Month: August 2024

Authored by Robert Gore via StraightLineLogic.com,

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

-Upton Sinclair

The overclass has produced far less than it has taken and has destroyed far more than it has created.

The overclass is the cohort in both government and ostensibly private enterprise who derive their sustenance directly or indirectly from government in exchange for goods or services. It consists of the relatively small group who rule, and the much larger group, numbering in the millions, whose defining characteristic is that government is the source of their compensation. For analytic clarity, this group does not include people who receive money from government (e.g. Social Security, AFDC) that is not salaries.

The overclass includes the massive administrative state, the military, intelligence, government contractors, much of public and private academia, many nongovernmental organizations and foundations, parts of the mainstream media, much of the scientific and medical establishments, and state and local governments. A substantial chunk of the $11 plus trillion that all levels of government will spend this year, an estimated 38.12 percent of the GDP, will flow into these pockets (figures from usdebtclock.org).

The underclass consists of that group who work in non-government-related private enterprise. Their output must satisfy a market test—someone has to be willing to pay more for it than the cost of the inputs used to generate it. This is a crucial distinction between the underclass and overclass, who are not subject to this market test.

While some members receive high incomes and are wealthy, the underclass is the underclass because legally it is subjugated to the overclass; its production supports the overclass. Statistically, underclass average compensation and benefits are now less than those of the overclass (it used to be the opposite).

The overclass produces less than it consumes and has grown relative to the underclass. The mounting national debt confirms both assertions. Ironically, that debt provides handsome incomes to the overclass sector that markets and trades it.

While billionaire oligarchs, prominent politicians, celebrities, journalists, academics, and woke warrior leaders arouse the most ire and dismay among their opposition, it is the overclass layer just below that top strata that has a vice grip on American governance and is the biggest obstacle to any meaningful change. They will never let go because they must hold on; current arrangements provide their livelihoods, prestige, and power. What makes this group so invidious is that its role is rarely acknowledged or even recognized.

It is a common observation that transfer payments from the welfare state essentially buy votes and keep recipients docile. However, who has more political influence―those recipients, or the bureaucrats who administer transfer programs; professors who spend their careers chasing government grants; Department of Agriculture officials who dispense crop support payments or oversee the department’s myriad programs and the agricultural interests who are their beneficiaries; the executives and employees of defense contractors; the TSA goons who harass you at the airport; the IRS goons who harass you at tax time; the DHS America lasters who champion open borders; scientists and administrators at national laboratories; researchers who cook up government-mandated vaccines; spooks who cook up regime changes; teachers who dumb down and indoctrinate our kids; government censors; central banker functionaries who debase the currency; and so on and so on and so on. Transfer payments are huge and unsustainable, but their recipients’ political clout is dwarfed by that of the overclass. Transfer payees can’t pay Hillary Clinton $600,000 for a speech; Goldman Sachs can and did.

The second tier of the overclass almost completely escapes moral scrutiny. They are not remote figures like the rulers and string-pullers. They are relatives, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances, and they go to the same stores, cocktail parties, backyard barbecues, sporting events, school plays, churches, and synagogues as the underclass. Overclass incomes make them a large percentage of what’s left of the shrinking middle class, although affluence puts many of them above middle class.

Rarely will productive members of the underclass that supports the overclass think about their relationships with the overclass in such terms. It’s not: “Bill works at the Department of Energy and wastes my tax dollars working on green energy scams”; it’s: “Bill works at the Department of Energy and we get together with our wives for dinner every so often.” If an underclass son or daughter is admitted to an Ivy League school, graduates, and secures a high-status, high-paying job in government, most underclass parents are delighted.

The moral posture of the overclass rests on social conditioning that politely overlooks two facts. Overclass compensation is stolen from the productive underclass, and the market value of overclass output is exceeded by the market value of the inputs used to produce it. The national debt grows as the real income of the underclass shrinks. The overclass’s face-saving justification is that the value of their output is measured in non-market metrics—the common good, public interest, or some other airy intangible.

What shreds that justification is the overclass’s massive destruction of value measured by either market or non-market metrics. America’s wars since World War II have cost tens of trillions of dollars and millions of lives. As the empire crumbles, can anyone cite a single intangible value they’ve advanced? They’ve had nothing to do with the defense of America proper, and everything to do with protecting various “interests” that are generally not specified because they are usually overclass rackets.

The trillions that government has thrown at health, education, and welfare have not produced equal or greater trillions’ worth of health, education, and welfare. They have produced all manner of social pathologies, including falling life expectancies; dumbed down, indoctrinated kids; greater than 50 percent out-of-wedlock birth rate; and crime-infested cities. The overclass has produced far less than it has taken and has destroyed far more than it has created. By any standard of value, it has failed.

Repeated failure is not a recipe for self-esteem. Overclass insecurity is often hidden by arrogance and maintained by fig-leaf justifications that among themselves they refuse to question. However, outside of their insular psychological garrison, those justifications are under increasingly strident attack, and they see an existential threat.

Their support structure is collapsing. The unbalanced arithmetic that allowed for an expanding overclass, whose real compensation steadily grew, has reached its limit. The productive underclass can be squeezed no more, and interest rates ratcheting up indicate credit market queasiness at the exponentially mounting debt. The stock market and the statistics are signaling imminent recession or worse. They toll the bell for the unaffordable overclass and their unaffordable privileges and pretensions.

Inside their insular garrison, the unmentionable is still unmentioned; but try as they might, they can’t ignore the barbarians at the gate. The barbarians don’t realize the benefits of their own subjugation, notwithstanding reams of “correct information” plied directly from government and through approved media. Instead, they’ve swallowed “dis-”, “mis-”, and “malinformation” through uncontrolled media that is devilishly difficult to control or censor. Whack one mole and two more pop up.

The symbol of all this gauche unruliness is Trump, at whom they direct their vitriol. He rips away flimsy pretenses and must be stopped by means fair or foul. He’s a symbol, but what he symbolizes is quite real: underclass recognition and resentment of overclass exploitation.

Unfortunately for the underclass, the chances of meaningful change via the ballot box are remote. For one thing, the overclass cheats; but even if Trump wins, it will be as difficult to make his rhetoric reality in the second term as it was in the first.

It’s a pleasant fantasy to think of Trump taking a chainsaw to the federal government à la Javier Milei. However, “institutional constraints” are a polite way of saying the overclass has a death grip on government; their livelihoods, status, and power depend on neither letting go nor having their hands pried away from it. They will delay, countermand, and sabotage everything he tries to do, and time will be on their side. The system is not going to change itself from within, no matter who’s on top.

Also in the pleasant fantasy category is the notion of a substantial portion of the underclass walking away from their critical jobs and letting things collapse; a shrug à la Ayn Rand. Unfortunately, they can’t abscond to a hidden gulch where no government, laissez faire capitalism, and gold—real money— are the order of the day.

They would be walking away from their jobs and sustenance, and most of them don’t have the resources for an extended “strike.” Not to mention the kind of retribution they might face from their employers or the government, like that the Canadian government levied against the truckers and their supporters. January 6 paints a clear picture of how the American government treats anyone it labels an “insurrectionist.”

One thing the underclass does have going for it is the unsustainability of current arrangements; what can’t last won’t. Long bear markets in bonds and stocks, exploding deficits, and a shrinking economy will force choices, cutbacks, and changes in policy. The overclass will never lose its taste for empire and domestic skims and scams, but economic and financial collapse will limit what can be stolen or borrowed.

What remains to be seen is where the breaking point is on underclass toleration of its own subjugation. The overclass and its globalist overseers are ratcheting up the totalitarianism, doing their best to make peaceful revolution impossible, and thereby making—as John F. Kennedy warned—violent revolution inevitable.

When the choices and cutbacks come, unproductive beneficiaries of government largess and unemployed members of the overclass with limited or no marketable skills can be expected to react violently, but it will be random and mindless. The productive underclass, on the other hand, could be far more problematic for what remains of the overclass, especially if does not wait until it has nothing—resources or freedom—left to lose.

The largest, stupidest, and most inflexible government (only China’s rivals it) since the fall of the Soviet Union has almost infinite vulnerabilities and attack points. The underclass has the knowledge, imagination, skills, and experience to exploit them. What emerges from a Great Asymmetric Insurrection could be anything from splintering and secession to the complete defeat of the government and a reconstituted confederation of states.

Regardless, the outcome will be a vale of tears for the overclass. They’re the embodiments of centralization of power and resources that serves no useful purpose (if it ever did) and contributes nothing but obstacles to humanity’s progress. Only their victims’ acquiescence has allowed them to survive and thrive, but that’s ending. The overclass will be the victims of the unstoppable forces of decentralization and their own arrogance, corruption, and tyranny. Its fall seems unimaginable now, but most of the twenty-first century has been unimaginable until it happened.

The outcomes of dramatic change and chaos are unpredictable, but one prediction can be hazarded. The future will belong to those enlightened polities where there is no underclass, only people who are free to peaceably live their lives as they see fit and have the first and only claim on what they produce.

Four former law enforcement and military officers are being accused of conducting a raid in 2019 that they used to extort a businessman out of $37 million.

The four accused individuals were paid by the victim’s business partner, a wealthy Chinese national, to engage in the “bogus raid”, according to NBC News.

They then made the businessman sign over his multimillion-dollar interest in Jiangsu Sinorgchem, a Chinese rubber chemical manufacturer. He had previously been in a dispute regarding the company for years.

According to the DOJ, the four men involved were:

• Steven Arthur Lankford, 68, of Canyon Country, a retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) deputy who stopped working for LASD in 2020 and owns a Santa Clarita-based process service company;
• Glen Louis Cozart, 63, of Upland, a former LASD deputy who owns and operates a San Bernardino County-based private investigation and security services company;
• Max Samuel Bennett Turbett, 39, of Australia, a United Kingdom citizen and former member of the British military who owns an Australia-based private investigation and asset recovery business; and
• Matthew Phillip Hart, 41, of Australia, an Australian citizen and former member of the Australian military who owns an Australia-based risk management services business.

The NBC report says that during the raid, the man’s wife and two children were present. The victim and his business partner, referred to only as “unindicted co-conspirator 1,” a wealthy Chinese national, were not named, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

In December 2018, the unindicted co-conspirator asked Turbett to help resolve her business dispute, expressing frustration with costly litigation and seeking an alternative solution, prosecutors said. She promised Turbett they could both retire if he succeeded.

Turbett and the co-conspirator then created fake settlement agreements, requiring victim 1 to transfer nearly $37 million in cash and shares in Jiangsu Sinorgchem to her. This set off a chain of events leading to the staged raid on June 17, 2019, according to the report. 

Before the raid, Turbett hired Cozart, who then recruited Lankford, a sheriff’s deputy, to locate victim 1 using a law enforcement database, which was against policy, prosecutors said. 

Turbett and Hart flew from Australia to Los Angeles to meet with Cozart and Lankford to plan the sham raid. During the raid, the defendants detained the victim and his family, confiscated their phones, and subjected the businessman to physical threats until he signed the agreements, prosecutors said. 

Although warned not to contact police, the victim reported the incident after the defendants left. Lankford later lied to police, claiming the raid was legitimate and that no force was used.

By November 2019, all defendants had been paid for their roles in coercing the businessman, with the co-conspirator paying Turbett’s company around $419,813 and thanking him for a “very good job,” according to prosecutors.

United States Attorney Martin Estrada commented: “It is critical that we hold public officials, including law enforcement officers, to the same standards as the rest of us. It is unacceptable and a serious civil rights violation for a sworn police officer to take the law into his own hands and abuse the authority of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.”

“The defendants in this case allegedly believed they could carry out vigilante justice by using official police powers to enter the home of vulnerable victims and extorting them out of millions of dollars,” said Akil Davis, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office.

The full DOJ press release can be read here. 

Authored by Stephen Katte via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Columbia University President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik has resigned from her post effective immediately following months of criticism over her handling of on-campus protests against the war in Gaza.

Students set up a pro-Palestinian encampment protesting the war and calling for the school to divest from corporations supporting Israel on April 17.

What followed was a month of chaos and violence between police and protesters, as one encampment was taken down, and a second one popped up. All protest encampments were disbanded by June 2, but critics argued Shafik hadn’t done enough to curb anti-Semitism and broader disruption to the university during that time.

In an Aug. 14 statement, Shafik said her decision to step down had come amid “a period of turmoil,” which she said has taken its toll on her loved ones.

“This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community,” she said.

“Over the summer, I have been able to reflect and have decided that my moving on at this point would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead.”

The university’s website lists Katrina Armstrong as interim president going forward. Armstrong is the university’s executive vice president for health and biomedical sciences. She has led the Columbia University Irving Medical Center since 2022.

It has not been announced when a new president might be appointed or who might be in the running to replace the outgoing Shafik.

New President for Next Term 

Shafik only assumed the role of president in July of last year. According to her statement, she will be moving on to a new job with the UK’s foreign secretary.

“In terms of next steps, I am honored to have been asked by the UK’s Foreign Secretary to chair a review of the government’s approach to international development and how to improve capability,” she said.

“I am very pleased and appreciative that this will afford me the opportunity to return to work on fighting global poverty and promoting sustainable development, areas of lifelong interest to me.”

She previously led the London School of Economics and held roles at the World Bank, the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, and the Bank of England.

A new term is due to start on Sept. 3, and Shafik said the timing of her announcement will ensure a new leader could be put in place before students return. 

“I have informed the Board of Trustees, and I would like to express my immense appreciation to them for their support,” she said in the statement.

“I am committed to working with the Interim President to ensure an orderly transition.”

Pressure Mounts on University Leadership 

Congress has called in several university leaders over the last year to answer questions about concerns of anti-Semitism on campus. Earlier this year, Claudine Gay from Harvard and Liz Magill from the University of Pennsylvania resigned due to pressures involving Gaza war protests.

Three deans at Columbia University also resigned on Aug. 8 after exchanging texts disparaging Jews during an event exploring anti-Semitism. University officials said in July the administrators in question were going on leave pending an investigation. 

Protests swept across college campuses in the United States and around the world since the Hamas terrorist group launched an attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, massacring 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking hostage 250 more. Israel responded with a military campaign to neutralize Hamas’s military capabilities in Gaza that were responsible for the attack.

According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, about 40,000 Gazans have been killed since the fighting began. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and noncombatants in its death counts.

How many murders is too many to get out of prison?

Apparently three, according to a California Democrat who has recently revived a bill that would grant early release to prisoners serving life sentences without the possibility of parole – a sentence which is typically reserved for those who have committed the most violent and egregious crimes – murderers, rapists, and repeat offenders whose actions were beyond the pale.

However, under SB 94, spearheaded by State Senator David Cortese (D), the doors could soon be open for some of these offenders return to society. The bill primarily targets those sentenced before June 5, 1990, when voters passed Proposition 115 which expanded the state’s ability to impose life without parole for particularly heinous crimes. Those who have served 25 years or more could petition for early release, with eligibility based on a range of factors including “childhood trauma,” military service, cognitive impairments, and even age-related conditions that supposedly reduce the risk of future violence.

The list of those exempt from early release has raised eyebrows – which includes only those who committed first-degree murder of a police officer, killed three or more people, or engaged in sexual violence, such as a rape-homicide, any of which would make an inmate ineligible for release. This means that someone convicted of two murders could still appeal – as long as one victim wasn’t a police officer and neither crime involved sexual acts.

Cortese argues that many of these prisoners, who have languished behind bars for decades, are now classified as low-risk according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s own assessments. He contends that the bill simply introduces a judicial review process for cases that have not been reconsidered in years.

However, as The Center Square reports, the San Diego Deputy District Attorneys Association has voiced strong opposition, urging lawmakers to consider the potential risks to public safety. The association pointed out that California voters, through Proposition 115, clearly expressed a desire to keep the most dangerous criminals behind bars for life. They argue that SB 94 undermines this mandate by creating presumptions favoring the release of individuals convicted of serious crimes.

“By enacting Proposition 115, the voters of this state have told us they want to keep the worst of the worst in prison where they belong,” wrote SDDDAA ion opposition. “By creating presumptions favoring the release of these murderers, SB 94 will create unjustifiable risks to public safety.”

California State Sen. Minority Leader Brian Jones (R-San Diego) added that “SB 94 could literally let hundreds of the most heinous murderers out of prison early, even if they were sentenced to life without parole. This harsh punishment is reserved for the worst of the worst criminals.”

Amazing…

Authored by Samantha Flom via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Heightened security protocols at and around former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club have Palm Beach, Florida, officials contemplating its closure.

The U.S. Secret Service ramped up its protection of the former president’s estate, along with his other properties, after the July 13 attempt on his life.

One change was the closure of a portion of South Ocean Boulevard, which borders the club.

The closure, which began on July 20, is expected to last through to Election Day on Nov. 5 at the earliest, but officials are already receiving complaints.

“Our residents don’t feel safe right now,” Palm Beach Town Council member Julie Araskog said at the council’s Aug. 13 meeting.

“It’s hard to get a fire truck through, it’s hard to get out of their homes, it’s hard to get a caregiver in. I had a problem the other night, and you can’t get a nurse in.”

Despite the road closure, the Mar-a-Lago Club is expected to reopen for the start of the Palm Beach social season in the fall.

But Mayor Danielle Moore said: “If the road is closed, the Mar-a-Lago Club is closed.”

“There’s no way in God’s green earth that they can bring 350 people into that club,” Moore said. “It’s completely illogical that you’ve got a road closed and then you’re going to let 350 strangers into your club.”

While the mayor agreed with the need to secure Trump’s primary residence, she said: “You can’t have it both ways, boys and girls. Either the club’s open or not.”

Other council members voiced their agreement, directing staff to research the town’s legal options.

During Trump’s presidential term, the Secret Service closed the road by Mar-a-Lago when he was present in Palm Beach.

The latest closure is effective indefinitely, at all hours of the day, even in his absence.

The new protocol is just one of the measures the Secret Service has taken to increase protection for those in its charge in the wake of the assassination attempt on Trump, including maximizing personnel, increasing the use of drones, and faster approval of personnel requests.

Meanwhile, Palm Beach attorney Joanne O’Connor is still waiting for a response from the agency outlining the authority under which it is keeping South Ocean Boulevard closed.

While residents can access the road with proper identification, O’Connor noted in a July 22 letter to Secret Service Chief Counsel Thomas Huse that the closure “effectively cuts the town in two.”

Palm Beach Police Chief Nicholas Caristo said that the Secret Service and local police were working together to direct traffic in the area and improve signage to ease the congestion.

Caristo also advised that limiting bridge openings to only once per hour could help speed up traffic.

However, for that to happen, the Secret Service would need to reactivate the maritime security zone that was in place around Mar-a-Lago during Trump’s presidency.

Trump began operating Mar-a-Lago as a social club in 1993 under a declaration-of-use agreement with Palm Beach. A breach of that agreement could allow the town to revoke the club’s occupational license.

The Epoch Times has contacted both the Trump Organization and the Trump campaign for comment.

Entitled millennials or out of control inflation in the housing market? You be the judge.

Samuel and Laura Graves both earn six figure sums, but say the housing market has left them with no choice but to raise their two kids in an apartment, according to Yahoo Finance and Business Insider.

The couple is in their mid 30’s and lives in Portland, Oregon. They’ve been looking for a house for three years.

Laura told Business Insider: “We refuse to become ‘house-poor’ and, like many others, are choosing to sit it out until the housing market is reasonable again.”

With a combined income of $250,000, they aim to keep their mortgage payment between $3,000 and $3,500—about 30% of their $11,000 monthly income, the report says.

However, rising home prices and mortgage rates have pushed most homes they like to a $5,000 monthly mortgage, nearly half their income. Instead of exceeding their budget, they’ve opted to wait, paying $2,700 a month for a two-bedroom apartment and storage, hoping the market improves.

The report says rising home prices and high mortgage rates have made homeownership increasingly unaffordable. And, although the Federal Reserve may cut interest rates, this could drive more buyers into the market, potentially raising prices further and keeping housing supply tight.

The couple, living in Wilsonville, a suburb of Portland, faces steep home prices—$642,000 on average. One home they liked was listed at $635,000, with an estimated $5,000 monthly mortgage payment, consuming 43% of their income. Though aware that other parts of the U.S. offer cheaper housing, they are hesitant to move again, according to the report. 

Previously, they lived in Spokane, Washington, where they paid $2,200 a month for their home. But after six years, they missed their jobs in Portland. In 2021, Laura’s old boss offered to double her salary, prompting them to sell their Spokane home and return to Portland.

“We actually tried uprooting the kids to a more affordable town and found ourselves less happy in the end,” Laura concluded.

“Our children have begun talking about how they want a house so badly and their own rooms. We’ll never get these years back. By the time we buy, we won’t even need room for a play set.”

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

The already-long 2024 presidential campaign has become the strangest in modern history.

Here are ten unanswered questions that illustrate how and why we’ve entered this bizarro world:

1. How can Kamala Harris merely promise us fixes to come in 2025 for inflation and an open border when she is still vice president for another six months? Why can’t she enact her proposed solutions to these problems (which she helped create) right now?

2. Would the media prefer to help her win but lose further credibility themselves by failing to ask why she has disowned her last three decades of leftist agendas, or to reclaim some of their reputations and thereby risk her losing?

3. Does the left appreciate the new campaign and election protocols it has now established?

That is to say:

Cancel by fiat their virtual nominee four months before the election when he sinks in the polls?

Nullify the outcome of a year of primaries and the will of 14 million voters?

Threaten a sitting president with removal by the 25th Amendment process unless he steps aside as his party nominee?

Anoint a replacement nominee before the convention and without a single primary—and then prevent any rival candidates from challenging her?

4. After the precedents of 2020 and 2024, is the future orthodox protocol for any Democratic nominee now to avoid all interviews and ex tempore speaking, and stick to teleprompted speeches and scripted responses only?

Is the fear that a transparent progressive messenger with an overt and honest left-wing message will double down on it and thus guarantee defeat?

5. For the next 80 days, has the chameleon-like Kamala Harris now become a temporary MAGA candidate, as she expropriates Trump’s positions from border security to no taxes on tips? Does the media care to ask the new 80-day MAGA Harris why she has renounced many of her once emphatic beliefs?

6. If Democratic presidential reelection candidate Joe Biden was pronounced fit as a fiddle before June 27, but after July 21 was abruptly forced off the ticket as too debilitated to continue as his party’s nominee, what exactly is his status now?

(Half-cognizant and thus able enough to continue his not-so-important task as America’s president, but also half-enfeebled and thus utterly unable to continue as the far more important Democratic nominee, it appears.)

7. Does the new anti-Semitic Democratic Party prefer to risk losing with the radical nonentity WASP Tim Walz as vice presidential candidate rather than likely win with a popular, successful, and moderate Jewish Josh Shapiro?

8. If one vice presidential candidate went to a war zone to serve with his deployed unit, while his counterpart preferred to retire from the military to avoid doing the same and lies about his abdication, how can the media credibly assert that the former’s tour was militarily suspect and yet pronounce the latter’s absence as heroic?

9. If the current president canceled his reelection bid because he was too debilitated and unpopular, and is now rarely seen or heard, and if the vice president is out of Washington running a campaign in his place, but avoiding all press conferences, interviews, and unscripted addresses, who exactly, if anyone, is running the United States for the next six months of the lame duck Biden-Harris administration?

10. If Donald Trump all summer has been compared by his enemies to Hitler and his murderous Third Reich, and if a 20-year-old would-be assassin and murderer with ease took up a sniper’s position to kill Trump—without a notified Secret Service or other law enforcement attempting to abort the shooter’s attempted assassination—what signal does that send to other would-be assassins for the next 80 days of the 2024 campaign?

Is the message that if a 20-year-old amateur sniper can brazenly and visibly for nearly an hour breach all Secret Service security perimeters to shoot eight times at the president, hit him in the ear, kill one innocent bystander, and wound two others, then almost any future, more-experienced serious shooter could match or exceed the ability of that disturbed amateur to get close enough to Trump to fire more than eight shots at his head?

And that shooting Donald Trump in many leftist quarters would subsequently earn the unhinged killer eternal fame, applause, and immortality?

And that if there are such anticipated rewards and perceived opportunities, then we may well see more attempts on candidate Trump’s life?

In sum, presidential campaigns traditionally kick off after Labor Day and mostly follow accepted protocols. But this warped 2024 version violates every prior precedent and is not just creepy but dangerous—even before the campaign was supposed to formally begin.

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

The federal government urged the Supreme Court on Aug. 13 to reinstate a $475 billion student loan relief plan after an appeals court ruling blocked key parts.

The new emergency application filed by Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar came after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on Aug. 9 temporarily paused parts of the SAVE plan while the litigation over it continues. The case is Biden v. Missouri.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh directed Missouri, which is challenging the plan, to respond by 4 p.m. on Aug. 19.

The SAVE plan that Education Secretary Miguel Cardona first proposed in August 2022 would lower monthly payments for millions of eligible borrowers and accelerate loan forgiveness for some borrowers. SAVE is an acronym that stands for Saving on a Valuable Education. A reported 8 million borrowers have signed up for the program.

The SAVE plan was not yet finalized in June 2023 when the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s previous $400 billion student loan forgiveness plan in Biden v. Nebraska.

Days ago, the Eighth Circuit found that Missouri and six other states challenging the plan would likely be able to prove the plan violates the major questions doctrine.

The doctrine requires courts to presume Congress does not delegate important policy questions to government agencies.

The injunction temporarily prevents the federal government from forgiving principal or interest on outstanding student loans, blocks a provision stopping interest from accruing on loans, and pauses a provision allowing borrowers to make very low or zero monthly payments geared to income.

District Judge John Ross in Missouri previously blocked the SAVE plan on June 24.

In the new application, Prelogar argues the plan is “a straightforward exercise” of the Department of Education’s authority under federal law.

“The Eighth Circuit’s injunction has severely harmed millions of borrowers and the Department by blocking long-planned changes and creating widespread confusion and uncertainty,” she said.

The injunction is so broad that it interferes with the department’s other programs that forgive student loan debt but are not in dispute.

“That extraordinary injunction has scrambled the Department’s administration of loans for millions of borrowers,” she said.

Prelogar said if the Supreme Court decides not to reverse the Eighth Circuit’s injunction, it should consider holding oral arguments in the case this fall “to avoid prolonging the harm the Eighth Circuit’s injunction is inflicting on millions of Americans.”

The new application came after Texas Solicitor General Aaron Nielson told the Supreme Court on Aug. 10 that Texas wanted to press on with its own previously filed application to halt the SAVE plan. That case is Alaska v. Department of Education.

Although the Eighth Circuit’s injunction halting aspects of the SAVE plan gave the state much of what it wanted, the ruling left some questions unanswered, such as whether the department violated the federal Administrative Procedure Act by giving the public an unusually short period to comment on the plan before it was finalized.

The Eighth Circuit’s injunction conflicts with the Tenth Circuit’s June 30 order pausing a ruling by District Judge Daniel Crabtree of Kansas who blocked parts of the plan. The Tenth Circuit’s ruling allows geared-to-income repayments by borrowers to begin.

The Epoch Times reached out to Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey for comment on the federal government’s new application but did not receive a reply by publication time.

With the Paris 2024 Olympics having come to a close, the countdown has started once more for the next Summer Games, set to take place in Los Angeles, the United States in four years time. Despite this year’s Olympiad having been heavily criticized for the “social cleansing” that took place in the run up to the event, with thousands of people relocated from the city’s encampments and squats, Statista’s Anna Fleck reports that there are already questions over how LA will respond to its homelessness crisis.

A 2023 report by McKinsey & Company reveals that LA’s number of people experiencing homelessness is the highest of any city in the United States.

According to the source, approximately one in every 150 LA inhabitants, or 69,000 people, are experiencing homelessness, and figures are still growing.

As Fleck shows in the following chart, based on estimates from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, where 84,000 people are estimated to experience homelessness in 2024, the figure could rise above the 100,000 mark by 2028. This data is based on the calculation that for every 207 individuals who exit homelessness daily, 227 more enter it.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Such crises affect all people in a society. For those experiencing homelessness directly, the impacts are of course the most severe, as according to the report, women who experience chronic homelessness can expect to see their lives cut short by an average of 35 years, while it is 28 years for men. For people living in the wider society, ripple effects are felt too as populations experiencing chronic homelessness have “historically required more spending on support services than the rest of the population”.

Increasing the stock of affordable housing is one part of the solution put forward by the McKinsey & Company analysts to at least slow the growth in homelessness, placing fewer people at risk of entering the situation in the first place. Just some of the barriers to this so far have been the complexity of the approval process as well as the high costs of construction.

The report states that a multi-pronged solution is needed to respond to this crisis of inequality, however, explaining: “building more housing is not enough on its own. Given the scale and complexity of the crisis, any solution may need tailored, large-scale coordination, the likes of which are typically seen in national-scale emergencies.”

This includes recognising that different groups have different specific needs, for example, whether that’s providing support for survivors of domestic violence, or for those battling with substance use disorders or for the formerly incarcerated.

These figures are estimates and vary depending on the source. For example, NBC reports the figure could be closer to 30,000 people.

Authored by John Wilder.

“This isn’t a video game.  There are no extra lives.”

-Edge of Tomorrow

Kamala Harris has invented a new type of presidential candidacy – one based on being absolutely nothing.  Seriously.  She has stated exactly one position publicly:  “No tax on tips” which is precisely the position staked out by Donald Trump two months ago.  I guess we should give Kamala this one, since she’s no stranger to a variety of tips.

Kamala posted a commercial to YouTube®, I tried to reply, but just like Kamala the comments were disabled.  (Memes and content mostly “as found”)

Oh, sure, Mr. Trump’s trademark is being “short on details” so that he can leverage a win, but based on 2016, what really outraged the GloboLeft is that Trump actually tried to follow through on many of his positions.  One thing that Trump won’t be to voters is a surprise, but I think Kamala is so unknown as to be a surprise, and not a good one.

Kamala’s first interview question:  “Describe yourself in one word.”  Kamala:  “Vague.”  Interviewer:  “Can you elaborate?”  Kamala:  “Possibly.”

Why?

She’s pulling what I’ll call an “Ultra-Clinton” approach to her candidacy.  Back when Hillary first ran for senate in 2000, I was expecting that, finally, she’d have to address the public.  There wasn’t any way, I naively thought, that she could duck the people for an entire election.  I mean, without killing them.

Whoops.  While Hillary did do carefully staged and vetted “listening tour” events, what she didn’t do was meet with anyone but fawning press.  She successfully avoided all genuine interaction with people so she wouldn’t have to kill time.  Of course, Hillary was well known to be a GloboLeft accomplice, so it wasn’t any surprise when the New York machine churned out a senate seat for her to launch an eventual presidential campaign.

Kamala Harris, though, is another matter.  She is the ultimate in vapor.  What, exactly, does she stand for?  Apparently, no taxes on tips.  But beyond that, she is a ghost.

Is she Indian or black?  Yes, though my guess is that more of her ancestors owned slaves than were slaves.

I guess if she doesn’t owe reparations, nobody does.

Is she for or against illegals scurrying across the border in unending streams?

Yes.  She wants to be seen as “tough on immigration” at the same time she promises to “let every illegal sitting in detention out on day one”.

Is she against inflation?  You bet she is, and on day one of her administration she’ll do something (the something is not mentioned) to stop it.  Why the Biden/Harris administration can’t stop it right here and now isn’t discussed and no one asks here that question, since that would be mean or something.  As usual, the Bee nails it:

If honesty is the best policy, I guess Kamala’s normally uses the second-best policy.

Interviews?  Trump sits down to a multi-hour open and candid conversation with Elon Musk, and sits for interview after interview.  Kamala?  She might sit for an interview sometime by the end of the month.  Maybe.  If they can keep her off the gin for that long.

And Trump’s request for three debates?

Well, there’s just one on the schedule, and that’s enough for Kamala, at least in August.  Heck, in September I’m not so certain that Paperwork American Judge Juan Merchan won’t slap Trump in irons and send him to prison.  Oh, sure, he’ll get out on an appeal shortly thereafter, but don’t count that possibility out.  This election is a circus, and we’re far short of the finale.

They did a study of how often Kamala was drunk.  The results were staggering.

But what is known is that Kamala is really attempting to appeal to a select group of voters:  those who aren’t paying attention and who will vote for a candidate based on what they feel.

Kamala has no need to preen for the hard-core GloboLeftists that want to hang Trump because they don’t like his face.  They’re going to show up for her even if she changes her tune to being pro-life and wants to start distributing AR-15s to every citizen.  They’d vote for her, because what they believe in is based only on what the latest talking points are from the DNC.  These people are Non-Player Characters (NPC) because they’re programmed by the mainstream news or by whatever the talking head night joke men tell them to believe.

What, really, is an NPC?

Since humans are social creature, there is an inherent tendency in many people to follow.  In the past, this made sense.  The number of people, say, a French peasant would have seen in their life was small, and they derived their beliefs by what was presented to them other people, rather than any other source.

This variety of NPC is popular in the UK, and in the United States too!  Talk about diversity!

Women, especially, were subject to this effect.  An example proving that was the number of war brides that American troops returned home with from Germany.  I don’t have the total from Germany, but over 300,000 war brides came from Europe, many speaking little English, to the United States.  These women immediately married men of the armed forces that had bombed and terrorized them for years because everyone said they were in charge now.

See?  NPC.

But as family groups become fractured due to no-fault divorce and a system that gives women cash and prizes for divorcing men, and as people become uprooted chasing economic success in areas far from where they grew up, they became reliant on a different tribe:  mass media.

No one is entirely immune, but some are entirely dependent on mass media for their opinions.  A close-knit family, longstanding friends, family stories and novels and other idea intrusions (like this blog) serve as counter-programming to the NPC soup that many live in.  The more you’re divorced from Infocancer like The View, the greater your immune system, and the less of an NPC you are.

This phrase must have tested highly with the NPC species Karenus Manageriusspeakum.

Kamala is not for you.  Kamala is for the NPC.

Kamala has to appeal (or pretend to appeal) to the middle.  These are the people who aren’t on the GloboLeft, and aren’t on the TradRight.  They just want to grill and enjoy the sunset and consume mass media.  Be aware, this how they were built – to follow.  Immersive multi-media that’s fed from a screen and doesn’t require any critical thought is what they desire.

For the NPC the TV or TikTok™ is their tribal sense of purpose.  Along with a lot of drugs.

How the NPC class copes.

The difficulty for Kamala is that for many of these people the last four years have been hell.  Their businesses have been closed (if they own a business) and their paychecks have dwindled in the face of ever-present inflation.  They’ve seen awful riots, they’ve seen this weird transgender explosion that they don’t much like, and now they notice huge numbers of people who moved into their neighborhood and don’t speak any English staring at them when they fill their gas tank.  They know they’re supposed to like them, but also have a tingling sense that these aren’t refugees or immigrants.  They’re becoming worried that this is an invader class.

Huh.  Wrongly think.  Get on board, citizen!

Kamala has to appeal to those people to win.  She can’t do it on record, so the best option is to run against anything she has ever stood for, or at least pretend to run against that.  She can say anything in front of any group, and will wait for the networks and search engines to run interference for her so that she can fulfill her strategy to win the White House.

How?  Kamala intends to be the first NPC candidate, standing for nothing, with no real substance except a desire for power with the media as her staunchest friend and defender.  Let’s get this woman some more gin!