occur.
“Excuse me,” says your landscaper. “The mower’s out of juice. Mind if I plug in?” You look from the immobile machine to your half-cut lawn. “Outlet’s over there,” you tell him. “But let’s knock $20 off your fee? What are we up to now, 25 cents a kilowatt-hour?”
Welcome to the future. Welcome to California.
The state, committed to net-zero emissions by 2045, is moving to ban sales of gas-powered landscaping equipment as early as 2024. This is not the first attempt. Politicians tried and failed to do the same in 2003. Since then, though, more than half of homeowners in the state have swapped out their consumer-grade equipment for “zero emission equipment” (ZEE), meaning, battery-powered weed whackers, leaf blowers, hedge clippers, chainsaws, and even lawn mowers.
Electric, Because It’s . . . Quiet?
Many make the switch because, although lower-powered and less reliable (do batteries ever die at the right time?), battery-powered equipment is less noisy. That’s what prompted Mayor Stewart Welch of Mountain Brook, Alabama to begin switching his town’s tools over to electric. The bellow of leaf blowers disturbed his tennis game with a friend who, as chance would have it, had previously complained about the town’s noisy equipment. The city has spent $18,000 over the last year outfitting its public works crew with electric trimmers, blowers, and more.
According to Stanley Black & Decker, sales of the company’s electric yard equipment jumped 75 percent between 2015 and 2020. But, although lots of people are making the switch of their own accord, they’re not doing it fast enough, according to California’s legislative assembly.
Stop and Recharge
The biggest holdouts are those who do landscaping for a living, and for good reason. I searched Husqavarna’s site high and low for battery run time info for its 550iBTX, which one landscaper reviewed as “The best electric blower on the market.” For $469? Not bad, I thought. After lots of web searching about the battery, I gave up and contacted support. Turns out, it does not come with one. The lowest-priced option will cost landscapers an extra $300 and lasts between thirty and sixty minutes. The one the associate recommended, though, costs $969 (yes, more than double the cost of the blower) and “lasts up to 3.5 hours,” he told me. That’s if you run it in “normal” mode, which is half the power of Husqavarna’s $459 gas blower; boost mode saps the power faster and is about 33 percent less powerful than the gas blower.
Some landscapers make electric work, and not just those whose equipment is paid for by taxpayers, as in Mountain Brook. Chris Regis, owner of Florida-based lawn care company Suntek, is able to charge customers between 10 and 20 percent more for all-electric lawn care. He says, “There are people who don’t care and say, ‘I just don’t want the noise.’” All power to them. That’s exactly how free markets work.
Given the numbers above, though, it would take a lot of lawns to make up one’s initial investment with only a 10 or 20 percent upcharge. But Regis’s investment is far greater. He has outfitted the company’s vans with solar panels for recharging batteries on the go—each van costing about $100,000. Reflecting on how much longer the same work now takes him, Jimi Layne of Mountain Brook’s crew asked, “Are we looking at dollars and cents?”
‘Expensive and Unreliable, Please’
That’s an even more pertinent question in California, where energy prices are the highest in the continental US. (23.11 cents per kilowatt-hour, as of June 2021). Gas is more expensive there, too, in large part because of penalizing policies, but researchers predict electricity prices can only rise in the golden state, thanks to a host of factors. Prices are high, in part, because the size of the state increases transmission costs, as do wildfires on mismanaged public lands that have knocked out critical infrastructure, requiring replacement.
But the biggest contributor to high prices is the state’s push to adopt wind and solar, which require big upfront investments but nonetheless necessitate a reliable backup for when the sun’s not shining and the wind’s not blowing.
This problem came to the fore in 2020 when, for two days, California’s three big energy companies instituted rolling blackouts across the state because the grid could not meet demand. It was a self-inflicted wound. Given the state’s environmental restrictions, many coal-fired power plants are being decommissioned, and thanks to irrational fears, they’re not being replaced with clean, reliable nuclear energy, either.
Instead, taxpayers are being forced to subsidize massive investments in “renewables,” and power companies make up much of the state’s inevitable shortfalls by buying energy from more reliable, fossil-fuel plants in neighboring states. Unfortunately for Californians, on August 14, 2020, when the sun set and solar farms went offline, these companies realized they had miscalculated how big that shortfall would be. Western states were in the grip of a heat wave, and as Californians reached for the AC dials, they lost power altogether.
A Deadly Mistake
Losing power is no minor inconvenience, particularly when you live in what is naturally a desert, and especially when it’s more than 100 degrees outside. It’s not just that people can’t charge their Teslas or their ZEE mowers. One 2020 study concluded that more than 5,500 Americans lose their lives due to extreme heat annually. Climate-related deaths are a key indicator of low climate resilience, the ability of a locale to deal with extreme temperatures and weather. And, of course, climate resilience is directly dependent on plentiful, affordable, reliable energy.
But, increasingly, that is what California is doing away with in favor of expensive, unreliable energy. Unsurprisingly, the poor suffer the most. Research done in 2020 shows that many in Los Angeles can’t afford air conditioners, and many who have them can’t afford to run them because electricity prices are so high. In fact, accounting for cost of living, California has the highest poverty rate in the country, in large part because energy prices are so high. This, not in spite of the state’s adoption of “cheap” and “reliable” renewables, but because of it—because solar and wind are not cheap nor reliable and require a backup that is.
Cutting the Lifeline
Yet, with startling shortsightedness, the state assembly has sent Governor Gavin Newsom a bill that will effectively eliminate a go-to backup: gas-powered generators. The bill (AB-1346) lumps gas-powered generators in with the offending landscaping equipment and all other “small off-road engines,” referring to them as SOREs. It “encourages” the California Air Resources Board (the state’s own sort of EPA) to “adopt cost-effective and technologically feasible regulations to prohibit engine exhaust and evaporative emissions from new small off-road engines” and to consider “expected availability of zero-emission generators.”
Such generators do exist, but they are far more expensive, generate far less power, and most need to be recharged after just a few hours. Consider the GOAL ZERO YETI 3000X. It costs $3,400, and an additional $250 kit enables you to use it as a battery backup for your home. After all that, you can power a single refrigerator for less than 2.5 days, and that of course drops if you want to power, say, a few lightbulbs. By contrast, a Duromax XP10000HX can power your whole home—lights, appliances, and A/C system—continuously, running on either gasoline or propane, and it costs $1,400.
When the power went out last August, says Collin Blackwell of Eldorado Hills, California, “We went out and bought an $800 generator, so that way we could have the fridge powered up in the garage at least and be able to have food and everything in the house.” Mark Galloway of Cameron Park said he lives in a mountain community where losing power is fairly common. “You should have something, so having the backup generator and things like that—I think it’s on you to really take care of that,” he said. “It’s not like it’s something that you can’t plan for.”
But, if AB-1346 is signed into law, going out and buying an $800 generator will no longer be an option.
California legislators have not only cut ties with reality—failing to see that they’re heading for ever more blackouts—they also want to cut their citizens’ last lifeline to reliable power when these blackouts inevitably occur. California is committing energy suicide, and given that people rely on energy for just about everything, we shouldn’t be surprised by the toll this will take on human life.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2021-12-21 18:16:552021-12-21 18:17:26Why California’s Move to Ban Gas-Powered Generators [and Lawn Equipment] Could Leave Californians in the Dark
Acton Academy affiliates are benefiting from the surge in interest in microschools and the growing demand by parents for private education options.
When Jessica Gregory and her husband moved from the Washington, D.C. area in 2020 to a suburban community north of Boston, they expected to find a school for their children that was similar in quality to the one they left behind. They were disappointed to discover that classroom and behavioral management consumed much of the school day, and a rigid curriculum stifled their children’s curiosity and creativity.
“Like so many other families across the country, when the pandemic brought public schooling onto my kitchen table, I was floored,” she told me. “We became the unintended participants in the daily grind of standardized learning plans, un-engaging lessons and burnt out educators – conversations that, until the pandemic, were abstract for many adults,” she said.
Determined to provide her children with a learning environment that nurtures their talents and cultivates their individuality, this fall Gregory launched The Wilder School, a microschool that is part of the booming Acton Academy network. Founded in Austin in 2010 by Laura and Jeff Sandefer, Acton Academy now has more than 250 affiliate schools in 31 states and 25 countries. Each Acton affiliate is founded by entrepreneurial parents like Gregory for whom the network’s philosophy of highly personalized, self-paced, learner-driven education resonates. Since its inception, Acton Academy has received over 15,000 applications from parents who desire to launch an affiliate school.
For Gregory, the chance to build a school from scratch that connects to a vision she believes in was enticing. “Acton offers a unique education model which complements individualized learning plans with small group, collaborative projects,” she told me. “When I found it, I was intrigued. Acton then takes this a step further, implementing the best aspects of the world’s leading learning models in an intimate, community-centered approach that feels like a natural extension of home life. I knew this was the right model for our family because it supports whole-child development, valuing equally the real-world application of leadership and academic skills,” she said.
On the day I visited The Wilder School, a bright, colorful and welcoming classroom in a standalone, home-like building behind the church from which Gregory rents the space, I got a glimpse of how a day at an Acton Academy operates. In the morning, learners of different ages are dropped off and have some free time to prepare for the day. Then, they gather together to set and review daily and weekly learning goals. These goals fall within the broad academic categories of reading, writing and mathematics, but the children, called “heroes” at Acton, decide how and what those goals entail, with help from their instructors, or “guides.”
For Gregory’s two children, ages seven and nine, who are the initial students in The Wilder School, math goals involve completing several units each week using Khan Academy, the free, online learning platform that is used in many schools and homeschools across the country. Reading goals are accomplished using Lexia, a literacy learning software, while writing skills are developed using Night Zookeeper, a playful, game-based platform that makes writing fun and engaging. While these are the learning tools Gregory’s children currently use to meet their weekly goals, children at Acton are free to set personalized learning goals using the tools or resources that work best for them.
After a morning of self-paced, learner-directed academic work, the children take a long lunch break and spend ample time outside before reconvening for collaborative, project-based work in the afternoon. At The Wilder School, that work currently involves participating in an interactive lesson on colonial America, as well as developing a sales pitch for which type of classroom pet to adopt.
At just over $12,000 in annual tuition, The Wilder School, like most Acton Academy affiliates, is a fraction of the cost of other local independent private schools. Gregory has ambitious plans for the growth of The Wilder School in the coming months and years, including expanding her classroom space and introducing early childhood and middle school programs. Her optimism is well-placed, as Acton Academy programs across the country have seen extraordinary growth in recent years, a trend that has only accelerated during the pandemic response.
At Acton Academy Placer, outside of Sacramento, founder Matt Beaudreau says the growth in his programs has been breathtaking. “We can’t build schools fast enough,” he told me, adding that he is already outgrowing the buildings in his three locations which currently serve more than 300 learners, ages four to 18. Beaudreau expects this number to nearly double over the next year, and with full-time annual tuition around $10,000, Acton Placer is more accessible than other area private schools. Some of Acton Placer’s continued growth is due to parents seeking schooling alternatives after nearly two years of frustration with closed schools and ongoing coronavirus policies.
As a private membership association that operates as a learning resource center, Acton Placer was unaffected by school closures and related pandemic policies. Mask-wearing has always been optional for all community members, with individual decision-making a key tenet of Acton Placer’s culture. Each Acton Academy affiliate is free to create its own structure, school culture and procedures, while staying true to the overall Acton educational philosophy. Indeed, decentralization of authority and an elevation of the individual is at the root of Acton Academy’s broader mission. The network was named after Lord Acton, who wrote in 1887: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
It’s precisely this decentralization of power and emphasis on self-directed learning and goal-setting that led Heidi Ross to enroll her 11-year-old son in an Acton Academy in San Diego. A teacher and literacy specialist for 20 years in both public and private schools, Ross values the freedom and flexibility of the Acton model. “He’s learning a lot about responsibility, accountability, speaking up with kindness and respect,” she told me. “He’s also met some really great challenges and been successful in increasing math and reading—the core skills they have at Acton. He sees his progress which really excites him, and has good friendships developing,” she added.
Acton Academy affiliates are benefiting from the surge in interest in microschools that began several years ago and has increased since the onset of the pandemic. They are also tapping in to growing demand by parents for private schooling options. According to a recent analysis by the Cato Institute’s Neal McCluskey, private schools have seen enrollment gains during the coronavirus response.
The Wilder School’s Gregory thinks that the growing interest in private education stems from remote learning during school shutdowns that gave parents a close-up look at what their children were learning. “Through this, they have begun to question why school remains so similar to their own experience and how this format will prepare their children for jobs that have yet to be created, spurring droves of families to depart the public school system in search of more effective, flexible alternatives,” she said.
Gregory added: “If anything positive came out of it, the pandemic has raised our collective awareness of education alternatives and the expectation families have for their children.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2021-12-21 18:04:142021-12-21 18:08:08This Microschool Network Is Booming as Families Flee Government-Run Schools
ISRAEL SHOWCASED is a project of The United West featuring the accomplishments and global contributions of Israel, to the world. FROM THE HOLOCAUST TO SURFSIDE – A short documentary by The United West about an elite team from Israel’s National Rescue Unit, in the search and recovery efforts at the Surfside, FL. building collapse.
The United West team, with Suzi Gold as Host, showcases the turbulent history of the Jews and their continued resilience to overcomes all obstacles and share their experience and talents with all mankind.
Please watch and share this story which features first-time interviews inter-cut with the actual 911 call, in real time! The Surfside unspeakable tragedy, ironically, will uplift you as you watch this story and listen to the survivors and rescue team members.
BACKGROUND ON THE SURFSIDE, FL. BUILDING COLLASPE:
On Thursday, June 24, 2021, at approximately 1:25 a.m. EDT, Champlain Towers South, a 12-story beachfront condominium in the Miami suburb of Surfside, Florida, United States, partially collapsed. Ninety-eight people died. Four people were rescued from the rubble, but one died of injuries shortly after arriving at the hospital. Eleven others were injured. Approximately 35 were rescued the same day from the un-collapsed portion of the building, which was demolished 10 days later.
The main contributing factor under investigation is long-term degradation of reinforced concrete structural support in the ground-level parking garage under the housing units, due to water penetration and corrosion of the reinforcing steel. The problems had been reported in 2018 and noted as “much worse” in April 2021. A $15 million program of remedial works had been approved before the collapse, although no main structural work had been undertaken. Other possible factors include land subsidence, insufficient reinforcing steel, and corruption during construction.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Defend The Borderhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDefend The Border2021-12-21 13:12:532021-12-21 13:13:14FROM THE HOLOCAUST TO SURFSIDE: The amazing story of the Champlain condo collapse in Surfside, Florida
Biden to deploy 100’s of FEDERAL VACCINATORS! “the virus is IN CHARGE & WE need to TAKE BACK CONTROL & the only way to do that as a society is to test & ISOLATE…” said @MaraAspinall an expert in med diagnostics at ASU”
Isolate who, how, & where, please?
Using our military to enforce getting vaxxed or face isolation?
WASHINGTON — President Biden will announce new steps on Tuesday to confront a staggering surge in coronavirus cases, including readying 1,000 military medical professionals to help at overburdened hospitals, setting up new federal testing sites, deploying hundreds of federal vaccinators and buying 500 million rapid tests to distribute free to the public.
The measures, outlined to reporters Monday night by two senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, come as coronavirus caseloads are rapidly rising around the country, particularly in the Northeast, fueled by the highly infectious new Omicron variant — just as Americans prepare to gather for Christmas.
The 500 million tests that the administration intends to purchase will not be available until January, the senior officials said, adding that the government intends to create a website where people can request that tests be sent to their homes, free of charge. It was not immediately clear where the tests would come from.
The plan for new federal testing sites will debut in New York City, where several new sites will be running before Christmas. And Mr. Biden intends to invoke the Defense Production Act, officials said, to accelerate production of tests. [Emphasis added]
Defense Production Act? Really? Shouldn’t we be producing jobs and not jabs? Doesn’t it hurt our military and their family if they take away their military doctors and nurses?
Does this make any sense? It only makes sense if the next step is to send the unvaxxed into concentration camps for their own good.
The Biden administration will offer bonuses to doctors who “create and implement an anti-racism plan” under new rules from the Department of Health and Human Services, a move meant to update Medicare payments to “reflect changes in medical practice.”
Effective Jan. 1, Medicare doctors can boost their reimbursement rates by conducting “a clinic-wide review” of their practice’s “commitment to anti-racism.” The plan should cover “value statements” and “clinical practice guidelines,” according to HHS, and define race as “a political and social construct, not a physiological one”—a dichotomy many doctors say will discourage genetic testing and worsen racial health disparities.
The “rationale” for the bonus, the new rules read, is that “it is important to acknowledge systemic racism as a root cause for differences in health outcomes between socially-defined racial groups.”
Such premises have found a receptive ear in the Oval Office, which has taken steps to institutionalize them throughout the federal bureaucracy. Hours after his inauguration, President Joe Biden signed an executive order launching a “whole-of-government equity agenda,” one plank of which was the “equitable delivery of government benefits.”
The new bonus scheme, HHS stresses, is “consistent with” this order. It follows a series of steps by the Biden administration to integrate “anti-racism” into government policy: in November, for example, the Department of Homeland Security listed “diversity, equity, and inclusion” as one of its top two priorities, ahead of “cybersecurity.”
Here’s a very grim White House tweet about the virus and getting vaxxed.
The most sick, twisted, and dishonest message I’ve ever seen come out of a White House. pic.twitter.com/mAmyeTmqqI
— John – Reliably Reliable Sources – Cardillo (@johncardillo) December 20, 2021
But Omicron has mild cold like symptoms and to date there has been one person who has died from it. This person was fully vaccinated and had a booster shot.
Worth noting: the one person who has died of Omicron in our country was fully vaccinated & boosted.
Is it a myth used to create an atmosphere of fear?
We are already seeing law enforcement officers being used to harass and even arrest the unvaxxed and those without a vaxx passport. Watch what happens in New York:
Man was arrested in Brooklyn, NY after trying to order food at Panera Bread without a vaccine pass
If the Brooklyn, New York police are focused on arresting someone ordering food at Panera Bread, who is going after robbers, rapists, murderers and other criminals?
The Bottom Line
Biden has now escalated his “War Against the Un-VAXXED.”
It’s obey or lose your job. It’s obey or be arrested. Now it’s obey or we will isolate you and your family.
Americans are indeed facing a dark winter of persecution by Biden and his minions. Evil has come to America and it’s name is mandate.
First they came after those who voted for Trump, but I did not vote in 2016.
Then they came for those who posted on social media about Biden, but I was not on social media.
Then they came after those who held a rally in Washington, D.C. on January 6th, 2021, but I was not in Washington on January 6th.
Then they came after the unvaxxed, but I was vaxxed.
Then they came after me and there was no-one left to defend me.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2021-12-21 09:21:352021-12-21 17:59:26Biden Weaponizes Healthcare: Will deploy 1,000 military vaccinators to ‘isolate’ the non-vaxxed
Payment apps and online payment options through social media platforms are used to enable child and adult sexual exploitation. These digital payment options give easier access to sexual predators to groom young users. Direct service providers serving child sex trafficking victims have called NCOSE to ask our assistance in advocating that Square, CashApp, and Venmo make changes to their platforms to reduce the ease with which predators can send money to young kids. Georgia First Lady Marty Kemp and online child safety group Barkhave found similar trends—predators using these online payment systems to groom and exploit children.
Child sex trafficking survivors have shown NCOSE their phones, explaining that $50 would suddenly show up in their account and they would know their sex trafficker just sold them to a sex buyer.
NCOSE listed Snapchat on the 2017 Dirty Dozen List in large part due to their app feature Snapcash, which was largely used to pay for filmed and in-person sex acts, including those with children. Gratefully, Snapchat disabled the feature, however the trend continues with the #snapcash hashtag still in-use, and Venmo and Square increasingly used as the payment processor. While Instagram remains a hotspot for grooming and soliciting sex from youth, the platform recently announced an upcoming subscription feature (just like exploitative OnlyFans) enabling users to pay and receive money for content on their platform, which is likely to be abused by child predators (we are already in talks with them to ensure exploitation remains prohibited).
In addition to the ease with which online payments are given and received directly to youth to facilitate child sexual exploitation, predators are also known to track the behavior of youth online and then use that knowledge to push kids to do what they want. The lack of privacy for youth online is deeply troubling. This is why our public policy team is advocating to raise the digital age of adulthood from the current 13 to 18 with legislation pending before Congress. Take action below.
In light of these increasing dangers facing youth online, we are especially excited about a new tool that gives parents “digital superpowers” to help navigate their child’s path to earning, learning, and developing essential money management skills, while protecting their financial privacy and providing essential armor against victimization and exploitation online.
We are pleased to recognize REGO and its super app digital wallet platform, MazoolaSM with the Dignity Defense Alert!
We all know the threat that social networking sites can pose to children and the ways predators can use data exposed on social media. However, the misuse of data collected during a child’s financial transactions online or in-person via debit cards, digital wallets, and smartcard apps can be just as damaging.
Data thieves are more likely to capitalize on kids’ data. Criminals can often open more fraudulent accounts using a child’s personal information before getting caught than when using an adult’s. In 2017, among people notified that their information was included in a data breach, 39% of minors became victims of fraud compared to only 19% of adults. Over 1 million kids are victims of identity theft each year and children are 51 times more likely to be a victim of identity theft than adults.
That kind of information is rocket fuel for abusers and predators who thrive on grooming, manipulation, and “social engineering” of young children. Personal data about a child’s online and in-person transactions would open massive new avenues to earn trust and break through child’s defenses and instincts.
The proliferation of contactless payments in the COVID-19 era continues to grow rapidly and debit cards and digital wallets are a significant tool that children can use. However, most parents are not aware of the potential threat these new financial payment mechanisms can create. For example, parents may sign up to allow their child to save or make easy, digital payments, without realizing this technology also creates an avenue for predators to anonymously transfer money into their child’s digital wallet. Services like this that don’t provide clear and easy parental visibility create unsafe spaces for children without even realizing it.
Mazoola, as the only COPPA-certified mobile family wallet, is a walled garden that offers parents much-needed reassurance that their children’s financial information is safe while shopping with their favorite retailers online or in-store from their mobile device. Parents get the immediate visibility into every one of their child’s transactions, while helping them build financial independence in a safe, step-by-step way.
A Cycle of Exploitation: Online Harms Facing Youth
The brave whistleblower Frances Haugen has shown how Facebook targets kids with harmful and toxic messages and ads, driving a cycle of exploitation and harm that has victimized thousands. Congress is rightly considering a host of reforms to create a safer, more accountable Internet—including limiting tech platforms’ overbroad Section 230 immunity and even more focused legislation like the KIDS Act that would limit online manipulation and amplification of the most destructive messages.
But overlooked in the debate is an even simpler, more immediate step legislators can take to protect our kids from technology platforms run amok—modernize and strengthen our privacy laws to cut off the data fuel that powers algorithmic abuse and exploitative microtargeting in the first place.
Right now, the federal COPPA law requires companies to get opt-in consent before collecting personal information from children who are 12 and under. But these new fintech digital wallet companies that are targeting kids, like Greenlight and goHenry, can collect personal data from all children at will unless their parents affirmatively “opt-out”—which often requires running an obstacle course of click-throughs and consent forms that even a determined adult would have trouble navigating. Obviously, very few parents have opted their kids out.
The resulting FinTech Child Privacy Protection (FTCPP) gap is bad enough when our kids are just surfing the web or uploading their personal information to TikTok. But the harm gets supercharged when kids start using non-COPPA compliant payment apps and digital wallets.
Children’s Privacy is Not Prioritized
A recent VICE investigation found the largest kid-targeting payment companies “are willfully stretching the bounds of the Federal Trade Commission’s rules” and reserve the right to collect and share “a shocking amount of data” about our kids—including “names, birthdates, email addresses, GPS location history, purchase history, and behavioral profiles.” The power to collect and sell the individual financial transaction history of a child to data brokers, which can then be aggregated and combined with the broader universe of data collected on that child from the rest of their online activity poses a clear and present danger to our kids.
Which brings us right back to the Facebook Files—and the risk that all this personal information will end up feeding the abusive ad targeting and addictive engagement tools that are causing so much damage to our kids online. A teenager who buys diet soda or starts visiting the gym shouldn’t find themselves bombarded with manipulative ads and sponsored influencer content promoting extreme weight loss or other unhealthy messages about body image and their lives. Access to this kind of data (or targeting based on it) would let predators refine their approach to potential victims based on an intimate knowledge of the things they like and how they spend their money and time.
If the data were to be breached or leak onto the dark web, it would give a global community of predators an inside track to manipulate and exploit our children.
New Legislation to Improve Child Online Privacy
Senator Ed Markey, (the original author of the COPPA legislation), has proposed bi-partisan critical legislation to close the FTCPP gap—ensuring all kids younger than 16 receive full COPPA-level opt-in protections and banning certain forms of targeting and similar data abuses, and creating a digital data “eraser” button to put families in control of kids’ data. Representative Kathy Castor has also introduced landmark legislation, the Kids PRIVCY Act, to strengthen COPPA and keep children safe online.
This legislation is especially critical to strengthen the security and safety of digital wallets and spending apps, especially as we emerge from a global pandemic that has skyrocketed the use of contactless payment systems—including for in-person sales. And existing products in the market like the Mazoola payment app have already proven it’s possible to provide full COPPA-level protection to older kids and seamless digital payment online or in stores without collecting any personal data at all about children.
Moving forward with privacy legislation as the first step in addressing the crisis of weaponized data and online harm is also smart because Congress has been working on core privacy issues and developing vetted legislative proposals for years. Both Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California’s Consumer Privacy Protection Act already provide similar strong protections for younger users, offering real-world proof this path is safe and feasible.
We know a lot about the harm too much data can do in the hands of massive online platforms that do nothing. Congress must act to protect our kids.
But in the meantime, smart tech like Mazoola can protect our kids now and let them benefit from the online world without falling prey to it.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00National Center on Sexual Exploitationhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngNational Center on Sexual Exploitation2021-12-21 08:38:152021-12-21 08:38:15Mazoola Protects Kids’ Privacy
Senator Joe Manchin drove President Biden’s “mammoth” spending bill over a cliff this weekend, sparing the nation a massive increase in new spending and ill-conceived policies it cannot afford.
The West Virginia Senator appeared on Fox News Sunday where he said, “I had my reservations from the beginning… The inflation I was concerned about is real, it is not transitory. If I cannot go home and explain it to the people of West Virginia, I cannot vote for it.”
“What Senator Manchin did yesterday represents an egregious breach of the trust of the President,” said AOC.
“Joe Manchin pretends to have a problem with the cost of a $1.75T investment over 10 years in the American people, but has no problem with giving $9T to weapons makers and the military,” tweeted Rep. Rasida Tlaib.
Marc Morano reported in a “Morano Minute” that “climate activists say Manchin’s opposition to Biden’s climate bill will be so harmful you’ll be able to see the effects on Earth’s geologic record.” “The Jurassic, Holocene, and now….Manchin-cene?” Marc asked.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki released a harsh statement in which she vowed to neither “relent,” nor “give up.” Read Psaki’s statement at CFACT.org.
Biden’s “Build Back Better” is laden with bad policy, including over $570 billion in climate spending. AOC reported during UN COP 26 that the bill still contains funding for her “Civilian Climate Corps” — a Brave New World-ish plan to enlist and brainwash thousands of young people to shame and hector the rest of us into climate compliance That would have been as much fun as the 50,000 new IRS agents Biden wants to loose to shake more taxes out of the rest of us.
Environmentalist Michael Shellenberger wrote, “Build Back Better would have undermined electricity reliability, raised energy prices, and made the U.S. more dependent on foreign energy imports.”
“Build Back Better” is a massive mistake. Now that it’s dead we should drive a stake through its heart, cut off it’s head and smother it in garlic.
Biden’s monstrous spending must never find a new incarnation from which to rise from its crypt.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Committee For A Constructive Tomorrowhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngCommittee For A Constructive Tomorrow2021-12-21 08:27:552021-12-22 06:51:24Manchin’s NO on “mammoth” “Build Back Better” bill
What rings true intuitively isn’t always backed up by the numbers.
Joe Biden, the current front-runner of the Democratic 2020 field, promises the return of electric vehicle (EV) tax credits. The presidential candidate says that “a key barrier to further deployment of these greenhouse-gas reducing vehicles is the lack of charging stations and coordination across all levels of government.” Biden wants 500,000 new charging stations by the end of 2030, thereby incentivizing the use of electric cars beyond the advantages given when buying them.
As it stands—and depending on the state in which the car is bought and withholding the individual tax situation of the buyer—some people can save up to $10,000 on a new Tesla thanks to this tax incentive.
This policy introduced under the Obama administration had the intention of promoting electric vehicles in order to reduce carbon emissions, but what happened in the countries that eliminated the tax credits tells a different story. When Denmark got rid of its tax credits for electric vehicles, Tesla’s sales dropped by 94 percent. In Hong Kong, the company saw a decline of 95 percent as the city got rid of comparable tax advantages for those buying electric cars.
According to Biden, that is because the right user incentives aren’t there, notably charging stations. However, the countries involved have considerably more charging stations than the US: Denmarkhas 443 charging stations in its capital Copenhagen, as well as over 500 more across the rest of the country. As for Hong Kong, the South China Morning Postreports:
The move [Tesla opening a super-charging car park in Hong Kong] followed the opening of Tesla’s first supercharger station – which can fully charge a Tesla in just 75 minutes […]. Currently there are 92 Tesla superchargers at 21 supercharger stations, with more than 400 public and shared charging points.
Clearly, the question of EV is not one of convenience but of price.
The Full Story
Norway has the largest fleet of electric vehicles in the world, making up 60 percent of all new sales this year. Reporting on the story, NPR writes that “10,732 [sold cars] were rated with zero emissions.”
The Institute of Transport Economics at the Norwegian Center for Transport Research lays out the ambition of carbon dioxide reduction through electric mobility.
For these vehicles a massive transition to electric engines can result in an up to a 97 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions and up to 76 per cent reduction in energy use per transport unit.
Adding to that, over 95 percent of Norway’s electricity comes from hydropower, of which 90 percent is publicly owned. That does not come without its downsides. As electricity consumption increases in Norway, the sector is unable to keep up. Last year, lack of rainfall and low wind speedexploded Norwegian electricity prices to the level of Germany (which is still in the process of phasing out nuclear energy). Norway then resorted to coal power, and as fossil fuel power imports exceeded energy export, Norway has actually seenan increase in CO2 emissions.
This is despite the fact that Norway’s climate and geography make it ideal for the production of renewables, which is not the case for every state in the US. However, electricity production is only half the story of EV.
The Batteries
Electric vehicle batteries need a multitude of resources to be manufactured. In the case of cobalt, the World Economic Forum has called out the extraction conditions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where more than half of the world’s cobalt comes from. Miners as young as seven years are suffering from chronic lung disease from exposure to cobalt dust. Not only does battery manufacturing account for 60 percent of the world’s cobalt use, but there are also no good solutions to replace it, which is something Elon Musk is struggling with.
This does not even address the extraction procedures, complications, ethical conditions, and emissions produced bythe need for aluminum, manganese, nickel, graphite, and lithium carbonate.
With a European marketestimated to reach a total of 1,200 gigawatt-hours per year, which is enough for 80 gigafactories with an average capacity of 15 gigawatt-hours per year, that need is set to increase exponentially.
The renowned German research institute IFO declared the eco-balance of diesel-powered vehicles to be superior to electric vehiclesin a study released in April.
Petrol Cars
We know from the US Department of Energy that the average fuel economy of cars more than doubled from 1975 to 2018. Fuel economy is increasing while horsepower has also increased exponentially, making cars both cleaner and faster. In 2017, the average estimated real-world CO2 emission rate for all new vehiclesfell by 3 grams per mile (g/mi) to 357 g/mi, the lowest level ever measured. View the Real-World Economy (MPG) and Real-World CO2 Emissions Chart (g/mi).
No wonder: As much as consumers might care about CO2 emissions, they are even more price-sensitive. Even those consumers who aren’t will eventually be swayed when they find out their car brand is costing them comparably excruciating amounts in fuel.
Electric cars won’t be the one-size-fits-all solution to our current transportation challenges—at least not for the foreseeable future. As both technologies have up-and downsides, we need to consider what innovation can realistically achieve before we make calls for bans or rushed replacements.
Bill Wirtz is a Young Voices Advocate and a FEE Eugene S. Thorpe Fellow. His work has been featured in several outlets, including Newsweek, Rare, RealClear, CityAM, Le Monde and Le Figaro. He also works as a Policy Analyst for the Consumer Choice Center. Learn more about him at his website.
Last we heard we had only 12 years to extinction. Suddenly the goalposts have been moved to 50 years. No explanation for the change! Undoubtedly in 50 years they will be moved again. This is climate policy, bartender style! https://t.co/AyCJBTjOcE
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2021-12-21 07:45:052021-12-24 05:31:04Electric Cars vs. Gas Cars: Is the Conventional Wisdom Wrong?
“We have a lot of problems in this country,” Levin rightfully began. “One of them is something called January 6 committee. And the January 6 committee — you can see that the propaganda, Democrat Party media, the propagandists at the White House, the propagandists that control Congress want to turn January 6 into some kind of an event, an event to use against conservatives, against Donald Trump, against anyone who disagrees with them
“They took this straight out of the old Soviet playbook, and that’s what I want to talk about — January 6,” Levin continued. “What are the differences between the January 6 committee and their so-called investigation and the kind of investigations that Joseph Stalin used to conduct? Not a lot. Nancy Pelosi, who is basically a modern-day Stalinist, in many respects, the way she controls Congress, the way she absolutely crushes the minority, the way she abuses House rules and House traditions, whether it’s impeachment, whether it’s hearings, whether it’s committee assignments and so forth.”
He added, “The issue is how was the Capitol building breached? How was it breached? And that is a subject that Congress should be very, very interested in so it doesn’t happen again, but they are not interested in it. This committee, having been appointed by Nancy Pelosi, is a cover-up job. It is a cover-up job because she can assure that all these loyalists, and the two unhinged… Never Trumpers, are never going to turn their sights on her and try and figure out why she didn’t call up more Capitol Police. She is in charge of the Capitol Police.”
Levin concluded, “Nancy Pelosi was in charge of protecting that building, and she failed. And yet, we have a committee that’s looking into a so-called insurrection that has no interest in Nancy Pelosi’s testimony. They have no interest in Nancy Pelosi’s emails, text messages, correspondence of any kind, which is absolutely shameful.”
Pelosi Touts the “Transformative Nature” of Massive Spending Bill
On October 12, 2021, Pelosi spoke about the fact that some Democrats wished to lower the cost of their party’s ten-year, $3.5 trillion “Build Back Better” spending bill. She indicated that the legislation’s price tag would be negotiated down, most likely by reducing the number of years it would cover. “We ha[ve] some important decisions to make in the next few days so that we can proceed,” said Pelosi. “I’m very disappointed that we’re not going with the original $3.5 trillion, which was very transformative, but in whatever we do, we’ll make decisions that will continue to be transformative about women in the workplace.” Any changes, Pelosi elaborated, “only would be [made] in such a way that does not undermine the transformative nature of it.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Discover The Networkshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDiscover The Networks2021-12-21 07:33:362021-12-21 07:33:36Levin: ‘Modern-Day Stalinist’ Pelosi ‘Failed’ to Protect Capitol
Burlington, Vermont cut its police force by 30 percent, back when ‘defunding the police’ was cool. Now Democrats are admitting the cut did a lot of damage. Officers left in droves because of the hostility. Overtime costs soared. Only five officers patrol at night. A crime-fighting team was disbanded. Emergency call response times got longer. Burglary and vehicle thefts are up. But not to worry, City Hall hired its own private security firm for their own safety. But like other places, Burlington had to confess error and reverse course. In October, the City Council voted to raise the number of officers and to offer bonuses to keep any more from quitting.
Burlington’s police chief called the whole ‘defund the police’ movement “a grand experiment on a national and local level that’s gone awry.” You got that right. But defunding the police is not the only way the magical thinking mush-for-brains Left has messed up criminal justice in recent months.
Take zero bail, for example. Crime is up in Democrat cities that enacted bail reform, including New York City. One reason is that repeat offenders who are let out go on to commit more crimes. Duh! How many repeat offenses would it take for you to think there might be a problem here – three? five? California’s no-bail policy resulted in a car-theft suspect being re-arrested 13 times in 12 weeks. Zero bail – another crazy left-wing idea. Police in Los Angeles arrested 14 suspects in smash-and-grab robberies last month, but they were all released from jail because of the Democrats’ low-or-no-bail policies. Just the facts, ma’am.
If stolen watches don’t matter to you, maybe murder will get your attention. Twelve U.S. cities, all run by Democrats, broke homicide records this year. Philadelphia had more than 500 murders. Critics are pointing to the defund the police movement as the cause. It only took Philadelphia a year and a half to go from cutting its police budget by $33 million to the most murders on record since 1990. The spike in homicides in Chicago is attributable to a lack of support for the police and to left-wing prosecutors who coddle violent offenders out of some misguided notion they are downtrodden and oppressed. Chicago is where gangs can shoot up entire neighborhoods and get released without charges.
Left-wing Democrats would rather chase unicorns and rainbows than criminals. It’s gotten so bad in L.A., the head of the police union is warning tourists to stay away because the police cannot guarantee their safety. In San Francisco, residents call the police to deal with stolen packages, break-ins, open drug use and other problems created by the homeless – but the police won’t come.
But Leftists are either in denial or actually trying to gaslight you. Take left-wing District Attorney Larry Krasner in Philadelphia where homicides passed 500 this year. Krasner said recently, “We don’t have a crisis of lawlessness, we don’t have a crisis of crime, we don’t have a crisis of violence.” In response, former Mayor Michael Nutter who is black said, “I have to wonder what kind of messed up world of white wokeness Krasner is living in to have so little regard for human lives lost, many of them Black and brown, while he advances his own national profile as a progressive district attorney.” Amen.
A “messed up world of white wokeness.” Had enough of these left-wing crazies, yet?
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Skirmish - Liberato.UShttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Skirmish - Liberato.US2021-12-21 07:22:572021-12-21 07:22:57The “Messed Up World of White Wokeness”
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The Biden administration will offer bonuses to doctors who “create and implement an anti-racism plan” under new rules from the Department of Health and Human Services, a move meant to update Medicare payments to “reflect changes in medical practice.”
Effective Jan. 1, Medicare doctors can boost their reimbursement rates by conducting “a clinic-wide review” of their practice’s “commitment to anti-racism.” The plan should cover “value statements” and “clinical practice guidelines,” according to HHS, and define race as “a political and social construct, not a physiological one”—a dichotomy many doctors say will discourage genetic testing and worsen racial health disparities.
The “rationale” for the bonus, the new rules read, is that “it is important to acknowledge systemic racism as a root cause for differences in health outcomes between socially-defined racial groups.”
Such premises have found a receptive ear in the Oval Office, which has taken steps to institutionalize them throughout the federal bureaucracy. Hours after his inauguration, President Joe Biden signed an executive order launching a “whole-of-government equity agenda,” one plank of which was the “equitable delivery of government benefits.”
The new bonus scheme, HHS stresses, is “consistent with” this order. It follows a series of steps by the Biden administration to integrate “anti-racism” into government policy: in November, for example, the Department of Homeland Security listed “diversity, equity, and inclusion” as one of its top two priorities, ahead of “cybersecurity.”
HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The new rules update Medicare’s Merit-Based Incentive Payment System, a scoring rubric that determines eligible doctors’ reimbursement rates. Congress set up that system in 2015 to reward clinicians for high-quality, cost-effective medical care—and to penalize them for providing unnecessary, costly services.
Doctors had been billing Medicare for services “regardless of how necessary they were,” said Chris Pope, a scholar at the Manhattan Institute who worked on the legislation as a Hill fellow. Sold as a way of controlling costs, the payment reform passed with broad bipartisan support.
“Republicans who voted for [the scoring system] weren’t voting for this,” Pope explained. “The idea that this would be used as a tool of racial policy never came up.”
But the scoring system did reward “improvement activities” that advance “health equity,” creating a mechanism for HHS to inject ideology into medical compensation. The new rules add “anti-racism” plans to the list of such activities, which are broken up into “medium” and “high-weighted” categories. “Anti-racism” plans will fall into the second weighting, giving doctors extra incentive to implement them. Under the complicated scoring system, the highest possible bonus is 1.79 percent of a doctor’s Medicare reimbursements.
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Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
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http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2021-12-21 06:37:462021-12-21 08:31:38Biden Administration to Give Bonuses to Doctors Who ‘Implement an Anti-Racism Plan’
By Conrad Black, Special to the Sun | December 19, 2021
December 26 will mark the 30th anniversary of the disintegration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and with it, the collapse of international communism. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama spoke for many when he said that we were “at the end of history” and that there would be no political evolution beyond what appeared to be the total triumph of liberal democracy.
This can clearly be seen now as a hopeful view inflated by triumphalism. China has risen to take the place of the Soviet Union, which itself replaced the Nazi German Third Reich as the principal rival to western democracy. One could easily imagine, looking at the feeble and inadequate regime now in office in Washington and imagine that the West, haltingly led by the United States and infested by appeasers and defeatists, was once again under severe challenge by a transoceanic, totalitarian power.
Showing unsuspected powers of improvisation, the international left that was completely defeated in the Cold War vanished into the undergrowth, but almost spontaneously returned as champions of environmentalism. If capitalism could not be defeated by a competitive economic system, Marxism, it shortly found itself in mortal combat with the old left now in alliance with the authentic, if often tedious, conservationists in a holy assault on capitalism as an environmental threat to the future of the planet itself.
We appear to be in a more dangerous confrontation with China and other countries conniving with it — especially Russia, Iran and North Korea — than we really are. China is aggressively posturing and claiming international waters as its own and threatening to accelerate reunification with Taiwan. Russia, having lost nearly half its population in the fall of the Soviet Union, is openly threatening to annex at least the predominantly Russian parts of Ukraine.
The enfeeblement of the American administration invites the inference that America is in irreversible decline. In fact, while China has enjoyed astonishing success as a development story, bootstrapping itself up from the socioeconomic depths, its institutions are untrustworthy, its government still maintains a high degree of control over the economy and the country’s largest businesses, and it is run by an odious and corrupt dictatorship. It is a country with few natural resources and an aging population due to its long-standing previous one-child policy.
All this obscures the fact that the Cold War and the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. were the greatest and most bloodless strategic victories in the history of the world. The greatest consequence of them is the triumph of capitalism in the world, in particular in China and Russia. It is the best system because it is the only one that is aligned with the almost universal human ambition to have more.
Because it incentivizes competition, it inevitably leads to an overheated and potentially self-destructive economic frenzy, but since the Second World War, capitalism has demonstrated its ability to lift countries out of poverty and make advanced economies more prosperous, including formerly communist China, formerly fascist Spain, almost all of central and western Europe, South Korea, Israel, Chile, Singapore and much of Latin America. India is making unprecedented progress.
This is the triumph of capitalism: the peace dividend at the end of the Cold War and the demonstration of the absolute superiority of the American over the Soviet system as the Americans outdistanced the Soviet Union militarily while spending far less on military matters. The triumph of capitalism was earned, even if pure capitalism is not for everybody.
The waffling generated by a sharp change in prevailing currents of public policy in the United States should not be mistaken for a reversal in the fortunes of capitalism, whose benefits are sweeping over almost all the world.
The United States is in the midst of a complicated process of renovation. Six years ago, Donald Trump was practically the only prominent American who saw how disillusioned people were over being mired in fruitless Middle Eastern wars, seeing the steady exportation of American jobs to cheap labour markets and the importation of the resulting unemployment, and the fact that those in the middle class had seen virtually no increase in the purchasing power of their incomes for decades.
Mr. Trump led an assault on the complacent bipartisan governing political class. Despite being harassed by false allegations of colluding with Russia to rig the 2016 election and a spurious impeachment trial over an unexceptionable conversation with the president of Ukraine, he effectively eliminated unemployment, increased domestic oil production while reducing foreign imports and cracked down on illegal immigration.
Only the coronavirus gave the Democrats the opportunity they needed to terrorize the population and deprive Trump of what appeared to be his probable re-election.
The Biden administration has made an almost complete shambles of every policy area: immigration, inflation, Covid, crime, and the unprecedented and shameful debacle in Afghanistan. It is increasingly obvious that either Mr. Trump or a candidate supported by him and endorsing most of his policies will be elected in 2024, and the renovation of America will resume.
There will be a new and more purposeful political elite and a powerful backlash against woke anti-Americanism in the schools and universities, the self-serving hypocrisy of limousine liberals on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, and the narcissistic hypocrisy of Hollywood and Big Sport. In these circumstances, the status of the United States as the world’s most important and influential country will be re-established.
China is fundamentally not remotely as strong a country as the United States. Its institutions are not credible and are universally mistrusted; it has the political instability of dictatorships where succession is always uncertain. Russia has a smaller GDP than Canada and is desperately trying to regain shards of its former empire after the sudden secession of nearly half the Soviet population.
The West can accommodate Russian ambitions up to a point. The key is to avoid driving a truncated and demoralized Russia into the arms of China and effectively giving the Chinese the right to develop the vast territory of Russian Siberia. As long as this can be avoided, the resumption of American national renovation will re-establish the unambiguous superiority of American influence in the world, and particularly its economic model. Capitalism is imperfect, but it is invincible, as was demonstrated 30 years ago.
Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
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http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2021-12-21 06:23:412021-12-21 06:23:41Powerful Backlash Building Against Woke Anti-Americanism as World Marks 30th Anniversary of Disintegration of USSR
“Islamophobic hate crimes” are in reality so thin on the ground that those who profit from claiming that Muslims are the targets of widespread discrimination and harassment in the West have to invent them. And they’re so much a part of the Western media narrative that Ekran Mohamed could be absolutely certain that her story would be believed uncritically, as it was. The students walked out in solidarity, primed every day of their lives to be ready to protest “racism” wherever it is found. But the whole thing, as is so often the case, was fake.
On Saturday (December 18), the City of Fairfax Police Department in Virginia released a statement, debunking allegations of hate crime made by a female Muslim student.
In its statement, the cops informed that they were actively investigating a case of assault that took place on December 14 this year at the Fairfax High School. “The police investigation determined the physical altercation between two Fairfax High School students was not a hate crime. The investigation revealed there were no racial comments made by either student,” the cops emphasised.
“The female student confirmed her hijab became partially undone during the altercation, exposing her hair. The female student advised that the information posted on several social media sites, stating that racial comments were used during the altercation were false,” the police statement concluded.
The Background of the Case
A 16-year-old female black Muslim student in Virginia had alleged that she was called racial slurs and thrashed by two of her male classmates. She had also claimed that her hijab was pulled during the brawl that ensued on December 14, 2021. The girl, who was identified as one Ekran Mohamed had received overwhelming support from 100s of other students.
Lawyer Abed Ayoub, representing Mohamed, had claimed, “There’s multiple witnesses who can attest to racist and Islamophobic comments and overtures being made immediately prior to the incident into the assault.” He alleged that the girl had spent the evening in a hospital emergency room on the evening of the fight and was forced to serve a suspension in the same room as the accused on the following day.
Ayob alleged that the attack took place during a class exercise. “The group that included the perpetrator were drawing … the symbols of Islam, like the moon and the crescent, and were putting Xs through it.” He claimed that the Muslim girl was grabbed by her neck and scarf when she went to complain about it to the teacher. The lawyer also said that witnesses heard the two accused make ‘racist’ and ‘Islamophobic’ comments.
While speaking about the incident, Ekran Mohamed told WUSA9, “I haven’t been able to eat. Because of the stress and how disgusted I am that I had to go through this where I should feel safe…It is for every Hijabi out there, every Muslim girl and every Muslim person out there. It is a daily thing that we go through.”
She further claimed, “People are trying to cover it up and make it look like an accident.”…
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2021-12-21 05:59:542021-12-21 06:01:52Virginia: Muslim girl claims ‘Islamophobes’ pulled off her hijab, students walk out in solidarity, but she lied
This is my last column for the year as I prepare to enjoy the holidays and rest up for 2022. As has become customary, I’m using this opportunity to review my top essays from the past year.
As you know, I write on a variety of subjects, such as management, systems, technology, social issues, politics, and observations of our changing world. Sometimes my work is instructional and informative, other times it is controversial or humorous. I certainly hope it isn’t boring. By the number of subscribers I have, their comments, and the hits I have on my web sites, I do not believe this is the case.
This has been another fiery political year and, as such, my political columns did very well. Nonetheless, what follows is based on my “hits” on my web pages.
Interestingly, my readership has expanded beyond Florida. Currently, the following countries follow my work: USA, Ireland, Ecuador, Germany, France, Italy, Nigeria, Philippines, Thailand, Norway, United Kingdom. This is based on circulation.
This was a difficult year for me personally. I lost my mother in the Spring, and I discovered I had liver cancer in Autumn, something which I have written about recently. On the plus side, I am now the proud Papa of my first grandchild, who has become the apple of my eye. I have also met a wonderful woman who has been very supportive during these troubling times. As such, I count my blessings as opposed to problems. I must remember to write about romance in our senior years. It’s rather enchanting.
Writing has always been an important outlet for me. It helps me maintain my sanity. As my illustrator buddy said, “If they were to make you stop writing, and have me stop drawing, they might as well give us a Viking funeral here and now and put us out of our misery. It’s what we do and who we are.”
2. TRYING TO KICK TRUMP UNDER THE BUS – Jan 19, 2021 – Number 2 and Number 3 discussed the “Stop the Steal” Protest in Washington, DC on January 6th. So their rankings didn’t surprise me. People want to know the truth about what happened that day, and so far they haven’t received it. It disturbs me greatly that protestors are still locked up without a speedy trial twelve months later. This is simply outrageous.
4. TIM’S FIGHT WITH CANCER, PART I – Nov 16, 2021 – Number 4 and Number 5 are also closely related as I described my approach to conquering my liver cancer problem. It is my hope these writings can start a dialog among cancer patients and give the general public a glimpse into our thinking process.
6. REPUBLICAN CLUBS FALTER – May 27, 2021 – This grabbed the attention of Republicans where I essentially made the observation, “The emperor has no clothes.” Something that didn’t sit well with the GOP hierarchy. However, the grass roots people loved it as I spoke on their behalf.
7. FLORIDA PARENTS’ BILL OF RIGHTS – Aug 24, 2021 – this was a new bill within the State of Florida. Other states have also tried this. It ultimately is a reminder that parents should have more control over their children’s educational rights, as opposed to local government. This has spurred attendance at local School Board meetings.
8. “INHERITANCE AFTERMATH” – May 6, 2021 – Following the loss of my Mother, I prepared a punch list of items to consider when shutting down an estate. I hope a lot of people will heed my advice.
9. REPUBLICAN VALUES – June 15, 2021 – I discussed the core values of Republicans, something the general public simply doesn’t understand.
10. FOR THE LOVE OF WHITE CASTLES – May 4, 2021 – In early May, White Castle Restaurants finally opened a store in the Orlando area. This was enthusiastically greeted by displaced Yankees now living in Florida. Here I discussed what it means to them.
I also provide an audio version of most of my columns for those people on the go, courtesy of YouTube. I would like to believe people listen to me at the gym or beach, but more realistically, people tend to tune in while they are traveling or at work. Interestingly, the popularity of my audio segments is not the same as my written columns.
AUDIO SEGMENTS ON YOUTUBE:
1. REMOVING PALMETTO PALMS – Thu, June 10, 2021 – This was far and away my post popular audio segment, which surprised me as I was describing only the removal of Palmetto Palms on my property. I guess a lot of people hate them as much as I do.
2. WHY IS EVERYONE HIRING? – Tue, June 8, 2021 – During the summer, I spotted several “Hiring!” signs. People would rather take government stimulus money as opposed to working. How can they look at themselves in the mirror?
3. “HOW TO BECOME A TYRANT” – MUST SEE TV – Tue, July 20, 2021 – This was based on a mini-series on Netflix which described the characteristics of Dictators over the years. A lot of what was described can be seen today in the political world.
4. BIDEN’S FIRST 100 DAYS – Thu, Jan 21, 2021 – my predictions of what Joe Biden would implement in the first 100 days of his administration.
5. WHO ARE THE DOMESTIC TERRORISTS? – Tue, Feb 9, 2021 – Well, according to Congress, it’s not Antifa of BLM, but parents voicing their displeasure at school board meetings.
7. THE JIM CROW SHTICK – Tue, Apr 20, 2021 – I produced this as a means to educate people about Jim Crow laws. I’m amazed how many people do not understand their origin.
9. THEY ARE KILLING THE GAME – Tue, Apr 27, 2021 – This was an unusual piece where I discussed how MLB is changing the game of baseball through rule changes.
10. IS JOE GOING TO MAKE IT? – Thu, July 29, 2021 – I discussed the president’s mental acuity, something people are finally questioning.
I will be on sabbatical for awhile until I am ready to get back in the saddle for the new year. Until then, Merry Christmas to all, and to all, Good Night!
Reed,Lawrence W. – Mavericks And Misfits (EPUB)
