Month: August 2023

Authored by J.M. Phelps via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Service members who received general discharges when separated from the military for their refusal to obey the vaccine mandate say their transition to civilian life has been hampered because they were not given honorable discharges.

The majority of service members kicked out over their refusal to get vaccinated received general discharges. With a general discharge, service members lose all educational benefits, reemployment rights, and civil service retirement credit.

Hayden Robichaux, donor relations coordinator for the Mighty Oaks Foundation, is one such service member. He had to build a career in the Marine Corps. He spent his initial two years serving as the military equivalent of a firefighter. But life as a Marine was interrupted by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s announcement of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate in August 2021, he told The Epoch Times.

Robichaux refused the vaccine and sought religious exemption.

“But it seemed like everybody who sought religious exemption was denied,” he said. Months later, a leaked June 2021 memo by the Pentagon watchdog revealed the department may have been violating standards in its process of denying religious exemption requests for the COVID-19 vaccine.

In addition to his religious conviction against the vaccine, he took objection to the fact that the only vaccines offered to service members at the time were labeled as authorized for emergency use, rather than having full FDA approval. This argument stems from the wording of the Pentagon’s vaccine mandate, which covers “COVID-19 vaccines that receive full licensure from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in accordance with FDA-approved labeling and guidance.” Robichaux and others believe that this means the mandate did not apply to any vaccines issued under emergency use authorization (EUA), such as the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

They argue that the military mainly offered service members EUA Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, rather than the FDA-approved Cominarty vaccine, and thus could not compel personnel to take them. They also argued that a Pentagon policy that says the Cominarty and EUA Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are interchangeable was illegal.

“With each denial,” Robichaux said, “I kept putting in appeals and each was denied; they were brushed off.” As he continued to refuse the vaccine, he said his leadership became “pissed.” In October 2021, he was given 10 days to get the jab. He soon faced the threat of Article 15, a form of nonjudicial punishment that can be imposed by a commander, that would “put a stain” on his career.

“Because of this,” he said, “I almost changed my mind, telling them that I was going to get it.” Members of his immediate family have collectively served in the military for over 80 years since the Vietnam War. “And I wanted to continue the legacy that we have under our name,” he said.

In the end, Robichaux maintained his religious objection to the vaccine and did not take it. Not only did he receive an Article 15, but he was also denied a promotion to corporal. While he admits he may have disobeyed the command to take the vaccine, he said, “I don’t believe it was a lawful command, as I should have never been forced to take an EUA product.”

Robichaux was discharged from the Marine Corps in February 2022. “My commanding officer recommended me for an honorable discharge, but once it went up the chain of command, it came back as a general discharge,” he said. His discharge was characterized as being connected to the commission of a serious offense. Domestic battery, murder, rape, terrorism, and drug use are considered typical commissions of a serious offense.

Since leaving the Marine Corps, he said, “I’ve only met one person that received an honorable discharge.” This, he said, is concerning when one considers the thousands of service members who were separated from the military. One day, Robichaux would like to have his discharge upgraded.

More of the Same

The Epoch Times also spoke to Private First Class Derrick Wynne, who joined the Army in July 2020. Nearly two years later, he was discharged from service for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine once mandated by Defense Secretary Austin.

Wynne described himself as a “hard refusal,” as he didn’t apply for an exemption. He refused because “they were offering vaccines issued under emergency use authorization,” which he considered as legally distinct from the fully FDA-approved vaccines service members were mandated to take.

In November 2021, for refusing to get the jab, he received a General Officer Memorandum of Reprimand, an administrative letter of reprimand placed on his service record. In addition, he was also told by several people in leadership and many of his peers that “they were going to make my life hell for refusing the vaccine.”

At this time, Wynne was informed that he would be discharged for refusing to take the vaccine.

“When they finally kicked me out on June 28, 2022, it began as a long, drawn-out process, but when it finally happened, I was only given a two-week notice,” Wynne said. “Many of the programs put in place to aid me in a healthy, successful transition to civilian life were pushed to the side.”

“It was a general discharge, labeled under the violation of a serious offense,” Wynne said. “To anyone who doesn’t know the whole story,” he said, “I sound like I was the one who knowingly broke the law.” But he argued that it was the military that was offering an illegal vaccine by only providing vaccines issued under EUA.

“After skimming through my chapter (administrative separation) packet four or five times before speaking with Trial Defense Services, I noticed that there was no option for an honorable discharge.” When he mentioned this to his legal counsel, he also “made a note in the packet for brigade legal to, at least, add the option for an honorable discharge.”

Brigade legal told him that once his commanding officer gave his recommendation, they would add the option for an honorable discharge before sending it up to the next level of decision. To his surprise, he said, “After my Commander gave his recommendation for an honorable discharge, once it went up the chain of command, there was no option for it.”

When he realized there was no chance for an honorable discharge, Wynne said he was not surprised due to what he described as the department’s recent history of “shady coercion tactics.” He said that “at the time, the military was doing everything they could to paint us [vaccine refuses] as criminals who were knowingly disobeying ‘lawful’ orders, without even taking the time to hear out our legitimate grievances.” For Wynne, “There was a blatant heavy hand on the scale, coming from the top down.”

The Epoch Times spoke to other service members who agree with Wynne. Some of them are being processed out of the military, today, for disobeying a “lawful” order mandated nearly two years ago. Most of them are receiving general discharges. The vaccine mandate was officially rescinded in January, but this did not affect the thousands of service members who had already been discharged over the vaccine.

Demand for Congressional Action

Once he was forced to leave the Army, Wynne’s reason for separation was labeled, like Robichaux, as a “misconduct (serious offense),” making subsequent job interviews more difficult, he said.

“The lack of an honorable characterization ripples outwards and is affecting thousands of us [service members] as a whole—not just from a bureaucratic perspective, but from a moral, principled aspect as well,” he said.

“I lost the education benefits I earned through my service, which would come in handy during my new career search,” he said. Within two months of being discharged, Wynne appealed the Army’s decision to the Army Discharge Review Board.

“Nearly nine months have gone by, and I’ve heard nothing,” he said. “I know Congress has the power to put in an inquiry and help soldiers like myself.”

Over the course of the last several months, wanting to address the issue of FDA-approved vaccines versus those made available through Emergency Use Authorization, Wynne has reached out to multiple congressmen to no avail.

“I was passed around from one elected official to another for months, and no one wanted to do anything to get answers to my questions,” Wynne said. “Every time a politician refuses to help me,” he said, “I feel like I’m being told: you’re a piece of trash; you should have gotten the vaccine.”

Proposed Legislation

In April 2022, Wynne was put in contact with Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Tex.) office. Although he remains frustrated about the lack of action in holding the Department of Defense (DOD) to account for the vaccine mandate, Wynne became aware of the Senator’s effort to ensure that those discharged under a General discharge could be designated as Honorably discharged through the AMERICANS Act.

Sen. Cruz and 18 original cosponsors introduced the Allowing Military Exemptions, Recognizing Individual Concerns About New Shots (AMERICANS) Act of 2023 (S.29) in January. The bill would require the department to offer reinstatement to service members who were separated for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.

For Wynne, Robichaux, and the multitude of other service members like them, it also states “any administrative discharge of a member on the sole basis of a failure to receive a COVID-19 vaccine must be categorized as an honorable discharge, and DOD is prohibited from taking any adverse action against such a member for that reason.”

A spokesperson for Cruz told The Epoch Times the senator is fighting for passage of his AMERICANS Act [to] bring justice to servicemembers terminated or otherwise punished because of their COVID-19 vaccine status.”

“He is also fighting for them legislatively, authoring the statutory language to ban the Department of Defense’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which became law in December 2022,” the spokesperson said.

The senator “has taken the lead in calling out the Biden administration for COVID-19 overreach and fighting to protect Texas servicemembers from vaccine mandates,” the spokesperson added.

Marine Corps and Department of the Army officials did not return requests for comment from The Epoch Times.

Corporate America is panicking this earnings season as the prospect of more than 40 million Americans carrying student debt will have to start making payments in October after a three-year-long payment forbearance that had artificially boosted disposable incomes by tens of billions of dollars.  

Using the ‘Document Search’ function on Bloomberg, the phrase “student loan” in all second-quarter earnings calls soared to a record high of 151 mentions. 

During earnings calls, companies in the financials, consumer discretionary, and consumer staples sectors had the most mentions. Consequently, these sectors are poised to face the greatest exposure when consumer spending decreases.

In June, Barclays economist Adirenne Yih wrote in a note to clients (available to pro subscribers in the usual place), explaining the restart of student loan payments would be a $15.8 billion monthly headwind — or a $190 billion per year — to the US economy as the average student debt holder sees an incremental monthly payment of — $390 beginning this fall.

With the return of these payments for 40 million Americans, the threat of consumer spending sliding is high. We’ve asked: Student Loan Repayments – Will It Start The Recession?

… and comes as the latest revolving credit (i.e., credit card debt) data shows consumers are nearing a breaking point as the spending binge wanes with interest rates at 22-year highs. 

Analytics company Earnest Insights wrote in a note that Frontier Airlines, Pleoton, and Old Navy will be some of the hardest-hit companies come October. 

Student loan payers who suspended payments during Covid will have to resume those payments come October. That cohort of shoppers made up more than 10% of spending at several national brands in 2022 (above the dotted line). Their spending also outperformed non-borrowers at several brands (left of the solid line), suggesting that their lack of payments may have buoyed their spending in recent years. That leaves dozens of national brands that benefited meaningfully from the pause in student loans, and that may be more exposed to that shopper base as payments resume.

Within Travel, Frontier Airlines was the most sensitive to the Covid-Suspended cohort in 2022, with 11% share and 2 points of outspending from the cohort. In contrast, Alaska Airlines and United Airlines both had 7% share and 10 points of under-spending. Airbnb had a high 11% share from the cohort but with 4 points of underspending.

Within the Home sector, Peloton was most sensitive, with 13% share and 11 points of outspending from the Covid-Suspended cohort; Sherwin Williams had 6% share and 10 points of under-spending. IKEA, Ashley, HomeGoods, Wayfair, and Lowe’s all had 10%+ share from the cohort but the cohort also underspent Non-Borrowers by ~5 points. 

Most Apparel and Department Stores had over 10% share from the Covid-Suspended cohort: Old Navy had the highest share at 14%; Nordstrom Full Price had the lowest share at 8%. Old Navy and Burlington each had 3 points of outspending from the cohort, while most others saw minimal to underspending. 

Earnest shows companies in the top left quadrant are most exposed to the student loan-paying cohort.

Company execs have already warned investors what’s about the incoming spending cliff:

Target’s CFO Michael Fiddelke

“The upcoming resumption of student loan repayments will put additional pressure on the already strained budgets of tens of millions of households … We remain cautious in our planning.”

Levi’s CEO Chip Bergh

“It’s not going to help us … The consumer is already under pressure and this is just going to ratchet that up even further.”

Macy’s CFO Adrian Mitchell

“The expiration of student loan forgiveness beginning in October, higher interest rate levels, and lower new job creation are all new pressures on the consumer.” 

A looming consumer spending cliff has corporate America in a panic. This seems deflationary.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

The State Department on Wednesday approved a potential $500 million arms sale to Taiwan for infrared search and track systems for the island’s F-16 fighter jets.

The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency said the sale is to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, Taiwan’s de facto embassy in the US, as Washington and Taipei don’t have formal diplomatic relations. The principal contractor for the deal is Lockheed Martin.

The State Department’s approval begins a period where Congress could block the potential deal, but there is widespread bipartisan support for arming Taiwan and virtually no opposition.

The approval came almost a month after the Biden administration provided Taiwan with $345 million in military aid using the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which allows the US to send weapons straight from Pentagon stockpiles, the primary way the US has been arming Ukraine.

Using the PDA to arm Taiwan is unprecedented as the US has sold weapons to Taiwan since Washington severed diplomatic relations with Taipei in 1979 but has never financed the purchases or provided arms free of charge. China issued several stern rebukes to the new form of US support for Taiwan.

The deal approved on Tuesday will also draw a rebuke from Beijing as China opposes all US arms sales to Taiwan. In 1982, the US and China issued a third joint communiqué on their freshly normalized ties regarding US arms sales to Taiwan.

The communiqué said that the US government intended “gradually to reduce its sale of arms to Taiwan, leading, over a period of time, to a final resolution.” But US officials at the time made clear they were leaving the commitment open to their own interpretation.

On the same day the communiqué was issued, President Reagan said in an internal memo that “the US willingness to reduce its arms sales to Taiwan is conditioned absolutely upon the continued commitment of China to the peaceful solution of the Taiwan-PRC [People’s Republic of China] differences. It should be clearly understood that the linkage between these two matters is a permanent imperative of US foreign policy.”

In recent years, China has increased military pressure on Taiwan, but the activity has primarily been a response to the US increasing its diplomatic and military support for Taiwan, which Beijing views as a violation of the conditions of the US-China normalization.

When mainstream economists and politicians cite “improvements” to the inflation problem in the US in recent months, what they are commonly referencing are changes to the Consumer Price Index (CPI).  However, the CPI is not a measure of total inflation, rather, it is a median snapshot of prices at a particular point and time.  True inflation is cumulative – A 10% increase one year and a 5% increase the next year is not a win, it means that you are now paying 15% more on average for everything you buy in the span of only two years.   

When CPI falls this does not mean that prices on goods and services are going down, it only indicates that prices are rising slower than they were the month or the year before.

Another misconception about CPI is that it measures the inflation rate accurately for regular consumers on common purchases.  In reality, the CPI represents mean average price rate increase for a vast basket of goods; over 94,000 items and services with over 200 separate categories.  Most of these items and services you will never use or rarely purchase in the span of a year.  In other words, inflation declines in uncommon goods can dilute the numbers, making it seem like inflation is dropping while prices on daily necessities continue to spike.  

The CPI is weighted according to consumer spending patterns, which is where the calculations can be “adjusted” to a certain extent in an arbitrary manner.  Then there is outright government manipulation through various means.  As we witnessed recently with the Biden Administration’s claims that “Bidenomics” has defeated the inflation threat, what these reports don’t mention is that Biden has been dumping US strategic oil reserves on the market for the past year.  And since energy prices effect the inflation of so many other categories, Biden has artificially manipulated the CPI down using one key resource.  

Now that his ability to dump oil reserves has ended, CPI will rise once again along with energy prices.

The point is, it’s impossible to get a sense of the real damage from inflation without looking at the cumulative inflation in necessities (the goods and services that people are required to purchase on a regular basis to live day to day).  If we throw out the CPI distraction and look at common necessities since 2020, the economic picture is far more bleak.  

Overall food prices have soared by 25%-30% in only three years (again, this means that you are now paying 30% more this year for food than you were paying at the beginning of 2020). Chicken is up from $3 per pound to $4 per pound.  Beef is up from $3.50 to $6 per pound.  Corn is up from $3.50 per pound to $4.70 per pound.  Wheat is up from $5 per pound to $7 per pound.  In 2019 the average American household was spending $8100 on food annually; with a 30% increase, in 2023 Americans will be spending at least $10,500 per household.          

By the end of 2019, the average rental price of a single family home was around $1450 per month.  This year the price is around $2000 per month.  At the beginning of 2020, the median cost of a home was $320,000; by 2023 the price skyrocketed to an average of $416,000.  

For gasoline, the price in early 2020 was around $2.50 per gallon.  The price has fluctuated dramatically due to Biden’s manipulation of the market using strategic reserves, but still remains high today at $3.80 per gallon.  

The cost of electricity has risen swiftly, holding steady around .13 cents per kilowatt hour for a decade, then spiking to at least .17 cents per kilowatt hour by 2023.

Remember, most of these costs are static and are difficult to reduce through household spending cuts.  These are not items that are easily removed from a monthly budget and the expenditures add up to considerable pressure on consumer accounts.  This is probably why around 74% of the public in polls say that the economy is getting worse, not better.  It’s because government statistics are not highlighting the true inflationary crisis.

When we look at the cumulative climb of prices in necessities since before the inflation crisis officially began, the truth is that Americans now have to increase their wages by at least 25%-30% on average to maintain the same standard of living they had three years ago.  This is a disaster not seen since the stagflationary event of the 1970s and early 1980s.  If you have a strange feeling like your bank account is being rapidly drained in recent months, that’s because it is.    

Authroed by Paul Ingrassia via Paul Ingrassia’s Substack (subscribe here…)

The following article is an excerpt from a series offering a comprehensive legal analysis discussing the second Jack Smith indictment against President Donald Trump.

Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution reads “[t]he executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Therefore, President Donald Trump had executive power vested in him through his presidential office. From that power flows certain privileges and indeed executive immunities. Among these privileges are those expressly delineated in the Constitution itself. The impeachment process, for example, as stated in Article II, Sec. 4, requires that for all “high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” the President “shall be removed from Office.” 

In other words, the Constitution lays out a process by which presidents of the United States are to be prosecuted—through impeachment. The reason impeachment, rather than traditional prosecution (and attendant punishments like incarceration), applies to the president is because of the uniqueness of the office itself. The president exposes himself to outsized publicity, controversy, and risk as a result of his office. Therefore, the punitive measures that uniquely attach to the executive officeholder are consonant with the duties and powers of the office itself. In addition, there is a special constitutional prerogative, one might say, in safeguarding the integrity of the presidential office, no matter the character and fitness of its occupant. Specifically, that would mean not imprisoning the officeholder or former occupants of the office based on alleged criminality done within the officeholder’s official capacities as president. It is for this reason that the Department of Justice has confirmed, “to wound [the President] by a criminal proceeding is to hamstring the operation of the whole governmental apparatus, both in foreign and domestic affairs.” (Memorandum from Robert G. Dixon, Jr., Asst. Att’y Gen., O.L.C., Re: Amenability of the President, Vice President, and Other Civil Officers to Federal Criminal Prosecution While in Office 30 [Sept. 24, 1973]). How far-reaching the scope of those capacities cover while in office should give way to a liberal construction due to the catastrophic impact such charges would necessarily have on the political fabric of the country.

In any event, and for the purposes of what is relevant in Jack Smith’s two indictments, the factual grounds on which President Trump allegedly committed crime(s) within his official duties as president have already been twice considered by the House of Representatives, for which the President—in conformance with Article II, Sec. 4—was acquitted both times by the Senate. Because the Senate voted not to convict President Trump of his alleged crimes, any and every remedial measure afforded by the constitutional process has already been exhausted. Therefore, to continue to bring charges against the President for the asserted crimes on which he has already been prosecuted is by definition an abuse of the judicial power and an expressed violation of the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment: “…nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb…” 

Notably, the Impeachment Judgment Clause of the Constitution, Art. I Sec. 3, reads as follows: “a person convicted upon an Impeachment, shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.” A plain reading of the clause allows for the subsequent indictment after a person is convicted and convicted only. This is in agreement with the longstanding judicial canon of construction, expressio unius est exclusio alterius, “the expression of one is the exclusion of others,” which provides that because the text excludes the term “acquittal” from the relevant clause, the framers’ intent was that only convicted officeholders would be open to additional prosecution, and not officeholders that were already acquitted based on constitutional procedure for their alleged crimes, therefore exhausting the constitutional remedy in toto. United States v. Wells Fargo Bank, 485 U.S. 351, 357 (1988). 

This construction is likewise supported by common sense: any officeholder who is convicted while in office, based on constitutional procedure, is necessarily removed from office – it is inconceivable that any officeholder would remain in office after being convicted of a crime. But the reason a post-conviction prosecution, as opposed to an acquittal, runs a lesser risk of being in violation of double jeopardy, and is therefore expressly licensed by Article I, Sec. 3, is because, upon removal from office, there is a natural continuity in the prosecutorial function – indeed, additional time may be required to prosecute the case to the fullest extent of the law. The conviction, pursuant to constitutional procedure, is just the first step of the criminal trial. In contrast, if an officeholder were acquitted for an alleged crime and served the remainder of his or her term in office, it would not make sense to resume a criminal trial based largely on the same factual grounds on which the acquittal was based, once the acquitted officeholder left his or her post – in particular, after some time elapsed in which the officeholder was acquitted, served out the duration of his or her term, and then became a private citizen – only then to resume the criminal trial for which that officeholder had been acquitted. The latter scenario poses an obvious risk to double jeopardy (and flies in the face of common sense). 

While the question is still occasionally debated, there is a great deal of support for the latter view in several important early legal commentaries and court decisions. For example, St. George Tucker, an editor of Blackstone’s Commentaries, raises the strong possibility that because “a conviction upon an impeachment is no bar to a prosecution upon an indictment, so perhaps, an acquittal may not be a bar.” (1 St. George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries 337 & n* [Philadelphia, William Y Burch et al. 1803, reprint 1996]). Even stronger authority for this view is found in Justice Story’s 1833 Commentaries on the Constitution, wherein Justice Story expresses his conviction in the above stated construction of double jeopardy: “In case of an acquittal,” he wrote, “there cannot be another trial of the party for the same offence in the common tribunals of justice.” (2 Story’s Commentaries). This point of view agrees with other state charters that predate the federal Constitution, but nevertheless provided interpretative guidance, such as the 1784 New Hampshire Constitution, which contained the first bill of rights to explicitly adopt a double jeopardy clause. Within the New Hampshire constitution’s double jeopardy clause, acquittal – which extended to acquittal by the Senate – is accounted for: “No subject shall be liable to be tried, after an acquittal, for the same crime or offence.” Art. I, Sec. XCI, 4 F. THORPE, THE FEDERAL AND STATE CONSTITUTION, reprinted in H.R. Doc. No. 357, 59th Congress, 2d Sess. 2455 (1909). 

More recently, an OLC memo from 2000 acknowledges that an acquittal by constitutional impeachment exhausts every single legal remedy for redressability, and therefore, to subsequently bring charges against that officeholder runs in flagrant violation of double jeopardy. On this theory, the OLC memo conceded: “Even if one took the view that the Impeachment Judgment Clause’s reference to ‘the party convicted’ implied that acquitted parties could not be criminally prosecuted, that implication would naturally extend only to individuals who had been impeached by the House and acquitted by the Senate.” (Whether a Former President May Be Indicted and Tried for the Same Offense for Which He Was Impeached by the House and Acquitted by the Senate, 24 Op. O.L.C. 110, 112 n.2 [2000]).

The Supreme Court has affirmed “the Double Jeopardy Clause prohibits merely punishing twice, or attempting a second time to punish criminally, for the same offense.” Helvering v. Mitchell, 303 U.S. 391, 399 (1938). Because the President has already been prosecuted—twice—for the asserted crimes underlying both of Jack Smith’s indictments, the legal remedy has already been applied: there is simply no other form of legal redress that is tolerable under the Constitution. 

In conclusion, Jack Smith’s claims are ill founded; to the extent they have any merit at all, they have already been prosecuted to the fullest extent the Constitution allows, and on each count, President Trump has already been acquitted of any and all criminal wrongdoing. 

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A slightly modified version of this piece was originally published in The American Mind, and can be found here.

Paul Ingrassia is a Law Clerk at The McBride Law Firm, PLLC. He graduated from Cornell Law School in 2022 and is on the Board of Advisors of the New York Young Republican Club. He was also a two-time Claremont Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @PaulIngrassia, Substack, Truth Social, and Rumble.

Australian investigative reporters have unearthed damning indications that Facebook’s fact-checking operation has been “hijacked’ by leftist activists.

The investigation by Sky News centers on fact-checking of reporting on a contentious referendum campaign that’s underway in Australia. The 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum — which Australians simply refer to as “the Voice” — calls for creating an entity called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice that would “make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government … on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.” 

Facebook is manipulating the public almost everywhere on Earth.

That is why they won’t open source their algorithm. https://t.co/iO0PUO1joF

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 23, 2023

When Sky looked under the hood of Facebook’s fact-checking, it found conflicts of interest, fact-checking policy violations, an entity operating with expired fact-checking credentials, and facts that seemingly belie previous assurances by Facebook/Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg. 

Facebook/Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg as long assured that Facebook’s fact-checking is orchestrated by a purportedly independent organization called the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN), which ensures an arms-length relationship between Meta and its fact-checkers. 

Sky, however, has discovered that an Australian university that’s among those fact-checkers, has a “secret commercial contract” with an Irish Meta subsidiary worth upwards of $740,000 a year, depending on how many fact-checks it churns out. That school, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), has frequently blocked and suppressed anti-Voice journalism on Facebook.

It gets worse. Though RMIT was previously certified in its fact-checking role by IFCN, that credential expired in December. The contract between RMIT and Meta authorizes Meta to void the deal if the school loses its certification, but Meta has allowed RMIT to keep on censoring content regardless. 

Our Facebook page is worthless now. It’s been throttled to death because of fact checks “paid for by grants from Facebook.” https://t.co/cWL2Szljkg

— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) August 23, 2023

That state of affairs isn’t unique to Australian fact-checking: “[RMIT] is just one of 55 fact checking operations around the world which remain signatories of the IFCN despite having expired credentials,” reports Sky.  

RMIT’s fact-checks overwhelmingly target anti-Voice content. Between May 3 and June 23, every one of RMIT’s fact-checks about the Voice scrutinized content that bolstered the case for voting ‘no’ on the measure. 

Not surprisingly, RMIT’s “Fact Lab” is led by a former Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reporter that Sky describes as being “unashamedly partisan.”  The man, Russel Skelton “has published dozens of tweets criticising conservative viewpoints and the journalists he has been tasked with fact checking.”

Skelton has himself explicitly advocated for a “yes” vote on the Voice, and yet he is empowered to police content from opposing perspectives. That’s a violation of IFCN’s Code of Principles: 

“Save for the issues of accuracy and transparency, the applicant’s staff do not get involved in advocacy or publicise their views on policy issues the organization might fact check in such a way as might lead a reasonable member of the public to see the organization’s work as biased,”

One of RMIT’s fact-checkers, Renee Davidson, is also publicly pro-Voice, and reposted a tweet accusing anti-Voice politician Peter Dutton of engaging in “fear-mongering through racism.” 

Davidson violated another IFCN principle, by labelling as “false” a former member of parliament’s speculative opinion about the future implications of a ‘yes’ vote on the Voice. In a TV appearance, that former MP, Nicolle Flint, suggested that implementation of the Voice’s provisions could evolve into indigenous Australians operating in an independent political system. IFCN declares that fact-checkers in its system “do not fact check statements that speculate about future events (because no one can fact check the future!).”  Similarly, fact-checkers are supposedly barred from assessing opinions. 

“Australians have a right to debate issues around the Voice without feeling coerced – especially by large and well-funded bodies seeking to control the national debate,” says Sky News Australia‘s Jack Houghton. “This referendum is for Australians to decide, not a handful of trumped-up academic elites doing everything in their power to influence the vote.”

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

Despite years of Biden family and media disinformation, we are finally learning that Joe Biden really did fire Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin for looking into state corruption involving the oil company Burisma and Hunter Biden—and ultimately Joe Biden himself.

As Vice President, Biden, in his own words, bragged that he had threatened to cancel the deliverance of American foreign aid to Ukraine unless Shokin was dismissed.

So what is the Congress to do now—un-impeach and exonerate an innocent impeached Donald Trump, and instead impeach a guilty Biden for essentially the same allegations?

After all, the Left redefined the impeachment bar in 2019 as leveraging foreign aid to Ukraine to benefit one’s political career.

And that is exactly what Joe Biden did to ensure his son could continue to raise millions for the Biden family with foreign governments, while being shielded from political consequences.

An impeached Trump also was accused of using the power of government to go after his likely 2020 presidential rival by suggesting that Joe Biden and his family were corrupt, and should be investigated by Ukrainian officials for fraud and bribery.

Despite Joe Biden’s denials, Trump was right: there was plenty of evidence to link Ukrainian unwarranted payoffs going into Biden family coffers.

So Trump in 2019 had good reasons to ensure that none of the Bidens were still burrowed deeply into the Ukrainian payoff machine.

In contrast, Joe Biden had far less grounds to unleash the full powers of government against his probable 2024 rival ex-president Trump.

Special Prosecutor Jack Smith is not charging Trump with bribery of the Biden sort. He does not allege that Trump gave special foreign policy preferences for those foreigners who paid his family for such services.

Instead, Smith argues that Trump unlawfully took out classified presidential papers—although Joe Biden did nearly the same.

Biden kept quiet about his vast removal of classified documents for over a decade. Not until Trump was being investigated did Biden suddenly notify the government of his illegal removals.

In contrast, a combative and boisterous Trump fought openly and constantly with federal archivists over which of his papers at his Mar-a-Lago estate were truly classified.

Prosecutorial leaks floated all sorts of unproven nefarious agendas that had prompted Trump’s disputes over his presidential papers.

But no one to this day has seriously asked why senator and then Vice President Biden secretly and weirdly removed and kept such sensitive material for years.

Recent reports allege that Hunter Biden may have been treated with kid gloves by prosecutors, partly because Hunter’s lawyers had threatened otherwise to call Joe Biden to the stand as a favorable witness.

Government prosecutors under pressure from the White House apparently balked at  the nightmare of a befuddled president of the United States testifying under oath about the supposed innocence of the very guilty Hunter Biden.

In truth, the former drug addict Hunter has played lots of such strange games with his own family.

In his laptop communications, Hunter whined that no one in the family appreciated his hard work at family grifting.

He sounded petulant that his father forced him to fork over half his income to the Joe and Jill Biden household.

At time of universal scrutiny of Hunter, the last thing any sane first son might do would be to hawk his own childish paintings at exorbitant prices to those wishing to buy influence with his father the president.

In effect, Hunter was almost daring the White House to stop his blatant grifting artistry.

Instead, the Bidens moved Hunter into the White House, apparently to keep him under closer watch.

Hunter is still out of control. He could take the family down with him unless President Biden continues to shield him from prosecution.

Ironically, the double standard used by Biden and the media to hound Trump has only raised new questions of fairness.

Why had the Biden family—with its far greater legal exposure—never faced such serial indictments?

A Republican House of Representatives had ended prior Democratic protection given the Bidens.

And the Ukraine war has again turned attention to the Biden-Burisma connection and Hunter’s shaking down of Ukrainian officials.

Finally, Joe Biden can no longer work a full day. He mutters. He stumbles. He serially lies.

He hijacks solemn occasions commemorating national tragedies by trying to one up the grieving with his own self-absorbed stories—most of them irrelevant and narcissistic half-truths.

If a cognitively and criminally challenged Biden cannot finish his term, we will finally learn the full story of 15 years of Biden family corruption.

The Bidens will lose the only impediment—Joe Biden’s political machinations—left in the way of an honest, full-blown felony investigation into what is likely the most corrupt presidential family in American history.

It was the definition of selling the news (and pre-positioning for another Powell punch below the market belt).

After what many said was the biggest blowout in corporate earnings history, when Nvidia not only smashed estimates but projected Q3 results that were above the highest whisper number, the stock initially soared in the premarket, only to slump and completely fill the earnings gap, before closing up 0.1% (after trading as much as 10% higher overnight), and even dipping red after the close.

The broader market tracked NVDA’s slump tick for tick, and after an early attempt to push to fresh highs, a burst of selling quickly dragged spoos to session lows…

… with virtually all sectors (except banks) dragged kicking and screaming into the red.

Which is hardly a surprise in a market when just a handful of stocks are again leading the entire market: yes, the breadth on the Nasdaq is the lowest it has ever been.

Option traders did their best to keep the market from sinking, with delta sinking far more slowly than overall risk, at both the shorter-term, 0DTE time horizon…

… and across longer-dated options…

… but in the end, the selling just proved to powerful for a delta reversal or an attempted gamma squeeze.

While NVDA did its best to keep stocks in the green, other names did not, with woke Disney extending its recent rout, and tumbling to the lowest closing price since 2014 (March 18, 2020 saw a lower intraday print but even the covid low closes were higher than today).

Meanwhile, another woke icon (which pretends it doesn’t use child labor), Nike, suffered its 11th consecutive day of declines, extending the longest stretch without a green close on record.

And in a testament to US consumer weakness, not even the retail outlet for increasingly more Americans who keep drowning under Bidenomics, could hold its own and Dollar Tree plunged 13% to close at the lowest level since Dec 2021.

In addition to the micro considerations, we also had a continuation of systematic factors, and as futures tumbled below the key support level of 4,400 and triggered renewed systematic/CTA/vol-control selling as confirmed by the massive Market on Close sell imbalance to the tune of $3.5 billion, macro was also in the picture, with the Citi eco surprise index posting a modest rebound after suffering the biggest set of “bad news” since April, and rising modestly on today’s stronger than expected Initial Claims and Durables reports…

… which in turn triggered a rebound in yields after their sharp drop on Wednesday…

… and sent the 2Y yield back over 5% again.

And speaking of yoyo-ing rates, tomorrow’s Jackson Hole meeting (previewed extensively here) was certainly on investors’ minds, especially since we saw some easing in recent days, although within a range that hasn’t really budged much in the past years, despite Powell’s explicit warning one year ago that pain is coming…

… which so far it has failed to make an appearance.

Angst over what the Fed chair will say has also sent the dollar sharply higher, reversing all of yesterday’s big drop, and continuing the range trade seen in the past week.

Despite the bounce in the dollar, oil managed to eek out tiny gains, and remains in the middle of the past month’s range; where it goes next will depend on what, if any, stimulus China will release next.

Finally, while the BRICs did not reveal a gold-backed currency despite some speculation ahead of the meeting (which has added 6 new countries to the famous acronym), gold held yesterday’s gain, with silver going even better.

So with that in mind ahead of Powell’s speech tomorrow, we say: “Go Jerome” and let’s hope you get it right this time.

Authroed by Matt Taibbi via Racket News,

Look on the WHO webpage and you’ll see a count of over 769 million confirmed cases of Covid-19, above 6,955,141 (as of this writing) cumulative deaths.

This is still a serious mortality rate, but as Matt Orfalea’s damning new video above shows, far short of what the same organization estimated at pandemic’s start.

We were told experts estimated a 3.4% death rate, which scared the pants off a lot of people, leading to fears of interaction with workers delivering food and all sorts of other behaviors.

I’m going to defer to Matt’s written research on this piece as well this week at the Orf Report (www.censorednews.substack.com), but a few quick notes on the above-described phenomenon:

It’s clear looking back now that “misinformation” during this period became synonymous with acts like “contradicting health officials,” or offering “information discarding what the health officials are saying,” or “using a hunch instead of listening to the global authority on public health,” as Anderson Cooper put it. My man Willie Geist of Morning Joe, whom I always liked, is seen here saying, “It’s not a time for Donald Trump to be calling in to cable shows.”

This was a key advance in the evolution of “misinformation.” Once Covid-19 arrived, defying health experts by having one’s own opinions or hypotheses was deemed a species of public deception, not just on the part of Donald Trump but among figures like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, also shown above. Like “AntiVax Barbie,” Jimmy Kimmel’s caricature of an antisocial menace who wore a cutoff tee reading “I CALL MY OWN SHOTS,” any person failing to accept what authorities said was quickly termed a “danger” by figures ranging from Kathleen Sibelius to Ben Rhodes to Brian Stelter.

This created a Catch-22 for people of all political persuasions. If disagreeing with “global health authorities” could be “dangerous,” even credentialed experts like Bhattacharya risked de-amplification or removal for advancing conflicting policy ideas that implied a different interpretation of facts. This phenomenon began with a pair of doctors in Bakersfield who were removed from YouTube for posting content that “disputes the efficacy of local health authority recommended guidance” on social distancing, among other things by suggesting death rates were not that high (“Millions of cases, small amounts of deaths”).

Episodes like this led to confusion over whether disagreeing on policy prescriptions like social distancing and lockdowns constituted “dangerous” speech, and this was observed in the often hyper-cautious coverage of New York Times reporters like David Leonhardt and even Apoora Mandavilli, who drew fire from readers and colleagues alike for reporting true numbers about the low impact of the disease on school-age kids, or relaying quotes with questions about booster efficacy. I heard from reporters during this time who didn’t know if they’d be cited for encouraging an end to lockdowns even if they just included a selectively less alarming facts about Covid-19.

As Orf shows above via his inimitable Newspeak-smashing style, the early apocalyptic predictions that so freaked out the population were eventually walked back by the same authorities. However, none of these furious opponents of questioning “experts” went back and corrected their records. This was once an expected convention even on TV media, where episodes like Dan Rather’s “At the time, CBS News and this reporter fully believed the documents were genuine” Bush-era self-mortification broadcast were considered necessary to retain public trust. Because the ostensible target of these early broadcasts was Trump, no one feels a need to correct anything, but people all over the world soon learned to hesitate to criticize health authorities — and for good reason, as yesterday’s news involving colleague C.J Hopkins showed.

This episode shows: not only can health authorities be wrong on facts, but they can use their supposed infallibility on facts to clamp down on policy criticisms as well, putting whole populations in the uncomfortable position of having to accept both numbers and policy answers on faith.

Thanks once again to Orf for a superior job of collecting material before it’s lost down our widening memory hole. Increasingly it looks like this is now a primary role of authority-era journalism, making sure we don’t give in to institutional pushes to forget what was said when, and by whom. This was a big one, and don’t let anyone tell you it wasn’t.