UK Says NATO Should Consider Skipping Standard Application For Ukraine

UK Says NATO Should Consider Skipping Standard Application For Ukraine

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

British Defense Minister Ben Wallace said Thursday that NATO should consider skipping a Membership Action Plan (MAP) as a requirement for Ukraine to join the Western military alliance.

The MAP is designed to ensure aspiring NATO members meet certain political, economic, and military standards to join the alliance. Waiving the MAP would speed up Ukrainian membership if NATO ever formally invites Kyiv to join.

According to the UK Parliament’s House of Commons Library, between 1999 and 2020, every new NATO member joined through a MAP. But Finland and Sweden were invited last year without having to go through the MAP process.

“I think we should absolutely look at skipping the Membership Action Plan,” Wallace said.

“But of course, we have to put some realism in this space that there are 31 members of NATO now and, you know, we have to all move together.”

Ukraine is looking to be invited to join the alliance at the Vilnius summit that will be held from July 11-12. But most NATO members agree that Ukraine can’t join the alliance while it’s fighting a war with Russia and is looking for other guarantees to give Kyiv.

Recent media reports said President Biden was “open” to the idea of waiving the MAP for Ukraine, but he told reporters that wasn’t the case. “They got to meet the same standards. So I’m not going to make it easier,” he said.

Ukraine was first promised it would eventually become a NATO member in 2008 despite the fact that Ukrainian entry into the alliance is a major red line for Russia. Any new promises for Kyiv at the Vilnius summit will only serve to prolong the war, as one of Russia’s main motives for invading was Ukraine’s alignment with NATO.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/01/2023 – 07:00

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/PRYlhjZ Tyler Durden

Free-Range Kids in Virginia Connecticut and Illinois Celebrate a Very Special Independence Day

This year, Independence Day will be especially worth celebrating for families in Virginia, Connecticut, and Illinois. Just ask Evelyn Hackel.

“The law goes into effect on July 1, and I’m really excited,” says Hackel, a naval architect in Virginia and mother to a 12-year-old named Elsa.

Evelyn is referring to S.B. 1367, also known as the “Reasonable Childhood Independence” bill.

Three years ago, Elsa decided to walk home from the library in Falls Church, Virginia. After she arrived home, the police knocked on her front door before she could even remove her coat. They told her mother that the girl was too young to be outside by herself.

Both mother and daughter ultimately testified before the Virginia Legislature in support of a bill that would enshrine the right of kids to enjoy unsupervised time—without getting their parents in trouble for neglect. This bill enjoyed bipartisan support, and in February, it passed in both legislative chambers. Illinois and Connecticut approved similar bills this spring.

Clearly, the country is fed up with having to treat kids like Ming vases. The first childhood independence bill passed in Utah in 2018; Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado followed soon after, making the score three red states and one purple state.

But this year “it’s been a bit of a blue wave,” says Diane Redleaf, legal consultant to Let Grow, the nonprofit that I founded. (Let Grow has worked to help get these bills approved.)

“We all want what’s best for our kids,” says state Rep. Travis Simms, a Connecticut Democrat who cosponsored the childhood independence bill with state Rep. Tom O’Dea, a Republican. Simms recalled how proud he felt when he started running errands for his mom as a kid.

“Regardless of whether we were 5 or 20, we all had our part to play,” he says.

In Illinois, the bill was particularly welcome because a confusing clause in state law made people believe no one could leave their kids unsupervised until age 14. The law didn’t actually say that—it said that by age 14, kids on their own would no longer be considered neglected by default—but it was often misinterpreted. Stories like this one, in which a suburban Chicago mom was investigated for letting her 8-year-old walk the dog, didn’t help matters.

Illinois’ new law allows “parents to take a common sense approach to raising their children,” says Nora Collins-Mandeville, director of systems reform policy at the Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The bill passed in part as a social justice measure. It recognizes that when, say, a single mom working two jobs lets her kids come home with a latchkey, that’s not neglect—it’s an economic necessity.

Freeing kids to go out and play—without making their parents worry about legal consequences—clearly appeals to people across the political spectrum.

“Before passage of this bill, many parents had these permissions weaponized against them,” says Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D–Va.), who supported the bill as a state senator before winning election to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Happiest of all, perhaps, are the homeschoolers, whose kids are often out and about.

“Homeschool families know that some of the best learning happens by doing,” says Will Estrada, senior counsel at the Home School Legal Defense Association. “Parents should be free to let their kids grow without fear of an unnecessary child protective services investigation.”

Until now, it has been too easy to dial 911, report an unsupervised child, and throw a decent family into chaos.

But this is a country founded on freedom. That includes the freedom of kids to play outside, climb trees, run errands, and just be kids, especially on Independence Day.

The post Free-Range Kids in Virginia, Connecticut, and Illinois Celebrate a Very Special Independence Day appeared first on Reason.com.

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A State Of Martial Law: America Is A Military Dictatorship Disguised As A Democracy

A State Of Martial Law: America Is A Military Dictatorship Disguised As A Democracy

Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?”

– Thomas Jefferson

The government is goosestepping all over our freedoms.

Case in point: America’s founders did not want a military government ruled by force. Rather, they opted for a republic bound by the rule of law: the U.S. Constitution.

Yet sometime over the course of the past 240-plus years that constitutional republic has been transformed into a military dictatorship disguised as a democracy.

Most Americans seem relatively untroubled by this state of martial law.

Incredibly, when President Biden bragged about how the average citizen doesn’t stand a chance against the government’s massive arsenal of militarized firepower, it barely caused a ripple.

As Biden remarked at a fundraising event in California, “I love these guys who say the Second Amendment is—you know, the tree of liberty is water with the blood of patriots. Well, if [you] want to do that, you want to work against the government, you need an F-16.  You need something else than just an AR-15.”

The message being sent to the citizenry is clear: there is no place in our nation today for the kind of revolution our forefathers mounted against a tyrannical government.

For that matter, the government has declared an all-out war on any resistance whatsoever by the citizenry to its mandates, power grabs and abuses.

By this standard, had the Declaration of Independence been written today, it would have rendered its signers extremists or terrorists, resulting in them being placed on a government watch list, targeted for surveillance of their activities and correspondence, and potentially arrested, held indefinitely, stripped of their rights and labeled enemy combatants.

This is no longer the stuff of speculation and warning.

For years, the government has been warning against the dangers of domestic terrorism, erecting surveillance systems to monitor its own citizens, creating classification systems to label any viewpoints that challenge the status quo as extremist, and training law enforcement agencies to equate anyone possessing anti-government views as a domestic terrorist.

2008 Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report goes on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

Subsequent reports by the Department of Homeland Security to identify, monitor and label right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) have manifested into full-fledged pre-crime surveillance programs. Almost a decade later, after locking down the nation and spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS concluded that the greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism.

Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that is colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.

The events of recent years have all been part of a master plan to shut us up and preemptively shut us down: by making peaceful revolution impossible and violent revolution inevitable.

The powers-that-be want an excuse to lockdown the nation and throw the switch to all-out martial law.

This is how it begins.

As John Lennon warned, “When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you—pull your beard, flick your face—to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you.”

Already, discontent is growing.

According to a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll, 7 out of 10 Americans believe that American democracy is “imperiled.”

Americans are worried about the state of their country, afraid of an increasingly violent and oppressive federal government, and tired of being treated like suspects and criminals.

What we’ll see more of before long is a growing dissatisfaction with the government and its heavy-handed tactics by people who are tired of being used and abused and are ready to say “enough is enough.”

This is what happens when a parasitical government muzzles the citizenry, fences them in, herds them, brands them, whips them into submission, forces them to ante up the sweat of their brows while giving them little in return, and then provides them with little to no outlet for voicing their discontent.

Our backs are against the proverbial wall.

We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’ve been on that fast-moving, downward trajectory for some time now.

When the government views itself as superior to the citizenry, when it no longer operates for the benefit of the people, when the people are no longer able to peacefully reform their government, when government officials cease to act like public servants, when elected officials no longer represent the will of the people, when the government routinely violates the rights of the people and perpetrates more violence against the citizenry than the criminal class, when government spending is unaccountable and unaccounted for, when the judiciary act as courts of order rather than justice, and when the government is no longer bound by the laws of the Constitution, then you no longer have a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

Brace yourselves.

There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of this country.

Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by political theater and public spectacle that they are oblivious to all else, you’d better beware.

Anytime you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you’d better beware.

And anytime you have a government so far removed from its people as to ensure that they are never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, you’d better beware.

The architects of the police state have us exactly where they want us: under their stamping boot, gasping for breath, desperate for freedom, grappling for some semblance of a future that does not resemble the totalitarian prison being erected around us.

The government and its cohorts have conspired to ensure that the only real recourse the American people have to express their displeasure with the government is through voting, yet that is no real recourse at all.

Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, what is unfolding before us is not a revolution. This is an anti-revolution.

We are at our most vulnerable right now.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/30/2023 – 23:40

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/jDldFQY Tyler Durden

These Industries Are Most ‘At Risk’ For AI Automation

These Industries Are Most ‘At Risk’ For AI Automation

Since the release of tools like ChatGPT, artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to permeate industries worldwide, transforming the way we work and live.

To gain insight into this rapidly evolving landscape, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu and Sabrina Lam – using data from MSCI – has ranked U.S. industries by their estimated share of employment that could be exposed to AI-driven automation.

Data and Highlights

This analysis comes from a March 2023 report published by Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research. 

The authors estimated automation exposure for over 900 U.S. jobs using the O*NET occupational database, which provides details on the types of tasks each occupation conducts. Exposure estimates were then weighted by the employment share of each occupation, and aggregated to the industry level.

Industry Estimated Share of U.S. Employment Exposed to AI (%)
Office and administrative support 46%
Legal 44%
Architecture and engineering 37%
Life, physical, and social science 36%
Business and financial operations 35%
Community and social service 33%
Management 32%
Sales and related 31%
Computer and Mathematical 29%
Farming, fishing, and forestry 28%
Protective service 28%
Healthcare practitioners and technical 28%
Educational instruction and library 27%
Healthcare support 26%
Arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media 26%
All industries average 25%
Personal care and service 19%
Food preparation and serving related 12%
Transportation and material moving 11%
Production 9%
Construction and extraction 6%
Installation, maintenance, and repair 4%
Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance 1%

According to these findings, “office and administrative support” will likely be the most affected by AI-driven automation at 46%. This transformation could largely impact common tasks such as data entry, scheduling meetings, and document management.

The second highest industry, “legal”, trails close behind at 44%. AI is expected to automate legal processes like contract analysis, and could even be used to anticipate court case outcomes.

As expected, industries that won’t be heavily impacted are those that rely heavily on manual labor, like “construction and extraction.” 

Benchmarking the Automated Future

AI is still a very new and developing technology. How it will impact labor productivity in the future depends on its capability (how fast it improves) and adoption (how quickly people and businesses begin using it). 

Adoption rates are unlikely to be the same around the world, as survey results have shown that some countries are more optimistic towards AI than others.

Under the most aggressive scenario, Goldman Sachs believes that AI automation could impact up to 300 million jobs globally and potentially result in a 7% increase in annual GDP (equal to about $7 trillion). 

Given AI’s massive potential for disruption, it’s more important than ever for investors to stay ahead. That’s why MSCI has created the MSCI ACWI IMI Robotics & AI Index, which benchmarks an investable universe of companies associated with the adoption of AI, robotics, and automation.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/30/2023 – 23:20

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Ivanka Trump Dropped As Co-Defendant In $250 Million Lawsuit

Ivanka Trump Dropped As Co-Defendant In $250 Million Lawsuit

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A New York appeals court has dismissed all claims against former President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump in a civil lawsuit brought by Attorney General Letitia James.

The New York Appellate Division’s First Department ruled unanimously this week to dismiss claims against Ivanka Trump because they were filed too late and she was no longer part of the Trump Organization during the relevant period.

The allegations against defendant Ivanka Trump do not support any claims that accrued after February 6, 2016. Thus, all claims against her should have been dismissed as untimely,” the judges wrote in the decision.

While the judges denied the former president’s motion to dismiss the case, they agreed to limit the time frame of some of the claims against the other defendants, barring some claims before 2016 and others before 2014.

The Trumps have denied any wrongdoing while the former president has accused James of engaging in a politically-motivated prosecution.

‘Witch Hunt,’ Claims Trump

James’ civil lawsuit, filed in September 2022, seeks at least $250 million in damages from Trump, his adult sons Donald Jr. and Eric, the Trump Organization and others. It also seeks to block the Trumps from operating businesses in the state of New York.

The suit accuses Trump of lying about asset values in order to secure better terms for loans and insurance

It alleges that, for about a decade between 2011 and 2021, Trump fraudulently manipulated asset valuations, including his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, his Trump Tower penthouse in Manhattan, and his own net worth.

James wants the Trump Organization to be barred from doing business in New York, from engaging in real estate acquisitions in the state for five years, and for Trump and his children to be barred from serving as high-level executives at any New York company.

Trump, who is the Republican frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election, has called James’ lawsuit a politically-motivated “witch hunt” meant to thwart his bid for the White House.

A spokesperson for the New York Attorney General’s office said in a statement to media outlets following Tuesday’s appellate court ruling that there’s enough evidence for the case to proceed against the other defendants.

“There is a mountain of evidence that shows Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization falsely and fraudulently valued multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for significant economic gain,” a spokeswoman for James said.

“This decision allows us to hold him accountable for that fraud, and we intend to do so,” the spokesperson added.

Christopher Kise, a lawyer for the former president and most of the other defendants, said the ruling was “the first step” toward ending the lawsuit.

“The correct application of the law will now limit appropriately the previously unlimited reach of the attorney general,” he said.

“We remain confident that once all the real facts are known, there will be no doubt President Trump has built an extraordinarily successful business empire.”

Read more here…

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/30/2023 – 23:00

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Florida Issues Statewide Emergency Malaria Alert

Florida Issues Statewide Emergency Malaria Alert

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Florida Department of Health issued a statewide alert after four people in Sarasota contracted malaria in locally transmitted cases, coming a day after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a similar notice for Florida and Texas.

“All individuals have been treated and have recovered. Malaria is transmitted through infected mosquitoes,” Florida’s Department of Health stated in a release issued June 27.

The agency stated that ground and airborne spraying that targets mosquitos will be carried out around Sarasota, which is near Tampa, to mitigate transmission.

“Effective treatment is readily available through hospitals and other health care providers,” the department stated. “Individuals in this area with symptoms of fever, chills, sweats, nausea/vomiting, and headache should seek immediate medical attention.”

It also advised the public to control the breeding of mosquitoes by eliminating any standing water, which is where mosquitoes lay their eggs.

Drain water from garbage cans, house gutters, buckets, pool covers, coolers, toys, flowerpots, or any other containers where sprinkler or rainwater has collected,” the alert said.

Locals should also take precautions while outdoors by using bug spray, avoiding infested areas, and wearing long sleeves and pants if possible.

Malaria is caused by a parasite, Plasmodium vivax, that spreads via mosquito bites, with the largest number of deaths occurring in tropical places such as sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria can be transmitted only by infected mosquitoes, not other people.

Symptoms include chills, fever, tiredness, headache, muscle aches, vomiting, diarrhea, and nausea, and anemia and jaundice may also occur. If left untreated, infected individuals could develop more serious complications and die.

According to the World Malaria Report, released by the U.N. World Health Organization, there were about 247 million cases of malaria in 2021, while the estimated death toll for that year was 619,000. The WHO African Region had the highest share, accounting for about 95 percent of cases and 96 percent of deaths, it said.

Malaria was mostly eliminated in the United States in 1951 after officials sprayed the pesticide DDT and drained swamps in rural areas. DDT was ultimately banned in 1972 in the United States but is still used in African countries.

CDC Issues Notice for 2 States

Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated that the cases in Florida and one in Texas mark the first local spread of malaria in the United States in about 20 years.

Read more here…

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/30/2023 – 22:40

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The Sad State Of American Journalism

The Sad State Of American Journalism

Authored by Patrick Maines via RealClear Wire,

We may never know for sure why FOX News sidelined Tucker Carlson, their most popular anchor, but the reason this matter takes on greater importance is because of the growing realization that the U.S. media beyond FOX no longer practice journalism worth the name.

Of course, it’s been widely known for a while now that propaganda and misinformation are the lifeblood of an outfit like CNN. But the truly horrifying thing is that it’s not just CNN. It’s virtually all of the MSM. Readers of RealClearPolitics, the NY Post, Wall Street Journal, and a handful of other mostly online outlets are aware of the cascading evidence of massive corruption by President Biden and his family, aided and abetted by the FBI and the Justice Department.

But if you get your news from ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, NPR, the Washington Post, or the New York Times, you have quite possibly not been aware of it. The worst aspect of this isn’t just the occasional betrayal of the country and every virtue in journalism. The worst is that these and other legacy media have been acting as a kind of journalistic cabal from 2016 until the present moment.

The list of truthful stories they have ignored or dismissed is as long as one’s arm. It includes the evidence that “Russiagate” was a fraud; that Hunter Biden’s laptop was, in fact, his and was deeply incriminating; that Joe Biden interjected himself in the affairs of the Ukrainian company, Burisma, to protect Hunter’s relationship with and astounding compensation from that company; that using his dad’s name, Hunter coerced millions of dollars out of a Chinese company (Harvest Fund Management) and then shared some of that booty with other Biden family members; and that in all of these things, the media actively sought to protect Joe Biden and to keep the American people in the dark.

One could add to this list the MSM’s lack of curiosity about the origin of COVID and the Wuhan Lab, and the ongoing scandal of the storming of our southern border.

If even one or two of the national news media had seriously delved into these matters – an ABC or CBS, a Times or Post – one could still have some degree of confidence in the independence and integrity of the media. But when none of them have done so, we are confronted with the chilling realization that the legacy media, for reasons only they and their therapists know, have become an existential threat to our country. Simply put, you cannot have a functioning democratic system when the citizens are kept in the dark and misled by our national news organizations.

As things stand now, a large number (a majority, according to a Gallup poll released in October of last year) of Americans have little or no confidence in the media. How could they? If the MSM ignore or misinform their readers and viewers about the most important issues of the day, how can people know how to act, vote, or think? Put another way, if the media don’t report something, did it happen?

Judging by multiple reports to date, events are going to force an answer to that question in the very near future. Thanks to pieces from online news and opinion outlets, and to FOX, there will be no avoiding the claims now being made about Joe and Hunter Biden, and about Merrick Garland and the Justice Department. And if, in the debate and resolution of these matters, everything the media has said and not said is proven wrongheaded and worse, where then the Fourth Estate?

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/30/2023 – 22:20

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/AYI5Xyw Tyler Durden

US Arming Taiwan With Volcano Mine-Laying Systems After Biden Called Xi A Dictator

US Arming Taiwan With Volcano Mine-Laying Systems After Biden Called Xi A Dictator

Taiwan has finalized a new defense deal with the US worth $146 million to acquire Volcano Vehicle-Launched Scatterable Mine Systems, seen as crucial for defense of the self-ruled island in the event of a Chinese military invasion. This comes the same week the State Department announced approval for $440 million more in ammo and logistics deals for Taiwan.

The pending Volcano mine-laying systems deal had first been previewed by the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency in December 2022. It additionally included M977A4 trucks, M87A1 anti-tank mines, as well as M88 and M89 training munitions.

Announcement of the finalized deal is sure to provoke China, at a moment Beijing-Washington relations have hit a recent low point, amid continued fallout over the Chinese ‘spy balloon’ shootdown in February and Biden’s recently calling Xi Jinping a “dictator”. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in follow-up days ago said he backed Biden’s assessment. 

Taiwan’s army first proposed acquisition of the US mine-laying system in 2018, as it needed to capability for rapid deployment of anti-tank mines over a large area, in the scenario of an amphibious landing assault

Among the capabilities of the Volcano system include

  • each vehicle contains 960 anti-tank/anti-personnel mines
  • is capable of laying a minefield 1,100 meters long
  • …and can scatter mines 120 meters wide within four to 12 minutes

A review of the system’s further specs and capabilities from a US defense industry website details the following

Ground Volcano is designed to emplace large minefields in depth and tactical minefields oriented on enemy forces in support of maneuver operations and friendly AT fire. The system consists of the M139 Dispenser used for dispensing pre-packaged mine canisters, the dispensing control unit (DCU) and mounting hardware, and is designed to be mounted on either ground or aerial vehicles using the same components except for the mounting hardware, which varies between fitment.

Volcano is designed to be fitted to and removed from vehicles with a minimum of time and labour. The dispensing system is also designed for ease of use, to operated by personnel with a minimum of training. The ordnance used by the system is based upon a modified GATOR mine. Both live and inert (training) ordnance is available; live canisters are painted green while inert canisters are painted blue.

China has meanwhile continued its warnings aimed at Taipei and the US, on Friday sending 24 Chinese PLA jets and five naval vessels near Taiwan, in what has at this point become a weekly and almost daily exercise.

Last weekend, the Taiwanese Defense Ministry said that eight Chinese warplanes came close to Taiwan’s contiguous zone, which extends 24 nautical miles off the island’s coast–which was a true rarity and is being widely interpreted as a more severe threat, compared to the somewhat routine breaches of the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). 

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/30/2023 – 22:00

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/CzDFg3o Tyler Durden

The Power To Define Is The Power To Rule

The Power To Define Is The Power To Rule

Authored by Pete McGinnis via RealClear Wire,

The federal legislative process is messy, slow, and littered with stumbling blocks – exactly as the Founders intended. Compromise and half-loaves are built into the system. The public can learn what legislation is up for vote, and members can slow down the process as they represent their constituents and work on their policy priorities. The sluggish pace frustrates activist government whether on the left and the right, so the executive branch finds workarounds: agencies promulgate regulations, the president issues executive orders, and so on.

Yet sometimes, in order to get what it wants, the government just changes how things are defined. The simple manipulation of language or the meaning of a word can often remove obstacles and give federal agencies what they couldn’t get through legislation.

For example, the National Academy of Sciences has proposed a new definition of poverty. Ostensibly, it wants to do this because “An accurate measure of poverty is necessary to fully understand how the economy is performing across all segments of the population and to assess the effects of government policies on communities and families.”

That’s reasonable. What’s not reasonable is the new definition’s practical impact: making millions more people eligible for welfare benefits. The U.S. could get a massive backdoor extension of the welfare state – at least $124 billion over 10 years, by one estimate – because NAS arbitrarily wants a new definition.

With Congress closely divided, this kind of spending could be nearly impossible to pass. But if the Census Bureau adopts NAS’s proposed new definition, the administration doesn’t need Congress.

And NAS’s proposal is not arbitrary. Twelve of the 13 authors of the paper proposing the change “have contributed to Democratic causes or worked for Democratic administrations.” So, inside of government, shielded from oversight and public awareness, partisans want to implement a partisan scheme – and they can do it by changing a few works or numbers.

It’s a common tactic. In the first two quarters of 2022, the United States experienced negative economic growth. That had long been one of the definitions of an economy in recession. Not anymore: with midterm elections looming, the Biden administration refused to acknowledge the recession. “When you’re creating almost 400,000 jobs a month, that is not a recession, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.

But job creation has not been a measure of what constitutes a recession – at least, not until it became convenient for the White House. Yellen was adamant. “This is not an economy that’s in a recession. A recession is broad-based weakness in the economy. We’re not seeing that now,” she said.

Truth may be the first casualty of war, but it’s no safer during a pandemic. This became apparent in September 2021, when the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) quietly redefined the words “vaccine” and “vaccination” on its website. As the Miami Herald explained:

Before the change, the definition for “vaccination” read, “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.” Now, the word “immunity” has been switched to “protection.”

The term “vaccine” also got a makeover. The CDC’s definition changed from “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease” to the current “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.”

Why did the CDC make these changes? Because the COVID-19 “vaccines” weren’t vaccines at all. Whatever their benefits, the shots developed and distributed in response to the pandemic did not “stimulate a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease.” Yet they were hyped as vaccines. When it became apparent that the shots weren’t doing the job of vaccines, the government decided to change the definition of what a vaccine is.

A CDC spokesperson’s attempt to explain it was singularly ineffectual: “Slight changes in wording over time … haven’t impacted the overall definition.” Except in this case. As the Herald explained, the spokesperson then went after a strawman:

The previous definitions could have been “interpreted to mean that vaccines were 100% effective, which has never been the case for any vaccine, so the current definition is more transparent, and also describes the ways in which vaccines can be administered,” the spokesperson said.

Nobody ever thought that vaccines were 100 percent effective, and even if they did, the responsible course would have been to call the COVID-19 drugs what they were and explain the difference to the public. Instead, government called them vaccines at a time when the public was desperate for the sort of reassurance the word “vaccine” had always carried.

In each of these cases, smart government insiders are using semantic sleight of hand to achieve their objectives or to justify them after the fact. “Control the language, control the masses” is a cliché, but only truths become clichés. Representative democracy is supposed to guarantee the people a voice in governance and ensure transparency in government’s workings. Unelected bureaucrats altering definitions to suit their needs betrays both goals.

Pete McGinnis is director of communications at the Functional Government Initiative.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/30/2023 – 21:40

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