The Left is losing the war on Christmas – badly – so now it’s trying to convince you it never happened. That’s a laugh.
There are the usual atheist groups flying ‘religious freedom’ banners doing their usual thing this year – protesting Christmas wreaths on military graves and installing yet another boring Satanic display in a state capitol building. These people are violating Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, the most important of which is ‘don’t repeat your stunts, don’t be boring.’
But the rest of the Left is mostly missing in action this year. Things have definitely changed from just a few years ago. (These links are old and may not work.)
In 2015 alone:
a VA hospital in Virginia banned Christmas trees. Washington Times
Starbucks moved to plain red holiday cups. Gateway Pundit
the University of Tennessee told employees to “ensure your holiday party is not a Christmas party in disguise” and no more “Secret Santa”. The Tennesseean
a city councilwoman resigned to protest her town’s Christmas tree lighting. She was later reinstated and appointed to head a newly-created diversity committee. Washington Post
The ‘Killing Jesus’ mini-series drew the largest audience in National Geographic cable channel history. Truth Revolt
And a Kentucky school district purged scripture references from a ‘Charlie Brown Christmas’ program. Daily Signal
Ah, the good old days. But, according to the Left, these things never happened, there never was a war on Christmas. It doesn’t exist. Conservatives made the whole thing up.
“There is not, and there never has been, a widespread campaign to harass, exclude, or persecute anyone who dares to wish a stranger a ‘Merry Christmas,’ as the Christmas warriors would have it,” an atheist recently wrote in Politico. According to this writer, the Left’s war on Christmas is just a “conflict invented to fill right-wing cable airtime,” a creation of the “grievance-industrial complex”, and an “effort by activist Christians to retain their cultural supremacy.”
And, of course, it’s all Donald Trump’s fault for appointing himself General Patton to fight the war on Christmas. Trump said recently, “When I started campaigning, I said, ‘You’re going to say “Merry Christmas” again,’ and now, people are saying it.” What left-wing article would be complete or even get published without bashing Trump?
But I digress. In the upside down world of this writer, the Left never tried to embarrass everyone out of saying “Merry Christmas”. No, it was the Right that started the whole thing by turning the phrase into a political weapon to pound on the Left. Sure, and I’m Santa Claus. The author’s bottom line: the Right should give up its phony claims there ever was a war on Christmas and just go away.
That’s ridiculous. This is gaslighting of the highest order. It presupposes the atheist groups never made an issue out of Christmas without anyone asking them to. Even today, you can go to the Freedom From Religion Foundation website and read all about how Christmas is just a relic of sun worship. The phony narrative presupposes there never was an endless parade of legal challenges to nativity scenes at the Supreme Court. So many we now have the reindeer rule requiring jurisdictions to mix in other symbols with their nativity scenes to pass constitutional muster. And it presupposes that the University of Tennessee, the National Geographic cable channel, and all the other anti-Christmas warriors didn’t have guns blazing in 2015, as noted above.
Here’s what’s going on. The Left is losing the war on Christmas, just like it’s losing the abortion fight and the war on parents. So the Left is trying to get you to believe it was all in your head and you’re delusional for thinking they’ve been up to no good and trying to destroy Christmas. Don’t fall for this line. They’re known liars – Trump/Russia collusion hoax, anyone? – and, what’s more, they think it’s their duty to lie to you because truth doesn’t matter; winning is the only thing.
So now I wish you all – gay, straight, Christian, Jewish, atheist – a Merry Christmas. I love saying that because it drives the Left nuts.
“No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.” – Plato
Cancel culture or “call-out culture” is a nuevo form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles – whether it be online, on social media, or in person. Those subject to this nuevo ostracism has then, by definition, been “cancelled.”
If you want to cancel a culture you must be ready to do everything you can to first destroy it by ostracizing those who you fear most. You use words that on the surface seem to be innocuous like: diversity, inclusion and equity to ostracize others. These seemly innocuous words become nasty labels like: homophobic, Islamophobic, white supremacist, racist, capitalist, rich and unvaxxed. To be labeled using one or more of these words is death by cancellation.
QUESTION: Who are the cancel culture’s enemies?
ANSWER: Those who speak truth to power.
George Orwell, in his dystopian novel 1984, wrote,
“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”
To cancel means to put human minds together in a new dystopian (undesirable or frightening) shape. A new cancel culture society where war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength.
To cancel is to destroy the mind and with it the body politic.
Build Back Better is code for ostracize, cancel and then destroy those who do not obey.
When you embrace the cancel culture then at some point you are on the road to your own self-destruction and that of your culture. At some point the cancel culture turns on those who created it. At some point the cancel culture ideologues do not merely destroy their enemies, they fundamentally change them into automatons.
As George Orwell wrote,
“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”
The tools of the cancel culture are: terrorism, oppression, torture and murder. The goal of the cancel culture is that we DIE!
A new Hill-HarrisX poll finds most voters think that “cancel culture” is unfairly punishing people over their past actions.
The survey used the Merriam-Webster definition to define the term as “the practice or tendency of engaging in mass canceling as a way of expressing disapproval and exerting social pressure.”
Sixty-nine percent of registered voters in the Nov. 2-3 survey said cancel culture unfairly punishes people for their past actions or statements, while 31 percent said it does not.
The survey found majorities of Republicans, Democrats and Independents saying it unfairly punished people, with Republicans being the most likely of the three groups to answer “yes.”
Seventy-nine percent of Republican voters along with 65 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of independents, specifically, said that cancel culture unfairly punishes people for their past actions or statements.
The poll also found 71 percent of registered voters said they strongly or somewhat believe that cancel culture has gone too far while 29 percent of respondents said they believe a little or not at all.
The most recent Hill-HarrisX poll was conducted online among 930 registered voters between Nov. 2 and 3. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.
No one wants to be cancelled because they said, tweeted, posted or published something that offended members of the cancel culture. It’s called the First Amendment right to free speech. Without free speech we have nothing – no freedom of religion, no freedom to assemble, no freedom to petition our elected officials and no freedom to speak the truth.
How to Cancel the Cancel Culture
Howard Rotberg wrote, “Any strong ideological belief carries with it a risk of denying those facts that do not support the ideology.”
QUESTION: What do we do to cancel the cancel culture?
As someone who has been a public figure now for four decades, I have learned to navigate both that kind of cancel culture and the “woke” cancel culture that pervades society today.
Here are seven lessons I’ve learned:
First and foremost, don’t give a damn about cancel culture. If you do, you’re giving small-minded people control over you that they don’t deserve. Realize that these are often people who want to silence your ideas because they’re afraid if others hear them, they might agree.
Always be honest. The best defense is always the truth. Moreover, make sure you have your facts straight before you speak and that you can back up what you say.
When you’re wrong, have the courage to admit you’re wrong. But when you’re right and taking a principled stand, have the courage to stand up for those principles, even in the face of withering criticism. Others will see your strength and be encouraged by it. But if you’re right and you give in, you have only served to embolden cancel culture. You have fed its voracious appetite and made it stronger, giving it more energy to seek out its next victim. You have made it harder for others to stand up for the truth, and as a result, many will continue to cower in silence.
Don’t try to cancel others. There’s no need to be cruel and adopt the tactics of cancellation. Here is where I go back to my faith-based roots. We all fall far short of perfection. We need to show grace and forgiveness toward others, especially if we hope for the same mercy from others when we inevitably stumble ourselves.
Be principled and don’t be a hypocrite. Hypocrites make easy targets for canceling and are fun for everyone to take down a few pegs.
Expect that anything you write or anything that you say in front of a camera (even your friend’s cell phone) could end up trending on social media or landing on the front page of a newspaper. If you’re not okay with that, think twice about saying or doing it.
There are an awful lot of people who are willing to deliberately take things out of context to make other people look bad. So always include context with what you say and write publicly, even if it means writing a slightly longer tweet or taking an extra 30 seconds to more fully explain your point. People may still take you out of context, but you will always “have the receipts,” as they say.
“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.”
The cancel culture’s myths are Diversity, Inclusion and Equity. It is a myth that one can be diverse and equal at the same time. Inclusion is a myth as well. For you see equal people are not free and free people are not equal. Diversity is not a condition, it is a tool for the cancel culturalists to gain power over others.
Diversity, inclusion and equity are unrealistic myths in a free society. These can only be imposed by edict in a totalitarian state.
It is critical for the anti-cancel culture warriors to never give up, never surrender. When they go low, we keep the high ground. When they want to fundamentally change our God given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, we must live free or die.
You will be banned on social media, lose friends, be attacked by others in public and even physically attacked on the streets during a peaceful protest.
This is war! A war of lies vs. truth. A war of good against pure evil.
America is now in a battle between freedom of individual choice or living under the boot of big government for ever.
The opposite of Diversity, Inclusion, Equity = DIE is Liberty, Integrity, Valor, Earnestness = LIVE!
Think about that as we enter 2022 and the new year.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2021-12-22 05:59:002021-12-23 05:31:15How Do We Stop the Cancel Culture’s Formula — Diversity, Inclusion, Equity = DIE?
“No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.” – Plato
In the late 80’s and early 90’s, while I was teaching, I noticed a great change in the goal of education. I usually didn’t care what the curricula or text said, I wanted my students to learn the skills I learned in school which helped me make great choices throughout my life. I was teaching my students skills so they could make the best choice for their life. It was during this time I noticed that instead of teaching knowledge and skills, the teachers manual changed. We were now to focus on feelings and common thought…
As a math teacher asking, “how do you feel about 2+2=4?” did not compute. How does that help you balance a checkbook or work a profit- loss spreadsheet?? So I never asked those questions. We also were to focus on the group not the individual. We were told individual excellence was not as important as the achievement and success of the group. The group got a name and the group achievement got stars on the wall instead of naming individual students and showing their achievement. Students were given group assignments and the fast learners were discouraged from finishing so fast. The others had to catch up. The dumbing down of everyone had begun. This evolution took about the entire 22 years I taught. Until one term when we came back to school and there were no more old texts for me to use. Everything was now to be done the John Dewey, Modern Education way. That year marked the end of my teaching career.
During that time, for continuing education, I attended the John Dewey New School for Social Research, Greenwich Village, NYC. It was there I learned that all subject matter was to be integrated with the same message. Hollywood, the Media were all to carry the same message which would be reinforced in school. The message: The Environment, the destruction of the planet is caused by HUMANS. Humans are evil and destructive. They were right at that time. The pollution and smog was so bad is some cities it was almost impossible to breathe. Environmental groups focused on pollution as the cause for climate change. In the beginning, the EPA did clean much of the air and water but somehow it was never enough. The rules got stricter and the cost to cure became unnecessarily higher. Try buying a simple item like a gas can. In 2000, a gas can was about $3-5.00. Today they are over $10. Why? Because now they have to follow insane EPA regulations on gas and oil as well as gas can design. Eventually as most people with power do, they abused their power and closed industries which was the original intent. No free thinkers allowed. The lucrative logging industry came to a stand still and Americans were forced to buy expensive lumber from Canada and overseas. Instead of logging and following good forestry practice which loggers did, the forests now go up in smoke and the lumber is now ash. Because they do not allow opposition, we have a choice of one, whatever they give us. My first car was a 1968 Camero. I got to pick the exterior color (white) and the interior color (Hunter Green) Not today. Today we can choose one of the packages the manufacturer selected for us. Sadly our children will never have the individual choices we seniors were able to make.
I learned how important messaging is. How you can take a group of people and motivate them into totally ignoring their own will and vote with the group. The one controlling communication has the power. If you can isolate people, make them afraid, they will give up almost anything to make the pain go away. (masks and mandates anyone). We learned Cloward and Piven, the Hegalian Dialectic, Cognitive Dissonance, Projection and the Precautionary Principal. I learned about, the ends justifying the means, Conspicuous Consumption and Planned Obsolescence. It was then that I realized we were teaching a communist method. Students were no longer encouraged to think outside the box. Today they must think inside the box. The pentagon is now purging the military of anyone who doesn’t think as told. No more individual excellence only collective mediocrity. Today unelected people who had this type of feel good education are making the new rules which make no sense because the new Globalists are void of logic and reason.
I began to notice how all of these psychological theories had one thing in common. As a math teacher I always look for the common denominator. They all were fed by EMOTION. What were we teaching in school? EMOTION. The communists locked onto Edwin Bernays, the grandfather of Marketing and Sales: “You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby” – 40 Virginia Slims Cigarette Ads From the Early 1970s introducing women to lung cancer. The thinking was once these kids got out of school, they would be guided by their emotions. As young adults they could be hooked on the fad of the month. Once that happened those in charge using a persuasive argument, trigger words and images can control the masses. You could sell them anything. Sell the sizzle, not the steak. The talking heads on MSM are perfect examples. Do they actually believe their own lies or are they controlled because of money and ego?
The brain is like a filing cabinet. A human can only have ONE thought at a time. The other thoughts are in the locked cabinet. So if all you ever deal with and learn in school is emotion, you will never use logic and reason. Today we are living the results of that type of emotional education. The 1% people running the world for the most part are sociopaths and nihilists. They have NO emotion and could care less about anyone but themselves. They are on a mission for eternal life by merging humans with AI. To them we will become cyborgs programmed to do their bidding. Resistance is futile. Anything else is just a temporary annoyance. With money and power, they control the next level of about 10% of the population. The job of the 10% is to use emotion to spread fear in order to control the sheeple. People who die along the way are just collateral damage in their never ending quest of money and power. Killing off seniors, no big deal. Seniors have become the useless eaters digging into their profit. So they continually tells us that the earth is overpopulated, not enough food – all lies. They know the money pot is finite and they resent you for having any. Which is why every time the middle class gets ahead, a bubble of destruction is orchestrated to put us back in our place by making sure we lose our assets while they get stimulus money to get richer. The money they have really belongs to the middle class. They essentially stole our money through all kinds of government schemes. We have it. They want it. So the communist rulers create recessions. We lose.
Think about the economy today. People can not return to work because the Globalists have arranged that by: overregulation, mandates, lockdowns, government subsidies, importing cheap labor and etc.. Globalists hate America, want to destroy America and have instituted a strategy called Death by 1000 Cuts. By owning Education, Wall Street, Media, Pharma, and Hollywood they owned messaging. This same messaging is now seen in every agency and industry in America. By owning education, they can insure Obedience and Loyalty. The incompetence, corruption, racism and hatred found in every American agency is staggering. What do they want: Diversity, Inclusion, Equity = DIE
Do you now understand why the border is open? The middle class was making too much money under Trump. The middle class was finally catching up. However according to the Globalists, the American middleclass was becoming a bad example for the rest of the world. Obama even told a group of Kenya graduates not to think about air conditioning or cars like Americans. No competition allowed under communism. No one except the chosen ones can profit as long as the government gets its cut. Enter China with lots of $$$$. A new partnership was born with China and the corrupt politicians who arranged favorable trade positions for China to the detriment of Americans. By following the America First plan of President Trump, the Globalists began to see their income and power shrink and the Middleclass expand. How dare MAGA fight back. You are the enemy. Therefore, anything goes, you deserve to be punished. Time for a good crisis and they have many: Inflation, Covid, Mass Unemployment, High Gas Prices, Drug, Crimes, Murders, Alcohol, Suicide. Let the Hunger Games Begin.
Globalists are in both parties. Globalists must punish their enemies. Their enemy is anyone who disagrees with them. Americans especially MAGA Americans disagree. Therefore Americans, MAGA are the enemy and deserve to be punished. This punishment of the evil domestic terrorists, MAGA enables Globalists to justify the political prisoners, riots, mandates, open borders, election theft, censorship. A close defeat is not enough, they must be crushed and replaced with MAGA people who love America.
We can’t let them get away with dictating to us. We can not allow their lies to stand. We must tell the truth. Did we forgot we are all equal? We must be the truth warriors. Stop letting others choose your destiny.
Is America worth saving?
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Karen Schoenhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngKaren Schoen2021-12-22 04:44:302021-12-22 06:50:41Who is making your choices?
Under Governor DeSantis, the state of Florida is the envy of the country. Everyone and their mother wants to move there. And for good reason. People want freedom, safety, and prosperity. Everything that Florida represents today. We love President Trump, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine Governor DeSantis not being our candidate in 2024. We are going to have to wait and see what happens.
Watch below.
Ron DeSantis defends freedom in Florida:
"We will not let anybody lock them down, we will not anyone take their jobs, we will not let anyone ruin their businesses, and we will not let anyone close their schools." pic.twitter.com/C12tOMhWvk
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis defended freedom in the Sunshine State Monday; saying he will not let the federal government “lock” anyone down or “take their jobs.”
“Floridians know we will not let anybody lock them down, we will not anyone take their jobs, we will not let anyone ruin their businesses, and we will not let anyone close their schools,” said the Governor.
RELATED TWEET:
Protestors in NYC are arrested for entering Burger King without showing proof of vaccination pic.twitter.com/XmwMHBcJi6
Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
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http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2021-12-22 04:35:212021-12-28 09:08:15FLORIDA: Governor DeSantis Vows ‘We Will Not Let Anybody Lock’ Floridians Down or ‘Take Their Jobs’
Drugs with less dangerous side effects have been removed from the market. Or at the very least paused, but in the current mad state of the world, it is mandatory. And anyone who thinks for themselves is part of a new underclass of the despised and marginalized.
The Oxford researchers reveal that 1 in 100 or 1% of all vaccinated individuals were admitted to the hospital or died with arrhythmia or irregular heartbeat.
Of the 38,615,491 vaccinated individuals included in our study, 385,508 (1.0%) were admitted to hospital with or died from cardiac arrhythmia at any time in the study period (either before or after vaccination); 86,754 (0.2%) of these occurred in the 1-28 days after any dose of vaccine. Of those who were admitted or died 39,897 (10.3%) had a SARS-CoV-2 positive test, with 29,694 (7.7%) having a positive test before vaccination. There were 7,795 deaths with cardiac arrhythmia recorded as the cause of death (1,108 had a SARS-CoV-2 positive test).
So 1 in 100 of the vaccinated individuals are going to the hospital with irregular heart beat and this isn’t international headlines?
I don’t know why but the idea that everyone who is unvaccinated is going to die over these next 12 weeks unless we do what Joe Biden says is objectively funny to me.
It’s childish to the point of being humorous.
Just not how adults that want to be taken seriously communicate.
Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2021-12-22 04:21:362021-12-22 13:03:34OXFORD STUDY SHOCKER: 1 in 100 Vaccinated Individuals Were Admitted to Hospital or Died with Arrhythmia During Study Period
Governor Greg Abbott of Texas has announced that his state will be building the border wall that Biden’s handlers won’t build, and on Monday we saw yet again why this wall will come not a moment too soon: U.S. Border Patrol officials announced that a “potential terrorist” linked to “Yemeni subjects of interest” was caught in Arizona after crossing into the country from Mexico. Biden’s handlers resolutely ignore the evidence that their open border mess is a national security issue, yet that evidence just keeps on piling up.
… the 21-year-old man was apprehended Thursday night entering the U.S. from Mexico through Yuma, Arizona, according to a tweet from Yuma Sector Chief Patrol Agent Chris T. Clem. He appears to have been wearing a jacket emblazoned with an American flag patch and another that stated: ‘Central Oneida County Volunteer.’ The man is allegedly from Saudi Arabia and ‘is linked to several Yemeni subjects of interest.’
Central Oneida County is in New York; Central Oneida County Volunteer Ambulance Corps Chief Thomas Meyers said the Saudi who was apprehended is not actually a member of the organization. It’s unclear how he got the jacket, but it suggests that he may have been in the United States before.
Border Patrol officials did not explain why the man was considered a “potential terrorist,” but there is nothing implausible about the claim. Rep. John Katko (R-NY), ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, distributed a fact sheet in October warning that “known or suspected terrorists are crossing the border ‘at a level we have never seen before.’”
John Cohen, the Department of Homeland Security’s counterterrorism coordinator, denied this, claiming, “That just simply is not the case. It is just factually inaccurate to frame the southern border as a place where we are seeing a significant number of al-Qaida or ISIS-related terrorists or foreign terrorists.” He said that the rate of jihad terrorists crossing the border was “very low,” and “low in comparison to people who are seeking to travel to the United States through the aviation infrastructure, through the northern border.”
However, when Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott retired last August, he released a video message in which he said: “Over and over again, I see other people talk about our mission, your mission, and the context of it being immigration or the current crisis today being an immigration crisis. I firmly believe that it is a national security crisis. Immigration is just a subcomponent of it, and right now it’s just a cover for massive amounts of smuggling going across the southwest border — to include TSDBs at a level we have never seen before. That’s a real threat.” The TSDB is the Terrorist Screening Database. Scott was referring to people who are on the database crossing the practically nonexistent Biden-era Southern border.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2021-12-22 04:09:322021-12-22 04:10:50‘Potential Terrorist’ From Saudi Arabia Caught After Crossing Biden’s Open Border
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer,” wrote Henry David Thoreau in Walden. “Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
In a profoundly important sense, no two human beings ever step to the music of life in identical ways. That’s because each one of us is his or her own uniquely singular amalgam of ideas, thoughts, traits, responses, and endless other elements that comprise our personalities. No evidence in history exists to suggest that the same person lived twice, a further testimony to the differences that make each one of us incomparable and unequaled.
When I study history, I focus on biography. I want to know who the notable people were who inspired movements, left remarkable impacts, even changed history itself. Not all those movements and impacts were positive, so I study bad people as well as good ones. In this anthology, the good outnumber the bad but we can learn from them all.
From Roman history, you will read here about the evil of Caligula and the good of Telemachus. From the British experience, you will be entertained by the beer maker Arthur Guinness, uplifted by female abolitionists and nurses like Edith Cavell, educated by theologian C.S. Lewis, and inspired by liberty-loving statesmen such as Edmund Burke and Robert Peel. From the French Revolution, you will be heartened by the courage of Olympe de Gouges and appalled by the lunacy of Francois-Noel Babeuf. You will find Russia’s Solzhenitsyn to be as exhilarating as the Peróns of Argentina and Abimael Guzman of Peru and Che Guevara of Cuba are depressing.
More than half of the 33 people I write about in this anthology were Americans—from the days of the nation’s founding to the 20th century. Some are genuine heroes, like aviator Bessie Coleman, musician Nat King Cole, entrepreneur Milton Hershey, economist Pelatiah Webster, and FEE’s founder, Leonard Read. I managed to work in Ralph Lazo, Rube Foster, Diamond Jim Brady, John Stetson and Calvin Coolidge too.
Fascinating people from other countries are to be found herein as well—notably, Jenny Lind from Sweden and Melitta Bentz from Germany.
In every case, the good and bad people in this book made a mark. Their lives teach lessons. We can learn from them even though separated by time, miles and culture. Ultimately, this is what history should be: People today being informed by people who came before.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2021-12-21 18:27:342021-12-21 18:28:37Mavericks and Misfits: Non-Conformists Who Changed the World for Better or Worse
California legislators have not only cut ties with reality—failing to see that they’re heading for ever more blackouts—they also want to cut their citizens’ last lifeline to reliable power when blackouts inevitably occur.
“Excuse me,” says your landscaper. “The mower’s out of juice. Mind if I plug in?” You look from the immobile machine to your half-cut lawn. “Outlet’s over there,” you tell him. “But let’s knock $20 off your fee? What are we up to now, 25 cents a kilowatt-hour?”
Welcome to the future. Welcome to California.
The state, committed to net-zero emissions by 2045, is moving to ban sales of gas-powered landscaping equipment as early as 2024. This is not the first attempt. Politicians tried and failed to do the same in 2003. Since then, though, more than half of homeowners in the state have swapped out their consumer-grade equipment for “zero emission equipment” (ZEE), meaning, battery-powered weed whackers, leaf blowers, hedge clippers, chainsaws, and even lawn mowers.
Electric, Because It’s . . . Quiet?
Many make the switch because, although lower-powered and less reliable (do batteries ever die at the right time?), battery-powered equipment is less noisy. That’s what prompted Mayor Stewart Welch of Mountain Brook, Alabama to begin switching his town’s tools over to electric. The bellow of leaf blowers disturbed his tennis game with a friend who, as chance would have it, had previously complained about the town’s noisy equipment. The city has spent $18,000 over the last year outfitting its public works crew with electric trimmers, blowers, and more.
According to Stanley Black & Decker, sales of the company’s electric yard equipment jumped 75 percent between 2015 and 2020. But, although lots of people are making the switch of their own accord, they’re not doing it fast enough, according to California’s legislative assembly.
Stop and Recharge
The biggest holdouts are those who do landscaping for a living, and for good reason. I searched Husqavarna’s site high and low for battery run time info for its 550iBTX, which one landscaper reviewed as “The best electric blower on the market.” For $469? Not bad, I thought. After lots of web searching about the battery, I gave up and contacted support. Turns out, it does not come with one. The lowest-priced option will cost landscapers an extra $300 and lasts between thirty and sixty minutes. The one the associate recommended, though, costs $969 (yes, more than double the cost of the blower) and “lasts up to 3.5 hours,” he told me. That’s if you run it in “normal” mode, which is half the power of Husqavarna’s $459 gas blower; boost mode saps the power faster and is about 33 percent less powerful than the gas blower.
Some landscapers make electric work, and not just those whose equipment is paid for by taxpayers, as in Mountain Brook. Chris Regis, owner of Florida-based lawn care company Suntek, is able to charge customers between 10 and 20 percent more for all-electric lawn care. He says, “There are people who don’t care and say, ‘I just don’t want the noise.’” All power to them. That’s exactly how free markets work.
Given the numbers above, though, it would take a lot of lawns to make up one’s initial investment with only a 10 or 20 percent upcharge. But Regis’s investment is far greater. He has outfitted the company’s vans with solar panels for recharging batteries on the go—each van costing about $100,000. Reflecting on how much longer the same work now takes him, Jimi Layne of Mountain Brook’s crew asked, “Are we looking at dollars and cents?”
‘Expensive and Unreliable, Please’
That’s an even more pertinent question in California, where energy prices are the highest in the continental US. (23.11 cents per kilowatt-hour, as of June 2021). Gas is more expensive there, too, in large part because of penalizing policies, but researchers predict electricity prices can only rise in the golden state, thanks to a host of factors. Prices are high, in part, because the size of the state increases transmission costs, as do wildfires on mismanaged public lands that have knocked out critical infrastructure, requiring replacement.
But the biggest contributor to high prices is the state’s push to adopt wind and solar, which require big upfront investments but nonetheless necessitate a reliable backup for when the sun’s not shining and the wind’s not blowing.
This problem came to the fore in 2020 when, for two days, California’s three big energy companies instituted rolling blackouts across the state because the grid could not meet demand. It was a self-inflicted wound. Given the state’s environmental restrictions, many coal-fired power plants are being decommissioned, and thanks to irrational fears, they’re not being replaced with clean, reliable nuclear energy, either.
Instead, taxpayers are being forced to subsidize massive investments in “renewables,” and power companies make up much of the state’s inevitable shortfalls by buying energy from more reliable, fossil-fuel plants in neighboring states. Unfortunately for Californians, on August 14, 2020, when the sun set and solar farms went offline, these companies realized they had miscalculated how big that shortfall would be. Western states were in the grip of a heat wave, and as Californians reached for the AC dials, they lost power altogether.
A Deadly Mistake
Losing power is no minor inconvenience, particularly when you live in what is naturally a desert, and especially when it’s more than 100 degrees outside. It’s not just that people can’t charge their Teslas or their ZEE mowers. One 2020 study concluded that more than 5,500 Americans lose their lives due to extreme heat annually. Climate-related deaths are a key indicator of low climate resilience, the ability of a locale to deal with extreme temperatures and weather. And, of course, climate resilience is directly dependent on plentiful, affordable, reliable energy.
But, increasingly, that is what California is doing away with in favor of expensive, unreliable energy. Unsurprisingly, the poor suffer the most. Research done in 2020 shows that many in Los Angeles can’t afford air conditioners, and many who have them can’t afford to run them because electricity prices are so high. In fact, accounting for cost of living, California has the highest poverty rate in the country, in large part because energy prices are so high. This, not in spite of the state’s adoption of “cheap” and “reliable” renewables, but because of it—because solar and wind are not cheap nor reliable and require a backup that is.
Cutting the Lifeline
Yet, with startling shortsightedness, the state assembly has sent Governor Gavin Newsom a bill that will effectively eliminate a go-to backup: gas-powered generators. The bill (AB-1346) lumps gas-powered generators in with the offending landscaping equipment and all other “small off-road engines,” referring to them as SOREs. It “encourages” the California Air Resources Board (the state’s own sort of EPA) to “adopt cost-effective and technologically feasible regulations to prohibit engine exhaust and evaporative emissions from new small off-road engines” and to consider “expected availability of zero-emission generators.”
Such generators do exist, but they are far more expensive, generate far less power, and most need to be recharged after just a few hours. Consider the GOAL ZERO YETI 3000X. It costs $3,400, and an additional $250 kit enables you to use it as a battery backup for your home. After all that, you can power a single refrigerator for less than 2.5 days, and that of course drops if you want to power, say, a few lightbulbs. By contrast, a Duromax XP10000HX can power your whole home—lights, appliances, and A/C system—continuously, running on either gasoline or propane, and it costs $1,400.
When the power went out last August, says Collin Blackwell of Eldorado Hills, California, “We went out and bought an $800 generator, so that way we could have the fridge powered up in the garage at least and be able to have food and everything in the house.” Mark Galloway of Cameron Park said he lives in a mountain community where losing power is fairly common. “You should have something, so having the backup generator and things like that—I think it’s on you to really take care of that,” he said. “It’s not like it’s something that you can’t plan for.”
But, if AB-1346 is signed into law, going out and buying an $800 generator will no longer be an option.
California legislators have not only cut ties with reality—failing to see that they’re heading for ever more blackouts—they also want to cut their citizens’ last lifeline to reliable power when these blackouts inevitably occur. California is committing energy suicide, and given that people rely on energy for just about everything, we shouldn’t be surprised by the toll this will take on human life.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2021-12-21 18:16:552021-12-21 18:17:26Why California’s Move to Ban Gas-Powered Generators [and Lawn Equipment] Could Leave Californians in the Dark
Acton Academy affiliates are benefiting from the surge in interest in microschools and the growing demand by parents for private education options.
When Jessica Gregory and her husband moved from the Washington, D.C. area in 2020 to a suburban community north of Boston, they expected to find a school for their children that was similar in quality to the one they left behind. They were disappointed to discover that classroom and behavioral management consumed much of the school day, and a rigid curriculum stifled their children’s curiosity and creativity.
“Like so many other families across the country, when the pandemic brought public schooling onto my kitchen table, I was floored,” she told me. “We became the unintended participants in the daily grind of standardized learning plans, un-engaging lessons and burnt out educators – conversations that, until the pandemic, were abstract for many adults,” she said.
Determined to provide her children with a learning environment that nurtures their talents and cultivates their individuality, this fall Gregory launched The Wilder School, a microschool that is part of the booming Acton Academy network. Founded in Austin in 2010 by Laura and Jeff Sandefer, Acton Academy now has more than 250 affiliate schools in 31 states and 25 countries. Each Acton affiliate is founded by entrepreneurial parents like Gregory for whom the network’s philosophy of highly personalized, self-paced, learner-driven education resonates. Since its inception, Acton Academy has received over 15,000 applications from parents who desire to launch an affiliate school.
For Gregory, the chance to build a school from scratch that connects to a vision she believes in was enticing. “Acton offers a unique education model which complements individualized learning plans with small group, collaborative projects,” she told me. “When I found it, I was intrigued. Acton then takes this a step further, implementing the best aspects of the world’s leading learning models in an intimate, community-centered approach that feels like a natural extension of home life. I knew this was the right model for our family because it supports whole-child development, valuing equally the real-world application of leadership and academic skills,” she said.
On the day I visited The Wilder School, a bright, colorful and welcoming classroom in a standalone, home-like building behind the church from which Gregory rents the space, I got a glimpse of how a day at an Acton Academy operates. In the morning, learners of different ages are dropped off and have some free time to prepare for the day. Then, they gather together to set and review daily and weekly learning goals. These goals fall within the broad academic categories of reading, writing and mathematics, but the children, called “heroes” at Acton, decide how and what those goals entail, with help from their instructors, or “guides.”
For Gregory’s two children, ages seven and nine, who are the initial students in The Wilder School, math goals involve completing several units each week using Khan Academy, the free, online learning platform that is used in many schools and homeschools across the country. Reading goals are accomplished using Lexia, a literacy learning software, while writing skills are developed using Night Zookeeper, a playful, game-based platform that makes writing fun and engaging. While these are the learning tools Gregory’s children currently use to meet their weekly goals, children at Acton are free to set personalized learning goals using the tools or resources that work best for them.
After a morning of self-paced, learner-directed academic work, the children take a long lunch break and spend ample time outside before reconvening for collaborative, project-based work in the afternoon. At The Wilder School, that work currently involves participating in an interactive lesson on colonial America, as well as developing a sales pitch for which type of classroom pet to adopt.
At just over $12,000 in annual tuition, The Wilder School, like most Acton Academy affiliates, is a fraction of the cost of other local independent private schools. Gregory has ambitious plans for the growth of The Wilder School in the coming months and years, including expanding her classroom space and introducing early childhood and middle school programs. Her optimism is well-placed, as Acton Academy programs across the country have seen extraordinary growth in recent years, a trend that has only accelerated during the pandemic response.
At Acton Academy Placer, outside of Sacramento, founder Matt Beaudreau says the growth in his programs has been breathtaking. “We can’t build schools fast enough,” he told me, adding that he is already outgrowing the buildings in his three locations which currently serve more than 300 learners, ages four to 18. Beaudreau expects this number to nearly double over the next year, and with full-time annual tuition around $10,000, Acton Placer is more accessible than other area private schools. Some of Acton Placer’s continued growth is due to parents seeking schooling alternatives after nearly two years of frustration with closed schools and ongoing coronavirus policies.
As a private membership association that operates as a learning resource center, Acton Placer was unaffected by school closures and related pandemic policies. Mask-wearing has always been optional for all community members, with individual decision-making a key tenet of Acton Placer’s culture. Each Acton Academy affiliate is free to create its own structure, school culture and procedures, while staying true to the overall Acton educational philosophy. Indeed, decentralization of authority and an elevation of the individual is at the root of Acton Academy’s broader mission. The network was named after Lord Acton, who wrote in 1887: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
It’s precisely this decentralization of power and emphasis on self-directed learning and goal-setting that led Heidi Ross to enroll her 11-year-old son in an Acton Academy in San Diego. A teacher and literacy specialist for 20 years in both public and private schools, Ross values the freedom and flexibility of the Acton model. “He’s learning a lot about responsibility, accountability, speaking up with kindness and respect,” she told me. “He’s also met some really great challenges and been successful in increasing math and reading—the core skills they have at Acton. He sees his progress which really excites him, and has good friendships developing,” she added.
Acton Academy affiliates are benefiting from the surge in interest in microschools that began several years ago and has increased since the onset of the pandemic. They are also tapping in to growing demand by parents for private schooling options. According to a recent analysis by the Cato Institute’s Neal McCluskey, private schools have seen enrollment gains during the coronavirus response.
The Wilder School’s Gregory thinks that the growing interest in private education stems from remote learning during school shutdowns that gave parents a close-up look at what their children were learning. “Through this, they have begun to question why school remains so similar to their own experience and how this format will prepare their children for jobs that have yet to be created, spurring droves of families to depart the public school system in search of more effective, flexible alternatives,” she said.
Gregory added: “If anything positive came out of it, the pandemic has raised our collective awareness of education alternatives and the expectation families have for their children.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2021-12-21 18:04:142021-12-21 18:08:08This Microschool Network Is Booming as Families Flee Government-Run Schools
ISRAEL SHOWCASED is a project of The United West featuring the accomplishments and global contributions of Israel, to the world. FROM THE HOLOCAUST TO SURFSIDE – A short documentary by The United West about an elite team from Israel’s National Rescue Unit, in the search and recovery efforts at the Surfside, FL. building collapse.
The United West team, with Suzi Gold as Host, showcases the turbulent history of the Jews and their continued resilience to overcomes all obstacles and share their experience and talents with all mankind.
Please watch and share this story which features first-time interviews inter-cut with the actual 911 call, in real time! The Surfside unspeakable tragedy, ironically, will uplift you as you watch this story and listen to the survivors and rescue team members.
BACKGROUND ON THE SURFSIDE, FL. BUILDING COLLASPE:
On Thursday, June 24, 2021, at approximately 1:25 a.m. EDT, Champlain Towers South, a 12-story beachfront condominium in the Miami suburb of Surfside, Florida, United States, partially collapsed. Ninety-eight people died. Four people were rescued from the rubble, but one died of injuries shortly after arriving at the hospital. Eleven others were injured. Approximately 35 were rescued the same day from the un-collapsed portion of the building, which was demolished 10 days later.
The main contributing factor under investigation is long-term degradation of reinforced concrete structural support in the ground-level parking garage under the housing units, due to water penetration and corrosion of the reinforcing steel. The problems had been reported in 2018 and noted as “much worse” in April 2021. A $15 million program of remedial works had been approved before the collapse, although no main structural work had been undertaken. Other possible factors include land subsidence, insufficient reinforcing steel, and corruption during construction.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The United West/ Defend The Borderhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe United West/ Defend The Border2021-12-21 13:12:532021-12-21 13:13:14FROM THE HOLOCAUST TO SURFSIDE: The amazing story of the Champlain condo collapse in Surfside, Florida
They made a big deal out of the fact Jussie Smollett was supposedly the victim of a hate crime, so I’m going to make a big deal out of the fact it was all a hoax and everybody who pushed the story really should apologize. They were either only too willing to be duped, at best, or left-wing propagandists deliberately pushing a phony narrative to score political points.
This story was made to order for the Left’s phony narrative on race and diversity. A gay black actor gets beaten up while out for a sandwich at 2 a.m. in downtown Chicago. The attackers put a noose around his neck and yelled, “This is MAGA country.” Except we now know it was all a crock, it never happened.
Despite the implausibility of the story, the media ran wild with it, it was all over the news. Politicians fell all over themselves to condemn the attack and show us how virtuous they were.
Joe Biden said, “homophobia and racism have no place on our streets or in our hearts. We are with you, Jussie.” Kamala Harris called it a “modern-day lynching”. The lynching theme was echoed by Senator Cory Booker. Bernie Sanders said the attack was evidence of “surging hostility” against minorities. Elizabeth Warren said, “no one should have to live in fear of being beaten on the street because of who they are.” Except it never happened.
A bevy of Hollywood celebrities fell for it, too. One tweeted: “OMG!! THIS is why the LGBTQ community continue[sic] to fight to be seen and PROTECTED against hate! We ALL have to take this racist and homophobic act of violence very personally!” Except it never happened.
Other people who gushed about the fake attack at the time now have egg all over their face. This includes Adam Schiff, Rashida Tlaib, Pete Buttigieg, and the Reverend Al Sharpton. Because it never happened. That’s what happens when mindless leftists believe their own phony narratives too much. America is a horrible rotten place full of white supremacists, Ku Klux Klanners who forgot their hoods, and systemic racism. Sure, and I’m the tooth fairy.
The Jussie Smollett story blew up in their face but, sad to say, that didn’t stop the Left from continuing to push their phony narratives. Charges of racism continue unabated. The latest example is the preposterous claim that farmers markets and food charities are evidence of white supremacy.
As was brilliantly observed recently, charges of racism can work only because present-day America is not a fundamentally racist country. This is not 1861, when slavery existed. It’s not even 1961, when lunch counters were segregated. In fact, the most visible racism I can see in 2021 is reverse racism coming from activists who want things like separate dorms, events, and graduation ceremonies for minority college students.
The Left’s whole race narrative has gone just about as far as it can go. It’s actually counterproductive now, as the Jussie Smollett hate hoax shows. It’s time to drop this well of poison and get on to better things.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Save America Foundationhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngSave America Foundation2021-12-21 12:38:482021-12-21 12:38:48The Unraveling of a Modern Day Lynching!
Biden to deploy 100’s of FEDERAL VACCINATORS! “the virus is IN CHARGE & WE need to TAKE BACK CONTROL & the only way to do that as a society is to test & ISOLATE…” said @MaraAspinall an expert in med diagnostics at ASU”
Isolate who, how, & where, please?
Using our military to enforce getting vaxxed or face isolation?
WASHINGTON — President Biden will announce new steps on Tuesday to confront a staggering surge in coronavirus cases, including readying 1,000 military medical professionals to help at overburdened hospitals, setting up new federal testing sites, deploying hundreds of federal vaccinators and buying 500 million rapid tests to distribute free to the public.
The measures, outlined to reporters Monday night by two senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, come as coronavirus caseloads are rapidly rising around the country, particularly in the Northeast, fueled by the highly infectious new Omicron variant — just as Americans prepare to gather for Christmas.
The 500 million tests that the administration intends to purchase will not be available until January, the senior officials said, adding that the government intends to create a website where people can request that tests be sent to their homes, free of charge. It was not immediately clear where the tests would come from.
The plan for new federal testing sites will debut in New York City, where several new sites will be running before Christmas. And Mr. Biden intends to invoke the Defense Production Act, officials said, to accelerate production of tests. [Emphasis added]
Defense Production Act? Really? Shouldn’t we be producing jobs and not jabs? Doesn’t it hurt our military and their family if they take away their military doctors and nurses?
Does this make any sense? It only makes sense if the next step is to send the unvaxxed into concentration camps for their own good.
The Biden administration will offer bonuses to doctors who “create and implement an anti-racism plan” under new rules from the Department of Health and Human Services, a move meant to update Medicare payments to “reflect changes in medical practice.”
Effective Jan. 1, Medicare doctors can boost their reimbursement rates by conducting “a clinic-wide review” of their practice’s “commitment to anti-racism.” The plan should cover “value statements” and “clinical practice guidelines,” according to HHS, and define race as “a political and social construct, not a physiological one”—a dichotomy many doctors say will discourage genetic testing and worsen racial health disparities.
The “rationale” for the bonus, the new rules read, is that “it is important to acknowledge systemic racism as a root cause for differences in health outcomes between socially-defined racial groups.”
Such premises have found a receptive ear in the Oval Office, which has taken steps to institutionalize them throughout the federal bureaucracy. Hours after his inauguration, President Joe Biden signed an executive order launching a “whole-of-government equity agenda,” one plank of which was the “equitable delivery of government benefits.”
The new bonus scheme, HHS stresses, is “consistent with” this order. It follows a series of steps by the Biden administration to integrate “anti-racism” into government policy: in November, for example, the Department of Homeland Security listed “diversity, equity, and inclusion” as one of its top two priorities, ahead of “cybersecurity.”
Here’s a very grim White House tweet about the virus and getting vaxxed.
The most sick, twisted, and dishonest message I’ve ever seen come out of a White House. pic.twitter.com/mAmyeTmqqI
— John – Reliably Reliable Sources – Cardillo (@johncardillo) December 20, 2021
But Omicron has mild cold like symptoms and to date there has been one person who has died from it. This person was fully vaccinated and had a booster shot.
Worth noting: the one person who has died of Omicron in our country was fully vaccinated & boosted.
Is it a myth used to create an atmosphere of fear?
We are already seeing law enforcement officers being used to harass and even arrest the unvaxxed and those without a vaxx passport. Watch what happens in New York:
Man was arrested in Brooklyn, NY after trying to order food at Panera Bread without a vaccine pass
If the Brooklyn, New York police are focused on arresting someone ordering food at Panera Bread, who is going after robbers, rapists, murderers and other criminals?
The Bottom Line
Biden has now escalated his “War Against the Un-VAXXED.”
It’s obey or lose your job. It’s obey or be arrested. Now it’s obey or we will isolate you and your family.
Americans are indeed facing a dark winter of persecution by Biden and his minions. Evil has come to America and it’s name is mandate.
First they came after those who voted for Trump, but I did not vote in 2016.
Then they came for those who posted on social media about Biden, but I was not on social media.
Then they came after those who held a rally in Washington, D.C. on January 6th, 2021, but I was not in Washington on January 6th.
Then they came after the unvaxxed, but I was vaxxed.
Then they came after me and there was no-one left to defend me.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2021-12-21 09:21:352021-12-21 17:59:26Biden Weaponizes Healthcare: Will deploy 1,000 military vaccinators to ‘isolate’ the non-vaxxed
Payment apps and online payment options through social media platforms are used to enable child and adult sexual exploitation. These digital payment options give easier access to sexual predators to groom young users. Direct service providers serving child sex trafficking victims have called NCOSE to ask our assistance in advocating that Square, CashApp, and Venmo make changes to their platforms to reduce the ease with which predators can send money to young kids. Georgia First Lady Marty Kemp and online child safety group Barkhave found similar trends—predators using these online payment systems to groom and exploit children.
Child sex trafficking survivors have shown NCOSE their phones, explaining that $50 would suddenly show up in their account and they would know their sex trafficker just sold them to a sex buyer.
NCOSE listed Snapchat on the 2017 Dirty Dozen List in large part due to their app feature Snapcash, which was largely used to pay for filmed and in-person sex acts, including those with children. Gratefully, Snapchat disabled the feature, however the trend continues with the #snapcash hashtag still in-use, and Venmo and Square increasingly used as the payment processor. While Instagram remains a hotspot for grooming and soliciting sex from youth, the platform recently announced an upcoming subscription feature (just like exploitative OnlyFans) enabling users to pay and receive money for content on their platform, which is likely to be abused by child predators (we are already in talks with them to ensure exploitation remains prohibited).
In addition to the ease with which online payments are given and received directly to youth to facilitate child sexual exploitation, predators are also known to track the behavior of youth online and then use that knowledge to push kids to do what they want. The lack of privacy for youth online is deeply troubling. This is why our public policy team is advocating to raise the digital age of adulthood from the current 13 to 18 with legislation pending before Congress. Take action below.
In light of these increasing dangers facing youth online, we are especially excited about a new tool that gives parents “digital superpowers” to help navigate their child’s path to earning, learning, and developing essential money management skills, while protecting their financial privacy and providing essential armor against victimization and exploitation online.
We are pleased to recognize REGO and its super app digital wallet platform, MazoolaSM with the Dignity Defense Alert!
We all know the threat that social networking sites can pose to children and the ways predators can use data exposed on social media. However, the misuse of data collected during a child’s financial transactions online or in-person via debit cards, digital wallets, and smartcard apps can be just as damaging.
Data thieves are more likely to capitalize on kids’ data. Criminals can often open more fraudulent accounts using a child’s personal information before getting caught than when using an adult’s. In 2017, among people notified that their information was included in a data breach, 39% of minors became victims of fraud compared to only 19% of adults. Over 1 million kids are victims of identity theft each year and children are 51 times more likely to be a victim of identity theft than adults.
That kind of information is rocket fuel for abusers and predators who thrive on grooming, manipulation, and “social engineering” of young children. Personal data about a child’s online and in-person transactions would open massive new avenues to earn trust and break through child’s defenses and instincts.
The proliferation of contactless payments in the COVID-19 era continues to grow rapidly and debit cards and digital wallets are a significant tool that children can use. However, most parents are not aware of the potential threat these new financial payment mechanisms can create. For example, parents may sign up to allow their child to save or make easy, digital payments, without realizing this technology also creates an avenue for predators to anonymously transfer money into their child’s digital wallet. Services like this that don’t provide clear and easy parental visibility create unsafe spaces for children without even realizing it.
Mazoola, as the only COPPA-certified mobile family wallet, is a walled garden that offers parents much-needed reassurance that their children’s financial information is safe while shopping with their favorite retailers online or in-store from their mobile device. Parents get the immediate visibility into every one of their child’s transactions, while helping them build financial independence in a safe, step-by-step way.
A Cycle of Exploitation: Online Harms Facing Youth
The brave whistleblower Frances Haugen has shown how Facebook targets kids with harmful and toxic messages and ads, driving a cycle of exploitation and harm that has victimized thousands. Congress is rightly considering a host of reforms to create a safer, more accountable Internet—including limiting tech platforms’ overbroad Section 230 immunity and even more focused legislation like the KIDS Act that would limit online manipulation and amplification of the most destructive messages.
But overlooked in the debate is an even simpler, more immediate step legislators can take to protect our kids from technology platforms run amok—modernize and strengthen our privacy laws to cut off the data fuel that powers algorithmic abuse and exploitative microtargeting in the first place.
Right now, the federal COPPA law requires companies to get opt-in consent before collecting personal information from children who are 12 and under. But these new fintech digital wallet companies that are targeting kids, like Greenlight and goHenry, can collect personal data from all children at will unless their parents affirmatively “opt-out”—which often requires running an obstacle course of click-throughs and consent forms that even a determined adult would have trouble navigating. Obviously, very few parents have opted their kids out.
The resulting FinTech Child Privacy Protection (FTCPP) gap is bad enough when our kids are just surfing the web or uploading their personal information to TikTok. But the harm gets supercharged when kids start using non-COPPA compliant payment apps and digital wallets.
Children’s Privacy is Not Prioritized
A recent VICE investigation found the largest kid-targeting payment companies “are willfully stretching the bounds of the Federal Trade Commission’s rules” and reserve the right to collect and share “a shocking amount of data” about our kids—including “names, birthdates, email addresses, GPS location history, purchase history, and behavioral profiles.” The power to collect and sell the individual financial transaction history of a child to data brokers, which can then be aggregated and combined with the broader universe of data collected on that child from the rest of their online activity poses a clear and present danger to our kids.
Which brings us right back to the Facebook Files—and the risk that all this personal information will end up feeding the abusive ad targeting and addictive engagement tools that are causing so much damage to our kids online. A teenager who buys diet soda or starts visiting the gym shouldn’t find themselves bombarded with manipulative ads and sponsored influencer content promoting extreme weight loss or other unhealthy messages about body image and their lives. Access to this kind of data (or targeting based on it) would let predators refine their approach to potential victims based on an intimate knowledge of the things they like and how they spend their money and time.
If the data were to be breached or leak onto the dark web, it would give a global community of predators an inside track to manipulate and exploit our children.
New Legislation to Improve Child Online Privacy
Senator Ed Markey, (the original author of the COPPA legislation), has proposed bi-partisan critical legislation to close the FTCPP gap—ensuring all kids younger than 16 receive full COPPA-level opt-in protections and banning certain forms of targeting and similar data abuses, and creating a digital data “eraser” button to put families in control of kids’ data. Representative Kathy Castor has also introduced landmark legislation, the Kids PRIVCY Act, to strengthen COPPA and keep children safe online.
This legislation is especially critical to strengthen the security and safety of digital wallets and spending apps, especially as we emerge from a global pandemic that has skyrocketed the use of contactless payment systems—including for in-person sales. And existing products in the market like the Mazoola payment app have already proven it’s possible to provide full COPPA-level protection to older kids and seamless digital payment online or in stores without collecting any personal data at all about children.
Moving forward with privacy legislation as the first step in addressing the crisis of weaponized data and online harm is also smart because Congress has been working on core privacy issues and developing vetted legislative proposals for years. Both Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California’s Consumer Privacy Protection Act already provide similar strong protections for younger users, offering real-world proof this path is safe and feasible.
We know a lot about the harm too much data can do in the hands of massive online platforms that do nothing. Congress must act to protect our kids.
But in the meantime, smart tech like Mazoola can protect our kids now and let them benefit from the online world without falling prey to it.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00National Center on Sexual Exploitationhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngNational Center on Sexual Exploitation2021-12-21 08:38:152021-12-21 08:38:15Mazoola Protects Kids’ Privacy
Senator Joe Manchin drove President Biden’s “mammoth” spending bill over a cliff this weekend, sparing the nation a massive increase in new spending and ill-conceived policies it cannot afford.
The West Virginia Senator appeared on Fox News Sunday where he said, “I had my reservations from the beginning… The inflation I was concerned about is real, it is not transitory. If I cannot go home and explain it to the people of West Virginia, I cannot vote for it.”
“What Senator Manchin did yesterday represents an egregious breach of the trust of the President,” said AOC.
“Joe Manchin pretends to have a problem with the cost of a $1.75T investment over 10 years in the American people, but has no problem with giving $9T to weapons makers and the military,” tweeted Rep. Rasida Tlaib.
Marc Morano reported in a “Morano Minute” that “climate activists say Manchin’s opposition to Biden’s climate bill will be so harmful you’ll be able to see the effects on Earth’s geologic record.” “The Jurassic, Holocene, and now….Manchin-cene?” Marc asked.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki released a harsh statement in which she vowed to neither “relent,” nor “give up.” Read Psaki’s statement at CFACT.org.
Biden’s “Build Back Better” is laden with bad policy, including over $570 billion in climate spending. AOC reported during UN COP 26 that the bill still contains funding for her “Civilian Climate Corps” — a Brave New World-ish plan to enlist and brainwash thousands of young people to shame and hector the rest of us into climate compliance That would have been as much fun as the 50,000 new IRS agents Biden wants to loose to shake more taxes out of the rest of us.
Environmentalist Michael Shellenberger wrote, “Build Back Better would have undermined electricity reliability, raised energy prices, and made the U.S. more dependent on foreign energy imports.”
“Build Back Better” is a massive mistake. Now that it’s dead we should drive a stake through its heart, cut off it’s head and smother it in garlic.
Biden’s monstrous spending must never find a new incarnation from which to rise from its crypt.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Committee For A Constructive Tomorrowhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngCommittee For A Constructive Tomorrow2021-12-21 08:27:552021-12-22 06:51:24Manchin’s NO on “mammoth” “Build Back Better” bill
What rings true intuitively isn’t always backed up by the numbers.
Joe Biden, the current front-runner of the Democratic 2020 field, promises the return of electric vehicle (EV) tax credits. The presidential candidate says that “a key barrier to further deployment of these greenhouse-gas reducing vehicles is the lack of charging stations and coordination across all levels of government.” Biden wants 500,000 new charging stations by the end of 2030, thereby incentivizing the use of electric cars beyond the advantages given when buying them.
As it stands—and depending on the state in which the car is bought and withholding the individual tax situation of the buyer—some people can save up to $10,000 on a new Tesla thanks to this tax incentive.
This policy introduced under the Obama administration had the intention of promoting electric vehicles in order to reduce carbon emissions, but what happened in the countries that eliminated the tax credits tells a different story. When Denmark got rid of its tax credits for electric vehicles, Tesla’s sales dropped by 94 percent. In Hong Kong, the company saw a decline of 95 percent as the city got rid of comparable tax advantages for those buying electric cars.
According to Biden, that is because the right user incentives aren’t there, notably charging stations. However, the countries involved have considerably more charging stations than the US: Denmarkhas 443 charging stations in its capital Copenhagen, as well as over 500 more across the rest of the country. As for Hong Kong, the South China Morning Postreports:
The move [Tesla opening a super-charging car park in Hong Kong] followed the opening of Tesla’s first supercharger station – which can fully charge a Tesla in just 75 minutes […]. Currently there are 92 Tesla superchargers at 21 supercharger stations, with more than 400 public and shared charging points.
Clearly, the question of EV is not one of convenience but of price.
The Full Story
Norway has the largest fleet of electric vehicles in the world, making up 60 percent of all new sales this year. Reporting on the story, NPR writes that “10,732 [sold cars] were rated with zero emissions.”
The Institute of Transport Economics at the Norwegian Center for Transport Research lays out the ambition of carbon dioxide reduction through electric mobility.
For these vehicles a massive transition to electric engines can result in an up to a 97 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions and up to 76 per cent reduction in energy use per transport unit.
Adding to that, over 95 percent of Norway’s electricity comes from hydropower, of which 90 percent is publicly owned. That does not come without its downsides. As electricity consumption increases in Norway, the sector is unable to keep up. Last year, lack of rainfall and low wind speedexploded Norwegian electricity prices to the level of Germany (which is still in the process of phasing out nuclear energy). Norway then resorted to coal power, and as fossil fuel power imports exceeded energy export, Norway has actually seenan increase in CO2 emissions.
This is despite the fact that Norway’s climate and geography make it ideal for the production of renewables, which is not the case for every state in the US. However, electricity production is only half the story of EV.
The Batteries
Electric vehicle batteries need a multitude of resources to be manufactured. In the case of cobalt, the World Economic Forum has called out the extraction conditions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where more than half of the world’s cobalt comes from. Miners as young as seven years are suffering from chronic lung disease from exposure to cobalt dust. Not only does battery manufacturing account for 60 percent of the world’s cobalt use, but there are also no good solutions to replace it, which is something Elon Musk is struggling with.
This does not even address the extraction procedures, complications, ethical conditions, and emissions produced bythe need for aluminum, manganese, nickel, graphite, and lithium carbonate.
With a European marketestimated to reach a total of 1,200 gigawatt-hours per year, which is enough for 80 gigafactories with an average capacity of 15 gigawatt-hours per year, that need is set to increase exponentially.
The renowned German research institute IFO declared the eco-balance of diesel-powered vehicles to be superior to electric vehiclesin a study released in April.
Petrol Cars
We know from the US Department of Energy that the average fuel economy of cars more than doubled from 1975 to 2018. Fuel economy is increasing while horsepower has also increased exponentially, making cars both cleaner and faster. In 2017, the average estimated real-world CO2 emission rate for all new vehiclesfell by 3 grams per mile (g/mi) to 357 g/mi, the lowest level ever measured. View the Real-World Economy (MPG) and Real-World CO2 Emissions Chart (g/mi).
No wonder: As much as consumers might care about CO2 emissions, they are even more price-sensitive. Even those consumers who aren’t will eventually be swayed when they find out their car brand is costing them comparably excruciating amounts in fuel.
Electric cars won’t be the one-size-fits-all solution to our current transportation challenges—at least not for the foreseeable future. As both technologies have up-and downsides, we need to consider what innovation can realistically achieve before we make calls for bans or rushed replacements.
Bill Wirtz is a Young Voices Advocate and a FEE Eugene S. Thorpe Fellow. His work has been featured in several outlets, including Newsweek, Rare, RealClear, CityAM, Le Monde and Le Figaro. He also works as a Policy Analyst for the Consumer Choice Center. Learn more about him at his website.
Last we heard we had only 12 years to extinction. Suddenly the goalposts have been moved to 50 years. No explanation for the change! Undoubtedly in 50 years they will be moved again. This is climate policy, bartender style! https://t.co/AyCJBTjOcE
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2021-12-21 07:45:052021-12-24 05:31:04Electric Cars vs. Gas Cars: Is the Conventional Wisdom Wrong?
Reed,Lawrence W. – Mavericks And Misfits (EPUB)
