Is Crime Really Surging in America? Yes and No

/in , , , , , , , /by

Violent crime is up. Burglaries and robberies are down. And progressive cities like Portland, Oregon are hiring more police. What’s going on?

For 36 years, Conrad Casarjian has owned and operated his Massachusetts jewelry store—the Gold-n-Oldies store on Revere Beach Parkway in Everett. He said he’d never experienced a burglary like he did in December when thieves smashed into his shop and made off with a handful of jewelry items.

“The break-in crew shattered the safety glass in the front door, must have reached in with a hammer, broke into one of the showcases, and made off with, at most, a few gold rings,” Casarjian told a local TV station.

The “smash and grab” was just one of a string of robberies in the area that police in Everett are investigating, and robberies like these appear to be happening in other parts of the country as well.

A couple weeks before Casarjian was robbed, CNN reported on a “wave of ‘smash-and-grab’ crimes” plaguing US cities.

The crime spree included a Nordstrom department store in Los Angeles where thousands of dollars of merchandise was stolen by at least 18 suspects, as well as a Nordstrom near San Francisco involving some 80 suspects. These burglaries followed hits in the area on Louis Vuitton, Burberry, and Bloomingdale’s department stores, as well as a Walgreens.

As Casarjian’s experience shows, the “smash and grabs” are not isolated to the Golden State. A Louis Vuitton store in Chicago, for example, also saw a dozen people storm in and steal $120,000 worth of merchandise. In Minnesota, meanwhile, organized thieves fell on Best Buy stores in Maplewood and Burnsville, suburbs of Minneapolis.

These incidents have left many wondering: Are we witnessing a nationwide surge in crime?

Before wading into matters of criminal justice, it’s important to acknowledge a few realities about crime data. First, we don’t have immediate data. It takes time for information to be collected and analyzed, which means we won’t have aggregate data on the extent of last year’s “smash and grab” crime sprees until later this year.

Second, there is no standardized system for collecting data in the US. The vast majority of crimes are never even reported to police (often due to a lack of trust in the system). And the data we do have rely on reporting from local departments—if they choose to participate. (According to the Pew Research Center, NIBRS, one of several tracking systems, received data from less than half of law enforcement departments).

Statistics can give us a glimpse of general trends, but the data are varied, incomplete, and prone to manipulation—and not just by politicians. Police unions are powerful lobbyists who are adept at using the media to create fear so as to secure higher pay and more power for themselves. Likewise, retail trade groups have been known to use similar tactics.

All that to say, when dealing with crime statistics in the US—a vast country with a population of 330 million and nearly 39,000 general-purpose governments—it’s important to admit we’re never dealing with the full picture.

As many know, 2020 was a year that saw a vast increase in violence. What is less known, and perhaps counterintuitive, is that it was not a year of crime.

“There was no crime wave—there was a tsunami of lethal violence, and that’s it,” Philip Cook, a crime expert at Duke University, recently told The Atlantic, citing preliminary FBI statistics.

This tsunami of violence included a 30 percent increase in the murder rate, the largest ever recorded. (About 21,500 murders took place, roughly 6.5 for every 100,000 people). The most common form of violent crime, aggravated assault, also increased by 12 percent. Not all violent crime increased, however; rape saw no statistical change and robberies and burglaries fell.

Meanwhile, FBI data suggest many non-violent crimes—including burglary and larceny—decreased in 2020.

In a normal year, such a divergence would appear quite strange, but considering the nature of the pandemic, there appears to be some logic to it. More people were home than normal, which might explain why burglaries fell.

Others, however, are less sure that crime is truly down. Robert Boyce, a retired chief of detectives for the New York Police Department, told ABC police have backed off arresting suspects they’d normally apprehend.

“Nobody’s getting arrested anymore,” Boyce said.

This might explain why FBI crime data show total arrests nationwide plummeted 24 percent in 2020 even as violence surged.

David Graham, writing at The Atlantic, says it’s possible the FBI’s statistics are simply “wrong,” noting that 2020 saw reports of drug crimes plummet even as drug overdoses reached an all-time high—“suggesting that drug arrests, not use, had changed.”

This is why some reject the idea that we’re witnessing a decrease in crime.

“It’s disingenuous in the face of a historic 30 percent rise in homicide to say that overall crime is down, simply because the majority of crime is low-level misdemeanors,” Thomas Abt, a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice and a former Justice Department official, told The Atlantic.

Whether one believes Cook or Abt, it should be noted that even with 2020’s surge in murders, the murder rate remains well below the rates experienced in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. The percentage increase is only so high because crime was previously at historic lows.

Conservatives have been eager to tie the “defund the police” movement to increases in crime. There’s no evidence that things are that cut and dry, at least if one interprets “defund” to mean smaller police departments.

While it’s true violent crime is up in many cities, the reality is few cities ever passed “defund” policies. Some made budget cuts, many quickly restored them. To date, no one has gotten rid of their police department. In fact, some police unions have already used the Defund the Police talking point to secure pay increases.

While the Defunding movement failed to actually abolish police, they may have succeeded in changing how police operate. San Francisco, for example, has largely abandoned enforcement of shoplifting. The lack of enforcement prompted New York Times journalist Thomas Fuller, who recently moved to San Francisco, to ask a grocery store clerk, “Is it optional to pay for things here?”

The shoplifting was so bad it prompted Walgreens to close five Bay area locations.

“Organized retail crime continues to be a challenge facing retailers across San Francisco, and we are not immune to that,” Walgreens spokesman Phil Caruso said following the decision.

It’s not just San Francisco, either. In New York City, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg angered many—citizens and police alike—when he issued a Jan. 3 memo instructing prosecutors to downgrade most felony property crimes (including violent ones) to misdemeanors.

It should come as little surprise that lighter punishments and a lack of enforcement for such property crimes would incentivize the practice. Studies have shown that efforts to remove or reduce penalties for property crimes have led to increases in those kinds of offenses.

This is not the only example of cities choosing to not prosecute individuals committing property crimes. Cities such as New York and St. Louis decided to drop criminal charges against the vast majority of alleged looters. Such scenarios raise the possibility that, in some places at least, police have simply stopped arresting suspects for many crimes. Their motivation? Some will say it’s because prosecutors stopped pressing charges, but that doesn’t really bear out in the data. It seems more likely that many police departments and officers are acting maliciously, pulling back and not enforcing property crime violations so they can lobby for larger budgets and ward off reform efforts.

Even if one accepts the idea that violent property crimes are on the rise—again, we don’t yet have data for 2021 and the FBI’s preliminary data for 2020 don’t show a surge—it’s unclear what role Defund the Police played, if any. It seems just as likely that pandemic policies, including lockdowns and school closures, are the primary cause. These policies shut teens (who are the most likely demographic to commit crime) out of schools, community programs, and jobs that would have taken up their time. Many of these programs focus on keeping teens out of gangs and other illicit activities and help them access skills-training and jobs.

Programs that dealt with mental health and addiction were also impacted by lockdowns, meaning many have not gotten the healthcare they need to be in their right mind. The economic uncertainty created by these policies is also likely a factor, as we know poverty can play a major role in criminality.

If “Defund the Police” did play a role, it likely stemmed from decisions of police brass and city councils—who opted to not pursue some violent crime, perhaps incentivizing such crimes—and less from budget cuts and reduced police departments.

For those hoping to see violence rates return to normal after a year of unrest, 2021 proved a disappointment.

At least a dozen US cities set new homicide records last year. Some police officials say the violent crime is the worst they’ve ever seen.

“It’s worse than a war zone around here lately,” Capt. Frank Umbrino of New York’s Rochester Police Department said in December after the city broke its 30-year-old annual homicide record with 7 weeks to go in the year. “We’re extremely frustrated. It has to stop.”

While such data are of course saddening, claims that US cities are war zones are hyperbolic. Rochester had about 80 murders last year. This is hardly exemplary, but it’s still far below the most dangerous cities in the world, and more than 50 percent lower than St. Louis on a per capita basis.

As the FBI itself points out, “Fatal violence is relatively rare and often intensely personal: according to FBI data, many American homicide victims know their killers.” This is why much of this increase has come from communities that were already struggling with violent crime pre-pandemic, some communities continue to struggle more than others with violence. Americans remain very unlikely to die by homicide.

Nevertheless, many cities, including lefty-capital Portland, Oregon, are now hiring more police. It’s unclear, however, if these “re-fund the police” movements will have their desired effect.

As the New York Times recently pointed out, the evidence that adding more police reduces violent crime is mixed. Aaron Chalfin, a criminologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told the paper that research shows crime falling after police are added about 54 percent of the time.

“Crime goes up and down for a million reasons that are completely independent of the police,” Dr. Chalfin said. “But we know, on average, if you look across many cities for many years, there is an effect.”

Furthermore, we know that the biggest deterrent to crime is the assuredness one will be caught for their crime and punished. In America, it’s a pretty good bet that won’t happen. Police are very bad at solving crimes in the first place, and during the pandemic it appears many pulled out of certain areas altogether.

All that to say, recent crime statistics are hardly a reason to increase the size of police departments or give them more money and power.

It is commonly said that poverty causes crime. But as economist Roger M. Clites has observed, the opposite is also true: crime causes poverty.

“It is not just others who are adversely affected by criminals. Perpetrators themselves lose ground economically. A large portion of people charged with criminal activity are relatively young. Their criminal behavior harms them in several ways,” Clites explained. “They may spend time incarcerated when they could have been gaining employment experience. Their criminal record may hamper them in obtaining future employment. They develop attitudes and habits that are detrimental to participation in the workplace. For these reasons many criminals condemn themselves to poverty.”

This is why there is widespread agreement that crime is bad for everyone, perpetrators and victims alike. Solutions are difficult, however, because crime is complex.

Police unions would have you believe the solution is simple: hire more police! While it’s possible some departments suffer from a lack of police—police last year reported a retirement rate 45 percent higher than a typical year—there are better solutions than simply hiring more cops or creating a shiny new federal program.

One thing is certain, throwing more money at this problem—or expanding the government’s control in any other way—is not the solution. We already spend between $81 billion and $180 billion per year on our criminal justice system depending on the calculations. And we spend that without seeing results, little of it goes to even solving violent crimes, much less preventing them.

If we truly want safer communities, some of the prescriptions are obvious. For one, reduce the number of laws on the books. Take non-violent and victimless crimes off the shoulders of police. Quit giving them excuses to focus their attention on ridiculous, money-making schemes like the War on Drugs. We need to change the incentive structures around policing by removing things like civil asset forfeiture that make them more inclined to chase petty criminals so they can take their money. Instead, police should function like the fire department—you come when there’s a true emergency and we call you, then you focus on putting out the fire.

In addition, we need to ensure school closures and lockdowns never darken our doors again so children, especially those in high-risk communities, get the education and resources they need to stay out of trouble.

We also need to pass common sense reforms, like bail reform, that ensure violent people are not released back into communities and that ensure people who are not threats are not pushed into a life of crime by a justice system that strips them of their livelihood before they’ve even been convicted.

Lastly, we need to enact real transparency and accountability in policing. It is inexcusable that they continue to hold communities hostage, refusing to do their jobs until they get a pay increase and a pat on the head. Instead, they need to earn their keep and only get pay raises when the violence rate decreases and they prove they’re doing their jobs.

AUTHORS

Hannah Cox

Hannah Cox is the Content Manager and Brand Ambassador for the Foundation for Economic Education.

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.

Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

RELATED ARTICLES:

NASCAR’s Bobby East Fatally Stabbed At California Gas Station

Migrant Encounters At US-Mexico Border Hit Another Historic High

Mexico Nabs Infamous Drug Lord Wanted For Decades For Killing DEA Agent

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

Uvalde Footage Underscores the Myth of Police Protection: ‘Just Call 9-1-1’

/in , , , , , , , /by

The gunman walked into Robb Elementary School almost casually.

Minutes earlier he had crashed a vehicle near the school, spraying three bullets at a pair of men who approached the scene to see if he was okay. After walking into the school, AR-15 in hand, the gunman takes a right turn down a hallway. From a different hallway, a child sees the gunman. The child pauses, watches, and then jumps at a roar of gunfire. He darts away.

Less than three minutes later, police officers begin to fill the corridor, weapons drawn.

The scene described comes from new video footage obtained by The Statesman and KVUE News on the May 24 mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which left 22 people dead and 18 injured. (Editor’s note: the footage, which is embedded below, does NOT show anyone being shot.)

The 77-minute video shows that police were on the scene minutes after the shooter entered the school, but they quickly retreated after receiving a burst of gunfire. As KVUE notes, over the next hour little is done, even as more and more police arrive.

In the video, 13 rifles can be seen arriving in the hallway in the first 30 minutes of the incident. The first shield arrives in under 20 minutes. Dozens of law enforcement officers can be seen in the hallway, along with equipment. No officers make entry into the classroom for more than 70 minutes.

The tragic events in Uvalde have naturally sparked both outcry and discussion. On good and evil. On mental health. On courage and cowardice.

Above all else, however, Uvalde has reignited the debate over gun control.

Following the shooting, and heated demands for new gun control laws, lawmakers in DC passed federal gun legislation for the first time in nearly 30 years, imposing tougher background checks on younger buyers and encouraging states to impose “red flag” laws.

This is peculiar, because the events at Robb Elementary School actually undermined one of the key arguments used to argue for gun control.

As Richard W. Stevens pointed out in a FEE article more than two decades ago, a common—and false—belief underpins gun control ideology.

“Private citizens don’t need firearms because the police will protect them from crime,” wrote Stevens, a lawyer in Washington, D.C., and author of Dial 911 and Die.

This belief, Stevens noted, is false for two reasons. The first reason is the most obvious one, which was on full display in Uvalde. Police can’t protect everyone from crime, and rarely do. The primary purpose of police is to respond to crimes after they occur, and data suggests even this they do not do very well.

“In reality, about 11% of all serious crimes result in an arrest, and about 2% end in a conviction,” writes Shima Baughman, professor of criminal law at the University of Utah, in The Conversation.

Second, Stevens notes, the government generally and the police specifically have no legal obligation to protect people from criminal attacks in most localities. In fact, they don’t even have to show up, Stevens explains.

It’s not just that the police cannot protect you. They don’t even have to come when you call. In most states the government and police owe no legal duty to protect individual citizens from criminal attack. The District of Columbia’s highest court spelled out plainly the ‘fundamental principle that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen.’

The “no duty” rule was established in a particularly gruesome landmark case.

Just before dawn on March 16, 1975, two men broke down the back door of a three-story home in Washington, D.C., shared by three women and a child. On the second floor one woman was sexually attacked. Her housemates on the third floor heard her screams and called the police. The women’s first call to D.C. police got assigned a low priority, so the responding officers arrived at the house, got no answer to their knocks on the door, did a quick check around, and left. When the women frantically called the police a second time, the dispatcher promised help would come—but no officers were even dispatched. The attackers kidnapped, robbed, raped, and beat all three women over 14 hours.

The horrifying events were made more horrifying in the legal aftermath. The victims sued the city and the police department for negligence to protect them (or even respond to the second call).

“The court held that government had no duty to respond to their call or to protect them,” Stevens writes. “Case dismissed.”

The court’s response was not unique. Most states have similar laws, Stevens notes, and some are quite explicit. A statute in Kansas precludes citizens from suing the government for negligence in police protection, while a California law states “neither a public entity nor a public employee is liable for failure to establish a police department or otherwise provide police protection service.”

While police may not be obligated to help people in need, it’s fair to assume that most want to help people. Unfortunately, by its very nature, bureaucracy tends to frustrate the ability of police departments to effectively do so.

An example of this can also be seen in Uvalde. A New York Times description of Uvalde Police Chief Pedro Arredondo’s decision making process reveals how bureaucratic processes and red tape appear to have cost lives.

[Arredondo] ordered the assembled officers to hold off on storming the two adjoining classrooms where the gunman had already fired more than 100 rounds at the walls, the door and the terrified fourth-graders locked inside with him, the state police said. (…)

Officers were told, under Chief Arredondo’s direction, that the situation had evolved from one with an active shooter — which would call for immediately attacking the gunman, even before rescuing other children — to one with a barricaded subject, which would call for a slower approach, officials said.

That appeared to be an incorrect assessment, according to the state police director, Steven McCraw: Gunfire could sporadically be heard inside the rooms, including on continuing 911 calls by the children.”

Police officers standing around debating protocols while a gunman in a nearby room executes children is both horrifying and mind-boggling to most people, but it perfectly illustrates the very real problems inherent in bureaucracies noted by economist Ludwig von Mises, who wrote about the inherent “slowness and slackness” pervasive in bureaucratic institutions.

On Tuesday, the Uvalde City Council accepted the resignation of Uvalde school district police chief Pedro Arredondo, who rightly stepped away from his position under pressure. But make no mistake: the lack of response by the Uvalde Police Department is a characteristic of bureaucracy itself, a problem that goes far beyond Arredondo’s leadership shortcomings.

The bottom line is that police usually have no obligation to protect individuals from crimes, and even if they do they lack the ability to effectively do so. The idea that Americans can protect themselves just by calling 9-1-1 is simply not true, and the tragic events in Uvalde and countless other examples show this.

When they say you don’t need a firearm because the police will protect you, don’t believe it.

AUTHOR

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

RELATED TWEET:

RELATED ARTICLES:

Was the Uvalde Massacre a Drug Cartel Warning to Border Agents to Back Off?

The Key to the Uvalde Massacre is: The Critical Importance of One Brave Good Guy with a Gun

PODCAST: What the Uvalde Cops Were Probably Thinking

How Bureaucracy May Have Cost Lives in Uvalde

The Devil Went Down to Texas: The Utter Evil of the Uvalde Massacre

For 77 Minutes, Cops Never Even Tried to Enter Classroom, Police Could Have Stopped Uvalde Shooter ‘3 Minutes’ After Entering School

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

Republicans Demand DOJ Release J6 Surveillance And Police Body Cam Footage

/in , , , , , , , , /by

House Republicans are demanding the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) release body and surveillance camera footage as well any other footage in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, according to a letter obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Wisconsin Rep. Glenn Grothman, Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert and South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman first requested the information from the DOJ in October 2021. Now, they are re-upping their inquiry, asking Attorney General Merrick Garland to release the information since their constituents have a “growing concern” with the DOJ’s “apparent failure” to do so.

“Many Americans question why their government, and the Department in particular, has been so selective in its release of footage,” the lawmakers said in their letter. “We believe all Americans, including Members of Congress, the media, and the public at-large, should be able to view footage from January 6th that the Department has in its possession.”

The committee investigating Jan. 6 has publicized some degree of unaired footage during its ongoing hearings. The Republicans want to know “what percentage of body camera, surveillance camera, and any other footage related to the events surrounding January 6th” in the DOJ’s possession has actually been made public.

Most of the 14,000 hours of surveillance footage from Jan. 6 has not been made public, Buzzfeed News reported in August 2021. It is unclear how things have changed roughly one year later.

“From every camera on the Capitol grounds – including body and fixed surveillance cameras – every second of footage from January 6, 2021 ought to be in the public domain by now,” Norman told the DCNF. “It is baffling to me why the Attorney General has failed to make the entirety of footage available, especially while the Select Committee is cherry-picking clips to suit its narrative.”

While lawyers and defendants charged in the Capitol riot have gained access to watch related surveillance footage, the footage is given under protective orders, which does not allow the parties to release it, Buzzfeed News reported. The Capitol Police’s chief lawyer said in a March 2021 affidavit that members of Congress can watch Jan. 6 footage on a case-by-base basis under the supervision of a police employee.

“The disclosure of any footage from these cameras is strictly limited and subject to a policy that regulates the release of footage,” said the lawyer.

The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the Capitol Police.

“It continues to be our hope that all Americans have faith in our systems of government, including our criminal justice and judicial system,” wrote the Republicans in their letter, setting an August 4 deadline. “For this reason, it is imperative that the Department adequately respond to our requests in timely manner.”

READ:

07-14-22_Follow Up Letter t… by Gabe Kaminsky

AUTHOR

GABE KAMINSKY

Investigative reporter.

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Rodney Davis Demands Answers From Legislative Branch Agencies On Their Work For Jan. 6 Committee

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Delta Paid Passengers $10,000 to Give Up Their Flight Seats. How One Economist Made It Possible

/in , , , /by

Julian Simon understood that inherent in market systems are the upsides of mutually beneficial exchange.

Delta Air Lines made headlines this month for offering passengers $10,000 to leave their flight. Several customers heading to Minnesota reported being offered $10,000 (in dollars, not flight credits) to voluntarily deboard an overbooked flight.

“On Delta flight from GRR to MSP and they just offered $10,000 for people to give up their seats,” tweeted Inc. tech columnist Jason Aten. “Ten. Thousand. Dollars.”

A different passenger on the flight, Todd McCrumb, told Fortune magazine it was no joke.

“It’s a true story,” McCrumb tweeted. “I was on that flight!”

When flights are overbooked, it means airlines have more passengers with tickets for a flight than there are seats. And, as I previously reported, complaints about oversold flights have increased relative to pre-pandemic times.

And while you might think airlines offering to pay customers for overbooked flights represents a bug in the airline industry, it’s actually the opposite. Airline overbooking payments are an intentional strategy by companies, and they are a great case study on the power of markets.

To see why, let’s look at the history of airline overbooking.

Prior to 1978, the airline industry dealt with a consistent bug: oversold flights. Oversold flights occurred as a means for airlines to deal with the fact that passengers frequently skip flights. This would lead to several empty seats on flights that could have otherwise been sold to other willing fliers.

While one or two empty seats in a flight may not seem like a big deal, this adds up when you consider the thousands of flights airlines offer every year. Each empty seat represents a lost opportunity to fly passengers at a lower cost.

So airlines solved this problem by selling more tickets than there were seats. Oversold flights were in a gray area for federal regulations, but this didn’t stop companies. They simply claimed this was sometimes done unintentionally. The American Airlines handbook for 1974-1975 stated:

American Airlines never deliberately causes a passenger to be oversold. We tolerate only a limited number of oversold and inconvenienced passengers only because we must allow some margin of error in our operation.

Despite this claim, it was an open secret in the industry that airlines overbooked to increase sales.

And before 1978, there was no good solution to an overbooked flight. The previously mentioned handbook gave crews some guidance for these situations such as:

Reservations will select for removal, the most recently sold locally boarding passenger, whenever good judgment dictates that this passenger will be less inconvenienced than some other passenger, except when undue hardship will be incurred.

In extreme cases the handbook said, “it may be necessary to cancel the flight until all passengers have deplaned.”

Lastly, the handbook is clear that employees should “[n]ever give an oversold passenger anything in writing which admits an error on the part of American Airlines.”

So volunteers were solicited, and, if none could be found, employees arbitrarily selected passengers according to ambiguous perceptions of inconvenience.

So, airlines oversold their flights to the detriment of involuntarily bumped passengers.

All of this changed after economist Julian Simon proposed a solution. In 1968, Simon, a professor of business administration at the University of Maryland, published an article cheekily titled “An Almost Practical Solution to Airline Overbooking.” His solution was simple—introduce a market.

Specifically, Simon proposed a reverse auction system. In this system, passengers would write down the minimum amount they would need to be paid to give up their seat. The person with the lowest amount would win the auction and receive money to give up the right to a seat.

It took nearly a decade for regulators and the industry to implement Simon’s solution in 1978— but it had many perks.

This market, like all markets, introduced a win-win scenario. Passengers who win the auction get an amount of money they value more than the seat. Other passengers don’t have to fear losing their seats. Airlines retain the ability to overbook flights. Everyone wins.

If you’re skeptical that airlines are made better off here, consider the data below.

VIEW CHART: TOTAL OVERSALES PER 10,000 BOARDINGS

As you can see from the graph, airlines massively increased overbooking when the reverse auction system was implemented in 1978. This suggests the system was profitable for airlines. If it wasn’t, airlines simply could have suspended overbooking.

The total oversales per 10,000 passengers continued to be higher than 1978 until in 2017, when the infamous United Express Flight 3411 incident occurred which led to major decreases in airlines utilizing overbooking.

The Flight 3411 incident infamously involved Dr. David Dao who was involuntarily selected to deboard his flight. After refusing, an officer forced Dao off the plane leading to a broken nose and concussion. Before the incident, United tried to offer vouchers to incentivize volunteers, but they refused to offer more than $800.

After the incident, United and several airlines began to severely cut oversales, but post pandemic those numbers seem to be rising again.

This sort of situation, where a change leads to all parties being better off, is known by economists as a Pareto improvement.

The market had other advantages as well. Unlike the prior system, the passenger who gives up a seat is not chosen arbitrarily. Instead, the person who loses the seat is someone who doesn’t value it very much anyways. This is another advantage of markets. Resources tend to be allocated to the people who value them most.

These valuable features should come as no surprise. Simon’s solution was for airlines to create markets, and inherent in market systems are the upsides of mutually beneficial exchange and resources being allocated to highest valued uses.

So a $10,000 offer to incentivize someone to deboard a plane isn’t a failure of markets—it’s the beauty of markets in action. I can only hope to someday be on a flight that offers me $10,000 to make new plans.

AUTHOR

Peter Jacobsen

Peter Jacobsen teaches economics at Ottawa University where he holds the positions of Assistant Professor and Gwartney Professor of Economic Education and Research at the Gwartney Institute. He received his graduate education George Mason University and received his undergraduate education Southeast Missouri State University. His research interest is at the intersection of political economy, development economics, and population economics. His website can be found here.

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

Two and 3-Year-Old Vaxxed Kids With Seizures Is ‘The New Normal’

/in , , , , , , , , /by

ONLY vaxxed kids. The only thing these kids have in common is that they were given the COVID vaccine just days earlier (two to five days earlier).

This is the new normal. Like the new ‘Sudden Adult Death Syndrome.’

Two and 3-year-old kids with seizures is “the new normal”

I’m getting multiple reports from my nurse friends about kids 2 and 3 years old having seizures. It is ONLY happening on vaccinated kids, and symptoms start 2 to 5 days after the COVID vaccine.

By: Steve Kirsch, July 5, 2022:

Doctors are mystified by a rash of seizures, rashes, etc. happening to 2 and 3-year-old kids.

The only thing these kids have in common is that they were given the COVID vaccine just days earlier (two to five days earlier).

The doctors cannot figure out what is causing the seizures (since it couldn’t be the vaccine since those are safe and effective). The medical staff is not permitted to talk about the cases to the press or on social media or they will be fired.

One nurse posted something to the effect of “how is this legal????” I had to paraphrase to protect the poster.

This is why you are hearing these reports from me. They can’t fire me.

There is nothing on the mainstream media about this since the nurses and doctors aren’t allowed to talk about it.

This will all come out some day, but for now, everyone is keeping quiet about it and the doctors are instructed to convince the parents that it isn’t vaccine related and that they are the only ones having the problem.

Because that’s how science works.

Keep reading…..

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED TWEET:

RELATED ARTICLES:

Data Proves ‘Sudden Adult Death Syndrome’ Fiction Is Death by Covid Vaccination

Vaxxed Young Adults are 92% More Likely to Die than Unvaccinated

Are We Now in the Era of the ‘COVID Matrix’ with the Mandated Vaxxed Passports?

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

Constitutional Sheriffs to Hold Summit to Encourage Elected Officials to Fight Ballot Fraud Ahead of 2022 Midterms

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

In order to avoid civil war, we must have free and fair elections. It is incumbent upon every American to ensure we the people choose our leaders. There are no casual observers or fence-sitters in the war against Americanism. You are either with us or against us.

Constitutional sheriffs to hold summit to encourage elected officials to fight ballot fraud ahead of 2022 midterms

By JD Heyes, Newstarget, July 11, 2022:

For decades we suspected that Democrats’ far-left agenda wasn’t really all that popular with the vast majority of our country, and the party proved that during the 2020 election cycle.

When it became apparent that President Donald Trump would cruise to reelection, noted by the massive rallies and spontaneous vehicle and boat parades that sprang up all over the country (including deep-blue California), the Democratic voter fraud machine kicked into high gear and the party, working with the allied deep state, literally stole the election.

Patriots years from now will question why there wasn’t a mass uprising over the blatant theft, but that is a discussion for another day. In the meantime, patriots — including constitutional sheriffs — are working to ensure that the Democrats can’t steal the upcoming 2022 midterm elections amid one of the dismal points in our country’s history.

Joe Biden’s approval rating has hit a low not seen for a president since the days of Jimmy Carter, and he’s taking his party down in flames with him. That leaves only one option for Democrats to cling to power: Vote theft. And the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) knows that which is why some of its members are having a press conference outside of Freedom Fest in Las Vegas this week — to expose voter fraud and press elected officials to take action to protect the integrity of the process.

Big League Politics reports:

The press conference will feature legendary Sheriff Richard Mack, and True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht and Greg Phillips to expose the immense voter fraud that occurred during the 2020 presidential election.

The itinerary for the press conference includes detailing the history of election fraud in America, showcasing current Investigations in progress from elected sheriffs, Sheriff Mack sharing his opening thoughts, Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips addressing the audience, and then a question-and-answer session for the media.

to determine the veracity of all elections. If allegations are incorrect, we want them exposed. If correct, we want proper investigations fully undertaken and the criminals responsible prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” said Mack, who serves as the CSPOA president.

“We ask for all Americans and public officials to demonstrate civility and cooperation as we pursue the truth. What we want is the truth; let the consequences fall where they may,” he noted further.

“We aren’t just here to say that election fraud is a problem but to begin to really try to enact proper solutions. Whether the winner of any race is a Republican or a Democrat makes no difference to us, we simply ask for the truth,” said Engelbrecht, whose research was used in Dinesh D’Souza’s “2000 Mules” smash-hit documentary, providing the evidence and proof Democrats and their garbage media allies had been demanding since Trump told them his victory was taken from him.

“We have the utmost faith in our country and feel strongly that when voters are educated, more will be done to support fair voting. Together, we are always stronger,” she added.

The press conference will take place at Ahern hotel on July 12 at 10am PST.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED VIDEO: Selection Code – Premier Trailer on July 16, 2022

RELATED ARTICLES:

“New Fall COVID Variants”: Here’s The Democrats’ Mid-Term October Surprise to Rig the Election

Jihad Jew-Hating Reps. Omar and Tlaib among Democrats tied to group with alleged links to Hamas slaying

Will The U.S. Fall Just As Rome Did?

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

What the Death of Hollywood Means for America

/in , , , , , , /by

The new entertainment industry will be even more woke.

Peak TV, a stunning era during which Big Tech and traditional studios entered into a furious competition to make a bewildering amount of content, is dead. The 559 scripted shows from last year represent a historic hubris that everyone, especially investors, is recovering from.

That was the year that Netflix announced that it was spending $18 billion on content.

In the aftermath, Netflix lost subscribers for the first time and expects to lose millions more as its stock fell 35%. The dot com giant lost, but so did its rivals. Disney+ lost billions, HBO Max is cutting back programming, and so are most others, including the ‘N’ in the FAANG oligarchy.

Netflix has been humbled, and is shedding woke programming and exploring an ad-supported tier, but the push by Hollywood studios to build rival streaming platforms to those of Netflix and Amazon by investing heavily in original content gated by subscriptions has set a lot of money on fire without achieving platform independence. Everyone lost, but Big Tech still runs the show.

Streaming subscriptions are replacing movie theaters and television networks. And that also means that Silicon Valley is replacing Hollywood. Netflix, Amazon, and Apple demonstrated that they had the capital to dominate the entertainment industry. This isn’t good news for the culture.

While old Hollywood had a reputation for being liberal, many studio bosses and producers were actually fairly conservative and movies were the products of a tug-of-war with more liberal writers, actors and directors. Movies had to be able to play in theaters across the country and serve as broad an audience as possible. Movies of that era might be homogenized, but they were less likely to openly offend or antagonize audiences. Movie stars were expected to at least pretend to lead moral lives and keep industry decadence locked away behind closed doors.

The partnership between Eastern European Jewish immigrant studio bosses who had started out, like Samuel Goldwyn, as a glove salesman, William Fox, a garment industry foreman, the Warner brothers, the children of a shoe repairman, and the much more urbane British and American talent turned the film industry into a cultural touchstone and made its products part of our national identity. Critics rightly pointed to the cultural impoverishment of making movie theaters into the hub of our culture, but they could not have imagined what was to come.

The fall of the studio system overturned the industry’s innate conservatism and while it ended many abuses and unleashed the talent, the end result was that movies became increasingly at odds with the values and morals of the American public. The decline of the networks likewise unleashed cable and then streaming programming that was oriented culturally leftward..

Rather than open up a range of programming targeting untapped segments of the public, Peak TV aimed for the same upscale urban multicultural audiences that the entire industry is aimed at. If the ideal wisdom of the marketplace existed, a world in which untold billions were spent to produce 559 scripted shows, should have produced a wave of conservative programming.

It did not.

The entertainment industry’s programming has been most conservative when control was consolidated by studios and networks. It is least conservative when it is driven by “talent”. Consolidated entertainment has at least tried to make programming for a broader country while industry disintegration has made programming more woke, more radical, and more hateful.

The Netflix revolution, in which endless amounts of investor cash were burned to lure talent, made for some of the some ‘woke’ programming imaginable. At the peak of Peak TV, Netflix had not only successfully mainstreamed radical sexual and gender identity, but was actively pushing sexual content involving children from Cuties to Big Mouth. Freed from a business model other than the dream of endless growth, Netflix burned billions of dollars and our culture.

Wokeness precedes broke-ness. But the story of Peak TV is also one of cultural brokenness.

Netflix pursued original programming by trying to make it as edgy as possible. In response, Hollywood studios revived old intellectual properties and tried to make them edgier with racial recasting, gender-swapping, sexual politics, and general social justice themes. The giant dumpster fire of Netflix was met with a social justice Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel, and DC. Anything with a known brand or IP was brushed off and given a social justice makeover.

Ghostbusters was rebooted as all-female, Doogie Howser, M.D. was reborn as an Asian girl, The Wonder Years was reimagined with a black family, Magnum P.I. with a Latino star, Party of Five with illegal aliens, and these and countless other examples showed that underneath all the fake wokeness, the industry had run out of original ideas. All Hollywood could do was try to make the old tired ones seem fresh and new with identity politics remakes.

And as Hollywood’s popular culture has become American culture, and for some the quasi-faith of fandom, the decay of the entertainment industry into wokeness has devastated society.

Hollywood has come to consist of the culture championed and consumed by boomers. Succeeding generations have reworked those “intellectual properties” to make them edgier and more political, but have produced few of their own franchises. Of the top ten media franchises dominant in America, only one, Harry Potter, was created by anyone born after 1964. And J.K. Rowling is not American and was predictably canceled for insufficient wokeness.

Hollywood is Joe Biden making TikTok videos. It’s an industry that was once creatively revolutionary, but now only puts on an appearance of aspiring to a political revolution. As long as the revolution doesn’t interfere with its tax credits and Chinese box office. Behind the wokeness is a brutal war between agents, producers, writers, directors, and the new dot com masters of the universe, over fortunes that are both astronomical and on the verge of vanishing.

The entertainment industry was slow to adapt to the internet because it is not inventive and is incapable of innovation. Even its response to Netflix consisted of old studios trying to build their own Netflix. Political radicalism makes dinosaurs seem like they are on the cutting edge. That’s why corporate broke-ness so often follows corporate wokeness. It’s not just that wokeness is bad for business, but it often disguises a much more broken business model underneath.

Hollywood is as tied down by guilds and painstaking rules as any medieval kingdom. All it really has anymore are the intellectual properties mined by greatest generation creators marketing to baby boomers (and in some cases, boomers reworking the pop culture of past generations) that have been passed down to newer generations and laboriously reworked to be more woke.

The internet killed Hollywood, as it did so many other industries, and streaming has become its slow death, accelerated by the boom and bust economics of an unstable country and world.

Cinema made a national propaganda machine possible. The Nazis and Communists both seized on it for that very reason and regime figures like Leni Riefenstahl and Sergei Eisenstein were brilliant, revolutionary, and quite evil. But it was American movies that conquered the world because they fused creative talent with American values. Hollywood is still the only national industry with the production capacity and know-how for a true worldwide reach, but its cultural impact is swiftly becoming negligible as it churns out reworked versions of the same thing.

As Hollywood dies, America and the world will be poorer for it, not for the billion-dollar woke digital cartoon factory that it has become, but for a time when a centralized entertainment industry did not have to be a mass propaganda machine feigning popular support for a regime.

That is exactly what it is now.

Hollywood’s biggest production of the pandemic year was the 2020 Democratic convention which abandoned working-class and riot-scarred Milwaukee for an entertainment industry stream. Stars in a streaming convention propping up a senile reactionary who had outsourced his future to radicals while sidelining the party’s old working-class constituency proved to be the perfect metaphor and epitaph for both the Democrats and for Hollywood.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Latest Super Gay ‘Thor’ Film more about ‘Hate and Blunder’ than ‘Love and Thunder’

Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube host songs calling for beheading over ‘blasphemy’ against Muhammad

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

We and President Trump endorse patriot Joe Gruters for Florida State Senate!

/in , , , , , /by

Joe Gruters has fought for Florida and its citizens. Since his election major pieces of legislation have been signed into law by Governor DeSantis including:

  • A bill to ensure integrity in our elections.
  • A bill, House Bill (HB) 1557, Parental Rights in Education, to protect children from indoctrination in Florida’s public schools.
  • A bill to create the Florida Guard to protect citizens from violence we’re seeing in other states.
  • A bill to require ID cards in order to vote.
  • A bill which prohibits classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity in K-3 classrooms, and after 3rd grade, these conversations need to be age-appropriate.
  • A bill that ensures that at the beginning of every school year, parents will be notified about healthcare services offered at the school, with the right to decline any service offered.
  • A bill which ensures that whenever a questionnaire or health screening is given to K-3 students, parents receive it first and provide permission for the school to administer the questionnaire or health screening to their child.
  • A bill creating a creating Election Police Unit in Florida

Joe was the Campaign Chairman for Florida during Trump’s victory in 2016.

Joe is a trusted ally and Chairman of the Republican Party of Florida for Governor Ron DeSantis during the 2020 and 2022 campaigns.

Joe Chairs the Republican Party’s National Election Integrity Committee to ensure that we have safe elections in all 50 states.

We and President Trump endorse Joe Gruters for State Senate.

Floridians must keep a Pro-Trump Warrior fighting for us in the State Senate!

Remember Election Day is August 23rd, 2022! Please go out and vote with conservatives with a conscience like Joe Gruters.

©Editorial Board of DrRichSwier.com. All rights reserved.

Homegrown Evil

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

There is evil abroad in the land, and it’s a cancer to our society. Any naïve belief in the inherent goodness of man was shattered on July 4th, 2022 in Highland Park, Illinois.

What would possess—and that’s exactly the right word—a young man with his whole life ahead of him to take to the roof of a building and systematically shoot off about 60 bullets, killing many and wounding dozens?

He shot fellow Americans enjoying an Independence Day parade. As far as we know, he killed total strangers.

From what has been coming out, this young man apparently came from a terribly dysfunctional home. For example, Fox News tells of one incident where the police were called to the confessed shooter’s home in September 2019 because he had reportedly threatened to “kill everyone.” The police then confiscated his collection of knives.

In his End of Day Report, Gary Bauer wrote of the shooter:

“He’s just another sad example of the people we have increasingly seen in the streets of America. The anarchists owned the streets in the summer of 2020. Their goal is to tear down, destroy and intimidate. And they desperately want to see America burn.”

He made videos with violent themes, such as “Toy Soldier.” In this video he is seen rapping in a classroom, and one of his lines is “F- this world.” Marca.com writes of this video:

“Images of a heavily armed shooter entering a school and opening fire are cut between scenes of him battling police outside. The shooter is seen lying in a pool of blood in the final scene.”

I read some interesting reactions on the Highland Park massacre from acquaintances, commenting back and forth through a private email chain.

One person wrote of the shooter:

“A monster….To be so callous and disregarding of human life as to shoot children and elderly alike at a small town parade—and obviously choosing the 4th of July was no coincidence. We have a violent culture—plus we’re teaching the next generation to hate America and its founding—what can we expect from such a deadly combination?”

He went on to mention how Chicagoland, including Highland Park, has some of the strictest gun laws in the country.

Another person responded:

“I’m not going to get into a debate about guns but do feel we need stricter purchasing guidelines…. A 22 year old with recorded violent music and videos and/or an 18 year old (as in Uvalde) should not be able to just purchase an AR-15 type rifle without some serious background check.”

Someone else said in the email chain:

“What’s scary, too, is the attention this guy is getting.  News coverage was non-stop pretty much all day, every station.  Just have to wonder about the next unhinged maniac out there who wants to be famous.”

I refuse to mention his name.

Some want to blame this whole evil act on guns. But there were guns from the beginning of this country through the present. Yet there wasn’t this same kind of rampant immorality.

George Washington said that religion and morality are indispensable supports to our political prosperity and to human happiness.

John Adams observed:

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

One of the reasons the founders thought the knowledge of God was so important was because they believed what the Bible says—that He will one day hold us all accountable. That view impacts how we live.

But our cultural elites today say that God has no place in the public arena.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, the Supreme Court systematically stripped God away from the public square. For example, in a case in 1980, they said that the Ten Commandments posted in schools are supposedly unconstitutional. They said that if they were hanging in the classroom, the children might read them, meditate on them, venerate them, and obey them.

Imagine —“Thou shalt not kill” was supposedly an unconstitutional message for our young people. We are reaping what we’ve sown. That Supreme Court case, by the way, was decided long before school shootings became common.

After the recent massacre, William Bennett, the former Secretary of Education in the Reagan Administration, commented that we need more exorcisms in our country to drive out the evil existing in the hearts of some of these sick fellow Americans.

I remember when Bennett once told me in a media interview: “Does anybody really have a worry that the United States is becoming overly pious? That our young people have dedicated too much of their lives to prayer, that teenagers in this country are preoccupied with thoughts of eternity?”

What America needs so desperately is a true revival of the soul, lest the moral cancer of godlessness overpower us. Let’s pray for America, before it’s too late.

©Jerry Newcombe. All rights reserved.

Marx and the Banning of Elements in the Periodic Table

/in , , , , , , , /by

Examining the problem, reaction, solution/thesis, counter thesis, solution, or the dialectic scam of the left.

There certainly seems to be more than one understanding of this phrase. Here is our shot at it. Of course, there are scholars of Hegel/Marx who read this site, and we welcome any corrections or other interpretations of this well known phrase.

Picking Global Warming as an example, we have a completely invented problem which of course can be manipulated in any way needed to end up at the point you want to land on. Primarily, the destruction of the West with its notions of free market economy and individual rights. Since the problem is fake, and created and enforced by “consensus” (See video below) all the reactions from people calling it out as fake must be dealt with using the dialectic attack of hate speech. This was fabricated by a second generation Frankfurt School acolyte, a certain Habermas, in the form of “Discourse Theory”.

For the past many decades, various leftist controlled governments and leftist think tanks, have attempted to use the element of Carbon as a means to control industry and humanity in a highly selective manner. Like slavery as an issue, we must only examine the ‘problem’ of CO2 production in Western and free market nations, more accurately perhaps, in cultures with the concept of individual rights as being sacrosanct. We must not look at slavery in Africa or Islam ever but must focus on the past actions in The USA pretty much exclusively in terms of passing moral judgment. And we must not look at really dirty industrial activity, let alone CO2 production in China or India but must pretend that CO2 produced by any and all means connected to humans in the West as an existential threat to the entire planet.

There should be no need to try and disprove the idea that CO2 is a problem on this site. I do have a dedicated page to the science of it here on Vlad but I don’t maintain it very well as to engage in a debate based on a lie is to lose that debate since only one side seeks to know the truth and the power of the lie is much greater in the short run. At least where the goal is destruction.

One fact though, is that where CO2 is produced, more life happens. Plants grow etc. Plants, and life, are made of carbon. Even on the side of highways, plants tend to thrive from a truly poisonous form of carbon, CO1 or Carbon monoxide. CO2 is actually pumped into greenhouses to help plants hit their optimal growth rate.

But let’s pretend that CO2 production was a problem. Then why are those who wrap themselves in a false flag of environmentalism, so opposed to nuclear power? Its the obvious solution to those who claim that carbon dioxide is an existential threat to the planet. Whatever the issues with nuclear power, it cannot be as bad as that.

And then there is this:

Geothermal

A very worthy deeper dive:

So we have a solution now for food production that is safe, energy efficient and absorbs far more carbon than it produces.

Global Warming is a consensus based thing though. Meaning communists agreed on creating it and presenting it as an existential problem in order to get to the solution they want, which is communism. No real world approach to solving even the non-problem of “global-warming” will be entertained and any attempt to expose it as the fraud it is will be met with charges akin to hate speech. “Climate-denier” for example, makes moral equivalence with a Holocaust denier to one who would deny the ‘existential threat of global warming’. A fairly palpable use of the Hate-Speech tactic.

More recently, in order to destroy farming in the Netherlands and replace these farms with what will almost certainly be beehive brutalist housing for illegal mostly Muslim and African migrants forced on the local population since before 2015, a new element and compound had to be demonized as an existential threat. Nitrogen, which makes up damn near 80% of the total atmosphere, and ammonia.

I won’t even bother to deal with the issue of nitrogen. To think that the tiny amount of nitrogen released on a few dutch farms justify the actions against farmers we see in the Netherlands is even worthy of rebuttal on that basis, means a lack of understanding of the tactic at play. Much like when one knows that nearly all human beings are born either a man or a woman (with the exception of extremely few genetic mutations which end with those individuals as they tend to be sterile) and to pretend these are fungible is, well risible.

So let’s look at the new threat of ammonia.

How could we somehow solve the issue of ammonia in a way that would satisfy those who claim its a problem while maybe at the same time, solving other problems many are concerned about:

The bottom line is:

The problems we are bombarded with, from Covid to vaccine hesitancy. From global warming to cow flatulence. From Nitrogen to ammonia, are all fake problems which, even by engaging about it, causes us to lose. These are not problems at all, and some, to the extent they might be, are selectively enforced against the Western nations and peoples with zero effort to deal with these non-problems in places like China, North Korea, India and other places where the raw production of these gasses and so on are orders of magnitude higher than in the West.

We need to understand that so much of what we engage with on a day to day basis is we, the intellectual descendants of Socrates, being constantly basted with pseudo-reality and false cosmologies in order to destroy Western civilization where it actually lives.

In our own minds.

Eeyore for VladTepesBlog.

EDITORS NOTE: This Vlad Tepes Blog column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Man Charged With Rape In Connection To 10-Year-Old Who Traveled For Abortion

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

A man was arrested Tuesday and charged with the felony rape of a 10-year-old girl who later travelled to Indiana for an abortion, The Columbus Dispatch reported.

Police said 27-year-old Gershon Fuentes confessed to raping the child on at least two occasions, according to the Dispatch. The child reportedly obtained an abortion in Indianapolis June 30.

Franklin County Children Services referred the case to the police June 22, and the suspect is being tested for paternity.

Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, shared the story with the press July 1 and said the child had gone to Indiana for the abortion because it was illegal in her home state of Ohio, a fact that has been contested by the state’s attorney general. She has since been disciplined for a HIPAA violation for publicizing the patient’s details, Fox News reported.

Fuentes is being held on a $2 million bond, which the judge said was especially high in order to protect the child’s safety.

Bernard did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

LAUREL DUGGAN

Social issues and culture reporter.

RELATED TWEET:

RELATED ARTICLE: Biden Considers Declaring Public Health Emergency To Help Secure Abortion Access

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Elvis Presley: A Riddle, Wrapped in a Mystery, Inside an Enigma

/in , , , , , /by

“A woman approached the stage during one of his Las Vegas shows, carrying a pillow on which she had placed a crown. ‘It’s for you, she said respectfully. ‘You’re the King.’ Elvis replied, ‘No, honey, there is only one king, and his name is Jesus Christ. I’m just a singer.'” — Gary Tillery, The Seeker King: A Spiritual Biography of Elvis Presley

After watching the film “Elvis” we decided to get the book The Seeker King: A Spiritual Biography of Elvis Presley by Gary Tillery. What prompted us was the UK Express’ article about the last day of Elvis’ life. Elvis died 45 years ago on August 16, 1977 at 1:30 p.m. at the age of 42. 

What caught our attention was the last book that Elvis took with him to the bathroom on the day he died. The title of the book was A scientific search for the face of Jesus by Frank O. Adams. Adam’s book is out of print but we came across The Seeker King and ordered it and read it with delight and astonishment at the many little things that we never knew or heard about Elvis when we were growing up.

Today we live in a world that seems upside down in many ways. During the “age of Elvis”, from his birth on January 8, 1933 to his death on August 16, 1977, we find hope, struggle, despair, redemption, success and enlightenment. It is a story that young men need to read about.

It is a book about how to understand what it means to be a man.

We recommend getting The Seeker King as a gift to your children and grandchildren who are 18 or older.

Elvis a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma

Winston Churchill is credited with the phrase a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. It means that which is so dense and secretive as to be totally indecipherable or impossible to foretell. It struck us as we read The Seeker King that this phrase fit to a tee Elvis Presley as a boy, young man, as a husband, father, as a deeply spiritual man, as the singer, the philanthropist and the drug addict.

But most of all as a life long seeker of truth.

Elvis truly was unique. He was unique in many ways over this short 42 years on this earth. Here is a list of events as reported in Gary Tillery’s book that happened during the life of Elvis that tore into our very heart and soul.

  • Vernon Presley on August 16th, 1933, the day Elvis was born, was strolling around outside his small two bedroom house nervously awaiting the birth of his sons, as his wife Gladys was having twins. Vernon recalled, “a strange blue glow surrounding the house. That was when he heard sounds from inside and went in to check.” The first boy was still born and a half hour passed before the second son, Elvis, was born.
  • Forty-two years later on August 16th, 1977 after Elvis died Claude Buchanan, a Tennessee farmer and acquaintance of Elvis, climbed a slope behind his house to take care of an injured cow. Tillery wrote Buchanan “was surprised to see Elvis striding up the far slope toward him. He [Elvis] was surrounded at first by a blue mist, and Buchanan found it odd that he hadn’t noticed him earlier farther down the slope. Elvis approached to a distance of about ten feet. Buchanan asked what he was doing there. ‘I’ve come to say good-bye for awhile, Claude.‘ He had no sooner spoken the words than Buchanan heard his wife calling him from behind. He turned and glanced down the slope toward her as she darted out of the screen door of their house—in such a rush that he though the kitchen might be on fire. ‘Elvis has died!‘ she yelled. ‘It’s on the radio.’ Claude thought to himself, He can’t be dead. He’s up here on the hill with me, but when he glanced back, Elvis had disappeared.”
  • Elvis said, “All I want is to know the truth, to know and experience God. I’m a searcher, that’s what I’m all about.“
  • Glady, Elvis’ mother, was “constantly worried about her son as he toured across the South.” Tillery wrote, “Elvis aroused primal emotions. (He merely made a flippant comment at the end of his show in Jacksonville, ‘Girls, I’ll see you all backstage,’ and hundreds stampeded after him. When police reached him his coat and shirt were torn to pieces and he was missing his belt, his boots, and even his socks.) And the girls were not the only problem; their jealous boyfriends found him a major threat. After a concert in Lubbock, Texas, a boy drew him over to his car and asked Elvis to autograph a photo for his girlfriend. When Elvis leaned over the windshield to use it as a writing surface, the boy staggered him with an unexpected punch to the face.”
  • Elvis coveted law enforcement badges. He was a huge supporter of local, state and federal law enforcement officers. Tillery wrote, “After the shows in the Astrodome, Houston Sheriff Buster Kern had given Elvis a gold deputy’s badge as a memento. Elvis had a genuine obsession with badges and had received others from authorities in Beverly Hills and Oklahoma City. In October 1970 he received one in Memphis from Shelby County Sherriff Roy Nixon. He had been an honorary deputy for years, but now he could officially carry a pistol and handcuffs in support of those fighting crime. A month later he contributed $7,000 to the Los Angeles police community-relations program, and subsequently was given a badge from the Los Angeles Police.” In December of 1970 Elvis received an honorary Federal Narcotics Badge with the approval of President Nixon. Elvis wanted this “NARC” badge to help fight against the growing threat of illegal drug addiction among his young fans.
  • Sadly, Elvis became addicted to a large number of drugs, including those containing narcotics, prescribed for him by his many doctors.
  • Whenever women told Elvis that they worshiped him he would tell them, “Love my music, but don’t ever worship anyone but the Lord.”

While a Godly man from his childhood to his death, he was also a sinner in many ways. He was a man seeking redemption for the sins he committed.

Elvis the warrior keeping America safe and pure

Elvis was also a man who wanted to keep the American “society safe and pure.”

In his 5 page letter to President Nixon he “emphasized drug abuse and Communist activity as his two major concerns.” Elvis also identified, “the drug culture, the hippie elements, the SDS, Black Panthers, etc.”

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s, and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) was founded in October 1966 in Oakland, California by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. It was a revolutionary organization with an ideology of Black nationalism, socialism, and armed self-defense, particularly against police brutality.

Sound familiar?

However, his success, fame and fortune meant little to him compared to his quest as a seeker of God.

To understand please read our review of the film “Elvis” titled ‘Elvis’ the Movie and Elvis the ‘Seeker of Truth’

We highly recommend you go to see the 2022 film Elvis and read the book The Seeker King: A Spiritual Biography of Elvis Presley by Gary Tillery.

When you do perhaps you will find what is really important in your life. We did.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

PODCAST: What the Uvalde Cops Were Probably Thinking

/in , , , , , , /by

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Heartbreaking video from inside Uvalde elementary school documenting the protracted failure of police to stop the slaughter underway there is prompting afresh disbelief and fury at the officers involved. What on earth were they thinking?

After weeks of conflicting official descriptions of what went down, this video further undermines public confidence in law enforcement. And those most critical of its conduct, especially towards minorities, are emboldened to renew and generalize their condemnations and efforts to demean and, if possible, defund the police.

Given all that, it seems likely what the Uvalde cops were thinking was: If they took unauthorized initiative to stop the shooter, their risk-averse chain of command would throw them to the wolves.

It’s not an excuse, just a possible explanation. And one that surely is operating elsewhere at a time when we need robust policing more than ever.

This is Frank Gaffney.

AUTHOR

Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Founder and Executive Chairman

RELATED ARTICLE: WATCH: New Footage Shows Uvalde Cops Running Away As Killer Shoots School Children Dead

RELATED VIDEO: CHILLING NEW UVALDE VIDEO Shows Delayed Police Response Before Gunman’s Mass Murder

EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy podcast is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Inflation Hits Yet Another Record High As Americans Feel The Squeeze

/in , , , , , , /by

Inflation climbed 9.1% over the past 12 months, the highest year-over-year percentage increase since December 1981, the Department of Labor (DOL) announced Wednesday.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased 1.3% between May and June, according to the DOL report released Wednesday. Economists had predicted that CPI would increase by 1.1% last month and 8.8% over the 12-month period ending in June.

“The energy index rose 7.5 percent over the month and contributed nearly half of the all items increase, with the gasoline index rising 11.2 percent and the other major component indexes also rising,” the DOL said in their report. “The food index rose 1.0 percent in June, as did the food at home index.”

The White House preemptively downplayed the inflation data, saying the metric was already outdated as prices have begun to supposedly decrease.

“June CPI data is already out of date because energy prices have come down substantially this month and are expected to fall further,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday.

“I don’t think that number peaks until September and I think at that point it will be in double digits,” E.J. Antoni, research fellow for Regional Economics at The Heritage Foundation told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Wednesday’s report follows a steady stream of negative polling for President Joe Biden, including one New York Times survey that found a majority of Democrats would prefer the 79-year-old not run in 2024. Voters have cited the economy and inflation as major issues ahead of the midterms.

The gasoline index rose 11.2%, while the food at home index increased 10.4%,  year over year, BLS reported. Almost all aspects of American purchases increased in June, including shelter, airline fares, new and used cars and trucks, medical care, household furnishings and operations, recreation and clothing, according to BLS.

CPI surpassed the Federal Reserve’s 2% target in May 2021 and has continuously climbed higher and higher since, according to federal data.

AUTHOR

MAX KEATING

Contributor.

RELATED TWEET:

RELATED ARTICLE: The DeSantis Boom: Florida Economy Soars As State Records Highest Budget Surplus Ever

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Racist Jill Biden Calls Latinos ‘Tacos’

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Now imagine the backlash from the mainstream media if Melania Trump said this. These double standards are really disgusting.

Right rips Jill Biden for saying Hispanic community as unique as ‘breakfast tacos’

By The Hill, July 11, 2022

First lady Jill Biden is receiving flak from the right for comments in which she said the Hispanic community was as “unique” as the “breakfast tacos” in San Antonio.

Biden was speaking at the 2022 UnidosUS Annual Conference titled “Siempre Adelante: Our Quest for Equity” in San Antonio on Monday.

AUTHOR

Geller Report Staff

RELATED ARTICLES:

‘SIT DOWN’: Biden Shouts Down Father Of Murdered Parkland Shooting Victim To Listen After Gun Control Speech Interruption

FBI Confidential Human Source INFILTRATED Proud Boys, Ran FBI Operation on J-6, Reported They Were INNOCENT

‘Liz Cheney Epitomizes Never Trumpers’ Betrayal Of Our Nation’

Elon Musk Laughs Off Twitter Lawsuit Threat

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