Tag: finance

Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“We’ve reached the point where state actors can penetrate rectums and vaginas, where judges can order forced catheterizations, and where police and medical personnel can perform scans, enemas and colonoscopies without the suspect’s consent. And these procedures aren’t to nab kingpins or cartels, but people who at worst are hiding an amount of drugs that can fit into a body cavity. In most of these cases, they were suspected only of possession or ingestion. Many of them were innocent… But these tactics aren’t about getting drugs off the street… These tactics are instead about degrading and humiliating a class of people that politicians and law enforcement have deemed the enemy.”

– Radley Balko, The Washington Post

Freedom is never free.

There is always a price—always a sacrifice—that must be made in order to safeguard one’s freedoms.

Where that transaction becomes more complicated is when one has to balance the rights of the individual with the needs of the community.

Philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau envisioned the social contract between the individual and a nation’s rulers as a means of finding that balance. Invariably, however, those in power grow greedy, and what was intended to be a symbiotic relationship with both sides benefitting inevitably turns into a parasitic one, with a clear winner and a clear loser.

We have seen this vicious cycle play out over and over again throughout the nation’s history.

Just look at this COVID-19 pandemic: the whole sorry mess has been so overtly politicized, propagandized, and used to expand the government’s powers (and Corporate America’s bank balance) that it’s difficult at times to distinguish between what may be legitimate health concerns and government power grabs.

After all, the government has a history of shamelessly exploiting national emergencies for its own nefarious purposes. Terrorist attacks, mass shootings, civil unrest, economic instability, pandemics, natural disasters: the government has been taking advantage of such crises for years now in order to gain greater power over an unsuspecting and largely gullible populace.

This COVID-19 pandemic is no different.

Yet be warned: we will all lose if this pandemic becomes a showdown between COVID-19 vaccine mandates and the right to bodily integrity.

It doesn’t matter what your trigger issue is—whether it’s vaccines, abortion, crime, religion, immigration, terrorism or some other overtly politicized touchstone used by politicians as a rallying cry for votes—we should all be concerned when governments and businesses (i.e., the Corporate State) join forces to compel individuals to sacrifice their right to bodily integrity (which goes hand in hand with the right to conscience and religious freedom) on the altar of so-called safety and national security.

That’s exactly what’s unfolding right now, with public and private employers using the threat of termination to force employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Unfortunately, legal protections in this area are limited.

While the Americans with Disabilities Act protects those who can prove they have medical conditions that make receiving a vaccination dangerous, employees must be able to prove they have a sensitivity to vaccines.

Beyond that, employees with a religious objection to the vaccine mandate can try to request an exemption, but even those who succeed in gaining an exemption to a vaccine mandate may have to submit to routine COVID testing and mask requirements, especially if their job involves contact with other individuals.

Under the First Amendment and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, individuals have a right of conscience and/or religious freedom to ask that their sincere religious beliefs against receiving vaccinations be accommodated. To this end, The Rutherford Institute has issued guidance and an in-depth fact sheet and model letter for those seeking a religious exemption to a COVID-19 vaccine mandate in the workplace. The Rutherford Institute’s policy paper, “Know Your Rights: How To Request a Religious Accommodation for COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates in the Workplace,” goes into the details of how and why and in which forums one can request such accommodation, but there is no win-win scenario.

As with all power plays of this kind, the ramifications of empowering the government and its corporate partners to force individuals to choose between individual liberty and economic survival during a so-called state of “emergency” can lead to terrifying results.

At a minimum, it’s a slippery slope that justifies all manner of violations in the name of national security, the interest of the state and the so-called greater good.

If the government—be it the President, Congress, the courts or any federal, state or local agent or agency—can willfully disregard the rights of any particular person or group of persons, then that person becomes less than a citizen, less than human, less than deserving of respect, dignity, civility and bodily integrity. He or she becomes an “it,” a faceless number that can be tallied and tracked, a quantifiable mass of cells that can be discarded without conscience, an expendable cost that can be written off without a second thought, or an animal that can be bought, sold, branded, chained, caged, bred, neutered and euthanized at will.

That’s exactly where we find ourselves now: caught in the crosshairs of a showdown between the rights of the individual and the so-called “emergency” state.

All of those freedoms we cherish—the ones enshrined in the Constitution, the ones that affirm our right to free speech and assembly, due process, privacy, bodily integrity, the right to not have police seize our property without a warrant, or search and detain us without probable cause—amount to nothing when the government and its agents are allowed to disregard those prohibitions on government overreach at will.

This is the grim reality of life in the American police state.

Our so-called rights have been reduced to technicalities in the face of the government’s ongoing power grabs.

Yet those who founded this country believed that what we conceive of as our rights were given to us by God—we are created equal, according to the nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence—and that government cannot create nor can it extinguish our God-given rights. To do so would be to anoint the government with god-like powers and elevate it above the citizenry.

And that, in a nutshell, is what happens when government officials are allowed to determine who is deserving of constitutional rights and who should be stripped of those rights for whatever reason may be justified by the courts and the legislatures.

In this way, concerns about COVID-19 mandates and bodily integrity are part of a much larger debate over the ongoing power struggle between the citizenry and the government over our property “interest” in our bodies. For instance, who should get to decide how “we the people” care for our bodies? Are we masters over our most private of domains, our bodies? Or are we merely serfs who must answer to an overlord that gets the final say over whether and how we live or die?

This debate over bodily integrity covers broad territory, ranging from abortion and euthanasia to forced blood draws, biometric surveillance and basic healthcare.

Forced vaccinations are just the tip of the iceberg.

Forced vaccinations, forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases: these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.

Consider the case of Mitchell vs. Wisconsin in which the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision found nothing wrong when police officers read an unconscious man his rights and then proceeded to forcibly and warrantlessly draw his blood while he was still unconscious in order to determine if he could be charged with a DUI.

To sanction this forced blood draw, the cops and the courts hitched their wagon to state “implied consent” laws (all of the states have them), which suggest that merely driving on a state-owned road implies that a person has consented to police sobriety tests, breathalyzers and blood draws.

More than half of the states (29 states) allow police to do warrantless, forced blood draws on unconscious individuals whom they suspect of driving while intoxicated.

Seven state appeals courts have declared these warrantless blood draws when carried out on unconscious suspects are unconstitutional. Courts in seven other states have found that implied consent laws run afoul of the Fourth Amendment. And yet seven other states (including Wisconsin) have ruled that implied consent laws provide police with a free pass when it comes to the Fourth Amendment and forced blood draws.

Read the writing on the wall, and you’ll see how little remains of our right to bodily integrity in the face of the government’s steady assaults on the Fourth Amendment.

Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—continue to be strangulated by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.

Worse, on a daily basis, Americans are being made to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to clear the nearly insurmountable hurdle that increasingly defines life in the United States: we are now guilty until proven innocent.

Such is life in America today that individuals are being threatened with arrest and carted off to jail for the least hint of noncompliance, homes are being raided by militarized SWAT teams under the slightest pretext, property is being seized on the slightest hint of suspicious activity, and roadside police stops have devolved into government-sanctioned exercises in humiliation and degradation with a complete disregard for privacy and human dignity.

While forced searches—of one’s person and property—may span a broad spectrum of methods and scenarios, the common denominator remains the same: a complete disregard for the dignity and rights of the citizenry.

Unfortunately, the indignities being heaped upon us by the architects and agents of the American police state—whether or not we’ve done anything wrong—are just a foretaste of what is to come.

The government doesn’t need to tie you to a gurney and forcibly take your blood or strip you naked by the side of the road in order to render you helpless. As this showdown over COVID-19 vaccine mandates makes clear, the government has other methods—less subtle perhaps but equally devastating—of stripping you of your independence, robbing you of your dignity, and undermining your rights.

With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our bodies or our lives.

You may not realize it yet, but you are not free.

If you believe otherwise, it is only because you have made no real attempt to exercise your freedoms.

Had you attempted to exercise your freedoms before now by questioning a police officer’s authority, challenging an unjust tax or fine, protesting the government’s endless wars, defending your right to privacy against the intrusion of surveillance cameras, or any other effort that challenges the government’s power grabs and the generally lopsided status quo, you would have already learned the hard way that the American Police State has no appetite for freedom and it does not tolerate resistance.

This is called authoritarianism, a.k.a. totalitarianism, a.k.a. oppression.

As Glenn Greenwald notes for the Guardian:

Oppression is designed to compel obedience and submission to authority. Those who voluntarily put themselves in that state – by believing that their institutions of authority are just and good and should be followed rather than subverted – render oppression redundant, unnecessary. Of course people who think and behave this way encounter no oppression. That’s their reward for good, submissive behavior. They are left alone by institutions of power because they comport with the desired behavior of complacency and obedience without further compulsion. But the fact that good, obedient citizens do not themselves perceive oppression does not mean that oppression does not exist.

Get ready to stand your ground or run for your life.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, our government “of the people, by the people and for the people” has been transformed into a greedy pack of wolves that is on the hunt.

“We the people” are the prey.

New Zealand’s PM Jacinda Ardern decided to place the entire country on lockdown after finding a single case believed to be (but not proven to be) caused by the delta variant. And she wants desperate Kiwis eager to avoid the two-month horrorshow of lockdowns currently plaguing Australia (which has failed to stop the spread of the virus) to know that the real culprit responsible for their current situation is: Australia.

Specifically, New South Wales, which according to Ardern didn’t lock down “hard and fast” enough to stop the virus from leapfrogging to neighboring New Zealand, which hasn’t seen a case of COVID in months.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

And anybody who questions whether New Zealand’s decision to enter a “Level 4” lockdown over a single COVID case (although the number of new cases climbed to 10 on Wednesday) should remember that if New Zealand doesn’t act decisively now, they will need to deal with endlessly frustrating extensions later. 

Jacinda Ardern was today asked her response to those that question the need for such a quick and harsh lockdown…

Her answer: Australia

— Charles Croucher (@ccroucher9) August 18, 2021

Here’s more according to News.Au:

Ms Ardern did not hide the fact that she blames NSW’s “light and long” lockdown for the spread of covid across the Tasman.

“Our ability to narrow down that this is a case that is linked to New South Wales outbreak, gives us a lot of leads to chase down as quickly as we can,” she said.

Asked by a reporter “what is your message to people who questioned the need for an alert level four lockdown?”

“Australia,” Ms Ardern replied bluntly. “We’ve seen the dire consequences of taking too long to act in other countries, not least our neighbours.”

“We have seen what can happen elsewhere if we fail to get on top of it. We only get one chance,” she said.

In response to Ardern’s testy accusation, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian defended her decision-making in the press, claiming that Greater Sydney’s lockdown was undertaken quickly enough, even as she counted a record 633 local cases.

Instead, she blamed “too many people” who have been breaking the rules for the rise in cases.

“We know the settings we have in place are some of the harshest that Australia has ever seen.”

“Unfortunately it only takes a small number of people to do the wrong thing, to cause this amount of spread.”

“We have the right settings in place. But unfortunately too many people continue to do the wrong thing,” she said.

New Zealand has made mask-use mandatory for people over 12, if they are visiting supermarkets, pharmacies or other locations open for essential services. Mask use is already mandatory on public transport.

The country’s vaccine rollout will continue Wednesday following a brief pause. Presently, only 24% of the country’s adult population is vaccinated. New Zealand’s lockdown has already killed the country’s chance to become the first G-10 nation to hike interest rates.

And ultimately Ardern’s criticism of Australia shows that the proponents of the already discredited “ZeroCOVID” approach will increasingly look for people to blame when their lockdowns are unsuccessful at eliminating a virus that’s become endemic to the human population.

Apparently, it seems like a better option than admitting the truth to a weary public.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Researching and developing new weapons technologies is a key part of the Pentagon’s strategy to counter China. In an interview with Defense News, President Biden’s new Air Force secretary said he’d like to see the US military field the type of new technologies that “scare China.”

Frank Kendall, who was sworn in as Air Force secretary on July 28th, made it clear in the interview that he is focused on China. “I’ve been obsessed, if you will, with China for quite a long time now — and its military modernization, what that implies for the US and for security,” he said.

Hyping up the threat of China’s military serves the Pentagon to justify more spending, and Kendall hinted that he believes the Air Force doesn’t have a sufficient budget. “The Air Force has been overly constrained,” he said.

“I think we’ve not been allowed to do things we really need to do to free up resources for things that are higher priority. We’ve had a very hard time getting the Congress to allow us to retire older aircraft.”

One project that Kendall discussed is the B-21 bomber, which is currently being developed. “I think that’s going to be something that will be intimidating, it’s going to be very capable. And there are a few others like that that are coming down the pipeline. … But I think we have to be continuously thinking about other things that will be intimidating to our future enemies.”

The Pentagon budget requested by President Biden prioritized spending on new weapons technology. The budget request asked for over $112 billion for research, development, testing, and evaluation, known as RDT&E. Besides new long-range bombers, US military leaders are calling for investment in technology like artificial intelligence, robotics, space and cyber capabilities, and hypersonic missiles.

Comments like Kendall’s concerning China are now commonplace from military leaders in Washington. Biden’s new Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said during his Senate confirmation hearing in July that he would focus “exclusively” on China in his new position.

In televised statements Wednesday Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan gave a speech reacting to fast-moving events in Afghanistan and the newly entrenched Taliban rule in Kabul. His main message was to emphasize Turkey is “open” to “cooperation” with the new Taliban leadership in Kabul, further saying that he appreciates their “moderate statements”. 

This comes after Taliban spokesmen Zabihullah Mujahid the day prior claimed that Afghani women would still be allowed to work and study, even suggesting the possibility of government roles but “in accord with Islamic law”. But the reality on the ground already is pointing in another direction.

“We are open to cooperation. They have been very sensitive towards relations with Turkey and we hope their sensitivity will continue,” Erdoğan said in the televised speech.

He further indicated Turkey stands ready to to cooperate in “every possible way” with Afghanistan based shared history and cultural ties, presumably a reference to Islam. 

Erdogan also for the first time declared Turkey’s willingness to remain in Kabul airport for the time being in order to ensure security and stabilization. This a day after Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavuşoglu confirmed that Ankara is engaged in formal talks with Taliban representatives, nothing “positive” intentions and messages.

Meanwhile, likely Turkey’s top priority is the prevention of a mass and sustained refugee exodus, as happened in prior years putting extreme strain on its economy. 

VIDEO: Turkey is building a wall along its border with Iran to prevent a new influx of refugees, mainly from Afghanistan as the Taliban take over the country.

For now, a 5km section is under construction but Turkey is aiming to build a 295km-long wall on its Iranian border pic.twitter.com/YJAZgUOEGa

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) August 17, 2021

Turkey is expected to feel the shock first of the beginning refugee wave coming out of Afghanistan, given it’s already long been for years a jumping-off point for Afghans making the arduous trip to Europe. The past decade alone has seen some 600,000 Afghans settle in Turkey – all the while a mass wave of Syrian refugees exited there as well, many which are still along Turkey’s southern border (over 3 million).

Turkey is reportedly now constructing a nearly 300km wall along the Iranian border to physically block the exodus coming from central Asia, according to the AFP.

Turkey deploys soldiers to Iran border to stop possible Afghan migrant surge https://t.co/XWEwTAog06 #Iran #Turkey #Afghanistan

— Reza H. Akbari (@rezahakbari) August 18, 2021

Ankara has also reportedly sent an emergency troop deployment to bolster its security force along the Iranian border in the far southeast.

Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,

A U.S. software company is accusing Chinese tech giant Huawei of pressuring it to build a data “back door” into a government security project in Pakistan, according to a recent legal filing submitted at the Central District Court in California.

California-based Business Efficiency Solutions (BES), in a lawsuit filed on Aug. 11, also accused Huawei of stealing its trade secrets, while the software company worked as Huawei’s contractor to a safe-city project in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan’s Punjab province.

BES said in its lawsuit that Huawei used “one of BES’s software systems to establish a ‘backdoor’ from China into Pakistan that allowed Huawei to collect and view data important to Pakistan’s national security and other private, personal data on Pakistani citizens.”

The current legal dispute was born out of a partnership between the two firms starting in 2016. That year, Huawei and Punjab Safe Cities Authority (PSCA), a provincial government body, inked an agreement for the Chinese company to implement a high-tech surveillance system, including more than 8,000 cameras, in Lahore, according to Pakistani media.

At that time, Shehbaz Sharif, former chief minister of Punjab, said that the safe-city project would turn Lahore into crime-free city.

The system would be available to the Punjab Police Integrated Command, Control, and Communication Center (PPIC3) of Lahore.

Huawei has heavily promoted its surveillance technology worldwide, sometimes under its “Safe City” or “Smart City” solutions promising to make cities more secure. In 2019, U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote a letter to then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, urging him to update U.S. travel advisories to warn Americans about traveling to countries with Huawei’s surveillance solutions.

“These technologies could expose their personal data to foreign governments, including potentially China,” the senators wrote.

In Pakistan, at least nine cities have signed up for Huawei’s Safe City systems since 2015. However, some cities including Islamabad had reported increased crime rates after adopting the systems.

The agreement between PSCA and Huawei was signed after a bidding process. According to the complaint, Huawei beat out competitors including Nokia and Motorola with a bid of $150 million.

The logo of Chinese telecom giant Huawei is pictured during the Web Summit in Lisbon on Nov. 6, 2019. (Patricia De Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images)

Additionally, BES stated in the filings that it was courted “aggressively” by Huawei to be the latter’s contractor because the Chinese firm “lacked the capacity to undertake such a technically advanced project on its own.”

BES said it created eight different software systems for the safe-city project, including a system to monitor buildings and another to monitor social media, the complaint said. Another system, formally called the data exchange system (DES), could collect data from different Pakistani government agencies, including customs, taxation, immigration, and registration.

In 2016, Huawei “threatened to terminate all agreements” with BES if the U.S. software company did not comply with its demand to have all eight systems tested in China.

“As of the filing of this complaint, Huawei-China has yet to return BES’s LLDs for the eight systems, or allow BES to uninstall any software, including the DES system, from Huawei’s facility in China,” the complaint said, referring to BES’s proprietary “low-level designs” (LLDs) for systems.

Low-level design is a general terminology used to describe the component-level design process, often involving designers and developers. In contrast, high-level design means the overall design architecture.

A year later, in 2017, Huawei allegedly demanded that BES install DES in Huawei’s laboratory in China—”this time not merely for testing purposes but with full access to data at the Lahore Safe City project.”

“We want to insure [sic] that PPIC3 has no objection in [the] transfer of this technology outside of PPIC3 for security reasons,” BES CEO and founder Javed Nawaz responded in an email, which is attached to the lawsuit, to Huawei officials.

“Please get an approval from PPIC3, in writing, prior to us performing this function.”

According to the complaint, Huawei initially said there was no need to get such approval while “threaten[ing] to withhold payments owed to BES.” Later, Huawei said it had received “approval from the Pakistani government,” BES alleged.

“In light of Huawei’s affirmative representations that they had the approval of the Pakistani government, the duplicate DES system was installed in China,” the complaint stated.

BES argued that PPIC3’s network could be compromised by Huawei.

“On information and belief, Huawei-China uses the proprietary DES system as a backdoor from China into Lahore to gain access, manipulate, and extract sensitive data important to Pakistan’s national security,” according to the complaint.

BES also alleged that Huawei “has used and will continue to use” the stolen trade secrets for other similar “Safe City” projects in at least seven other Pakistani cities, as well as those in other countries including Qatar, Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.

The U.S. software company is seeking damages and permanent injunctive relief against Huawei.

To bolster its claims, BES cited two U.S. court cases—both indictments against Huawei for trade secrets theft in 2019 and 2020—in its complaint.

Huawei, PSCA, BES, and BES’s attorneys did not respond to requests for comment. According to The Wall Street Journal, BES is not operating or generating revenue at the moment.

Currently there’s an abundance of speculation over how China and Russia are poised to “step into the Afghan gap” – as one analyst in FT has put it. Already in July, less than a month before the ‘shockingly’ fast Taliban blitz across all provinces and into Kabul, the West was perhaps surprised to see a Taliban delegation received so warmly by China’s foreign minister Wang Yi in Tianjin.

It’s now expected that China could be among the first countries to formally recognize the Taliban government, with the latter currently claiming it’s newly “reformed” – the latest evidence of the hardline Islamist group’s old school brutality fully on display notwithstanding. 

As America’s military might and trillions of dollars sunk into the failed 20-year long “nation building” bloody conflict and occupation is in retreat, it’s expected that both China and Russia will cautiously bring their diplomatic and financial influence to bear to steer the central Asian country away from terrorism and toward “peaceable reconstruction”. 

A new report in Financial Times presents a series of key insights on China and Russia’s possible next moves… “We hope that the Taliban of Afghanistan has united all events and is establishing a political framework that meets the nationwide circumstances of Afghanistan and lays a basis for long-lasting peace in Afghanistan,” Geng Shuang, China’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations was cited in FT as saying.

And a Chinese government advisor and professor at Lanzhou College Zhu Yongbiao, had this to say: “China has benefited from the irresponsible behavior of [the US] which has deeply undermined the worldwide picture of the US and the connection between Washington and its allies.” Indeed a quick look at the gleeful and mocking tone out of English language Chinese state-run media this week, particularly Global Times, confirms as much.

China, US, Russia share consensus in Afghanistan, but Washington ‘should correct its mistake to exchange cooperation’
https://t.co/wsbA4gJoAK pic.twitter.com/vkiYTI8Ubn

— Lin Jing 林静 (@CGCHINA_CPT) August 17, 2021

Wang Yi, China’s overseas minister, also issued this public message:

“The Afghan Taliban has the utmost sincerity to work towards and realize peace,” a Chinese language assertion that adopted the assembly mentioned. “The Afghan Taliban won’t ever permit any drive to make use of the Afghan territory to interact in acts detrimental to China. The Afghan Taliban believes that Afghanistan ought to develop pleasant relations with neighboring nations and the worldwide group.”

And this additionally from the Chinese Foreign Ministry earlier in the week: “The Afghan Taliban said on multiple occasions that it hopes to grow sound relations with China, looks forward to China’s participation in Afghanistan’s reconstruction and development and will never allow any force to use the Afghan territory to engage in acts detrimental to China.”

If you are going to criticise the Taliban, criticise them on our terms. Let’s start with its relationship with China – opening the doors to Chinese state-owned companies to exploit Afghanistan’s untouched rare-earths & calling the Uighur genocide an ‘internal matter for China’. pic.twitter.com/cZMN7gA1jX

— Muhammad Jalal (@jalalayn) August 18, 2021

Furthermore, Moscow based political analyst Arkady Dubnov had this to say of the perspective from Russia:

“We are able to align our pursuits [with China] in opposing the US,” he mentioned. “What is sweet for us is unhealthy for Individuals, what’s unhealthy for us is sweet for Individuals. Immediately the state of affairs is unhealthy for Individuals and so it’s good for us.”

Already the past years have seen closer and closer China-Russia economic and military cooperation. With the US in retreat, Afghanistan apparently presents another front – albeit high risk – for Moscow and Beijing to find common cause.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

A Texas Democrat has confirmed she went to Portugal while colleagues were either trying to pass election reform bills or in Washington publicly opposing that effort.

Most Texas House Democrats fled the state last month to deny Republicans in the state’s lower chamber quorum. They did so to try to stop election reform bills from being passed.

Virtually all of the Democrats went to Washington, including state Rep. Jessica Gonzalez. But she later traveled to Portugal, she confirmed for the first time on Tuesday.

Gonzalez said she went overseas to get married.

“We all say family comes first. That value should apply to all families, including mine. I made the decision not to share where I was so that my wife and I could get married in privacy,” Gonzalez told the Dallas Morning News.

“I wanted us to have this special day, surrounded by a few of our friends and loved ones.”

Her wife, Angela Hale, is a registered lobbyist for Equality Texas, an organization that advocates for the LGBT.

Reports of Gonzalez and another Texas House Democrat, state Rep. Julie Johnson, going to Portugal emerged earlier this month, but neither lawmaker would confirm or deny the trip.

“No one has shown proof,” Gonzalez said at the time.

The offices of Gonzalez and Johnson did not pick up the phone on Wednesday or immediately return voicemails.

State Rep. Victoria Neave, another Democrat, also left Washington in early August to get married. It’s not clear where she went.

Texas House Democrats are still largely refusing to appear at the state Capitol in Austin, preventing Republicans from passing election reform bills.

The Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the lawmakers can be arrested, clarifying an ongoing situation that has yet to be resolved.

“The Texas Constitution empowers the House to ‘compel the attendance of absent members’ and authorizes the House to do so ‘in such manner and under such penalties as [the] House may provide,’” the state’s highest court said.

“Neither the passage of time nor the passions of a hotly contested legislative dispute can change what it means.”

Steakhouses are an iconic part of the American dining out culture, but the resurgence of the virus pandemic and soaring beef prices could diminish the appetite of steakhouse chains. 

The $5 billion US premium steakhouse sector serves up $60 ribeyes and is usually frequented by business account-wielding executives, corporate events, and tourists in popular metro areas. 

But as the Delta infections and deaths increase, businesses are delaying employees returning to the office, and travelers are canceling trips – threatening in-person dining at high-end steakhouses. 

Reuters says, “steakhouses are especially vulnerable to the spread of the virus because their traditions – such as lengthy, indoor, three-course dinners – may scare off apprehensive customers.” 

Besides the emergence of the virus pandemic scaring patrons from eating indoors, high-end steakhouses are also battling surging beef prices, with wholesale prices rising more than 40% in July than a year ago. It’s not just steak. All other sorts of wholesale prices for food essential for steakhouses have increased in the last year. Higher wholesale costs are particularly damaging to steakhouses because it erodes profit margins. 

Restaurant chains like Ruth’s Chris Steak House are locking in beef prices because there’s a risk food inflation may worsen into 2022. 

San Francisco-based reservation service OpenTable Inc. showed seated diners at steakhouses had doubled by midyear compared with January, mainly because infection cases waned as people felt more comfortable dining indoors with at least half the country vaccinated. Now there are risks seated diners at steakhouses could slump ahead of October, which is the starting point of the flu season in the US, when immune systems are usually weakened. 

Malcolm Knapp, a research firm that tracks steakhouse data, said sales at high-end steakhouses peaked in early July and have fallen in the first week of August. If the trend continues, there’s a risk that sales could flatline or go negative in the coming months. 

“We won’t get the lift we had expected before the magnitude of the Delta variant came through,” said Knapp.

New York City Open Table for the number of seated diners has slumped in the past 30 days.  

Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar has had to adapt to more carryout orders than ever before because people are still afraid to eat an entire three-course meal indoors. During the 2020 pandemic, carryout soared to 47% of sales. The figure is now around 8%. 

Another famous steakhouse is Ruth’s Chris Steak House who closed some of its restaurants during the virus pandemic because they couldn’t instantly conform to a delivery and takeout model. 

Ruth’s Chris has trimmed the fat and shrunk its corporate footprint, and added takeout this summer. Chief Executive Officer Cheryl Henry said the move had attracted new customers: “We started to see younger, more affluent guests trying Ruth’s for the first time through our takeout and delivery program.”

The emergence of the virus has companies scrambling to delay office reopenings and canceled travel plans. If the virus worsens ahead of the flu season, steakhouses across the US could be widely impacted. To survive, they will need to have a robust delivery and takeout model. 

And making matters worse, soaring food inflation is crushing steakhouses’ margins which will ultimately be passed along to patrons. 

Commentary by Rep. James Comer via RealClearPolitics,

Under the Biden administration, the United States is on the path toward becoming a welfare state fully entrenched in waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. President Biden plans to expand welfare to almost half of the country’s working adults through the deceptively named American Families Plan. If passed, it will allow the federal government to meddle in Americans’ everyday lives from birth to death. Meanwhile, every year, entitlement programs are spending tens of billions of taxpayer dollars improperly—either through inaccuracies, incompetence, or fraud.  

Government is already too big with too much waste. Current entitlement programs are rife with abuse. Their size and lack of guardrails to protect taxpayer dollars open the door for bad actors to take advantage of the system. But rather than acknowledging and addressing these issues, the Biden administration wants to dramatically expand the welfare state, which will undoubtedly result in even more waste, fraud, and abuse.  

Since 2003, when agencies were required to report these payments, the Government Accountability Office estimates $1.9 trillion in improper payments have been made. But that might just be the tip of the iceberg because the GAO maintains it is unable to “determine the full extent to which improper payments occur.” 

In fiscal year 2020, more than 21% of Medicaid’s federal program spending was the result of improper spending, which means one-fifth of taxpayer dollars, intended to help roughly 77 million low-income and medically needy individuals, has been lost without helping those Americans. Medicare was similarly disastrous, with $43 billion in improper payments—money that should have helped provide health care for the 63 million elderly and disabled currently receiving Medicare benefits.  

Outside of Medicare and Medicaid, three other significant sources of improper payments are for the earned income tax credit, unemployment insurance, and supplemental security income. Almost a quarter of the payments made for the earned income tax credit in FY2020 were improper—this amounted to $16 billion. Of the benefits paid by the Department of Labor for the unemployment insurance program, 10% were improper payments, which accounted for $8 billion. The Social Security Administration similarly spent almost 10% of the Supplemental Security Income funds on improper payments during FY2020—amounting to $5.3 billion.

The federal government wasted tens of billions in improper payments last fiscal year alone—and that does not include any improper payments related to COVID-19 relief programs. We already know substantial fraud occurred within pandemic unemployment benefit programs. It’s simply a matter of time before we know how severe the damage was in improper payments.  

Congress is responsible for government oversight, and it is urgent we address these abuses now. The American people pay for these entitlement programs, believing the money will be there if they are ever in need of it, but with so many improper payments wasting away taxpayer dollars, that belief may be misguided.  

Toward that end, I’ve called on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to provide a breakdown of all state specific Medicaid improper payments from 2015 to 2020. This will provide a better picture of the types and amounts of improper payments. These details will help us eliminate incentives for fraud and reduce waste.  

No matter what the data says, however, one thing is crystal clear: We can’t fix the social safety net by making it bigger and expanding the government’s reach. That’s like taking a leaky bucket and adding more water to it thinking the hole will fix itself. It’s unrealistic and irresponsible. Sadly, that’s President Biden’s plan. 

He is planning to expand existing entitlement programs and create new ones. He is doing so knowing the federal government is incapable of tracking the waste in existing programs, opening the door for more abuse. Why? Because he and the Democrats are anxious to reshape America. To make Americans dependent on the government rather than encourage self-reliance and promote the American dream.  

But if the president continues down this path, America will deteriorate into a socialist welfare state, constantly on the edge of fiscal collapse and where the American dream will no longer be a reality. Republicans stand ready to stop the rise of the socialist state, and while we wage that battle, we must simultaneously fix the massive flaws in our existing welfare system. If we fail or the administration stops us, American families will pay the price.

Travel restrictions across mainland China following the latest COVID-19 outbreak have likely dented Macau’s gross gaming revenues (GGR) in August. 

According to brokerage Bernstein, daily GGR plunged from an average of $16 million from Aug. 1-8 to $10 million over the past seven days, the lowest daily figure since September 2020. 

Even though Macau, an autonomous region on the south coast of China, known for giant casinos, is reopened, visitation to the popular destination area from 6 to 12 August was 78% lower than in July. 

The estimated GGR for the first 15 days of August combined is 87% lower than August 2019 and 62% below July 2021 at $193 million. 

Bernstein analysts Vitaly Umansky, Louis Li and Kelsey Zhu, told clients in a note on Monday that “travel ability and demand worsened over the past week due to the COVID contagion.” 

“Macau now has 14-day mandatory quarantine or ‘health management’ on travelers from districts in more than 30 cities of 11 provinces in China (but seven cities of four provinces were removed from the list over the past week). “The current COVID situation in China will last at least a month with disrupted travel to Macau.”

Both analysts expect August GGR to print 80% below August 2019 and 50% below July 2021. They expect visitations to casinos in the coming months to remain soft due to the emergence of the virus. 

Macau’s casino stocks have plunged to a 5-year low on the prospects of declining GGR in August. 

“The whole environment looks unfavorable for Macau and other travel-related industries,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Angela Hanlee.

A separate report by Dutch bank ING outlines a growing concern of slower economic growth for China in August and beyond. 

“Strict social distancing measures also limit people flows around the Mainland, which limits domestic leisure travel and spending during the summer holidays.” 

The critical understanding is the emergence of the virus is slowing the global economy once more.  China is doing everything in its power, especially cutting rates, to prop up a sagging economy.