President Joe Biden came into office promising to repeal President Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act – a law that turbocharged American job growth and U.S. national competitiveness. In the first two years of the Biden administration, there was a chance that the president could have succeeded in undermining the law.
Yet, today, as Biden finishes his term, the Trump tax cuts are not only still standing but may be strengthened.
That is, if Senate Republicans seize the opportunity before them.
In January, the House overwhelmingly passed the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act (H.R. 7024), a major new tax relief package that builds on the successes of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Its relief targets the engines of American productivity including full deductibility for Research and Development costs, full and immediate expensing, as well as interest deductibility and restoration of deductibility of depreciation and amortization costs.
Passing this bill enhances American competitiveness with China, boosts job creation, increases wages for workers, and promotes new investment and innovation.
As Jay Timmons, CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers put it, “Remember the 2017 tax reforms? They were rocket fuel for our industry. We kept our promises to raise wages, hire workers, and invest in our communities. We would not be outpacing other countries without them.”
But it also does something else: The bill extends important cost recovery provisions of the 2017 Republican tax cuts signed by President Trump, an essential step in achieving full permanency of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Without congressional action, President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts expire at the end of 2025.
While Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Mike Crapo and some colleagues have raised objections about provisions of the bill that would expand the Child Tax Credit, Crapo and other GOP senators need to keep sight of the significance of this measure in a larger fight.
Passing the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act would vastly improve Republicans’ bargaining position going into the fight over the future of the Trump tax cuts.
And right now, advocates for job growth and competitiveness must be prepared for this fight.
At a March 12 hearing on the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act, Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) declared, “This set of policies isn’t going to be on the table in 2025 if this bill stalls out.” It’s understandable for Republicans to dismiss this as empty talk, given that the GOP faces a highly favorable Senate map in this year’s elections.
But, in politics, nothing is certain. Remember the “red wave” that wasn’t? Even if Republicans retake the Senate, Wyden and allies could follow through on their threat if Democrats retain the White House or take back the House.
Conservative Republicans have every reason to support the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act. The bill would be financed by repealing the employee retention tax credit, a COVID-era program that has been rife with fraud. Over 40 conservative and free-market organizations haveurged lawmakers to pass the pro-growth legislation. Other organizations and leaders from across theconservativemovement have strongly backed the bill. At the same time, far-left Democrats includingSen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) andRep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) have railed against the legislation.
If GOP senators want to save their signature economic success of the past decade, they must get to yes on this tax reform.
Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and is the author of “Govzilla: How the Relentless Growth of Government Is Devouring America.”
SEC Expected To Deny Spot Ether ETFs In May, Consensys Sues Over ‘Security’ Status
There are increasing doubts among industry insiders that the SEC will approved Spot Ether ETFs in May, according to a report from Reuters.
According to four people who participated, recent meetings between issuers and the SEC have been one-sided and agency staff have not discussed substantive details about the proposed products.
That is in contrast to the intensive and detailed discussions between issuers and the agency in the weeks before its landmark approval of spot bitcoin ETFs in January, said the people who declined to be identified because the talks are private.
As CoinTelegraph reports, before the historic approval, the SEC rejected spot BTC ETF filings for over a decade.
Many analysts agree that the SEC is likely to further delay possible approval of Ether ETFs.
“It seems more likely that approval will be delayed until later in 2024, or longer,” VettaFi ETF data analyst Todd Rosenbluth reportedly said, adding that the regulatory landscape is still too “cloudy.”
He also noted that he’d sourced “good intel” to suggest that the SEC may be giving the silent treatment to prospective fund issuers on purpose.
Price action has sown ETH relatively underperforming BTC from the initiation of the spot bitcoin ETFs as hope fades for ETH… for now…
Balchunas also mentioned that SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s stance on Ether could also impact the decision process as he has refused to give clarity on whether Ether was a security.
We have detailed the furore over the classification of Ether as a security (or not) a number of times (most recently here and here), but today saw the situation escalated as Consensys, a major backer of the Ethereum blockchain, filed a lawsuit against the agency in Texas federal court, asking the court, among other things, to resolve one of the biggest legal uncertainties hanging over the crypto industry by stating that Ethereum’s digital token, Ether, is not a security.
Fortune’s Jeff John Roberts reports that in its 34-page legal filing, Consensys uses dramatic language to argue that the SEC’s efforts to exert jurisdiction over Ethereum is both illegal and a threat to blockchain technology more broadly.
“The SEC’s unlawful seizure of authority over ETH would spell disaster for the Ethereum network, and for Consensys. Every holder of ETH, including Consensys, would fear violating the securities laws if he or she were to transfer ETH on the network,” the complaint states.
“This would bring use of the Ethereum blockchain in the United States to a halt, crippling one of the internet’s greatest innovations.”
Gensler’s tactics have angered many in the crypto industry who have complained the SEC has failed to provide clear rules or to create a regulatory model that accounts for the distinct features of blockchain technology.
The controversy over Ethereum has been especially heated since the SEC has signaled repeatedly in the past that the blockchain’s tokens, like Bitcoin, are not securities and therefore outside its jurisdiction.
This includes a landmark 2018 speech where a senior official stated that Ethereum had become “sufficiently decentralized” as well as the agency’s decision last year to allow Ethereum futures trading—an implicit acknowledgement that Ether is a commodity. Meanwhile, video has surfaced of Gensler himself, in his role as a private citizen, telling hedge funds in 2018 that Ethereum is not a security.
However, as we detailed here, these precedents (and his own words) have failed to dissuade Gensler, who appears to be using a recent feature of Ethereum, known as staking, as grounds for the recent legal campaign.
As a reminder, the release of so-called ‘Hinman documents’ last June had revealed the role of network decentralization in the SEC’s thinking on whether a digital token should be classified as security or not.
In particular, JPMorgan points out that SEC officials had acknowledged in the past that tokens on a sufficiently decentralized network are no longer securities because there is no “controlling group˙ in the Howey sense (the Howey Test relates to the U.S. Supreme Court case to determine whether a transaction qualifies as an investment contract).
“If there is no spot Ethereum ETF approval in May, then we assume there is going to be a litigation process after May,” Panigirtzoglou told The Block earlier in the month.
“We believe that the most likely scenario is that the SEC eventually loses this litigation (similar to what happened with the Grayscale and Ripple legal battles last year), which means that eventually, the SEC will approve spot Ethereum ETFs (but not as soon as this May).”
In an interview with Fortune, Consensys founder Joe Lubin described as “preposterous” the theory that staking transformed Ethereum from a commodity into a security.
“The act of staking is really just posting a security bond so you can get paid to contribute labor and resources to help operate the Ethereum protocol. Now they’re trying to turn that into some sort of investment contract,” Lubin said.
Lubin also stated that Gensler’s legal position appeared to be an attempt to halt the overall growth of crypto, and to justify the SEC blocking pending applications by companies to launch spot ETFs for Ethereum following the huge popularity of Bitcoin ETFs.
“They are trying to regulate a technology on its merits, which the SEC shouldn’t be doing. They’re trying to stifle certain kinds of innovation. And they’re trying to do that because probably they see Ether spot ETFs as a floodgate that’s going to bring a lot of capital into our ecosystem,” said Lubin.
As Fortune notes, the Consensys lawsuit was filed in Texas, which dovetails with a broader strategy of the crypto industry to tee up eventual legal appeals in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
The circuit has shown greater skepticism of agency actions than other courts and, if the industry can win a favorable judgment, it would likely tee up an appeal for the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, against that clearly politically-motivated push by Gensler (anything to placate Warren after he was forced to acquiesce over spot bitcoin ETFs); on April 24, Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) officially approved the first batch of spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs, including three BTC and three ETH ETFs by China Asset Management, Harvest Global Investments and Bosera.
HK spot bitcoin/ether ETFs officially approved to begin trading on April 30th. Fees are 30bps, 60bps and 99bps which is on avg lower than we thought, good sign. We doing an Analyst Q&A in an hour on this w/ local HK team. Register here, bring your qs: https://t.co/GzzCZailx3https://t.co/AvJ6dv2Xha
Ivy League institutions are renowned worldwide for their academic excellence and long-standing traditions. But how hard is it to get into one of the top universities in the U.S.?
In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu details the admission rates and average annual cost for Ivy League schools, as well as the median SAT scores required to be accepted. The data comes from the National Center for Education Statistics and was compiled by 24/7 Wall St.
Note that “average annual cost” represents the net price a student pays after subtracting the average value of grants and/or scholarships received.
Harvard is the Most Selective
The SAT is a standardized test commonly used for college admissions in the United States. It’s taken by high school juniors and seniors to assess their readiness for college-level academic work.
When comparing SAT scores, Harvard and Dartmouth are among the most challenging universities to gain admission to. The median SAT scores for their students are 760 for reading and writing and 790 for math. Still, Harvard has half the admission rate (3.2%) compared to Dartmouth (6.4%).
*Costs after receiving federal financial aid.
Additionally, Dartmouth has the highest average annual cost at $33,000. Princeton has the lowest at $11,100.
While student debt has surged in the United States in recent years, hitting $1.73 trillion in 2023, the worth of obtaining a degree from any of the schools listed surpasses mere academics. This is evidenced by the substantial incomes earned by former students.
Harvard grads, for example, have the highest average starting salary in the country, at $91,700.
A federal judge in Washington D.C. has denied seven motions from a defendant seeking to identify FBI agents in Jan. 6 crowds and gain access to undercover videos shot by Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers, at least one of whom incited the crowds at the U.S. Capitol.
In a 22-page order, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled against William Pope on a range of motions filed in his Jan. 6 criminal case since May 2023.
Judge Contreras partially granted a government cross-motion to modify the evidence protective order in the case. “I now have the most restricted discovery access conditions of any Jan 6 defendant,” Mr. Pope wrote on X.
“All I’m asking for is a fair fight in court, but he’s denying me rights to defend myself Pro Se that aren’t denied to attorneys,” Mr. Pope told The Epoch Times in a statement. “Even though some January 6 attorneys have filed highly sensitive materials as public exhibits, or leaked them on social media, I have not released a single sensitive or highly sensitive file governed by the protective order.”
Mr. Pope, 38, publisher of the news website Free State Kansas, was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, covering the protest and subsequent violence.
Federal prosecutors charged him with civil disorder, corruptly obstructing an official proceeding, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, impeding ingress or egress in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, impeding passage through the Capitol grounds or buildings, and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building.
He faces a July 22 trial.
Sought FBI Agents
Mr. Pope most recently asked the court to compel federal prosecutors to identify all FBI special agents or other employees who were “material witnesses” at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and produce “all photographs, videos, and records related to their presence.”
In that motion, Mr. Pope cited two suspected FBI agents who attended Jan. 6 events at the Capitol with former special agent John Guandolo, who once served as the Bureau’s liaison with U.S. Capitol Police.
Mr. Guandolo “has said in interviews that he was with several active-duty FBI agents on January 6, and that he and those agents have been interviewed by the FBI regarding their observations,” Mr. Pope wrote in his Feb. 12 motion.
One of the men was seen on security video clapping enthusiastically as a large crowd of protesters rushed up the east steps to the Columbus Doors. “Oh, oh, oh man, this is huge,” the man said, heard on Mr. Guandolo’s cell phone video that showed the crowd ascending the steps.
The other suspected agent was seen on Capitol Police security video meeting with an FBI SWAT team shortly after its BearCat tactical vehicle rolled onto the House Plaza at about 2:30 p.m. Twenty minutes later the SWAT team responded to the South Door after the shooting of Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd.
Federal prosecutors argued they have no obligation to investigate the identity or roles of FBI agents on Jan. 6. The judge concurred.
“The Court agrees with the government and finds that defendant has failed to show that the government has an obligation to produce the requested material,” Judge Contreras wrote.
In another motion denied by Judge Contreras, Mr. Pope sought to compel the U.S. Department of Justice to inventory and provide access to all Capitol Police security video it has had in its possession.
Mr. Pope said footage is missing from some of the 1,800 USCP security cameras, and prosecutors have only produced 6,000 hours of security video in discovery. A U.S. House committee that oversees Capitol Police has released 20,000 hours of an expected 40,000 hours it will post publicly.
Mr. Pope wrote that the importance of the security video—thousands of hours of which are now available on Rumble—is underscored by an investigation suggesting two Capitol police officers perjured themselves in the first Oath Keepers trial in the fall of 2022.
Video obtained by Blaze Media showed that a supposed confrontation between Officer Harry Dunn and the Oath Keepers could not have occurred as he described under oath. Capitol Police Special Agent David Lazarus, who testified that he witnessed the confrontation, was in another part of Capitol grounds at the time.
‘Not Beneficial’
“While Pope asserts that the missing camera footage is ‘highly relevant to January 6 cases, including [his] own,’ … he does not explain what he expects the footage to show or why that footage would assist in his defense,” Judge Contreras wrote. “Much of the camera footage that Pope requests depicts areas where Pope never set foot. That footage is therefore not beneficial to Pope’s case.”
The judge also denied Mr. Pope’s Aug. 21, 2023, motion seeking video shot by more than two dozen members of the MPD Electronic Surveillance Unit on Jan. 6. He first requested access to the Electronic Surveillance Unit videos in March 2023.
The August 2023 motion cites MPD internal affairs investigations of MPD officers Nicholas Tomasula and Lt. Zeb Barcus. Hundreds of pages of documents on Mr. Tomasula were heavily redacted, Mr. Pope said, and “the two reports have led to more questions about misconduct by undercover police.”
Mr. Tomasula was identified as the MPD officer heard on video encouraging protesters on the Northwest Steps to keep going and enter the Capitol. He was heard participating in crowd chants such as, “Whose House? Our House!”
At the foot of the Northwest Steps, as a protester climbed up a makeshift ladder onto the balustrade, Mr. Tomasula shouted: “C’mon, man, let’s go! Leave that [expletive],” his video showed. Mr. Tomasula got help from a protester climbing onto the balustrade, then shouted to protesters moving up the steps, “C’mon, go, go, go!”
Federal prosecutors admitted in 2023 that Mr. Tomasula acted as a provocateur embedded in the crowd on Jan. 6.
Judge Contreras concluded Electronic Surveillance Unit video is only relevant to the extent Mr. Pope can identify an undercover officer whose path he crossed.
“While evidence of undercover officers instigating the riot on January 6 could—hypothetically—be helpful and material to Pope’s case, Pope’s motion ‘never identifies a single individual he interacted with whom he now suspects to be an undercover actor,’” Judge Contreras wrote.
“Pope does not say that he himself spoke with or was induced by any undercover officer,” the judge wrote. “Therefore, he cannot make an entrapment defense with the evidence he seeks from the government, and the material he seeks is irrelevant and immaterial.”
Mr. Pope complained that prosecutors restricted his access to some of the investigative materials, which he described as “highly explosive” and “exculpatory.”
In previous filings, Mr. Pope described several self-identified Antifa supporters who were intercepted by undercover MPD officers on Jan. 6, including one who was carrying a gun.
MPD officers made a traffic stop at 10:15 a.m. on Jan. 6 of a vehicle containing three Antifa operatives: Jonathan Kelly, Logan Grimes, and Dempsey Mikula.
“Undercover officers who stopped their vehicle said they had received reports that the individuals were carrying weapons,” Mr. Pope wrote. “No footage of this incident has been produced by the government in discovery. However, Kelly live-streamed part of the police stop to Facebook.”
Metropolitan Police arrested Mr. Grimes—who identifies as a woman and uses the name Leslie—for carrying a pistol without a license and being in possession of a high-capacity magazine and unregistered ammunition, according to Mr. Pope. The charges were dropped on Jan. 7, 2021.
In a previous filing, Mr. Pope identified undercover MPD officer Ryan Roe, who encountered a still-unidentified protester seen cutting down green plastic temporary fencing on Capitol grounds. Mr. Roe said to #FenceCutterBulwark, “Appreciate it, brother,” according to his video.
Luxury DC Apartment Building Replaces Front Desk Staff With Amazon Lockers, Sparking Tenant Protest
Tenants of a luxury apartment building blocks from the White House were furious this week after they discovered the building’s management company fired all front desk workers and replaced them with Amazon delivery lockers.
Journalist Samuel Breslow of the media outlet The Forward wrote on X about tenants of CityCenterDC, a mixed-use development consisting of two condominium buildings, two rental apartment buildings, two office buildings, and a luxury hotel, on 10th St NW, or about a five-minute walk to the White House, “protested the surprise decision to fire front desk staff, replacing them with Amazon delivery lockers.”
Tenants of the @CityCenterDC luxury apartments are protesting a surprise decision to fire front desk staff, replacing them with Amazon/@minnowpod delivery lockers.@Hines management prepared a presentation to try to appease; they didn’t get beyond the first slide.#CityCenterDCpic.twitter.com/Zx4wK0Ov8I
The building described the move to replace human workers with Amazon lockers as a “technology advancement aimed at enriching your stay.”
Apartments.com shows that CityCenterDC’s rent ranges from $2,500 a month for a studio to $15,300 for a luxury apartment.
On Instagram, user washingtonianprobspostedBreslow’s story. Folks there weren’t thrilled:
“All the crime and violence goin around the last thing they should do is leave the front desk unattended,” one Instagram user said.
Someone asked: “How did the property management company think that replacing the front desk ppl with lockers is the same?”
“Goes to show how disconnected they are with people outside of their status. They don’t realize that replacing front desk staff with storgage boxes is taking away jobs from people and altering folks livelihood,” another user said.
Launched in 2017, Saudi Arabia’s NEOM, a sprawling high-tech development on the northwestern Red Sea coast, was introduced as the crown jewel of Vision 2030. This futuristic desert megaproject, extending over some Jordanian and Egyptian territory, was cast as a bold leap toward economic diversification under the leadership of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS). But, recent geopolitical setbacks have raised significant concerns about the viability of some of NEOM’s components.
Initially celebrated for its revolutionary design, The Line, a linear city within NEOM, was to redefine urban living. Yet, recent reports suggest a dramatic scaling back. Earlier this month, Bloomberg revealed a massive reduction in the metropolis’ scope – from 105 to 1.5 miles – and a decrease in likely inhabitants from 1.5 million to fewer than 300,000 by 2030. Furthermore, funding uncertainties and workforce reductions indicate a project in jeopardy.
While this adjustment does not signify a wholesale failure of Vision 2030, it does prompt a re-evaluation of the project’s most ambitious elements.
Experts suggest that The Line’s original scale was overly optimistic, lacking the necessary urban infrastructure for such an innovative endeavor. Financial and geopolitical challenges, including regional instability and insufficient foreign direct investment, further complicate NEOM’s future.
Not so straight-forward
The drastic downsizing of The Line “appears to be a reassessment of timeline feasibility,” Dr Robert Mogielnicki, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, tells The Cradle. “There are many experimental, world-first dimensions within the NEOM gigaproject, and some are eventually going to need rightsizing or rethinking.”
Also speaking to The Cradle, Dr Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Baker Institute Fellow at Rice University, believes the project’s contraction to be a good thing:
Reports that The Line may be scaled back significantly is actually a positive move if it injects greater realism into a project whose initial scale appeared fanciful and difficult to translate into reality. Greater pragmatism in designing and delivering the gigaprojects associated with Vision 2030 is a good thing and means there is a greater likelihood of the projects making it off the drawing board.
Given financial and economic factors, The Line was never feasible as initially presented. Ultimately, the amount of wealth the Saudis generate from oil is not enough to finance the most ambitious of MbS’ Vision 2030 projects. And Riyadh has not been able to lure the levels of foreign direct investment needed to make these extremely expensive vanity projects realizable.
“The vast scope of [The Line] always struck me and many other observers as aspirational rather than realistic,” explains Gordon Gray, the former US ambassador to Tunisia.
Some analysts have pushed back against the recent avalanche of negative media coverage…
All the gloating about NEOM getting scaled back misses the point.
NEOM is a “moonshot” that has already succeeded.
It totally shifted the parameters of acceptable ambition in Saudi Arabia and made people see the kingdom within a paradigm of development.https://t.co/UjAX5CSdfM
Speaking to The Cradle, Ryan Bohl, a Middle East and North African analyst at risk intelligence company RANE, says:
I’d argue that the goals for The Line were unrealistic from the start, given that there’s virtually no urban infrastructure in the area, and it’s very difficult for cities to be started from scratch like that, regardless of the amount of investment poured in. Even if Saudi Arabia had, for example, done something extreme like declare NEOM to be their new capital city, it would still probably struggle to attract residents as we’ve seen from other historical examples like Brazil’s shift of its capital to Brasília.
Nonetheless, The Line and other singular projects had a purpose that was not necessarily about actually implementing the projects themselves. “The point of The Line, in particular, was to create a raison de parler – for people to actually talk about Saudi Arabia, to create a massive public debate globally where people are saying there’s something amazing happening in the desert,” Dr Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at King’s College London, tells The Cradle.
It attracts attention. That sort of discourse – positive or negative – creates a buzz. That buzz was supposed to attract investors who wanted to be a part of this, help Saudi Arabia build a city of the future, and try to do something completely outlandish and absolutely unconventional.
Gaza: a wrench in the works
The leadership in Riyadh has understood that the success of Vision 2030 heavily depends on attracting substantial foreign direct investment into the Kingdom. Ultimately, stability in Saudi Arabia and the wider West Asian region is crucial.
Consequently, Riyadh’s recent foreign policy has been less ideological, focusing instead on maintaining amicable terms with all major players in West Asia to advance Saudi business, commercial, and economic interests.
Within this context, Riyadh has worked to reach a peace deal with Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement, made an effort to preserve the Beijing-brokered 2023 Saudi–Iranian détente, restored relations with Qatar and Syria, and mended fences with Turkiye.
Therefore, beyond financial and economic constraints that require a reassessment of the most ambitious Vision 2030 projects, such as The Line, Israel’s brutal six-month war on Gaza and the expansion of that conflict into the Red Sea have created headwinds for Saudi Arabia’s geoeconomic plans.
As Arhama Siddiqa, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, explains to The Cradle:
Given the current instability in the Red Sea region, investors may hesitate to support a large-scale project like NEOM due to perceived risks. Even if the direct security threat to NEOM is minimal, the overall instability in the area can deter investors from committing substantial resources to a long-term venture. Additionally, the broader [West Asia] conflict further complicates the situation, adding another layer of uncertainty. Addressing these security concerns could require Saudi Arabia to allocate more resources to regional security measures, potentially diverting funds from the NEOM project.
There is no denying that Saudi Arabia’s economic diversification agenda is vulnerable to naval operations in the Red Sea. NEOM and other Red Sea projects require vessels to be able to freely travel from the Gulf of Aden through the Bab al-Mandab and up to Saudi Arabia’s west coast.
THE LINE, @NEOM ‘s groundbreaking vertical city, reimagines urban living: no roads, cars, or emissions – just 5 minutes to all you need. Powered by the world’s latest tech for sustainability, connectivity, lifestyle. pic.twitter.com/If1mGAM3wV
The Gaza war’s potential spillover into this vital waterway continues to raise concerns for Saudi officials about the impact on the Kingdom’s Vision 2030. These dynamics help explain Riyadh’s frustration with the White House for not leveraging its influence over Israel to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza. It has led to Saudi Arabia’s decision to abstain from joining any US-led security initiatives and military operations in the Red Sea and Yemen.
The Israel–NEOM connection
Israel’s geographic proximity to northwestern Saudi Arabia, its technological advancement, and its vibrant startup culture position the occupation state as a promising partner for Vision 2030 and the NEOM project, particularly in biotechnology, cybersecurity, and manufacturing.
Writing in March 2021, Dr Ali Dogan, previously a Research Fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, went as far as arguing that “relations with Israel are necessary for Saudi Arabia to complete NEOM.”
Dr Mohammad Yaghi, a research fellow at Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, similarly stated that NEOM “requires peace and coordination with Israel, especially if the city is to have a chance of becoming a tourist attraction.” However, Saudi Arabia’s leadership role in the Islamic world, exemplified by the monarch’s title as the “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,” makes any formal normalization of relations with Tel Aviv highly sensitive.
Initially, it was thought that while the UAE and Bahrain could establish overt relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia would continue to engage covertly, ensuring essential collaborations like those rumored in the tech sector could progress discreetly.
An example being in June 2020, when controversy arose over Saudi Arabia’s alleged engagement with an Israeli cybersecurity firm, which the Saudi embassy later denied.
Yet, almost seven months into Israel’s campaign to annihilate Gaza, can Saudi Arabia still look to Tel Aviv as a partner in NEOM? It appears that amid ongoing crises in the region, chiefly the Gaza genocide, Riyadh must be careful to avoid being seen as cooperating with the Israelis in covert ways, and full-fledged normalization seems off the table for the foreseeable future.
Nonetheless, after the dust settles in Gaza and the Red Sea security crisis calms down, Saudi Arabia will likely maintain its interest in fostering ties with Israel as part of an “economic normalization” between the two countries. This could be important to Vision 2030’s future, particularly in NEOM. But Israel’s unprecedented military campaign in Gaza will likely alter West Asia in many ways for decades to come. Even after the current war in Gaza is over, anger toward Israel and the US will continue.
Without a doubt, the Israeli–NEOM connection will be increasingly sensitive and controversial, both in the Kingdom and the wider region – a factor that the leadership in Riyadh cannot dismiss.
Secret Service Agent Assigned To Kamala Harris Hospitalized After Fighting Other Agents
A Secret Service agent assigned to protect Vice President Kamala Harris got into a physical altercation with several other agents Monday morning around 9 a.m. near Joint Base Andrews, located near Washington DC.
The agent in question was immediately “removed from their assignment,” the Secret Service told the NY Post.
“A US Secret Service special agent supporting the Vice President’s departure from Joint Base Andrews began displaying behavior their colleagues found distressing,” said Anthony Guglielmi, chief of communications.
According to CBS News, “the agent spouted gibberish, was speaking incoherently and provoked another officer physically,” and “pushed the special agent in charge while they were near the lounge of Joint Base Andrews.”
They were immediately handcuffed and detained by other Secret Service agents who intervened, and ambulances were called to the scene. An initial medical evaluation concluded that there was no indication of substance abuse.
The USSS remains in a temporary holding pattern until further information becomes available, the sources said. After the agent receives additional medical attention and further evaluation, it will be determined if they can return to work. An internal review will be conducted and the USSS will assess if the agent’s top secret security clearance will be removed for medical or disciplinary reasons, sources explained. -NBC News
Harris was at the Naval Observatory at the time according to the USSS, and the incident had “no impact on her departure from Joint Base Andrews” on the day in question.
According to RealClearPolitics journalist Susan Crabtree, “there are DEI concerns among the USSS community about the hiring of this agent,” adding “Other agents and officers within the USSS are asking questions about the agent’s hiring process, whether the USSS did enough to look into the agent’s background and monitor the agent’s mental well-being…”
Other details: Sources say the agent in question was acted erratically upon showing up for a traveling shift at Joint Base Andrews. The agent ended up tackling the Senior Agent in Charge of the VP detail, got on top of him and started punching him. At this point, I’m told, the…
One of them is known as the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc.
It’s Latin for “after this, therefore because of this.”
The classic example concerns the rooster and the sunrise.
Every morning before the sun comes up, the rooster does his crazy crowing routine, waking up everyone around. Shortly after, the light begins to appear on the horizon.
If you knew nothing else, and you watched this happen over and over, you might conclude that the rooster is causing the sun to rise.
Of course, this is testable. You could kill the rooster and see what happens. The sun still comes up. But wait just a moment. Just the fact that this one rooster is dead doesn’t mean that all roosters are gone. Some rooster somewhere is crowing and causing the sun to rise. So your little experiment doesn’t disprove the theory.
What a conundrum, right?
If someone is convinced that a bird is controlling the sun, there is probably no way to convince him otherwise.
We can laugh at this example. How can someone be so dumb? Actually, this basic fallacy affects all science in all times, all places, and all subjects. The presumption that a regular pattern showing something happens and then something else happens with regularity implies causation is baked into human thinking. Now and always.
It’s a fallacy, meaning that it is not necessarily true. It could be true, however, subject to serious investigation. And therein lies the real problem. We need to figure out what causes what. But discerning causal agents from accidental ones is the biggest issue in all thinking.
The need to know is baked into what it means to be a rational creature. We just cannot help ourselves. That’s why this fallacy persists everywhere.
There is also the famous case of malaria. It was once believed that infections were worse at nightfall, so the theory was that it was caused by cold air at night. Not crazy, right? Except that the real reason was that the mosquitoes came out in the evenings. They were the real culprit. But a bad theory based on fallacy prevented many people from seeing it.
My goodness, we were overwhelmed by this during the COVID-19 experience. The fake science was overwhelming.
Day after day, we saw loads of fake science of this sort being dumped on the world.
Look, California’s cases are down and California bans gatherings, therefore coercive measures are controlling virus spread!
Not so fast.
These factors could be completely unrelated. We might not even have good data on infections at all. Those are subject to testing (accurate or not) and might be completely wrong on a population level. Even if the data were correct, the low infections could be caused by weather, prior immunity, or something else that we have not considered.
Early on, I can recall looking at these amazing real-time charts of infections and deaths and believing that I had a window into reality. Several times, I even posted things along the lines of “See, Arizona has achieved herd immunity,” without understanding that the data were wildly inaccurate and subject to testing, reporting, and a host of other factors. Even the data were suspect: Misclassification was rampant.
And here too, the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc bit everyone extremely hard. But most of us went along with it.
So crazy did it all become that people including bureaucrats at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started inventing nutty theories such as that masking protects against virus spread, which science had long proven to be untrue. It became even crazier: You can sit without a mask but walking and standing causes viruses to spread, so that’s when you have to wear a mask!
Absolutely nuts!
It was the same after vaccination.
Countless famous people took to social media to announce they had COVID-19 but it was a mild case thanks to the vaccine. There is simply no way they could know that. They knew for sure that they had the vaccine and they knew for sure that their case of COVID-19 was mild. But believing that one caused the other was simply a matter of faith. It might have been mild regardless. It might have been milder. As time went on, we encountered many studies showing that more vaccination was associated with more infection. Did one cause the other? It’s hard to say.
And yet vast numbers of vaccine studies in the past several years have been affected by this problem. Particularly vexing is the problem of the “healthy user bias,” which is that people who were vaccinated tend to be more compliant and conscientious in other ways too, which meant that initially, it seemed like they had better health outcomes from COVID-19 vaccination, but the results were actually attributable to this bias.
This was revealed in later studies. But the problem of discerning cause and effect from random noise still persists.
The field of medicine has long dealt with this problem. We are mortified that the practice of bleeding patients persisted for centuries even up to the 19th century. How could they have been so stupid? Well, they had a theory that disease was caused by bad humors in the blood so it needed to be drained. Then they observed that the patient got better.
Well, the patient might have gotten better anyway and even faster without bleeding. But it took many centuries to finally realize that. Many non-allopathic medicine people had been screaming about this issue for a long time, but they were ignored as cranks. That’s because bleeding was a conventional practice endorsed by the people with the most professional prestige.
Once you see this fallacy at work, you cannot unsee it. It’s everywhere in medicine but also in economics, health, horticulture, law and sociology, and all the physical world sciences. The gun debate is a good example. There is high crime and there are lots of guns, so people conclude that the guns cause the crime, whereas the presence of guns might simply be a response to crime and a means of protection. Without them, the crime would be far worse.
The fallacy in question drives vast amounts of politics today. There is a tendency to blame any existing president for all existing economic conditions, but the real cause might date further back in time. Still, nearly every debate follows the same lines: This happened; therefore, his actions or inactions caused it. It could be true or it might be the same as the rooster and the sunrise.
We flatter ourselves now that we are beyond such fallacies. They belong only to the superstition-ridden ages of the past. That’s complete nonsense. We are probably more inundated by this fallacy now than ever. Whatever it is that people trust and believe in at any particular time is what people identify as the key to curing whatever malady is around.
Today, people believe in pharmaceuticals. Whatever the issue is, it can be solved by a new lab-created potion. As a result, we are soaked as a society in these, even though the evidence for many of them is scant. The more you look at, for example, the effect of psychiatric drugs, the less it becomes clear whether and to what extent these help or actually may worsen the real problem.
It’s even true with antibiotics. All parents use amoxicillin on childhood ear infections today. But my grandmother swore by putting warm mineral oil in the ear and avoiding conventional meds completely. It took me only a few minutes to discover a 2003 study that randomized whether kids got herbal oils with or without antibiotics. Results: no difference.
The implications are profound. We are so attached to pharma and allopathic strategies that we might be overlooking vast naturopathic and homeopathic methods that work better.
Seizing on one solution and sticking with it prevents the human mind from being creative about other possible and better solutions. Generations can go by in which fallacies rule the day. We can laugh about roosters and sun, bleeding and disease, dances and rain, but how many times do we commit these fallacies in our world today but our dogmatic attachments prevent us from seeing them?
Houthis Launch Attack On US Cargo & Navy Ships Following Two Weeks Of Quiet
Yemen’s Iran-linked Houthis have announced new aggressive actions in the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea regions, saying late Wednesday that projectiles were launched against more US and Israeli-owned commercial vessels, and that a US warship was also targeted. This follows a period of relative quiet this month.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said in a video address that an antiship ballistic missile was launched against the Maersk Yorktown cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden, resulting in a direct hit.
The US military subsequently confirmed the fresh attack on the “US-flagged, owned, and operated vessel with 18 US and four Greek crew members”; however, the statement indicated no casualties or damage. The projectile may have exploded near the ship without hitting it.
“There were no injuries or damage reported by US, coalition, or commercial ships,” US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in the statement, without indicating whether there was any level of an actual direct strike on the ship. Commenting further, Maritime Executive details:
They received a report from a vessel of an explosion in the water approximately 72 nautical miles southeast of the port of Djibouti. The statement only said that there had been an explosion “at a distance,” and that the crew and vessel were reported safe.
CENTCOM further described that within hours of the attack on the Maersk Yorktown, US forces “successfully engaged and destroyed” four drones over Yemen.
The government of Greece this week also said it has been engaged in fresh counter-Houthi actions:
The Greek Ministry of National Defense said on Thursday that one of the country’s military ships serving in the European Union’s naval mission to counter the Houthis in the Red Sea intercepted two drones launched towards a commercial ship from Yemen.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) had earlier confirmed an incident some 72 nautical miles (133km) southeast of the port of Djibouti in the Gulf of Aden.
These kind of Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and off Yemen’s coast have somewhat waned of late, compared with the near daily intensity of the prior months, and some analysts have speculated that the Houthis are running low on their missile and drone arsenal.
Prior to Wednesday’s new incidents, the last significant Houthi attacks prior to that came two weeks ago. This could also be due to the prospect of some kind of Red Sea truce negotiations which have been reported of late.
— United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) (@UK_MTO) April 25, 2024
A Yemeni official has been cited in regional outlet The National as saying, “In response to the Yemeni group’s attempts to target Israeli ships, the US has not only resorted to military action but also sought to convey proposals that would incentivize the militants to stop their attacks.”
“Messages containing incentives were sent from the Americans to Sanaa in recent weeks. These messages were delivered through envoys and mediators, including western officials, with the Omani capital, Muscat, also playing a significant role,” the source added.
It’s not just record capital gains taxes that Americans have to look forward to if they choose “4 more years, pause” of the senile occupant in the White House: As Epoch Times’ Jeffrey Tucker reports, property taxes are also about to soar.
Below we excerpt from his latest report on where the Biden tax tsunami sill strike next:
There have been very few points of financial solace in the past few years apart from rising financial markets. Part of that has been an incredible increase in home valuations. This comes from inflation, yes, but also from shifts in supply and demand for home purchases. Demand is as it always was but realizing it is another matter.
The problem is on the supply side. In most places around the country, homes are not going on the market at the same and predictable pace they once were. This is for reasons of soaring costs of new mortgages. Many homeowners purchased back when interest rates were absurdly low and negative in real terms, perhaps 2 or 3 percent.
Selling now means paying huge capital gains taxes and then applying for a new mortgage at 7.5 percent. The implications of that seemingly small change are actually gigantic, and making it work without paying drastically more in monthly bills means moving to a cheaper area of the country or downsizing the quality and size of the home.
Rather than make that choice, many homeowners are stuck living right where they are even if they would prefer some other job or home elsewhere. They are frozen in place but, hey, at least these people have homes that they own, right?
Not only that but the valuation that you see on Zillow is going up and up. Yay!
Not so fast. In the United States, you pay property taxes on your home. This reality gives rise to the perennial question: do you really own your home if maintaining that title requires paying huge property taxes on the place annually? If you don’t pay, the house is taken over by the state, period. It feels a bit like renting doesn’t it? Indeed, the difference between renting and owning can get a bit blurry.
Property taxes are the way schools are funded in the United States generally speaking and with some exceptions. Taxes are organized according to school districts, the lines of which are extremely strict. The identical home one street from the next can have a big difference in price based entirely on market perceptions of quality of the schools in the relevant district.
This is a major reason why “school choice,” whereby anyone from any district can attend any other, has never made much progress politically in the United States. It means a tremendous scrambling of ownership valuations. No one wants that.
You pay these taxes whether you use the schools or not and whether or not you even have children at all. That’s what makes them public schools. The public shares in the expense but the reality is that it is not the public but just property owners from one district to another, with subsidies added by state governments and the federal government, plus “booster” organizations formed by parents.
If you are living in a district and stuck in a home because you cannot move due to expense, you are still stuck paying taxes regardless. These are assessed annually based not on the price at which you purchased the home but on the value of the home at present market value. That doesn’t seem fair either. Why should you continue to have to pay more and more in taxes based on valuation that you are not actually seeing in any kind of profit?
You are a sitting duck, forced to cough up whatever the assessors and tax collectors decide you have to pay.
This year alone, we are seeing huge increases in market valuations that are reflected in taxes you have to pay whether you use public schools or not. The taxes on many mid-sized homes in Texas, for example, are going up thousands of dollars right now. The fear in Georgia is so large that some activists have put on the ballot an initiative to cap property taxes to insulate them from market pressures.
Adding to the frustration here is the terrible reality of school closures from 2020–2022. Even if you wanted to use the schools, you could not because the authorities said that there were viruses in the schools that the children would spread and bring home. There was never any evidence at all that schools were uniquely guilty of viral spread but the perception was used as the excuse to force everyone into Zoom school, which taught the kids nothing.
We are now faced with years of learning loss that keeps getting worse, not to mention soaring absenteeism. The routines of an entire generation were disrupted and not returned to normal.
