Month: March 2023

Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is pressing the Treasury Department to conduct a thorough review of new whistleblower allegations regarding the Chinese-owned short video app TikTok that were recently brought to his attention.

Writing to Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on March 8, Hawley said that a TikTok whistleblower has come to him with direct knowledge of the app’s operating practices. His allegations, Hawley said, are “deeply concerning” and appear to contradict with public statements from senior executives of TikTok and its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance over the handling of U.S. users’ data.

Revelations from leaked recordings that engineers in China had repeatedly accessed the platform’s U.S. data as of last January have raised bipartisan concerns in Congress.

While TikTok’s chief operating officer Vanessa Pappas in September 2022 testified to senators that they have “strict controls in terms of who and how our data is accessed,” and vowed that “under no circumstances would we give that data to China,” the whistleblower described the access controls as “superficial” at best, if they exist at all, according to Hawley.

TikTok and ByteDance employees can “switch between Chinese and U.S. data with nothing more than the click of a button using a proprietary tool called Dorado,” Hawley said, quoting the whistleblower who likened it to a “light switch.”

Another tool the whistleblower cited is called Aeolus, which he said will allow a China-based employee access to U.S. data with authorization from a manager and a dataset owner.

“I have seen first-hand China-based engineers flipping over to non-China datasets and creating scheduled tasks to backup, aggregate, and analyze data.”

The whistleblower also described close coordination between TikTok and ByteDance, both of which he said “rely on proprietary software they engineered in China, thereby reducing foreign scrutiny and enabling Chinese engineers to insert software backdoors,” Hawley wrote in the letter.

“TikTok and ByteDance are functionally the same company. They use the same data analysis tools and chat apps, and managers are in constant contact,” Hawley cited the whistleblower as saying.

‘Highly Disturbing Allegations’

Hawley sees the “highly disturbing allegations” as the latest reason for a complete purge of TikTok from the United States, which is most popular among American teens.

“Despite TikTok’s many reassurances that members of the Chinese Communist Party do not have access to U.S. data, it seems more and more likely that they do,” he wrote. He requested Yellen provide information on what TikTok has shared with the foreign transaction review panel—the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)—that she chairs regarding its software tools, dataset facilities, internal products, the declared access ability for TikTok staff in China through these tools, and the internal approval process that CFIUS is aware of.

Read more here…

Giving someone the middle finger is a God-given right according to a Canadian judge.

In a 26-page decision reported by The Guardian, judge Dennis Galiatsatos dismissed a case against a man who allegedly harassed his neighbor in a Montreal suburb.

“To be abundantly clear, it is not a crime to give someone the finger,” he said in the Feb. 24 ruling. “Flipping the proverbial bird is a God-given, charter-enshrined right that belongs to every red-blooded Canadian.”

In May 2021, Neall Epstein was arrested by police for uttering death threats and “criminal harassment” against his neighbor, Michael Naccache, in Beaconsfield, Quebec.

But judge Galiatsatos instead laid into Naccache, whose complaints were “nothing more than mundane, petty neighborhood trivialities.”

“It is deplorable that the complainants have weaponized the criminal justice system in an attempt to exert revenge on an innocent man for some perceived slights that are, at best, trivial peeves,” reads the ruling.

Naccache had previously accused Epstein of assaulting his parents in March 2021, a claim the judge dismissed outright.

The focus of the case happened later that year, however. In May, Epstein testified his neighbour held up a handheld drill and said: “You fucking crazy neighbour; you dipshit,” adding: “You’re fucking dead.”

In response, Epstein told him to “fuck off” and proceeded to give Naccache the finger as he walked away, court documents showed. Video evidence, taken from CCTV footage, “clearly shows that Epstein is looking in the complainant’s direction and giving him the finger, sometimes with both hands”. -The Guardian

According to Galiatsatos, “being told to ‘fuck off’ should not prompt a call to 911.“

“The complainants are free to clutch their pearls in the face of such an insult. However, the police department and the 911 dispatching service have more important priorities to address.”

And while the middle finger “may not be civil, it may not be polite, it may not be gentlemanly … Nevertheless, it does not trigger criminal liability.”

In the judge’s conclusion, he wished he could throw the case’s files out of a window to express his outrage about Epstein’s charges. 

*   *   *

Read the decision here:

Authored by Beth Berlje via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

With spring planting just around the corner, Ohio and Pennsylvania farmers near the Norfolk Southern train derailment are worried about the effect spilled chemicals will have on their crops and livestock.

In a joint letter on Wednesday, Senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), and John Fetterman (D-Pa.) asked Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Thomas Vilsack and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Michael Regan to address the concerns of farmers and agricultural producers in the affected areas around East Palestine, Ohio, and Darlington Township, Pennsylvania.

The letter asks the USDA and EPA to send resources to the region to help farmers test soils, plant tissue, and livestock to determine their safety and marketability.

It also asks for a review of what disaster assistance could be offered to farmers.

So far, the letter says, no agency has provided clear guidance to farmers about the safety of their crops and livestock and whether they will be able to safely sell them.

“Farmers in the region are already reporting receiving requests to cancel orders due to health concerns,” the letter said. “Farmers and food producers in East Palestine and Darlington Township need assistance in responding to this manmade disaster.”

Despite testing results, the letter said, some consumers will still be apprehensive and refuse to purchase agricultural products from the region because of the contamination. That is why farmers have specifically asked for disaster assistance.

“Senators Casey and Fetterman have worked tirelessly to support Pennsylvanians and Ohioans impacted by this disaster in the short term, namely advocating for resources and holding Norfolk Southern accountable for the harm the derailment has inflicted, in addition to working to prevent similar disasters from happening in the future,” a press release about the letter said.

Fetterman’s Health

Fetterman’s work has been interrupted by health issues. The train derailed on Feb. 3 and four days later, on Feb. 7, Fetterman went to George Washington University Hospital because he was lightheaded. This was a concern because he suffered a stroke on the campaign trail and has cardiac problems. He was released on Feb. 10.

Fetterman then checked into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for treatment of clinical depression on Feb. 15, where he is expected to stay for weeks. At first, there were no signs of his working from the hospital, but on March 6, his staff posted photos on Twitter of him sitting with an aide in a lavender room at the hospital.

Productive morning with Senator Fetterman at Walter Reed discussing the rail safety legislation, Farm Bill and other Senate business. John is well on his way to recovery and wanted me to say how grateful he is for all the well wishes. He’s laser focused on PA & will be back soon. pic.twitter.com/143uAhoQRx

— Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) March 6, 2023

 “Productive morning with Senator Fetterman at Walter Reed discussing the rail safety legislation, Farm Bill, and other Senate business. John is well on his way to recovery and wanted me to say how grateful he is for all the well wishes. He’s laser-focused on PA & will be back soon,” the Twitter post from Chief of Staff Adam Jentleson said. Fetterman remains unavailable to constituents.

But now, he has signed this and another joint letter.

Questions for Norfolk Southern

Another letter was sent to Alan Shaw, president and CEO of Norfolk Southern Corporation. It was signed by Fetterman, Casey, Brown, and U.S. Representatives Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), and J. D. Vance (R-Ohio).

In it, they asked the following questions:

• How does the company plan to assist individuals or municipalities with short-term water needs? What will be done in the long-term if water sources are contaminated by the hazardous materials that leaked out of tanker cars or that were created during the explosion and subsequent fires?
• What is the company’s plan to reimburse local farmers if their crops, soil, or livestock are found to be injured, killed, contaminated, or in any way rendered less valuable by the derailment or its effects?
• How will the company determine the amount of direct financial compensation it will provide to municipalities affected by this derailment, including East Palestine, Ohio, and Darlington Township, Pennsylvania?
• What steps will the company take to make information regarding reimbursements and financial assistance available to local residents, organizations, businesses, and relevant public officials? Following the emergency phase of the clean-up, what subsurface remediation activities are anticipated being needed and what is the anticipated length of time required for those activities?
• What are the company’s plans for remediation and disposal of impacted soils? Will any of the materials need to be transported off-site for treatment and disposal? And how will the company ensure communities are protected along the transportation route?
• Since the adoption of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR), how has Norfolk Southern’s staffing changed? Can you confirm that Norfolk Southern’s workforce has reduced by approximately 40 percent due to PSR? Further, please provide data on the size of the Norfolk Southern workforce that conducts inspections of trains since adoption of PSR.
• How much has Norfolk Southern expended on stock buybacks and dividends in the past 10 years? And during that period how much has Norfolk Southern expended on maintenance and repair of infrastructure and rolling stock?

If you’ve been to your local butcher or checked out the meat section in a supermarket, you’re aware that beef prices are still high, and in some instances, are continuing to rise. 

Readers have been well informed about “beeflation” and why it’s happening:

• Dwindling US Cattle Herd Implies Supermarket Beef Prices May Rise Even More

• Hamburger Prices Might Continue To Rise As US Cattle Herd Shrinks

• US Beef Herd Drops To Lowest Since 1962 As Global Food Crisis Intensifies

Due to the continued scarcity of beef cattle supplies, there appears to be no relief in sight, and as a result, cash markets have risen this week to $165 per 100 pounds – the highest level since the record peaks of 2014. At this point nine years ago, ranchers resorted to reducing their herds to combat the high feed prices and drought.

As we noted the other day, “Americans need to be prepared to eat a lot less beef, because the size of the national cattle herd is steadily shrinking.” 

According to the latest report from the USDA, the number of beef cows in this country has fallen to the lowest level since 1962…

Don Roose, the founder of US Commodities, a grain and livestock investment and management firm, recently warned:

“We’re still in the contraction phase.

“It takes a long time to build a herd back up again.”

Meaning beef prices at the supermarket might go much higher until demand destruction hits. 

However, there is some good news. Global food prices have slid for the eleventh consecutive month. And it gets better: wholesale egg prices collapsed in early February. 

The ongoing supply woes could result in a potential continuation of the rise in beef prices — unleashing an affordability crisis in meat. It’s important to remember unelected officials on a global scale are attempting to reshape diets. 

Ah, yes, Bloomberg… 

The most practical step to avoid eating insects is to become your own producer of food — or buy local. 

Authored by Gary Bai via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Republican lawmakers sitting on the House Oversight Committee are planning to visit the jail holding Jan. 6 defendants in Washington, D.C., multiple media outlets confirmed.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. James Comer (Ky.), who both sit on the committee, told media outlets on Wednesday that they are intending to organize a trip to the Central Detention Facility to visit defendants who were criminally charged for their involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.

A spokesperson for Comer confirmed with Fox News that Greene is leading the effort.

Greene told ABC that she would send a letter this week to congressional lawmakers to begin the scheduling process for the visit.

Comer told The Hill that the visit is “not high on [his] list” and he will see what his schedule looks like.

The Epoch Times contacted Greene’s and Comer’s offices for comment.

Tucker Carlson Airs Footage

It comes two days after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) released more than 40,000 hours of Jan. 6 footage to Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, who then aired some of the footage on his show on Monday and Tuesday.

One tape aired Monday showed Capitol Police officers walking alongside Jacob Chansley, a Jan. 6 defendant serving a 41-month sentence after pleading guilty to an obstruction charge. Chansley was unarmed and walked past several Capitol police officers.

Another showed Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick giving directions inside the Capitol apparently after clashing with protestors, which Carlson said casted doubt on the mainstream narrative that Sicknick died of a head injury.

The aired tapes have caused an uproar in the media and in Congress. Republicans have had mixed reactions to the tape release, while virtually all Democrats condemned the release and Fox News’s coverage of the tapes.

Greene said in reaction to the tapes’ airing that Democrats had lied to the American people and that they “had people in place to make” the Capitol breach happen.

“The Democrats that support Antifa terrorism, lied about Covid and locked down America, ripped our borders wide open to Mexican Cartel terrorism and daily fentanyl murder of Americans, were the ones who did not place the National Guard at the Capital on J6 when they knew the intelligence because they had people in place to make it happen,” Greene wrote in a Twitter post on March 7, citing Tucker Carlson’s Monday Segment. “Then they blamed all of us for the breach of the Capital and have tortured American citizens as political prisoners.”

“You don’t get to ignore Antifa anarchists and terrorism on one hand and be all about justice for J6 on the other,” she said in another post.

Since Jan. 6, 2021, more than a thousand Americans have been arrested and charged with crimes related to the Capitol breach, according to a March 8 statement published by the U.S. Attorney’s office in D.C. These include more than 320 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement, the statement reads.

‘Human Rights Abuse’

The visit is partially to see the conditions of the Washington facility, Greene told The Hill.

“They’re pretrial, and they haven’t even been convicted, and they’re not allowed to see their families, many times are not allowed to see their attorneys. The food has been a major complaint,” Greene told the outlet. “There’s been complaints of it tasting like cleaner.”

“We’re going to be addressing the human rights abuse, such as the fact that they’ve been held in solitary confinement up to 23 hours a day, denied the ability to see their families,” Greene said.

A November 2021 inspection report published by U.S. Marshals Service found “systematic failures” in the conditions of confinement at the Washington jail. Observed violations of civil rights include “overpowering” smells of urine and sewage, punitive withholding of food and water, lack of attentiveness to “observable injuries” on prisoners, and intentional antagonization of prisoners, U.S. Marshal Lamont Ruffin wrote in the report.

The Epoch Times has contacted the Washington Central Detention Facility for comment.

“As prisoners of this Jail, we have witnessed the horrendous treatment and have been personally afflicted by the hellacious conditions this Jail insists on tormenting its traumatized guests with,” reads a letter written by some of the Jan. 6 defendants in prison. “A more accurate terminology to describe the facility … would be to call this location an ‘evisceration facility,’ of the body, mind, and soul.”

For much of the day, anyone doing analysis on the now-liquidated Silicon Valley Bank was confined to using stale financial data as of Dec. 31… we certainly were when analyzing the impact of SVB’s contagion (see here) as excerpted below:

For those who slept through yesterday, here is what you missed and why the US banking system is suffering its worst crisis since 2020. Silicon Valley Bank, aka SIVB, the 18th largest bank in the US with $212 billion in assets of which $120 billion are securities (of which most or $57.7BN are Held to Maturity (HTM) Mortgage Backed Securities and another $10.5BN are CMO, while $26BN are Available for Sale, more on that later )…

… funded by over $173 billion in deposits (of which $151.5 billion are uninsured), has long been viewed as the bank at the heart of the US startup industry due to its singular focus on venture-capital firms. In many ways it echoes the issues we saw at Silvergate, which banked crypto firms almost exclusively.

The big question, of course, is what happened in the past 24 hours to not only snuff the bank’s proposed equity offering, but to push the bank into insolvency.

So how many deposits were pulled from SIVB in the past 24 hours. Everyone going off the Dec 31 number

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 10, 2023

We got the answer just a few moments after that tweet, when the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation reported that shortly after the Bank announced a loss of approximately $1.8 billion from a sale of investments and was conducting a capital raise (which we now know failed), and despite the bank being in sound financial condition prior to March 9, 2023, “investors and depositors reacted by initiating withdrawals of $42 billion in deposits from the Bank on March 9, 2023, causing a run on the Bank.“

As a result of this furious drain, as of the close of business on Thursday, March 9, “the bank had a negative cash balance of approximately $958 million.”

At this point, despite attempts from the Bank, with the assistance of regulators, “to transfer collateral from various sources, the Bank did not meet its cash letter with the Federal Reserve. The precipitous deposit withdrawal has caused the Bank to be incapable of paying its obligations as they come due, and the bank is now insolvent.”

Some context: as a reminder, SIVB had $173 billion in deposits as of Dec 31., which means that in just a few hours a historic bank run drained a quarter of the bank’s funding!

But not everyone got out in time obviously, there is a long line of depositors who are over the $250,000 FDIC insured limit (in fact only somewhere between 3 and 7% of total deposits are insured). The following list, while incomplete, is approximately sorted by size of exposure:

• USDC – Crypto Stablecoin run by Circle – Silicon Valley Bank is one of six banking partners Circle uses for managing the ~25% portion of USDC reserves held in cash. While we await clarity on how the FDIC receivership of SVB will impact its depositors, Circle & USDC continue to operate normally.

• ROKU – Roku had 26% of its cash, $487 million with Silicon Valley Bank

• BLOCKFI – BlockFi has $227 million in “unprotected” funds in Silicon Valley Bank, according to a bankruptcy document, and may be in violation of U.S. bankruptcy law.

• RBLX – Roblox said 5% of its $3b cash and securities balance is held at SVB.

• DNA – Gingko Bioworks: Only the cash balance of the company’s wholly-owned subsidiary Zymergen Inc. is held in deposit accounts at SVB, representing approximately $74M or 6% of the company’s cash and cash equivalents as of December 31, 2022

• RKLB – RocketLab USA had about $38 million in its accounts with the bank, representing about 7.9% of the startup’s cash and equivalents

• LC – Lending Club warned about potentially losing funds on deposit at SVB of $21 million, said amount isn’t material to its liquidity position or capital levels, and doesn’t pose a risk to the group’s business or operations.

• PAYO – Payoneer: Of the company’s approximately $6.4B in total cash balances as of December 31, 2022, less than $20M is held at SVB

• PTGX – Protagonist Therapeutics considers its exposure to any liquidity concern at SVB to be limited, given that cash held at SVB is approximately $13 million as of March 9, 2023. 

• ACHR – Archer Aviation entered into a $20 million loan with SVB in 2021, $10 million of which is due for repayment in 2023

• COHU – Cohu announced that it has deposit accounts with SVB with an aggregate balance of approximately $12.3M, which is approximately 3.8% of the company’s total cash and investments.

• IGMS – IMG Biosciences: ‘As of March 10, 2023, the Company holds less than $5.0 million in deposits at SVB. Therefore, the Company believes it does not have any material exposure to any liquidity concerns at SVB.’

• RYTM – Rhythm Pharmaceuticals announced that it has deposit accounts with SVB with an aggregate balance of approximately $3.4 million, which is approximately 1.1% of the Company’s total cash and cash equivalents.’

• SYRS – Syros Pharmaceuticals discloses that, as of March 10, 2023, it has two deposit accounts at Silicon Valley Bank. One of these accounts has a balance of less than $250,000, and the other has a balance of approximately $3.1 million pursuant to a letter of credit that the Company was required to provide to its landlord in connection with the execution of the lease for its corporate headquarters…

• EYPT – EyePoint Pharmaceuticals currently maintains a de minimis amount of cash, in the single digit millions of U.S. dollars, with Silicon Valley Bank (SIVB)

• ATRA – Atara Biotherapeutics currently maintains an account at Silicon Valley Bank (“SVB”) holding cash deposits of approximately $2 million, which amount the Company considers to be immaterial to its liquidity.’

• ISEE – Iveric Bio currently maintains a de minimis amount of cash and cash equivalents, in the low single digit millions of U.S. dollars, with Silicon Valley Bank (“SVe”).’

• VERA – Vera Therapeutics currently holds approximately 1.2% of its cash and investments with SVB. Accordingly, the Company considers its risk exposure relating to SVB to be minimal.

• XFOR – X4 Pharmaceuticals had approximately 2.5% of its cash deposits with SVB.

• CTMX – CytomX Therapeutics does not consider its exposure to any liquidity concern at SVB to be significant. The cash held at SVB in CytomX’s operating CTMX account is at or near the FDIC-insured limit of $250,000. CytomX also maintains a deposit account at SVB under a standby letter of credit issued pursuant to its office lease for approximately $917,000.’

• AXSM – Axsome Therapeutics has material cash deposits with SVB. 

• WVE – Wave Life Sciences aggregate amount of the company’s cash and restricted cash held at SVB is approximately $1.5M.

• JNPR – Juniper Networks maintains operating accounts at SVB with a minimal cash balance of less than 1% of the company’s total cash

• QS – QuantumScape has very limited exposure to SVB, with only a low single digit percentage exposure relative to both the Company’s total liquidity and total assets.

And now the 64 trillion dollar question: was the bank run sparked by the bank’s attempted capital raise – which followed a modest $1.8 billion in losses as the bank sold off its AfS holdings to boost its liquidity – or was it the result of an external influence? What we mean by this is that as reported yesterday, several prominent venture capitalists – such as Peter Thiel – advised their tech startups to withdraw money from Silicon Valley Bank on Thursday.  Would the bank run have happened if it wasn’t for their urging? Or another question: why would some of the VC luminaries actively encourage a bank run? Yesterday we proposed one possible answer.

Why are VC icons ganging up and Lehmaning SVB? If your business model relied on QE wouldn’t you try to trigger the next QE too https://t.co/7teJlObiji

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 9, 2023

And while such a course of action by venture capitalists would be understandable, if ethically questionable, what is perhaps more notable is what Bloomberg reported earlier, citing The Infromation: it wasn’t just the Peter Thiels of the world:

Prominent venture capitalists advised their tech startups to withdraw money from Silicon Valley Bank, while mega institutions such as JP Morgan Chase & Co sought to convince some SVB customers to move their funds Thursday by touting the safety of their assets.

Let us get this straight: the largest US commercial bank was actively soliciting the clients of one of its biggest competitors, and the 16th largest US bank, knowing full well deposit flight would almost certainly lead to the collapse of a bank which courtesy of fractional reserve banking, had only modest cash to satisfy deposit demands: certainly not enough to meet $42 billion in deposit outflows.

Of course, Jamie, who has suddenly emerged as a key figure in the Jeff Epstein scandal alongside Jes Staley, knows this, and would be delighted with an outcome that kills two birds with one stone: take his name off the front pages and also make JPMorgan even bigger. Actually three birds: remember it was JPM that started that “Not QE” Fed liquidity injection in Sept 2019 when the bank “suddenly” found itself reserve constrained. We doubt that JPM would mind greatly if Powell ended his rate hikes and eased/launched QE as a result of a bank crisis, a bank crisis that Jamie helped precipitate. 

And while we wait to see if Dimon’s participation in the Epstein scandal will now fade from media coverage, and whether Powell will launch QE, we know one thing for sure: JPM was a clear and immediate benefactor of SIVB’s collapse because in a day when everything crashed, JPM stock was one of the handful that were up.

 

Authored by Bruce Abramson via RealClear Wire,

On February 28th, the Supreme Court heard arguments on President Biden’s plan to extinguish an estimated $400 billion in student debt. Biden deserves credit for highlighting a debilitating federal program in desperate need of reform. His proposal, however, would make the problem far worse, not better. Any serious reform would force academic institutions to take some responsibility for the education they provide—and to show some responsibility to the many young Americans they induce to go deeply into debt. 

The problems run deep. American higher education has become a hollow bubble of an industry coasting on brand equity and past glory. 

Notwithstanding pockets of world-class excellence, the industry does little well. Universities are top-heavy and inefficient. Their complex products bundle education, research, and campus life for many students who need—and can afford—only the first of the three. On campus, classrooms teach neither critical thinking nor employable skills. The return on research dollars is pitiful. Antisemitism and segregation thrive at levels unseen elsewhere in American society. Internal procedures fail to provide due process or equal protection. 

American academia is a sham suffering from disastrously flawed structures and incentive systems.

Costs have risen uncontrollably. Forty-three years ago, my freshman tuition at Columbia (including mandatory fees, excluding residential costs) ran between $20,000 and $25,000 in today’s dollars. Ivy League schools today charge about $70,000—nearly triple in real terms. The 1980 price tag associated with America’s most expensive colleges—affordable to many like me only with the help of student loans—will now hardly cover in-state tuition at a top public university like Berkeley or Michigan. 

The federal student loan programs have mushroomed to obscure the real costs. Free federal dollars flow through students who can’t fathom the burden of future repayment into university coffers. Colleges have taken advantage of this federal money to pad their payrolls with administrators—now employed in greater numbers than faculty, nationwide—most charged with little more than regulatory compliance and a desire to promote ideological purity.

From there, things get worse. All decisions concerning faculty hiring, promotion, tenure, publication, grants, awards, and prestige are made by the faculty. The key to professional success thus lies entirely in impressing senior colleagues. The vaunted peer review process means that other faculty members agree that your work furthers the ideas upon which they have based their own careers. Not exactly a recipe for innovation.

Why challenge conventional wisdom when doing so can create only ostracism, criticism, and career setbacks? It’s far safer to add your voice to the “consensus of experts” that already defines your field.

As to the students themselves—and recent graduates—they have little recourse. Prestigious faculty highlighted in promotional materials fade into the background as underpaid adjuncts and graduate students teach most of the classes. Implications about the value of a degree, perhaps accurate when applied to students who excel in engineering but way off the mark for most students, are never binding. Universities have zero liability for mislabeling their offerings, for bait-and-switch tactics, or for providing an unsatisfactory education. The entire system insulates colleges and universities from consumer displeasure.

Today’s wealthiest universities are blissfully protected from external economic pressures, external assessments of quality, external customer complaints, and external liability for unacceptable performance. Many take matters even further, providing their own security and internal adjudication procedures—minimizing their exposure to the police and the courts that govern the rest of us. 

With that intense structural insulation in place, the rest is unsurprising. An industry handed an unlimited budget, unassailable prestige, tax benefits, liability shields, and autonomous policing and courts behaves precisely as you’d expect it to behave: It is committed to draining outside resources for the benefit of insiders. That the resulting institutions are woke and leftist is almost coincidental. The entire industry structure is designed to promote inefficiency, absurdity, self-adulation, and contempt for others. It is delivering on that design.

The current system saddles young adults with crushing debt, empowers the worst instincts of corrupt academic administrators, and tightens the control of government bureaucrats over education. America’s institutions of higher learning will never again produce informed citizens and talented leaders unless we address their deep structural flaws and corrupt incentive systems.

Student loan programs are overdue for reform. Debt relief for past loans, however, would make things worse rather than better. It would reward problematic behavior of the past and motivate worse behavior in the future. 

Proper reform would make the institutions accountable for the debt they induce America’s youth to incur. Loan guarantees—even if conditional and partial—would force them to consider efficiency, economics, and program quality for the first time in decades. 

Reforming the student loan system wouldn’t fix many of the problems plaguing American academia. It would, however, go a long way toward realigning institutional incentives with the needs of a healthy industry. Let the universities scream that forcing them to assume responsibility would mark the end of American education as we know it. It would mark the beginning of American education as we need it.

Authored by Julie Kelly via American Greatness,

In another example of Washington’s inexorable slide into banana republic territory, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) took to the floor of the U.S. Senate on Tuesday to call for the removal of an American journalist. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen an anchor treat the American people, and American democracy, with such disdain,” Schumer said during his seven-minute authoritarian tirade.

“And he’s going to come back tonight with another segment. Fox News should tell him not to. Fox News, Rupert Murdoch—tell Mr. Carlson not to run a second segment of lies. You know it’s a lie.”

Schumer later reiterated his demand to a group of journalists who, rather than denounce one of the most powerful government officials in the country attempting to silence an influential member of the media, dutifully reported Schumer’s bleating without question.

Republican senators including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) joined the fray, echoing Schumer’s faux concerns over “national security.”

Clearly, it’s panic time. The White House, Congress, and the Democratic Party propaganda arm that is the corporate media realize their carefully engineered narrative about January 6 is imploding in real time. Which is why they’re accusing Carlson of “whitewashing” and “rewriting” the events of January 6. Anything less than total fealty to regime-approved talking points about what happened before and after that day now is considered a “threat to democracy.”

But facts are facts. And no amount of pearl-clutching by the hags on “The View” or threats made by U.S. senators can alter the reality of January 6. Between video recordings, witness testimony, court filings, and news reporting, the undeniable truth about January 6 cannot be willfully wished away even by the most skilled spinmeisters.

Here’s what we know:

• Some people acted badly. A handful came ready for a fight while others admit they were caught up in a mob mentality that unfolded over the course of the afternoon.

• The overwhelming majority of protesters did not act badly or violently. Not only do security footage and other video sources demonstrate that is indeed true, the Justice Department’s own data supports it. “Parading” in the Capitol, a class B misdemeanor, is by far the most common charge in the Justice Department’s sweeping investigation. According to an update published this week, 919 out of 1,000 defendants face trespassing charges. Of the 518 who accepted plea agreements, 385 pleaded guilty to misdemeanors and 133 pleaded guilty to a felony.

• The most common felony is not “insurrection” but rather obstruction of an official proceeding. Fewer than 20 people face seditious conspiracy charges.

• Roughly 100 defendants are accused of attacking police officers with a dangerous weapon. No one is charged with carrying or using a firearm inside the building.

• Speaking of police, body-worn camera and independent video show outrageous misconduct by law enforcement. D.C. Metropolitan Police launched an aggressive and unnecessary offensive against the crowd assembled on the west lawn. Even though protesters were respecting police lines at the time, footage shows officers throwing stun grenades into and other devices containing rubber bullets into the crowd beginning shortly after 1:00 p.m.

• Video and testimony by Capitol police officers at trial confirmed how that activity enraged the crowd. Other officers shoved women down stairs and shoved one man off the upper terrace balcony.

• This conduct continued inside the building. Some officers shoved and hit individuals inside the Rotunda and other areas. A brutal scene in the lower west terrace tunnel unfolded as police used their batons to beat at least two women on the head resulting in bleeding and injuries.

• Excessive force caused the deaths of four Trump supporters: Ashli Babbitt, Rosanne Boyland, Kevin Greeson, and Benjamin Phillips.

• On the flip side, despite persistent claims even by Attorney General Merrick Garland and White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre as recently as this week, no police officers died as a result of injuries sustained on January 6. Officer Brian Sicknick is on video walking around after he suffered a pepper spray attack; he died of a stroke the next day. There’s no evidence the reported suicides of other officers after January 6 were related to the protest.

• Further, the responsibility of sufficiently protecting the Capitol with enough officers fell to the Capitol Police board—staffed by the sergeant-at-arms for then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund repeatedly testified that he requested additional help including National Guardsmen days before January 6. Even as the chaos unfolded that day, House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving and Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger delayed pursuing the proper authorization of the National Guard.

• Irving told House Republicans that his staff as well as members of the House Administration committee began planning for January 6 weeks before the protest. Jamie Fleet, a security staffer for both Pelosi and the committee overseeing Capitol functions, told the January 6 select committee that he started preparations for January 6 in the summer of 2020.

• When the building was breached at around 2:15 p.m., Congress was not voting to certify the electoral college results at the time, a common misperception. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Arizona) were in the process of disputing the election outcome in Gosar’s home state, a process permitted under the Electoral Count Act. The joint session of Congress technically had been adjourned an hour earlier so debate could begin.

• For all the wasted energy spent over the past two years that democracy almost died on January 6, the chaotic protest only delayed the certification ceremony for seven hours. Joe Biden officially was declared president at 3:00 a.m. the next day.

• The surveillance video viewed by Carlson’s team has not been made available to defense attorneys, arguably in violation of defendants’ constitutional rights.

• A separate trove of tapes that captured activity from the hours between noon and 8:00 p.m. was turned over to the FBI in early 2021 to use in its investigation. With few exceptions, all footage remains under protective orders. Defense attorneys consistently have complained that access to the full archive is constrained by the protective orders.

Plenty of other falsehoods and misrepresentations animate the fable of January 6. But for those honestly seeking the truth, consider this a cheat sheet for future use.