U.S. National Debt of $34,088,375,076,993.31 Trillion is a Ticking Time Bomb

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As the crushing crises increase at dizzying speed, it’s almost impossible to know where to look first.

Whiplash. And perhaps the Democrats objective.

U.S. national debt tracker for Jan 25, 2024: See what American taxpayers (you) owe in real time

US national debt is climbing at rapid pace — and shows no signs of slowing down

By Megan Henney · FOX Business

The U.S. national debt is climbing at an astronomical pace and has shown no signs of slowing down despite the heightened scrutiny on government spending.

The national debt — which measures what the U.S. owes its creditors — fell to $34,088,375,076,993.31 trillion as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the latest numbers published by the Treasury Department. That is down about $21 billion from the $34,109,378,375,744.03 figure reported the previous day.

By comparison, just four decades ago, the national debt hovered around $907 billion.

The unrelenting increase is what prompted Fitch Ratings to issue a surprise downgrade of the nation’s long-term credit score in mid-2023. The agency cut the U.S. debt by one notch, snatching away its pristine AAA rating in exchange for an AA+ grade. In making the decision, Fitch cited alarm over the country’s deteriorating finances and expressed concerns over the government’s ability to address the ballooning debt burden amid sharp political divisions.

“This is a warning shot across the U.S. government’s bow that it needs to right its fiscal ship,” Sean Snaith, an economist at the University of Central Florida, told FOX Business. “You can’t just spend trillions of dollars more than you have in revenue every year and expect no ill consequences.”

The outlook for the federal debt level is bleak, with economists increasingly sounding the alarm over the torrid pace of spending by Congress and the White House.

The latest findings from the Congressional Budget Office indicate that the national debt will nearly double in size over the next three decades. At the end of 2022, the national debt grew to about 97% of gross domestic product. Under current law, that figure is expected to skyrocket to 181% at the end of 2053 — a debt burden that will far exceed any previous level.

Should that debt materialize, it could risk America’s economic standing in the world.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

WARNING: Florida’s County Commissioners are Losing Housing Makeup Authority

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Once again the Florida State legislators are diminishing local authority regarding the housing make up of the county.

Considering the illegal problem we have in the state, and knowing that most agriculture is done with equipment, why do the Florida State legislators feel the need to change the makeup of the county without local input?

These bills should never pass. Soon there will be no reason the have local elected officials.

That is a Great Reset goal. Please share

In 2023 they passed CS/SB 102

Housing; Citing this act as the “Live Local Act”; deleting the authority of local governments to adopt or maintain laws, ordinances, rules, or other measures that would have the effect of imposing controls on rents; providing an exemption from ad valorem taxation for land that meets certain criteria; authorizing local governments to adopt ordinances to provide an ad valorem tax exemption for portions of property used to provide affordable housing meeting certain requirements; suspending, for a specified period, the General Revenue Fund service charge on documentary stamp tax collections; authorizing the Governor, under the Florida Job Growth Grant Fund, to approve state or local public infrastructure projects to facilitate the development or construction of affordable housing, etc.

APPROPRIATION: $711,000,000

In 2024 they are now attempting to pass HB 1051 and SB1082

HB 1051

HB 1051 General Bill by Agriculture, Conservation & Resiliency Subcommittee and Tuck and Alvarez (CO-SPONSORS) McClure

Housing for Agricultural Workers: Prohibits governmental entity from inhibiting construction of housing for agricultural workers on certain agricultural land; provides requirements for construction or installation of specified housing; requires local ordinances comply with certain regulations; authorizes adoption of local land use regulations that are less restrictive than certain state & federal regulations; provides requirements for record maintenance; provides for the suspension & removal of use of certain housing units; specifies applicability of certain permit allocation systems; authorizes continued use of certain housing sites constructed if certain conditions are met.

Effective Date: July 1, 2024

SB1082

General Bill by Agriculture, Conservation & Resiliency Subcommittee and Tuck and Alvarez (CO-SPONSORS) McClure

Housing for Agricultural Workers: Prohibits construction of housing for agricultural workers on certain agricultural land; provides requirements for governmental entity from inhibiting construction or installation of specified housing; requires local ordinances comply with certain regulations; authorizes adoption of local land use regulations that are less restrictive than certain state & federal regulations; provides requirements for record maintenance; provides for the suspension & removal of use of certain housing units; specifies applicability of certain permit allocation systems; authorizes continued use of certain housing sites constructed if certain conditions are met.

Effective Date: July 1, 2024

©2024. Karen Schoen. All rights reserved.

Leadership Of Major U.S. Landowner Chock-Full Of Chinese Communist Party Members

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Top executives at Hong Kong-based WH Group Limited, the world’s largest pork producer that controls vast swaths of U.S. farmland through its American subsidiary, are Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of corporate records and state-run media reports.

Records and reports reviewed by the DCNF identify four top executives and the chairman of the pork giant as CCP members with extensive ties to the Chinese government. WH Group controls nearly 150,000 acres of land across 29 U.S. states through its subsidiary Smithfield Foods, a family-run business established in 1936, which it purchased for $7.1 billion in 2013. While a keyword search on Smithfield’s website returned only two articles mentioning the firm’s relationship with WH Group, neither of the two articles mentioned China. An online map of Smithfield’s global business activities does not list any operations in, or connection to, Asia, despite archived reports from their website suggesting otherwise.

Revelations about WH Group’s CCP and Chinese government ties, which the DCNF found by cross-referencing the firm’s roster with Chinese-language news reports and corporate records, come as Republicans push for bans on Chinese rural land purchases, in particular, those close to U.S. military bases.

“It is no joke to join the Chinese Communist Party,” Matt Shoemaker, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer, told the DCNF. “You cannot just walk in and sign-up. You have to show that you are a true believer.”

Several states, including Florida, have taken legislative and executive action to ban Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland. Recently, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson issued an executive order banning such purchases near military installations. GOP lawmakers also recently pressed the Biden administration to launch an investigation into the second-largest foreign owner of U.S. land after his CCP membership came to light.

“No foreign government should be owning American farmland,” said Shoemaker, who is running for Congress in North Carolina as a Republican. “It is a national security issue, for obvious reasons.”

WH Group’s chairman, Wan Long, as well as multiple board members and some senior management were identified as CCP members in a 2022 Chinese-language stock exchange filing from a subsidiary called Shuanghui Investment and Development Co. (SIDC). WH Group and Chinese corporate records from SIDC also show that WH Group’s chairman and several top executives hold, or previously held, Chinese government positions.

Between 2010 and 2021, the amount of U.S. land owned by Chinese entities skyrocketed from 13,730 acres to 383,935 acres, according to USDA reports.

Smithfield operates half a dozen distribution centers, nearly 20 direct store delivery services, 36 feed mills, as well as more than 40 production plants and 2,400 farms across 29 U.S. states, according to the firm’s website. In total, WH Group owns 146,000 acres in the U.S., according to a 2018 report by the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

“Smithfield Foods, Inc. holds a substantial market share in the U.S. pork industry, accounting for approximately 26% of the total market share,” according to trade publication Essential Protein Trade & Shipping News.

In a bygone era, GOP governors might have welcomed Chinese investment into rural industries and communities. Now, it’s become a major source of concern as relations between the U.S. and China continue to sour.

South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem told the DCNF her office has had “a lot of hard conversations” with Smithfield’s leadership, adding she now believes the company poses a national security threat.

“Any time it felt like we would have the opportunity to work together, it ended up not going as well as I hoped,” Noem said. “I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that Smithfield is owned by China.”

Smithfield did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

‘The CCP’s Long-Term Strategy’

WH Group Chairman Wan Long is among the company’s senior leadership who is a CCP member with Chinese government ties, a DCNF review of corporate business filings and Chinese state media reports found.

An archived business profile on SIDC’s website identifies Wan Long as a CCP member.

SIDC is “the largest animal protein company in Asia” and its products include “chilled fresh pork and packaged meat products,” according to Smithfield’s website.

The DCNF reviewed and carefully translated key sections of SIDC’s Chinese-language website, which contains extensive information about WH Group executives’ CCP and Chinese government ties that are absent from WH Group’s English-language website.

Born in 1940, Wan Long joined the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) at the age of 20 before entering China’s meat industry, according to Chinese state-run media outlet People’s Daily. Wan Long has since earned various Chinese government positions and state awards, his archived SIDC profile states.

Between 1998 and 2018, Wan Long served as a representative to the National People’s Congress, according to his archived SIDC profile. The National People’s Congress operates “under the leadership” of the CCP, and its officials are “invariably influential members of the CCP and leaders of major mass organizations,” according to the Congressional Executive Commission on China.

SIDC’s archived website also notes that Wan Long has received a “special allowance” from China’s State Council. This refers to a reward system created to “strengthen and improve the work of the Party’s intellectuals,” according to the state-run China News Service. The tax-free reward ranges from a monthly stipend of roughly $85 to an approximately $2,800 lump sum payment, according to China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. However, it is unclear if Wan Long still receives this government reward.

Wan Long also earned the honorific “senior political engineer” from the Chinese government, according to his archived SIDC profile. Senior political engineers are required to possess a “relatively systemic grasp of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory,” according to the State Council’s State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.

China’s United Front Work Department (UFWD) also named Wan Long as one of 100 “Outstanding Private Entrepreneurs In The 40 Years Of Reform And Opening-Up” in 2018, according to the All-China Federation Of Industry And Commerce, a UFWD subordinate agency that co-sponsored the award.

The UFWD engages in “influence activities and intelligence operations,” according to the House Select Committee on the CCP.

SIDC’s 2022 filing on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange also identifies three WH Group senior managers — Qiao Haili, Wang Yufen, Liu Songtao — and WH Group executive director Ma Xiangjie as CCP members. All four WH Group executives hold high-level positions at SIDC.

Ma Xiangjie was also elected to serve as a National People’s Congress delegate in Henan province, according to that government body’s website. Delegates are elected by “the People’s congresses at the provincial level as well as by the People’s Liberation Army,” according to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

A local branch of the All-China Federation Of Industry And Commerce named Ma Xiangjie as one of Henan province’s people of the year between 2019 and 2020, according to the UFWD-affiliate’s website.

Yet, it is unclear just how many CCP members WH Group employs.

SIDC, on the other hand, has employed hundreds, according to the Communist Party Member Network’s website, which is operated by the CCP’s Organization Department.

“In recent years, over 300 new Party members have been recruited, strengthening the Party’s troops,” reads SIDC’s Communist Party Member Network profile. “Currently, Shuanghui Development’s senior executives include 17 Party members, constituting 85% [of all senior executives]; six business department general managers are Party members; six Party members are among the seven management department directors; all project managers are Party members; and 47% of the firm’s mid-level cadre are Party members.”

‘Update CFIUS’

When WH Group purchased Smithfield in 2013, the acquisition “received clearance” from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).

CFIUS reviews foreign investments into the U.S. on the grounds of national security, the Treasury Department website states. Multiple U.S. government agencies participate in the CFIUS process, including the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense and others, according to the Treasury Department, which is also involved in that process.

“We are pleased that this transaction has been cleared by CFIUS, and we thank the Committee for its careful attention to this review,” Smithfield’s CEO and president at the time, C. Larry Pope, said at the time, according to an SEC filing.

Over a decade later, House Republicans see CFIUS’ approval of WH Group’s purchase of Smithfield as a case study in why the body needs to be reformed.

“What we need to do is update CFIUS to ensure that it has jurisdiction over all foreign adversary land purchases, and to ensure that it has the ability to consider U.S. food security as a factor in assessing the potential risk of a transaction,” Wisconsin Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, who chairs the House Select Committee on the CCP, told the DCNF.

Iowa Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson said the CCP has “nefariously exploited loopholes to buy U.S. land, so they can exert control over our food supply and undermine our national security.”

“This is all part of the CCP’s long-term strategy to hurt America and our interests — whether it’s garnering valuable U.S. military intelligence or interfering with our food supply chain,” Hinson told the DCNF. “We cannot allow another acre of U.S. land to get into the hands of the CCP.”

WH Group, SIDC, Wan Long and CFIUS did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

AUTHOR

PHILIP LENCZYCKI

Investigative reporter.

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: Second-Largest Foreign Owner Of US Land Is A Chinese Communist Party Member

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

DEI/DIE the Virgin Skies: ‘Um… Why Is Our Plane’s Wing Missing All Those Screws?’

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“You can deny reality but you cannot avoid the consequences of denying reality.” — Ayn Rand.

‘Um… Why Is Our Plane’s Wing Missing All Those Screws?’

Another one of these disconcerting stories has cropped up suggesting that we may have a wider problem than previously suspected. It’s not nearly as bad as the door plug blowing out of a Boeing 737 Max over Portland, but it’s still troubling. Back on January 15, a passenger at Manchester Airport in the UK was awaiting takeoff on a flight to New York City when he noticed something unusual out the window. He was seated near the wing of the aircraft and he saw that one panel on the wing had a number of screws missing. Somewhat alarmed, he called it to the attention of a flight steward. A maintenance worker was summoned and the flight was delayed while they attended to the missing hardware on the wing. (NY Post)

A New York-bound Virgin Atlantic flight was canceled just moments before takeoff last week when an alarmed passenger said he spotted several screws missing from the plane’s wing.

British traveler Phil Hardy, 41, was onboard Flight VS127 at Manchester Airport in the UK on Jan. 15 when he noticed the four missing fasteners during a safety briefing for passengers and decided to alert the cabin crew.

“I’m a good flyer, but my partner was not loving the information I was telling her and starting to panic, and I was trying to put her mind at rest as much as I could,” Hardy told the Kennedy News agency of the moment he spotted the missing fixings.

The passenger took photographs of maintenance people with screwdrivers fiddling around with the panel where the missing hardware was noticed. (You can see the pictures in the linked article.) But then the flight was canceled and everyone was booked on other flights while they pulled the plane back for additional inspection and maintenance.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Electric Vehicles are Fleecing Us Out of Billions

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When you buy a new internal combustion vehicle, you are also paying for someone else’s electric vehicle.

While the subsidies are egregious enough, it turns out EV manufacturers are fleecing us out of billions, and doing it with government help.

Attorneys Michael Buschbacher and James Conde explain at The Wall Street Journal:

When carmakers test gasoline-powered vehicles for compliance with the Transportation Department’s fuel-efficiency rules, they must use real values measured in a laboratory. By contrast, under an Energy Department rule, carmakers can arbitrarily multiply the efficiency of electric cars by 6.67. This means that although a 2022 Tesla Model Y tests at the equivalent of about 65 miles per gallon in a laboratory (roughly the same as a hybrid), it is counted as having an absurdly high compliance value of 430 mpg. That number has no basis in reality or law.

Government subsidies and mandates wildly distort automobile production.  And as Buschbacher and Conde further explain, this funny math sucker punches us all, right in the wallet:

For exaggerating electric-car efficiency, the government rewards carmakers with compliance credits they can trade for cash. Economists estimate these credits could be worth billions: a vast cross-subsidy invented by bureaucrats and paid for by every person who buys a new gasoline-powered car.

CFACT has been educating the public on the myriad follies stemming from government pushing us to buy electric vehicles for years.

Buschbacher and Conde remind us that makers of diesel vehicles, Volkswagen in particular, were fined tens of billions of dollars for fudging their emissions compliance math.

There should be no double standards for EV manufacturers fudging their math to cash in on compliance credits.

The government agencies enabling EV makers to fleece the public should be called to account as well.

AUTHOR

Craig Rucker

Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president. Widely heralded as a leader in the free market environmental, think tank community in Washington, D.C., Rucker is a frequent guest on radio talk shows, written extensively in numerous publications, and has appeared in such media outlets as Fox News, OANN, Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hill, among many others. Rucker is also the co-producer of the award-winning film “Climate Hustle,” which was the #1 box-office film in America during its one night showing in 2016, as well as the acclaimed “Climate Hustle 2” staring Hollywood actor Kevin Sorbo released in 2020. As an accredited observer to the United Nations, Rucker has also led CFACT delegations to some 30 major UN conferences, including those in Copenhagen, Istanbul, Kyoto, Bonn, Marrakesh, Rio de Janeiro, and Warsaw, to name a few.

EDITORS NOTE: This CFACT column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Meet United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby

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Expose the powerful cabal installing these mental patients in enormously powerful positions in society?

Fly United. DEI the friendly skies….

“Woke airline policies need to end”: Scott Kirby in drag pictures surface as United Airlines CEO comes under fire online over DEI video

By Amrita Das, Jan 15, 2024:

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby has come under fire for newly surfaced photos where he appeared in drag. The pictures were posted on Libs of TikTok’s X feed on January 15. The group claimed United Airlines shifted their focus onto including and sponsoring drag shows into their business.

Under the same thread, the group posted video footage of an interview with AXIOS, where Kirby was asked how the DEI program is executed in the company. To that, the 56-year-old CEO said they are aiming to have women and people of color as 50% of their employees. Kirby revealed only 19% of their pilots now comprise people of color or women. He added:

“And by the way, from all the data I have seen, that’s the highest of any airline in the country.”

Scott Kirby also expressed his pride at the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion campaign at United Airlines. The video was met with criticism from the netizens. They complained the DEI programs in corporate companies are making way for inefficient people to get hired for jobs.

In the case of airlines, people wrote that hiring an unskilled pilot through DEI would pose potential threats to the safety of the passengers and other crew members onboard a flight. One user called this campaign ‘woke’ and said these policies should end.

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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Inflation Under Biden Hiked The Massive National Debt In A New Way In 2023, Experts Say

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Interest rate hikes to combat sky-high inflation under President Joe Biden have led the Federal Reserve to run over a hundred billion dollar deficit, adding to the national debt, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Federal Reserve in past years has operated a net surplus, remitting those excess earnings to the Treasury to pay off the national debt, according to a press release from the Fed. In 2023, following an inflation-driven increase to the federal funds rate, the interest rate that the central bank has to pay to commercial banks that are holding excess cash overnight, the Fed began losing money, which the Treasury has to issue debt to pay, according to experts who spoke to the DCNF.

“The Fed’s losses do contribute to the deficit,” George Selgin, director emeritus of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute, told the DCNF. “Normally, the Fed saves the government money by sending most of the interest it earns on its securities back to the U.S. Treasury. But because the Fed now pays interest on banks’ reserves, when the rate it pays goes up, its remittances to the Treasury go down, and lately the rate it pays has risen so much that this past year alone it owed banks more than $100 billion more than it earned. Until it makes up for this loss and also for losses from the previous few years, which could take a long time, it won’t be sending anything to the Treasury.”

The Fed was able to remit around $79 billion to the Treasury in 2022 before having to take out $16.6 billion in debt by the end of the year as rising interest rates took hold, later losing $114.3 billion in 2023, according to the Fed press release. The Treasury received $109 billion, $86 billion, $54.9 billion and $62.1 billion from the Fed in 2021, 2020, 2019 and 2018, respectively.

The rates that the Federal Reserve pays on the overnight reserve balances held by commercial banks have risen in accordance with hikes in the federal funds rate, which the Fed has put in a range of 5.25% and 5.50%, the highest rate in 22 years, in response to high inflation that peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 under Biden. Inflation has since moderated to 3.4% as of December — still not at the Fed’s 2% target, but enough to prompt a median of Fed governors to predict three rate cuts before the end of 2024.

“The Fed’s rate hikes are supposed to counter inflation by raising the cost of borrowing, which is supposed in turn to cause people to borrow and spend less,” Selgin told the DCNF. “But the same hikes add to the government’s deficit, by reducing the Fed’s Treasury remittances, but mainly by raising the interest the Treasury has to pay on its shorter-term obligations. So unless the government cuts spending, the rate hikes can fail to counter inflation, and might even aggravate it, and the public bears the double burden of higher rates and high, if not higher inflation.”

Many economists point to high-spending policies for a portion of the inflation that has plagued Americans under Biden. Biden signed the American Rescue Plan in March 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022, authorizing $1.9 trillion and $750 billion in new spending, respectively.

The U.S. national debt exceeded $34 trillion for the first time in the country’s history on Dec. 29, 2023, with around $27 trillion being held by the public and the other more than $7 trillion being intergovernmentally held. For Fiscal Year 2023, the federal government ran a budget deficit of around $2 trillion when the president’s failed student loan forgiveness plan is properly accounted for, compared to $1 trillion in the previous fiscal year.

“The reason it has losses is that the Fed printed money to buy federal debt,” Richard Stern, director of the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget at the Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF. “Then, when it stopped printing money to buy more debt, new federal deficits fell onto the private money markets. This triggered crowding out and the ensuing interest rate surges we’ve seen. Then the interest rate spike reduced the market value of the existing debt that the Fed is holding — that’s what the losses are.”

Net interest payments on the national debt have also increased rapidly as rates have risen, with any new Treasury debt issued having to be at a much higher interest rate, costing more to maintain and hold. In the first quarter of 2021, when Biden first took office, interest payments totaled around $535 billion, which has grown to more than $980 billion as of the third quarter of 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

“I’d say that the losses are indicative of the inflationary money printing used to cover Biden’s spending and just one more example of where the government is using inflation and interest rate manipulation to cheat bondholders and steal from hard-working Americans,” Stern told the DCNF.

The White House did not respond to a request to comment from the DCNF.

AUTHOR

WILL KESSLER

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Dem Demands On Automakers Could Backfire On Their Own Climate Agenda And Americans’ Wallets, Experts Say

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

New Labor Edict From Biden Regime Declares War On Independent Workers

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Biden declares war on the so-called gig economy and countless companies that use freelancers. “(Biden) Admin proving it’s an equal-opportunity jobs killer.”

The labor market is cooling while more Americans are using side hustles like driving for Uber to cope with rising prices.

Yet now the Biden Administration is declaring war on the so-called gig economy and countless companies that utilize freelancers. (WSJ)

Biden’s Independent-Contracting Rule Destroys Worker Independence

By F. VINCENT VERNUCCIO

A recent regulatory change by the Biden administration is so poorly designed, there’s no telling exactly how many workers will be hurt.

But now, as many as 73 million Americans who are independent contractors could lose that freedom. So may every American who might have pursued this path in the future.

On January 10, President Biden’s Labor Department issued a new rule that will gut independent contracting nationwide. While the department and much of the media are framing the rule as a win for workers, it’s anything but.

The Biden administration, which claims the rule will make it easier for workers to get employment benefits, overtime pay, and minimum wage, is really looking out for the interests of labor unions, which have struggled to organize independent contractors and find it much easier to go after traditional employees. There’s nothing pro-worker about stifling workers in favor of special interests.

[ … ]

Over the past four years, I’ve spoken with workers around the country who depend on independent contracting. Shelby Givan told me she became a freelance online educator so she could continue teaching while caring for her infant son. Karen Anderson built a 25-year career as a writer, editor, and photographer, taking jobs she liked instead of working for a firm. Kim Kavin did the same thing, choosing independent writing after a ten-year career in the struggling yet demanding news-and-magazine business.

From actors and designers to truckers and construction workers, I’ve heard the same thing over and over. Independent contracting gives workers…

Read more.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED VIDEO: “Bidenomics” Exposed In Hilarious Viral Video

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FAA’s Diversity Push Focusing on Hiring People With ‘Severe Intellectual’ and ‘Psychiatric’ Disabilities

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This is so dangerous and deadly. America’s elite have lost their minds. 

FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with ‘severe intellectual’ and ‘psychiatric’ disabilities

By Emma Colton, Fox News, Jan. 14, 2024

The Federal Aviation Administration is actively recruiting workers who suffer “severe intellectual” disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website.

“Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring,” the FAA’s website states. “They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”

The initiative is part of the FAA’s “Diversity and Inclusion” hiring plan, which claims “diversity is integral to achieving FAA’s mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond.”

The FAA’s website shows the agency’s guidelines on diversity hiring were last updated on March 23, 2022.

The FAA, which is overseen by Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation, is a government agency charged with regulating civil aviation and employs roughly 45,000 people.

All eyes have been on the FAA and airline industry in recent days, after a plug door on a Boeing 737 Max 9 blew out during an Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5.

The FAA grounded all 737 MAX 9 planes after the incident, and is carrying out an “extensive inspection” and maintenance work.

The FAA added it would increase its oversight of Boeing following the incident, including auditing Boeing’s 737 Max 9 jetliner production line and companies that supply parts to the airline manufacturer.

Following the incident, social media commenters and public figures have charged that airlines and airline manufacturers’ emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives has made flying less safe.

“Do you want to fly in an airplane where they prioritized DEI hiring over your safety?,” tech billionaire Elon Musk wrote on X last week. “That is actually happening.”

“The DEI Rot In The Airline Industry Is Way Worse Than You Think,” Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh wrote in an op-ed last week.

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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Top Trans Pediatric Doctors Admit In Unearthed Video That Puberty Blockers Aren’t As ‘Reversible’ As Advertised

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Airlines Prioritize Wokeness Over Safety: But at What Cost?

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My dad is a certified physician assistant. As such, he often shares spontaneous medical advice with me (although part of that is just because he’s my dad and cares about my wellbeing.) For instance, some advice he’s given me that he would give to anyone is if you or someone you know needs surgery or a medical procedure, be sure to ask the doctor in charge two questions: “How many times have you performed this operation? And when was the last time you did it?”

According to my dad, these questions are crucial to ask because you want to make sure you can fully trust the person who’s handling your safety and survival. And that can be said about nearly anything, right? The fear of flying, for instance, is extremely common. But I’m sure more people will come to feel the same as the pilots and airlines responsible for passenger safety and survival are increasingly untrustworthy.

Last week, an Alaska Airlines flight had to make an emergency landing after loose parts caused a portion of the plane’s body to blow off less than 20 minutes after takeoff. Passengers on that flight were terrified, and many thought they were “going to die.” Thankfully, there were no casualties, and even the boy closest to the danger was left relatively unharmed. Some, perhaps, consider it a miracle.

But here’s the reality: “To an incredibly dangerous extent,” wrote Daily Wire host Matt Walsh, “The airline industry is in the process of actively making itself less competent and reliable.” But why? It’s simple. The airline industry is prioritizing wokeness — in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) — over safety and qualified personnel.

If your grandfather needed heart surgery, you want to know, as much as humanly possible, that you can trust the cardiothoracic surgeon holding the life of your loved one in their hands. Yes, tragedies do still occur sometimes, but the difference is taking every precaution you can up to that point. This same concept should apply to the pilots flying hundreds of people across oceans and continents. Pilots are very much responsible for the lives of those on board. And yet, airlines such as United and Alaska have decided their priorities must be fixated on skin color.

United, Alaska, and other airlines aren’t focused on hiring qualified individuals — those who not only received their pilot license, but truly earned it. Instead, these airlines only seem to care about what their employees look like. Or as Walsh put it, “[I]n their various public statements and press releases, United Airlines has made it very clear that they’re mainly interested in hiring pilots on the basis of skin color and gender, rather than competence.”

I find it hard to fathom that a staple in the industry, Boeing, cares more about scoring perfectly on tests that evaluate LGBT policies than whether their aircrafts are equipped to take off without crashing. Which, by the way, Boeing did score perfectly on the Human Rights Campaign’s 2023 Corporate Equality Index. Oh, and so did American, Southwest, Alaska, and some 545 other businesses. And while not everyone scored perfectly on their radical gender and sexuality quiz, most airlines at least share the same DEI goals. But at what cost?

The trend seems to be that any time woke principles are prioritized, people get hurt — physically or mentally. The transgender movement is a perfect example. Minors are told they’re born in the wrong body, and that the puberty they’re experiencing is actually a sign to defy basic biology. So, they proceed with the hormone blockers and the “gender-affirming care.” So-called medical professionals sign off on double mastectomies and testosterone for healthy teenage girls. And in the end, they suffer the consequences of constant pain, rashes, and infections for the rest of their lives.

Too often, it’s permanent, life-changing damage. It’s heartbreaking. And that’s the reality of prioritizing wokeness: It destroys lives. And the companies like Boeing thatemphasizing wokeness over safety will perhaps, sooner or later, be responsible for ending lives. That is, if they continue to hire pilots who don’t know how to fly and engineers who don’t know how to build.

Paul Fitzpatrick, president of 1792 Exchange, shared with The Washington Stand, “It’s time to free Boeing from their captivity to political activist groups so they can get back to building safe and innovative aircraft. Distractions are many at Boeing when they are pleasing and funding divisive and extreme ideologies.”

He continued, “To score 100% on Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, Boeing allowed a political stakeholder to dictate policies on personnel, marketing, operations, and lobbying. Whether it is that issue set, divisive DEI policies, or climate extremism, Boeing should reject stakeholder capitalism and return their financial and mental focus to hiring the most qualified talent to produce the safest airplanes possible.”

To Boeing and all other companies who have misplaced priorities, Fitzpatrick reiterated, “[T]heir duty [is] to shareholders and customers. They must get back to business.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

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KEVIN MOONEY: Biden Admin’s New Climate Rules Could Mean Big Payday For His Buddies, Burden For American Businesses

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In a setback for former government officials and attorneys poised to cash in on proposed climate disclosure rules, the Securities and Exchange Commission continued to kick the ball down the road last year.

Many of the objections raised in public comments revolve around so-called Scope 3 emissions that are not directly produced by companies and instead result from what occurs “upstream” and “downstream” of a company’s activities. That’s a problem because if the SEC rule is finalized the commission would effectively extend its jurisdiction to include private companies that transact business with public firms registered with the SEC.

There’s a strong case to be made that under this scenario the commission would be overstepping its authority, which would help to explain why the SEC has continuously slow-walked its proposal.

But there’s additional intrigue involving a somewhat unheralded “carbon accounting” firm equipped with specialized software known as Persefoni that could also gum up the works. The for-profit outfit founded in 2020 has managed to recruit several high-ranking SEC officials who all had a hand in crafting the climate rules first introduced in March 2022.

These include Allison Herren Lee, a former acting chair of the SEC, Kristina Wyatt, who served as the SEC’s senior counsel for climate and environmental, social, and corporate government (ESG), and Emily Pierce who served as the SEC’s assistant director in the Office of International Affairs.

The SEC estimates that it will cost anywhere from $460,000 to $640,000 for companies to comply with the new rules during the first year they are in operation. Given the complexity involved in tracking Scope 3 emissions, it’s not too difficult to imagine how Persefoni stands to benefit financially from software and accounting services specifically tailored for this purpose.

In fact, that appears to have been the plan right from the get-go. Influence Watch describes how the accounting firm and environmental activists joined forces to have substantial input on the disclosure rules. Moreover, Persefoni is prominently mentioned throughout the SEC proposal. But it’s not just carbon accountants who stand to benefit at the expense of companies that fall within the purview of the SEC.

Dan Kish, a senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, a Washington-based nonprofit, sees a potential “big payday for law firms” attached to the SEC’s supply chain reporting mandates.

“This is all about expanding the size and scope of government,” he said in an interview. “Lawyers can get involved with a class action lawsuit and they’ll say this particular company didn’t properly report their emissions. You can expect the lawyers to take a huge chunk from these suits. This gets into very gray areas about how a company can be expected to account for every single item along the supply chain.”

Kish continued:

“You’ll have lawyers intervening supposedly to protect the public interest, but they’ll be raking in all kinds of cash. The process doesn’t stop here since the law firms will then dump campaign contributions into the coffers of the people pushing these policies.”

The SEC’s actions can be viewed as just one small part of President Biden’s “whole-of-government effort” to push climate initiatives at the expense of taxpayers and energy producers.

Companies in the energy-intensive states, such as Pennsylvania, will likely feel a greater financial burden, explained Gordon Tomb, a senior fellow with Commonwealth Foundation, a free market think tank headquartered in Harrisburg, explained. (RELATED: DAVID BLACKMON: Left-Wing Billionaires Have A New Plan Up Their Sleeves In War On Fossil Fuels)

“Pennsylvania is the second largest net supplier of energy to other states and the largest exporter of electricity to other states,” Tomb said. “As such, private companies supporting enterprises that emit carbon dioxide in the production of energy number at least in the hundreds and their employees in the many thousands. Imposing costs artificially constructed to advance a quasi-religious climate ideology and create ways for the politically connected to make money without producing a benefit is viciously economically destructive.”

Ultimately, it’s up to Congress to reign in overreaching executive agencies. Last June, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, (R-K.Y.) and Senate Banking Committee ranking member Tim Scott (R-S.C.) sent a joint letter to the SEC seeking information and documentation providing insight into the commission’s relationship with Persefoni and environmental activist groups. That’s an encouraging sign, but hardly sufficient for the potential victims of burdensome new regulations.

AUTHOR

KEVIN MOONEY

Kevin Mooney is the Senior Investigative Reporter at the Commonwealth Foundation, Pennsylvania’s free-market think tank, and writes for several national publications. Twitter: @KevinMooneyDC.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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GROVER NORQUIST: Biden Enables Freeloading On American Innovation

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Name the Enemy: Globalists. What do they want? Everything

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I think I am beginning to dislike the word “Sustainable” . I think it is the most overused words in the past 3 years. Everything we touch or do, all products, actions must be sustainable. Yet does anyone know what Sustainable ,means`. according to the dictionary sustainable means: able to be maintained at a certain rate or level. According to Gro Harlem Bruntland, author of Our Common Future, Globalist friend of Globalist Hillary Clinton, “Sustainable Developments means development of society that meets the needs of the present society without compromising the needs of future society to meet their own needs.”

In simple terms Sustainable means CONTROL! 

In this controlled society there will be no growth, no innovation, no creation. You will do nothing without Government approval.

All activity will be regulated by a consensus of unelected Globalists who think they have the right to control you. They use the Precautionary Principal determining the worst case scenario on the computer and regulate as if it were true. They never take into consideration the genius of man in solving problems because they do not want problems solved. They lie and get the low information populace to believe they are taking action without scientific certainty to save future generations from scarcity of resources often screaming that without these restrictions, the planet will be destroyed by climate change. They restrict, catch shares, oil, water, coal, food, mobility Globalists lie so you will believe they must

NATIONALIZE EVERYTHING for the common good. In reality they are just a bunch of grifters determined to steal everything we own. We will own nothing and they will be happy.  

As Globalists must change mindset of Americans into do more for less. They intend to accomplish this through the Implementation and monitoring using  TECHNOLOGY by Digitalizing ID, Money, Surveillance Cameras, Vaccine Passports, Smart Meters while forcing people to live in SMART 15 minute cities.

Everything must be watched, shared, monitored for usage. You will be monitored for your consumption patterns and if you use too much you will be shut off. Smart Meters, Smart Grids, Red light Cameras, Social Credits, Vaccine Passport and Digital money will keep you in line with their program. S=Surveillance, M=Monitoring, A= Analysis, R=Reporting, T=Technology

” For the Globalists, the point isn’t to improve the world, the point is to control it, and control you. ” Mark Keenan. Read and share Mark’s article: Decoding the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s): Indoctrinating Your Children into the New Fake Sustainable World. Order.. https://www.globalresearch.ca/decoding-un-sustainable-development-goals-indoctrinating-children-new-fake-sustainable-world-order/5843937?doing_wp_cron=1705028520.7377040386199951171875

This will never happen in America you say. Sorry wrong answer. It is already here. By lying and paying off elected officials, Globalist were able to get businesses to be their enforcer. They called fascism Public Private Partnerships (P3s).  Gov Rick Scott brought P3s to Florida. How did that work?

The Globalists wanted to redistribute the wealth of the middle class to themselves and their friends.  So they began to outlaw products that were perfectly fine but they didn’t control and were not making money from.  All of a sudden the inexpensive incandescent made in America light bulb was not sustainable. It had to be replaced by the CFL (compact fluorescent light bulb) Never mind that the CFL was filled with mercury and harmful to the environment if broken and were 3 times as expensive. But they were made in China in companies owned by Globalists.

Globalists hate competition so only favored companies who followed Globalist regulations would get government contracts. PPPs began replacing small family owned American companies. Covid  insured that many small companies went under while regulations are finishing the rest. Today it is almost impossible for a small business to make money. That is the idea.

None for thee and all for me should be the motto of the Globalists. Nothing is more in your face than the lies about beef. In Ireland ranchers were told to kill 1/3 of their herd because cows expel methane gas and that is harming the planet. All over the globe the cry is save the planet, kill the cows. What will happen if this is ever done?  People will starve which is the idea.  Less People, Less Problems. So what will the Globalists eat?  Will they eat bugs?  Don’t count on it. Today we learned that Mark Zuckerberg is raising a herd of “high quality beef” on his ranch in Hawaii. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-embarking-most-delicious-112603039.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall

For a clear understanding of how you are being fleeced you this is a MUST SEE documentary The Great Taking  https://rumble.com/v3yptkd-the-great-taking-documentary.html   You must prepare.

All is not grim if we act. Globalists can not handle the truth. The world is waking up and all over populists are winning elections. Will it be easy? NO. It took Globalists a long time to get this much control. They will not go away without a fight. But the truth will win.

How do you spot a Globalist? They are in both parties. Its very easy. Just ask your candidate what MAGA means.  Ask them what kind of government does America have? If they say a democracy, say next. If they say a Republic ask them what is the difference between a democracy and a republic. There is only one way to save America that is – with hard work. Are you up to it? Did you share? Contact your legislator? Did you get 5?

Did you comment to the SEC about the NAC?

Did you Call your legislator Send them an email, tweet, phone call. Tell them Close the Border or Close the government

See MTG Hearing on the Covid Vaccine, then call your legislator and tell them NO to the WHO.

©2024. All rights reserved.

TAKE ACTION

Florida: Stop Article V a.k.a. Con-Con CON: ACT NOW: Con-Con resolutions HCR 693 and HCR 703 have passed to next committee 1/11. Tell your legislator NO to Con-Con CON

Education Bills Florida Citizens Alliance

Bills: https://goflca.org/agenda/2024-bill-assessment/

Florida legislature is trying to cut the HOPE scholarship giving a scholarship for students to get out of Public School if bullied. Sign the petition.https://flcactioncenter.org/petition/please-don-t-lose-hope

Defend Florida, https://defendflorida.org/

These Election Integrity Bills need sponsors :  HB135 – Voter Registration Applications

HB 671 Ballot Boxes

HB 359 – Voting Systems

SB 190 – Ballot Boxes

©2024. Karen Schoen. All rights reserved.

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Second-Largest Foreign Owner Of U.S. Land Is A Chinese Communist Party Member

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The second-largest foreign landowner in the U.S. is a Chinese billionaire who it has been determined is a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of Chinese-language news reports.

Chen Tianqiao, the founder, chairman and CEO of global investment firm Shanda Group, owns approximately 200,000 acres of land in Oregon, according to Land Report. Chen also has extensive ties to the Chinese government, ranging from CCP membership to executive roles in CCP-affiliated organizations, according to a DCNF review of Chinese-language media reports.

In 2015, Chen acquired 198,000 acres in Oregon, according to Land Report. The $85 million purchase made the Chinese national the 82nd-largest property owner in the U.S. and the second-largest foreign U.S. land owner, Bloomberg reported, second only to a Canadian family who owns over 1 million acres of Maine.

Oregon’s Bull Springs Skyline Forest accounts for approximately 33,000 of Chen’s acreage, according to Land Report. The forest is located west of Bend, Oregon, and is home to springs, creeks, timberland and wildlife, according to the Bull Springs Skyline Forest website.

Oregon Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer said she was “deeply concerned that individuals tied to the Chinese Communist Party are buying up timberland, which is one of our most precious and finite resources.”

“Foreign ownership of United States lands is a serious problem that has rightfully sparked unease among farmers, ranchers and foresters across the country,” Chavez-DeRemer told the DCNF.

Chen also owns several urban properties in the U.S., including the Vanderbilt Mansion in Manhattan, the Seeley Mudd Estate near Los Angeles and a 150,000 square-foot research facility at Caltech called the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience — each worth tens of millions of dollars, according to Land Report.

Chinese ownership of U.S. land, in particular agricultural land, has come under increased scrutiny from GOP governors, who see it as a potential national security threat. Several states, including Florida, have taken legislative and executive action to ban Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland, the most recent being Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s January 2024 executive order banning such purchases near military installations.

“One of the Chinese Communist Party’s goals is to undermine and weaken America,” Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio told the DCNF. “This includes instances where our greatest adversary continues to buy land — whether its farmland or near our installations.”

‘Despise All Our Enemies’

Born in 1973, Chen served as a student cadre from an early age, state-run media outlet China News Service reported.

“In 1990, Chen enrolled in Fudan University to major in economics, the following year he joined the Chinese Communist Party, and, in 1993, he won the title of ‘Shanghai Municipal Outstanding Model Cadre Student,’” according to a DCNF translation of an archived 2005 press release from Chen’s alma mater, Fudan University in Shanghai.

Chen was just 18 when he joined the Communist Party, according to a 2007 article from Communist Youth Daily, the official newspaper for the Communist Youth League.

Since joining the Party, Chinese media outlets and business filings have repeatedly identified Chen as a CCP member.

A 2016 Sohu.com article identified Chen and several other Chinese CEOs as CCP members. Likewise, Chen’s profile on the Chinese financial portal Sina, which was last updated in November 2023, identifies him as a CCP member.

The state-run Beijing Review describes Chen as an admirer of Mao Zedong, first chairman of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Several Chinese-language outlets have also reported that Chen’s corporate office prominently displays Mao’s written works.

Chen even has a favorite Mao Zedong quote, according to state-run media outlet China News Service: “Strategically we should despise all our enemies, but tactically we should take them all seriously.”

Mao delivered the remarks in a speech denouncing American imperialism during a visit to Moscow in November 1957, according to the University of Dayton Review.

Above and beyond his CCP membership, Chinese government records show that Chen served as a representative to the 11th and 12th councils of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which ran between 2008 and 2018.

The CPPCC is a Chinese government agency where “all the relevant united front actors inside and outside the party come together: party elders, intelligence officers, diplomats, propagandists, military officers and political commissars, united front workers, academics and businesspeople,” former CIA officer Peter Mattis testified to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in 2019.

“CPPCC delegates attend a high-profile annual meeting to receive direction from the CCP regarding the ways its policies should be characterized to both domestic and foreign audiences,” according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. “Delegates to the CPPCC serve as proxies for CCP interests by virtue of their participation in this forum, and they frequently act as interlocutors with foreign government officials, businesses, and academic institutions.”

Chinese media reports include photos of Chen attending CPPCC meetings while wearing the government agency’s distinctive red, clip-on delegate’s badge.

‘Growing Cause For Concern’

Chen has also held executive positions with the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce (ACFIC), including with the group’s Shanghai branch, according to the Chinese-language news outlet Sohu.com.

ACFIC describes itself as an organization “led by the Communist Party of China” that “contributes greatly to the Party’s united front and economy related work as well as the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

John Dotson, deputy director of Global Taiwan Institute, told the DCNF that ACFIC is subordinate to the United Front Work Department (UFWD), which is a CCP agency whose operations are a “blend of engagement, influence activities and intelligence operations,” according to the House Select Committee on the CCP.

“In regards to the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, it’s definitely a subordinate agency of the UFWD — that’s not even a matter for analysis or interpretation,” Dotson told the DCNF. “In public Chinese sources, ACFIC is openly listed as a subordinate branch of the UFWD.”

ACFIC could not be reached for comment.

“The increase in PRC-affiliated U.S. land purchases in recent years is a growing cause for concern,” a House Select Committee on the CCP aide told the DCNF. “We can start with adding a presumption of denial for entities affiliated with the PRC when it comes to land acquisitions near national security sites such as military bases that the CCP could use for intelligence collection or worse.”

Chen and Shanda Group did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

AUTHOR

PHILIP LENCZYCKI

Daily Caller News Foundation investigative reporter, political journalist, and China watcher. Twitter: @LenczyckiPhilip.

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Inflation Soars As High Prices Continue To Squeeze Americans

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Inflation rose year-over-year in December, even as the Federal Reserve projects interest rate cuts by the end of the year, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) release on Tuesday.

The consumer price index (CPI), a broad measure of the prices of everyday goods, increased 3.4% on an annual basis in December and 0.3% month-over-month, compared to 3.1% year-over-year in November and above expectations of 3.2%, according to the BLS. Core CPI, which excludes the volatile categories of energy and food, remained high, rising 3.9% year-over-year in October, compared to 4.0% in November.

Inflation rose year-over-year in December, even as the Federal Reserve projects interest rate cuts by the end of the year, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) release on Tuesday.

The consumer price index (CPI), a broad measure of the prices of everyday goods, increased 3.4% on an annual basis in December and 0.3% month-over-month, compared to 3.1% year-over-year in November and above expectations of 3.2%, according to the BLS. Core CPI, which excludes the volatile categories of energy and food, remained high, rising 3.9% year-over-year in October, compared to 4.0% in November.

“It was unseasonably warm in December, which boosted gasoline prices enough to send the monthly headline number up a bit,” Peter Earle, economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Disinflation is continuing, but the last percent or two down to the Fed’s target range are going to be tougher to nail down.”

Shelter contributed the most to the monthly gain, with prices rising by 0.5% for the month and 6.2% for the year, according to the BLS. Prices for energy rose 0.4% for the month, reversing the trend of declining energy prices that stands at -2% for the year.

Prices for motor vehicle insurance continued to trend up, rising 1.5% in the month following an increase of 1% in November, according to the BLS. The index for food also had a similar increase in November of 0.2%, totaling 2.7% year-over-year.

“It was unseasonably warm in December, which boosted gasoline prices enough to send the monthly headline number up a bit,” Peter Earle, economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Disinflation is continuing, but the last percent or two down to the Fed’s target range are going to be tougher to nail down.”

Shelter contributed the most to the monthly gain, with prices rising by 0.5% for the month and 6.2% for the year, according to the BLS. Prices for energy rose 0.4% for the month, reversing the trend of declining energy prices that stands at -2% for the year.

Prices for motor vehicle insurance continued to trend up, rising 1.5% in the month following an increase of 1% in November, according to the BLS. The index for food also had a similar increase in November of 0.2%, totaling 2.7% year-over-year.

The current rate of inflation stands in contrast to the Fed’s target rate of 2%, which it aims to achieve through its use of its federal funds rate, which it has set in a range of 5.25% and 5.50%, the highest point in 22 years, in response to soaring inflation under President Joe Biden, which peaked at 9.1% in June 2022. In their last Federal Open Market Committee meeting, a median of Fed governors estimated that the federal funds rate would be around 4.6% by the end of the year, indicating around three rate cuts.

The CPI report comes less than a week after the BLS announced that the economy added 216,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in December, despite revising the number of jobs down in October and November by a collective 71,000. In total, the number of jobs was revised down by 749,000 in 2023, around one-quarter of those initially announced.

“Right now, the Fed is projecting three rate cuts in 2024, while futures are suggesting five or six,” Earle told the DCNF. “I think that as long as the general price level keeps falling, the Fed will stick to its 75 [basis point] cutting plan. But if we get clearer signs of a slowdown in the late spring and early summer, we may indeed see four or five cuts this year.”

AUTHOR

WILL KESSLER

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Banks Making Easy Money Off Crisis Gov’t Program Designed To Bail Them Out

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

America’s CEOs Are More Scared Of Country’s Huge Debt Than Anything Else

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U.S. CEOs believe the country’s national debt and deficit are the greatest geopolitical risks to business operations in 2024, according to a survey from the research group organization The Conference Board.

The U.S. national debt was put ahead of other top risks for CEOs, including the potential for an increase in cyberattacks, war in the Middle East, higher energy prices and risks associated with decoupling from China, according to The Conference Board. The U.S. national debt exceeded $34 trillion for the first time in the country’s history on Dec. 29, 2023, following huge government deficits and spending under the Biden administration.

“For U.S. CEOs, the biggest risk is right at home — the mushrooming US national debt and deficit,” The Conference Board said in its report. “The US fiscal outlook continues to deteriorate, with the deficit for FY2023 topping estimates at $1.7 trillion. The increasing practice of issuing U.S. Treasury securities to finance deficit and debt places tremendous strain on the financial system, potentially raising business borrowing costs and limiting access to capital.”

American CEOs are also particularly concerned about an economic downturn/recession, noting that it and inflation are the external factors that are most likely to have the greatest impact on their organizations in 2024, according to The Conference Board. Financial institutions and analysts are mixed with their predictions of the economy in 2024, with banks like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase forecasting a risk of a recession while Deutsche Bank and Société Générale both predicting a recession.

Global political instability, higher borrowing costs and labor shortages are also among the top five most concerning external factors for U.S. CEOs, which all fuel inflation, according to The Conference Board. Inflation remains elevated, rising 3.1% year-over-year in November, far above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, after decelerating from its peak under Biden of 9.1% in June 2022.

The national debt has ballooned under Biden following a number of costly initiatives pushed by the president. In March 2021, Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, which authorized $1.9 trillion in new spending, and in August 2022, the president signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which approved $750 billion in spending.

AUTHOR

WILL KESSLER

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Part-Time Jobs Are Booming Under Biden As Americans Look To Make Ends Meet

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.