Henry “Enrique” Tarrio Jr., the Florida-based former chairman of the Proud Boys accused of being the mastermind of a seditious conspiracy to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison on Sept. 5 by U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly.
Mr. Tarrio, 39, of Miami, received the longest prison term among all Jan. 6 defendants, eclipsing the previous record of 18 years given to Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III in May, and Mr. Tarrio’s co-defendant, Ethan Nordean, on Sept. 1.
Prosecution of Mr. Tarrio and his Proud Boys lieutenants included the most extended Jan. 6 criminal trial—more than four months—held in the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Tarrio was the last of his trial group to be handed a sentence by Judge Kelly, an appointee of former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Nordean was sentenced to 18 years, Joseph Biggs 17 years, Zachary Rehl 15 years, and Dominic Pezzola 10 years.
Federal prosecutors sought a 33-year prison term for Mr. Tarrio, described in court documents as a “naturally charismatic leader, a savvy propagandist, and the celebrity chairman of the national Proud Boys organization.” Prosecutors claimed he exhibited “pernicious, violence-oriented leadership.”
During a nearly four-hour sentencing hearing, defense attorneys said 15 years would be a sufficient prison term.
Mr. Tarrio expressed remorse for Jan. 6, for letting down his grandfather and his family, and for not respecting law enforcement.
He asked the judge for leniency so he could return to society and turn away from “my selfish endeavors.” Mr. Tarrio said the trial has humbled him and he no longer wants anything to do with rallies or politics.
“I am not a political zealot,” he said.
Calling seditious conspiracy a “serious offense,” Judge Kelly said Mr. Tarrio was the “ultimate leader” of the conspiracy who schemed to have government buildings taken over on Jan. 6. What happened that day was a “disgrace,” the judge said.
Although Mr. Tarrio was not physically present in Washington on Jan. 6, Judge Kelly applied a sentence enhancement for terrorism based on the attack on Capitol fencing by Mr. Biggs and Mr. Nordean. Judge Kelly said the seditious conspiracy made Mr. Tarrio complicit in the fence destruction and deserving of the terrorism enhancement.
On May 4, Mr. Tarrio was found guilty by a jury of seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to use force, intimidation, or threat to prevent officers of the United States from discharging their duties, interference with law enforcement during civil disorder, and destruction of government property.
Mr. Tarrio was found not guilty of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers. The jury could not reach a verdict on two other counts.
Much like the Oath Keepers put on trial in 2022 and 2023, Mr. Tarrio was accused of plotting to thwart the “peaceful transfer of power” from President Donald J. Trump to Joseph Biden Jr.
Defense attorney Sabino Jauregui rejected the idea his client is a terrorist.
“My client is no terrorist,” Mr. Jauregui said, instead describing Mr. Tarrio as a “misguided patriot.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Conor Mulroe disagreed, describing Jan. 6 as a “calculated act of terrorism.”
US Officials Say Chinese “Tourists” Engaged In ‘Gate-Crashing’ US Bases For Espionage
Fresh reporting in The Wall Street Journal has reviewed and presented a series of instances which are being dubbed low-level Chinese intelligence collection efforts, often involving Chinese nationals posing as tourists who attempt to gain access to military bases in the US, sometimes in bizarre and forceful ways.
US officials have tracked a dramatic increase in these incidents, citing that they’ve occurred as many as 100 times in recent years. These episodes have also been called ‘grate-crashing’ incidents.
“The Defense Department, FBI and other agencies held a review last year to try to limit these incidents, which involve people whom officials have dubbed gate-crashers because of their attempts—either by accident or intentionally—to get onto U.S. military bases and other installations without proper authorization,” the WSJ wrote.
Documenting some of the more interesting examples, the report said, “They range from Chinese nationals found crossing into a U.S. missile range in New Mexico to what appeared to be scuba divers swimming in murky waters near a U.S. government rocket-launch site in Florida.”
The people involved are not likely Chinese intelligence officials themselves, but possibly assets pressed into service by their country while they are in the states. In many cases, the phenomenon appears a low-level and easy attempt at testing security practices at high secure American government installations.
These instances have reportedly come under renewed scrutiny after the Chinese ‘spy balloon’ shootdown incident off the South Carolina coast in early February.
The FBI has said, “The Chinese government is engaged in a broad, diverse campaign of theft and malign influence without regard to laws or international norms that the FBI will not tolerate.” But of course, Beijing has responded by rejecting the “groundless accusations” and “Cold War mentality” which the foreign ministry says has been on display by the US. “The relevant claims are purely ill-intentioned fabrications,” the Chinese embassy in D.C. told the Journal.
Officials described incidents in which Chinese nationals say they have a reservation at an on-base hotel. In a recent case, a group of Chinese nationals claiming they were tourists, tried to push past guards at Fort Wainwright, Alaska, saying they had reservations at a commercial hotel on the base. The base is home to the Army’s 11th Airborne Division, which is focused on Arctic warfare.
In numerous other examples, Chinese “tourists” take photos, or even deploy recreational drones, to capture images of sensitive military sites.
Another example US officials described to the WSJ involved Chinese visitors going to White Sands National Park – only to wander onto the neighboring missile testing range and facility. Similar scenarios have even happened at the White House, where Chinese visitors on group tours appeared to have focused their photo-taking on security guard houses and Secret Service guard infrastructure, before being told to leave.
“Chinese nationals, sometimes posing as tourists, have accessed US military bases and other sensitive sites as many as 100 times”
“No cases appear to have resulted in espionage charges.”
In another incident, Chinese nationals appear to have been found scuba diving off Cape Canaveral, home to the Kennedy Space Center. The area is the launch site for spy satellites and other military missions. A spokesman for Homeland Security Investigations’s Tampa, Fla., field office said the incident was part of a continuing investigation and declined to comment further.
They were reportedly taking photos near the launch site, but at the same time there’s some ambiguity and “cover” given they simply claimed they were scuba diving and were engaged in harmless recreation in public waters.
The report says that often the Chinese nationals are only briefly detained and then put on a plane and sent out of the country and back to China early. US officials believe that this is an organized probing effort of the Chinese government and its intelligence services.
Groups leading the advertiser boycott of X/Twitter receive money from and have a history of spying for governments…
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO, ADL; MP Damian Collins, CCDH Advisory Board Member; Sasha Havlicek, CEO of ISD
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) are nongovernmental organizations, their leaders say. When they demand more censorship of online hate speech, as they are currently doing of X, formerly Twitter, those NGOs are doing it as free citizens and not, say, as government agents.
But the fact of the matter is that the US and other Western governments fund ISD, the UK government indirectly funds CCDH, and, for at least 40 years, ADL spied on its enemies and shared intelligence with the US, Israel and other governments. The reason all of this matters is that ADL’s advertiser boycott against X may be an effort by governments to regain the ability to censor users on X that they had under Twitter before Musk’s takeover last November.
Internal Twitter and Facebook messages show that representatives of the US government, including the White House, FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as the UK government, successfully demanded Facebook and Twitter censorship of their users over the last several years.
ADL is waging a very similar campaign against X/Twitter that it successfully waged against Facebook in 2020. In just three days, 800 companies, including $129 billion consumer products giant Unilever, withdrew tens of millions of dollars in ad revenue from Facebook until it agreed to ADL’s censorship demands. “The Facebook caved to far-left pressure groups and now allows them to silently dictate policy in exchange for ad money,” said Musk yesterday. “That is the relationship they’ve had with X/Twitter for many years. Presumably, they have that with all Western search or social media orgs.”
It’s possible that there has been an increase in hate on X since Elon Musk bought the company. With greater free speech policies comes the possibility of more offensive speech, including racist or antisemitic speech. Bigotry does exist, and it should be challenged.
But there is no good evidence of that. Public has debunked claims by ISD and CCDH of an increase. And researchers have repeatedly debunked ADL’s claims of rising antisemitism for years. In 2009, an Israeli filmmaker found that ADL could not support its claims of an antisemitism crisis. Wrote NPR in a review of the film, “When he presses ADL staffers for evidence to back up their claims of a sharp spike in North American anti-Semitism in 2007, they can offer only wan transgressions…”
Eleven years later, Liel Leibovitz noted in Tablet that ADL had, for a report, “counted hundreds of threatening calls to Jewish community centers made by a mentally troubled Israeli teenager. You had to read the report’s fine print to learn that the number of violent attacks against Jews that year had actually decreased by 47%.”
ADL, ISD, and CCDH have not presented any good evidence that offensive speech online directly causes “hate-motivated violence,” nor that censorship prevents it. Moreover, last week Public reviewed evidence suggesting that the best way to combat hate speech is through open and public debate, which allows people to change their minds, not censorship.
ADL’s main goal is supposed to be stopping “the defamation of the Jewish people,” but the organization is using the legacy of antisemitism and the Holocaust to justify unrelated censorial advocacy work. This is exploitative, and it is defamatory to say that Jews, in general, need and favor censorship. Many Jews on both the left and the right have argued that ADL does not represent their interests. By claiming to speak for all Jewish people while demanding highly unpopular policies, the ADL may be inadvertently driving antisemitism.
As troubling as these highly partisan ideological biases are, what’s most dangerous are the past and present ties between ADL, ISD, CCDH, and governments, particularly security and intelligence organizations, which we detail below.
Neither ADL, ISD, nor CCDH have responded to multiple requests for more information or an interview.
ADL’s Spying For Governments
FBI Director Robert Mueller gives the keynote speech at the Anti-Defamation League’s 2005 National Commission Meeting November 3, 2005 in New York City. Mueller, who was joined by U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, spoke on terrorism, extremism and other global topics that are the centerpiece of this years ADL National Commission Meeting. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Although ADL is currently focused on demonizing Trump supporters as “domestic terrorists,” it has a history of partnering with the state and law enforcement to target the Left.
…
Today, ADL’s ties to intelligence and security organizations are closer than ever. It works with the FBI by holding a training session with agents and hosting FBI Director Christopher Wray as a featured speaker. According to Greenblatt, the FBI works directly with ADL “every day.”
…
We do not have firm proof that there is a conspiracy by the intelligence and security agencies of the United States and Britain to control the content on social media platforms like X and Facebook through their control over CCDH, ISD, and ADL. Perhaps ideological, cultural, and political alignment alone explain the remarkable coordination we have documented. Perhaps the US and UK government funding for CCDH and ISD is insignificant compared to their nongovernmental funders.
But there is enough evidence of conspiracy for members of Congress and Parliament to investigate CCDH, ADL, ISD, and other so-called “nongovernmental” organizations for the advocacy of censorship. Who is funding them? What are their relationships with government officials? What is their role in intelligence and security organizations?
…
What’s clear is that we also need to change our view of ADL, CCDH, and ISD. They cannot be considered “nongovernmental organizations.” Their ties to the government, particularly the national security state, are too strong.
A network composed of experts from inside and outside the U.S. government repeatedly recommended that people who suffered adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination receive additional shots, even when the experts could not rule out the vaccines as the cause of the events, documents obtained by The Epoch Times show.
The network, the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment (CISA) Project, is run by a doctor who has received extensive funding from pharmaceutical giants, including the top two COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, according to other records.
In one example, CISA was presented with records showing a 63-year-old woman experienced chronic kidney disease, with symptoms including kidney swelling, after receiving a second dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
CISA subject matter experts (SMEs) said that the diagnosis could not be definitively confirmed without a kidney biopsy but that they still felt comfortable using a causality algorithm for the presumed diagnosis developed in part by Dr. Kathryn Edwards, CISA’s principal investigator.
Applying the algorithm to the case resulted in an “indeterminate” designation, or an inability to rule out the vaccine causing the problem, in part because there was no evidence of other causes. But that inability did not stop the program from recommending additional shots.
“Weighing the potential risks of COVID-19 vaccination and the benefits of preventing COVID-19, the SMEs provided their opinion that the patient should receive future COVID-19 vaccinations,” the Feb. 24, 2023, letter to the patient’s doctor stated.
At the time, the effectiveness of the vaccines against symptomatic infection had been shown to start low and wane quickly, while protection against severe disease began higher but also rapidly dropped.
After the woman received her next shot, the CISA experts said, the doctor should check in on her to see if she experienced recurrent hematuria, or blood in her urine.
“Although the CDC’s subject matter experts claim to have no idea if inflammation of the kidneys in a 63-year-old woman was caused by the mRNA COVID-19 biological, they tell the attending physician to go ahead and give the woman another COVID shot. That amounts to a challenge/re-challenge experiment on a sick woman without informed consent,” Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, told The Epoch Times in an email.
“Government officials admitting ignorance about a biological product’s potential side effects but directing a doctor to risk a patient’s life by continuing to inject the product into a patient, who already has suffered an injury following use of that product, is immoral,” she added. “We expect and deserve government health officials to adhere to a higher professional and ethical standard of care.“
Some people who experience a problem after a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine have experienced a recurrence of the problem following another dose, according to case studies and surveillance data.
Dr. Edwards, until recently of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and the CDC did not respond to requests for comment.
Other Letters
The Epoch Times obtained, through the Freedom of Information Act, letters sent by CISA to physicians.
CISA features experts with the CDC and other institutions, including Vanderbilt University, Boston Medical Center, and Johns Hopkins University collaborating to respond to doctors who ask the program to review patient cases and provide recommendations.
“CISA provides consultations for U.S. healthcare providers with complex vaccine safety questions about their patients and conducts vaccine safety clinical research,” the CDC states on its website.
The first COVID-19 vaccines were authorized and recommended in December 2020. From Dec. 1, 2020, through June 1, 2023, CISA provided 48 recommendations to doctors dealing with COVID-19 vaccines, the records show.
In 39.5 percent of the cases, CISA recommended another vaccination. In 23 percent of the cases, CISA recommended against another vaccination. In 14.5 percent of the cases, CISA said there were no reasons patients could not receive more doses. In the remaining cases, CISA advised reassessing the matter down the road or advising a patient who had not yet received a vaccine to receive a vaccine.
The recommendations for future doses came even in cases where CISA was unable to say the vaccine did not cause the adverse event.
In a letter dated May 4, 2021, CISA experts said there was “no evidence” to support non-vaccine causes for the patient’s condition but that there was “no definitive known association” between the condition and Pfizer’s vaccine, leading to an indeterminate designation in the causality algorithm.
While one of the experts said that in a person “with the right immunologic makeup,” the vaccine “could be an initial inciting injury” causing the condition, many of the experts advised the patient to receive another dose.
The patient might want to receive Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which uses different technology than the Pfizer and Moderna messenger RNA shots, CISA said in the letter. “Support for this guidance included that it would avoid the lipid envelope and the mRNA presentation of the antigen to this patient,” they wrote.
In another letter, dated Jan. 18, 2022, CISA experts also found no evidence for non-vaccine causes for the patient’s condition, which appeared after Pfizer vaccination. But they repeated the claim that there was no definitive association between the vaccine and the condition, leading to an indeterminate designation.
CISA experts “strongly felt that the risk of COVID-19 infection was higher than the potential risk from another dose of vaccine,” according to the letter, and recommended a second Pfizer dose.
In a third letter, dated May 23, 2022, CISA experts said the causality algorithm resulted in an indeterminate designation “due to lack of strong evidence against a causal association.” They described a “very perplexing case” and acknowledged the patient’s condition was “not understood.”
But CISA experts still advised the patient, who suffered an event after a Pfizer dose and had also recovered from COVID-19, to receive another shot.
“This would be especially important in light of the current surge in circulating Omicron variants,” they wrote.
Small Number of Causal Determinations
A small number of cases led to the determination that the vaccination caused an adverse event.
In six instances, CISA experts determined that the event was “consistent with causal association,” or caused by the vaccination, because the condition suffered by each patient was “a known possible adverse event following immunization.”
In all six cases, experts recommended against additional doses while advising the doctors caring for the patients to follow up with the patients to figure out which non-COVID vaccines the patients could safely receive.
CISA experts also advised against additional COVID-19 vaccine doses in five other cases. The designations in those cases were also indeterminate, making the differences between them and those that resulted in recommendations for future doses unclear apart from several involving people who had expressed opposition to receiving more shots.
In seven other cases, CISA experts said there were no contraindications, or no reasons for not receiving at least one additional dose. The CDC has maintained a short list that currently includes just two contraindications for the COVID-19 vaccines—a history of severe allergic shock or a history of a known diagnosed allergy to a component of one of the shots.
Patients with other conditions, such as heart inflammation after COVID-19 vaccination, are generally advised to avoid additional doses, the CDC says in the list. But that is only a “precaution,” not a contraindication.
CISA also advised doctors of nine of the patients to reassess future COVID-19 vaccination down the road and, in two of the cases, told doctors that patients who had not yet received a COVID vaccine could receive one.
The decision to commit a crime in Chicago has never been easier. Criminals are almost guaranteed to profit because the chances of getting caught and punished have collapsed to near-zero.
It’s a big reason why the city is on target to hit a post-pandemic high in major crimes in 2023, currently up 32 percent vs. last year. It’s also why crime is unlikely to slow down significantly any time soon. Mayor Brandon Johnson doesn’t show any signs of imposing a higher cost on the city’s criminals. And Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and Cook County Chief Judge Tim Evans haven’t changed their soft approach to crime either.
The math is pretty straightforward. A demoralized, restricted police force. Plus a 1 in 20 arrest rate. Plus a high rate of unreported crime. Plus a dismal 911 response rate. Plus a city leadership that’s soft on crime. All that equals a near-zero chance of criminals ever getting punished.
Not until the costs of committing crime go way up – and the equation changes – will Chicagoans see any relief.
Equation inputs
Arrests
The chance of getting arrested in Chicago for a major crime collapsed to just 5 percent in 2022. It was already a low 10 percent just four years ago.
The arrest rate for criminal sexual assault? Just 3 percent. Ditto for Motor Vehicle Thefts. Burglaries were at only 4 percent and Robberies, 5 percent.
For thefts over $500, the chance of getting busted is even lower, at just 1 percent. There were just 201 arrests out of 20,041 crimes reported last year. And you’ll avoid arrest 96 times out of 100 across any form of theft, which The New York Times recently reported.
Unreported crimes
It gets even better for Chicago criminals. The above data is just for crimes that are actually reported. The Bureau of Justice Statistics found that nationally in 2019, “Only 40.9% of violent crimes and 32.5% of household property crimes were reported to authorities.” So the real chance of getting caught is even lower than the 5 percent.
Soft-on-crime leadership
Criminals are far more likely to get verbal support for the crimes they’ve committed, not condemnation, from Mayor Brandon Johnson. Kids just being “silly,” he said of the city’s recent teen takeovers. They’re not “mob actions,” he argued. We captured both those moments here and here.
And there’s the fact that even if criminals do get caught, the chances of being convicted and sentenced are low. State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and Chief Judge Tim Evans continue their light treatment of felony weapons charges and issue plea deals on the cheap.
Criminals also know they’re less likely to be detained pre-trial, which Wirepoints covered in Close the revolving door for high-risk offenders in Cook County. There are about 800 more violent defendants out on electronic ankle bracelets at any one time – many of them felons – than there were in 2016. There are thousands more defendants out without any tracking.
With the SAFE-T Act now law, the number of alleged criminals back on the streets before trial will increase further.
911 calls
Yet another part of the calculus is the fact that Chicago’s police aren’t responding to more than half of the urgent 911 calls they receive, part of what are called RAPs, or Radio Assignments Pending. Last year we reported on the 2021 data, which showed just over half of all priority 911 calls weren’t immediately handled.
It was even worse in 2022. Of the more than 780,000 Priority 1 and 2 911 service calls, 60 percent had no Chicago police available to respond.
Those delays included:
Over 4,700 robbery-related calls, including 470 robberies in progress
Over 19,400 calls of batteries in progress
Nearly 2,000 reports of sexual assault, including 150 assaults in progress
Over 18,000 reports of a person with a gun
Over 1,200 reports of citizens shot
Nearly 1,000 reports of citizens stabbed
Making it worse
The simple calculus of Chicago’s criminals is clear when you look at the city’s latest criminal fad: robberies.
The ease of stealing cars like Kias and Hyundais, in combination with new laws prohibiting police from foot and car chases, has emboldened criminals even more.
Criminals are now using those stolen cars to go on robbery sprees neighborhood to neighborhood, sometimes committing as many as 20 robberies within hours of each other, confident they won’t get caught or even chased.
…CPD police officers on patrol and in a surveillance camera operations center witnessed an armed robbery in progress in the 6500 block of North Western Avenue. “I can see them right now,” the officer radioed. “They got long guns. There’s a unit on scene.”
That patrol unit tried to pull the Durango over as they snaked through the North Side. Officers said four men were inside the SUV with their faces covered, bearing at least one rifle. But not long after the unit started to chase the SUV loaded with armed, masked men who had just robbed someone as Chicago police officers watched, a CPD sergeant ordered the squad car to terminate their efforts to stop the Durango.
At least eleven people were robbed that night, including some after the police supervisor decided to let the group of armed robbers get away.”
More victims of crime
Add all the above and it’s easy to see why criminals face a near-zero risk of punishment.
That also helps explain why the city’s crime numbers continue to rise. Chicagoans have been victimized more than 51,000 times during the first 8 months of 2023 – already more than they were over the entirety of 2019, 2020 or 2021. Only homicides are down compared to last year, by 8 percent – a small decline compared to other major cities.
If the lawbreaking trend continues, 2023 major crimes will total 78,000, some 17% more than in 2022.
For sure, there’s a lot to be done to solve the crime crisis in Chicago. The social challenges and poor educational outcomes plaguing the city will take years, if not decades, to unwind.
But to save lives in the meantime, and to make Chicago safer – one of Mayor Johnson’s key goals – the near-zero cost of committing crimes must rise dramatically. And that means reforging the chain of criminal justice, from arresting to prosecuting to sentencing.
These Are The Most Popular US Undergrad Degress Of The Last Decade
In an era of soaring tuition fees and mounting student debt, choosing which undergraduate degree to pursue has become a crucial decision for any aspiring college student. And it always helps to see which way the winds are blowing.
As Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao shares below, this visualization by Kashish Rastogi, based on data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), examines the changing landscape of undergraduate degrees awarded between the 2010–2011 and 2020–2021 academic years.
Undergraduate Degrees Growing in Popularity
The NCES classifies all four-year bachelor degrees into 38 fields of study. Of these fields, 21 saw an increase in graduates in 2020–2021 compared to 2010–2011.
While only those with more than 30,000 graduates have been shown in the graphic (to prevent overrepresentation of large changes in small pools of graduates), the full list is available below.
Rank
Field of Study
2010–2011
2020–2021
% Change
1
Business
363,919
390,781
+7%
2
Health Professions
143,463
268,018
+87%
3
Biomedical Sciences
89,984
131,499
+46%
4
Psychology
100,906
126,944
+26%
5
Engineering
76,356
126,037
+65%
6
Computer Sciences
43,066
104,874
+144%
7
Communication
83,231
90,775
+9%
8
Security & Law
Enforcement
47,600
58,009
+22%
9
Interdisciplinary
Studies
42,473
54,584
+29%
10
Leisure &
Fitness Studies
35,934
54,294
+51%
11
Public Administration
26,799
34,817
+30%
12
Physical Sciences
24,338
28,706
+18%
13
Mathematics
17,182
27,092
+58%
14
Agriculture Sciences
15,851
21,418
+35%
15
Natural Resources
& Conservation
12,779
20,507
+61%
16
Engineering
Technologies
16,187
18,562
+15%
17
Transportation
4,941
5,993
+21%
18
Legal
4,429
4,589
+4%
19
Military Technologies
64
1,524
+2,281%
20
Science Technologies
367
532
+45%
21
Library Science
96
119
+24%
Note: Field of study names have been edited slightly from their NCES labels for better readability.
Let’s take a look at the areas of study that were most popular, as well as some of the fastest growing fields:
Computer and Information Sciences
Bachelor’s degrees in this discipline have grown by 144% since 2010–2011, with over 100,000 graduates in 2020–2021. The allure of the tech sector’s explosive growth likely contributed to its popularity among students.
Health Professions
Undergraduate degrees in health professions saw an 87% increase, attracting nearly 260,000 graduates in 2020–2021. This field accounted for 13% of the total graduating class, reflecting the growing appeal of the healthcare sector.
Engineering
There were 50,000 more engineering graduates in the U.S. in 2021, up 65% from 2011. With a median income over $100,000 per year, engineering graduates can usually rely on good wages as well as versatility in future careers, capable of finding jobs in tech, design, and communication fields, and of course, becoming future entrepreneurs.
Biomedical Sciences
University graduates in this field, which focuses on the integration of the study of biology with health and medicine, grew by 46%. A subset of this category—epidemiology—has been in the limelight recently thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Business
While this category recorded a modest 7% growth in graduates, its popularity has been indisputable in the last decade, representing the largest proportion of the graduating class in both 2011 and 2021.
Fields with Declining University Graduates (2011‒2021)
Meanwhile, 17 areas of study experienced declines in the number of completed university degrees. We explore some of the notable ones below:
Rank
Field of Study
2010–2011
2020–2021
% Change
1
Social Sciences
142,161
1,37,908
-3%
2
Visual &
Performing Arts
93,939
90,022
-4%
3
Education
104,008
89,398
-14%
4
Liberal Arts
46,717
41,909
-10%
5
English
52,754
35,762
-32%
6
History
35,008
22,919
-35%
7
Human Sciences
22,438
22,319
-1%
8
Foreign Languages
21,705
15,518
-29%
9
Philosophy
& Religion
12,830
11,988
-7%
10
Architecture
9,831
9,296
-5%
11
Ethnic, Cultural
& Gender Studies
8,955
7,374
-18%
12
Theology
9,073
6,737
-26%
13
Communications Tech
4,858
4,557
-6%
14
Personal &
Culinary Services
1,214
594
-51%
15
Construction Trades
328
221
-33%
16
Mechanic & Repair
226
221
-2%
17
Precision Production
43
28
-35%
English
Popular in the 1970s, the English undergraduate degree has gone through peaks (80s and 90s) and troughs (2000s and 10s) of popularity in the last 50 years. Between 2010–2011 and 2020–2021, the number of students with an English degree has fallen by a third.
The state of English’s woes are even making its way to pop culture, like in Netflix’s The Chair, which follows the head of a struggling English department at a major university.
Education
The existing teacher shortage in the United States does not seem to be getting fixed by a burgeoning supply of new grads. In fact, the number of university graduates in Education fell 14% between 2011 and 2021. With concerns around stagnant wages, burnout, and little to no support for supplies, many teachers are seeing an already demanding job becoming harder.
Liberal Arts
In the classic era, the liberal arts covered seven fields of study: rhetoric, grammar, logic, astronomy, mathematics, geometry, and music. Now, liberal art degrees include several other subjects: history, political science, and even philosophy—but students are meant to primarily walk away with critical thinking skills.
The modern world rewards specialization however, and a wider-scope liberal arts degree is seeing fewer takers, with a 10% drop in graduating students.
Real Final Sales is the bottom line assessment of GDP. It excludes inventories which net to zero over time.
GDI was negative for two consecutive quarters and has been weaker than GDP for four quarters. GDI is now positive, but it is subject to greater revisions than GDP.
In theory, GDP and GDI measure the same thing — the total value of goods and services produced in a geographic area and sold to end-users at arms-length prices during a quarter — but in different ways. If the economy had a single cash register, GDP would measure the money coming into the till, GDI would measure where the money went — to wages, supplies, taxes, interest, dividends or left in the till for owners and stockholders. But since the economy has billions of transactions, many complex and not all captured in official numbers, GDP and GDI have different measurement errors, and thus different values. They’re usually pretty close, however, differing by 0.8% on average.
Using two successive down quarters as the signal for recession, from 1947 to 1973 GDP and GDI agreed all but once. They both signaled four recessions at the same times, and they both missed the 1961 recession. GDP did give one false alarm in 1947.
Since 1973, however, GDI has done much better. Four times it signaled recession before GDP and once it caught a recession that GDP missed. Twice the two triggered at the same time, and once GDP gave a false alarm.
There’s been more news recently suggesting that a recession began at the end of 2022. Second-quarter GDP growth was revised down. Job openings are plunging. The labor leverage ratio — the proportion of workers quitting to those let go by employers — is falling as well, suggesting workers fear a weak job market and have little power to get increased wages. Corporate profits are falling as well. If current trends continue, and if GDP declines a significant share of the roughly 1.5% needed to fall in line with GDI, the economic numbers released from late September through October could well prompt the NBER to announce a recession.
This has three main implications, two political and one economic. Politically, NBER declaring a recession would support the Republican story that the Biden administration hurt the economy and denied obvious economic reality for three years to push left-wing policies. It would make Democratic painting of Bidenomic prosperity seem hollow or even dishonest.
I have been talking about the GDP vs GDI discrepancy, negative revisions, the discrepancy between jobs and employment, corporate profits, and the job leverage ratio for months, and in far more detail. Let’s take a look at some of my recent posts.
Negative Revision to 2nd Quarter GDP, Huge Discrepancy with GDI Continues
Accounting for negative revisions, jobs effectively increased by 77,000 while unemployment surges as people looking for work can’t find it. Bloomberg labeled this “Goldilocks”.
Unemployment rose by 514,000. Over half a million people wanted jobs but couldn’t find them.
Full time employment is down by 150,000 since January of 2023.
Here is a blurb I have posted in my monthly jobs reports for eight straight months.
Because of annual benchmark revisions, the way the BLS reports revisions, and the relatively small sample sizes of monthly jobs reports, we cannot, with strong confidence, suggest these reports portray an accurate picture of either jobs or employment.
Of the 894,000 rise in employment in January, 810,000 was due to annual benchmark revisions. And the BLS does not say what months were revised, just poof, here you go.
The monthly jobs report by the BLS samples a mere 6 percent of jobs. The Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) payroll employment data represents 95 percent of the data.
The BLS will not incorporate March of 2023 until January of 2024. Lovely.
The Labor Leverage Ratio, a Measure of Wage Bargaining Power, Is in Retreat
Data from the BLS, the Labor Leverage Ratio (LLR) is defined as Quits / (Layoffs + Discharges)
The BLS comments “the quits rate can serve as a measure of workers’ willingness or ability to leave jobs.”
Philadelphia Fed GDPplus Measure Sure Looks Like Recession Started in 2022 Q4
The Philadelphia Fed has a measure called GDPplus that’s a blend of GDP and GDI, not an average. It appears to lean more heavily on GDI.
In 100 percent of the cases, with no false signals, no misses, and no lead times more than two quarters, every time GDPplus had two consecutive quarters of negative growth, the economy was in recession.
On closer inspection, all but once, and the exception was a mere -0.1 percent, every time GDPplus had one quarter of negative growth, the economy was or would soon go into recession. By soon, I mean within two quarters.
GDPplus accurately forecast the 1961 recession but GDP and GDI both did.
GDPplus Recession Signals
Mish compilation of recession lead times based on DGPplus data
GDPplus Recession Signals Synopsis
GDPplus signaled every recession
GDPplus was on time 4 times, early by a quarter 3 times, and early by 2 quarters twice.
This makes it appear as if GDPplus is a leading indicator. It isn’t because the data is heavily revised.
The BEA makes revisions frequently, especially on GDI. Since GDPplus is more reliant on GDI, it also has significant swings. However, GDPplus is the best recession indicator yet.
One quarter is sufficient and barring positive revisions to GDI and by implication GDPplus, the economy went into recession in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Mainstream media is finally waking up to these discrepancies, albeit without any detailed analysis.
It’s quite possible a recession has come and gone. The NBER already had one instance of declaring a recession after it was over so don’t be surprised if it happens again.
‘In Broad Daylight & In Front Of Kids’: Disturbing Video Shows Maryland Cop Getting Into Backseat With Woman
A viral video shows a police officer in Prince George’s County, a county in Maryland that borders Washington, D.C., taking what appears to be a young woman into the back of his police cruiser in broad daylight while kids play just feet away. It’s unclear what the officer and young woman did in the back of the cruiser.
A video posted on TikTok of a Prince George’s County Police officer has gone viral… I think I might know why 🤔 pic.twitter.com/sTX08SsNxh
Maryland Bureau Chief for 7News DC Brad Bell confirmed on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Prince George’s County Police Department’s “command staff is aware” of the viral video circulating on multiple social media platforms. He said the police department has “opened an investigation into the circumstances.”
.@PGPDNews says “command staff is aware” of this viral video and they’ve opened an investigation into the circumstances. https://t.co/XdG4P1BEsc
#BREAKING: @PGPDNews spokesperson says the department has suspended the officer seen in the viral video of him getting into the back of a police cruiser with a female (unidentified).
One X user pointed out, “Across the playground in broad daylight is wildd levels of horny.”
“Prince George’s County Police sure do love black booty right in front of the immigrants and the kids,” another said.
Someone said, “It’s a PG County cop and folks are acting shocked my this…”
“In broad daylight where kids were playing at that smh. He couldn’t drive down the street?! And that girl looked MAD YOUNG to me. This is so foul smfh,” X user said.
The Prince George’s officer is taking ‘protect and serve’ to a whole other level. None of this is shocking in the Democratic stronghold county that borders DC.
If you hold precious metals in your portfolio, there is a good chance you fear hyperinflation and the crash of fiat currencies.
You probably distrust governments in general and believe they are self-serving and have no interest in your economic well-being. It is likely that your holdings in gold are your lifeline – your hope to get you through these times while holding on to your wealth.
But have you ever given any thought to the possibility of having this lifeline confiscated by the authorities?
In my conversations with friends and associates, I have often raised this question. The typical responses:
“They’d never do that.”
“I’ll deal with that if and when it happens.”
“I just wouldn’t give it to them.”
I consider these “wishful thinking” responses.
It’s an interesting thought that the greatest threat to gold and silver investment might not be the possibility of losing on the speculation, but the government taking it away from you. It’s a thought that I’ve found few want to even think about, let alone discuss.
If you fall into this camp, you’re in good company. Some of the forecasters whom I respect most highly also treat it either as unlikely or at best, “something we may need to look at in the future.” To date, in conversing with top advisors worldwide, the two primary reasons they believe gold will not be confiscated are:
1. “Confiscation would mean the government acknowledges the reality of the value of gold.”
Yes, this is quite so. They would be changing their official view… which, of course, they do all the time. But I submit that all that they need to do is put the proper spin on it.
2. “They would meet greater resistance than they did back in ’33.”
I expect that this is also true, but that a plan will be put in place to deal with that resistance.
We’ll address both of these assertions in more detail shortly, but first, a bit of history.
In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt came into office and immediately created the Emergency Banking Act, which demanded that all those who held gold (other than personal jewelry) turn it in to approved banks. Holders were given less than a month to do this. The government then paid them $20.67 per ounce – the going rate at the time. Following confiscation, the government declared that the new value of gold was $35.00. In essence, they arbitrarily increased the value of their newly purchased asset by 69%. (This alone is reason enough to confiscate.)
Today, the US government is in much worse shape than it was in 1933, and it has much more to lose. The US dollar is the default currency of the world, but it’s on the ropes, which means the US economic power over the rest of the world is on the ropes.
I think that readers will agree that they will do anything to keep from losing this all-important power.
The US government has essentially run out of options. At some point, the fiat currencies of the First World will collapse, and some other form of payment will be necessary. Yes, the IMF is hoping to create a new default currency, but that, too, is to be a fiat currency. If any country were to produce a gold-backed currency in sufficient supply, that currency would likely become the desired currency worldwide. Fractional backing would be expected.
As most readers will know, the Chinese, Indians, Russians, and others see the opportunity and are building up their gold reserves quickly and substantially. If these countries were to agree to introduce a new gold-backed currency, there can be little doubt that they would succeed in changing the balance of world trade.
That said, the US government is watching these countries just as we are, and they are aware of the threat of gold to them.
The US government ostensibly has approximately 8,200 tonnes of gold in Fort Knox, although this may well be partially or completely missing. Additionally, it ostensibly holds a further 5,000 tonnes of gold in the cellar of the New York Federal Reserve building. Again, there is no certainty that it is there. In general, the authorities don’t seem to like independent audits.
In fact, there are rumors that the above vaults are nearly or completely empty and that the above quoted figures exist only on paper rather than in physical form. While there is no way to know this for sure, it’s not out of the question.
Either way, if the US and the EU could come up with a large volume of gold quickly, they could issue a gold-backed currency themselves. It’s a simple equation: The more gold they have = the more backed notes they can produce = the more power they continue to hold. By seizing upon the private supply of their citizens, they would increase their holdings substantially in short order.
Either that or they could just give up their dominance of world trade and power… What would you guess their choice would be?
It is entirely possible that the US government (and very likely the EU) has already made a decision to confiscate. They may have carefully laid out the plan and have set implementation to coincide with a specific gold price.
So how would this unfold? Let’s imagine a fairly extreme scenario and ask ourselves if it could be pulled off effectively:
The evening news programs announce that the economic recovery is being hampered by wealthy private investors who, by hoarding gold, are skewing the value of the dollar and threatening the middle and poorer classes. The little man is being made to suffer while the rich get richer. A press campaign to equate gold ownership with greed ensues.
The government announces the Second Emergency Banking Act, advising the public that “the first EBA was instituted by FDR to solve this same problem during the Great Depression. This act was instrumental in helping the little man ‘recover.’” (As the average man on the street doesn’t know his history nor how wrong this statement is, he’ll believe it. Besides, the announcement has a “feel-good” message, and that’s all that matters.)
Possessors of gold, who make up a small minority of the population, would become pariahs. It won’t matter that the guy who owns two gold Maple Leafs is not exactly a greedy, rich man. No one will wish to be seen as resisting confiscation. Neither will they wish to go to prison for resisting, no matter how remote the possibility.
The US pays for the gold in US dollars, which are rapidly headed south. Yes, the Fed will need to print more fiat dollars in order to pay them off, but this suits their purpose, as it inflates the dollar even more. Those who have turned in their gold will do whatever they can to unload the US dollars as quickly as possible and will need to find another investment at a time when there are very few trustworthy investments other than gold. The stock market would likely rise, showing the public how the gold confiscation program is “working.”
One last scary possibility: The government demands that gold is turned in immediately and that settlement will occur following confiscation. After confiscation, it announces that, as there has been such a large number of cases of rich people ripping off the little man, processing them all could take months, possibly even a year or more. A further announcement states that some investors have made an unreasonable profit on the backs of the poor and that they should not be granted this profit. This profit must be returned to the people. (You can almost hear the cheers of the people.) Then it sets about making assessments. The bureaucrats find that most investors do not have formal, acceptable receipts for every coin in their possession. So if you paid $1,200 for a Krugerrand a couple of years ago, you get paid $1,200. If you bought it at $250 in 1999, you get paid $250. But if you have no receipt in an acceptable form, you get a “fair,” median payment, say, $500, regardless of when you bought it.
Appeals: Each investor will be allowed up to one year to appeal the decision of the Treasury as to what is owed him. Of course, the investor knows that the dollar is sinking rapidly and that he would be wise to shut up and take what he is being offered.
Again, this hypothetical scenario is an extreme one.
The reader is left to consider just how likely or unlikely this scenario is and what that would mean to his wealth.
But bear this in mind: If the above scenario were to take place soon, the average citizen would have mixed feelings. They would be glad that the “evil rich” had been taken down a peg, but they would worry about the idea of the government taking things by force, because they might be next. It would therefore be in the government’s interests to implement confiscation only after the coming panic sets in – after the next crash in the market, after it becomes plain to the average citizen that this really is a depression and he really is in big trouble. Then he will be only too glad to see the “greedy rich” go down, and he won’t care about the details.
As terrible as the thought is, it seems unlikely to me that the government will not confiscate gold, as they have little to lose and so much to gain.
Those who own gold would prefer to think that this cannot happen, but they have quite a lot riding on that hope and precious little evidence to support it.
It is entirely possible that this scenario will not take place, just as it is possible that confiscation will not take place. The purpose of this article is to spark some serious discussion – both for and against the possibility.
Investors are, by their very nature, planners. It may take a community of investors to develop a legal plan to deal with the above eventuality. Time to get started.
The government can’t easily confiscate what’s outside its own borders, which is why it’s working night and day to make it as difficult as possible for you to protect your assets abroad. This sad reality means that you need to take action before it’s too late. Your first step? Learn how to start internationally diversifying your wealth – and your life. From investing in international markets and opening offshore bank accounts to setting up an offshore LLC or annuity.
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Unfortunately, there’s little any individual can practically do to change the trajectory of broke governments in need of more cash. There are still steps you can take to ensure you survive the turmoil with your money intact. That’s precisely why bestselling author Doug Casey and his colleagues just released an urgent new PDF report that explains what could come next and what you can do about it. Click here to download it now.
In a blow to the COVID-19 “silent spreader” narrative that has been used to push for universal masking, including controversially among schoolchildren, a recent study published in The Lancet suggests that people who are non-symptomatic rarely have the ability to infect others.
Silent transmission is the idea that those who are infected with COVID-19 but show no symptoms can still spread the virus to other people.
While all relevant studies show that presymptomatic and asymptomatic “silent spreaders” account for some proportion of infections in other people, the degree of silent transmission is less clear.
A number of early studies—in some cases affected by limitations that may have led to their proportion of presymptomatic transmission to be “artifactually inflated”—suggested that silent transmission accounted for around half of secondary infections, or even more.
The early studies led public health authorities to argue that everyone should wear a mask at all times when out in public or crowded places. This, in turn, helped drive draconian universal masking policies, including in schools, in a bid to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
For instance, Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), initially discouraged universal mask-wearing early in the pandemic but later did a U-turn.
Initially, “we didn’t realize the extent of asymptotic spread,” Dr. Fauci said in July 2020, adding that later, “we fully realized that there are a lot of people who are asymptomatic who are spreading infection.”
“So it became clear that we absolutely should be wearing masks consistently,” Dr. Fauci said at the time.
But new research calls into question the significance of the threat of silent transmission, which comes as COVID-19 cases are on the rise in America, driving what some are calling a renewed pandemic “hysteria” and calls for a fresh round of restrictions, including mask mandates.
‘Very Few Emissions’ Before Symptom Onset
The new study, published in the August issue of The Lancet’s Microbe journal, shows that people who are sick with COVID-19 but don’t show any symptoms have a limited ability to spread the virus to other people.
Participants in the British study, which was carried out by researchers at Imperial College London, were unvaccinated healthy adults aged 18-30 who were intentionally infected with COVID-19.
The subjects were monitored under controlled circumstances while self-reporting symptoms three times per day, and researchers collected nose and throat swabs from them daily, checking for the presence of the virus.
The researchers also tested the inside of masks worn by the participants, checked their hands, and examined the air and surfaces of rooms that the subjects were kept in for a minimum of 14 days.
Ultimately, the researchers found that less than 10 percent of the viral emissions from infected participants took place before the first symptoms emerged.
“Very few emissions occurred before the first reported symptom (7%) and hardly any before the first positive lateral flow antigen test (2%),” the authors of the study wrote.
The new study—which takes the form of a rigorous, controlled “challenge study” rather than the earlier modeling studies that relied on subjective inputs and assumptions of researchers—contradicts earlier research that set the tone for much of the prevailing narrative. That early research appears to have inflated the perceived threat of presymptomatic spread.
The latest study, suggesting that silent transmission is far less significant, comes amid a growing drumbeat of alarm as COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are on the rise—along with calls in some circles for renewed restrictions.
By contrast, many are calling for cool heads to prevail—or are urging civil disobedience if lockdowns or other mandates are reimposed.
‘Artifactually Inflated’?
Some early studies, such as one published in August 2020 called “Temporal Dynamics In Viral Shedding and Transmissibility of COVID-19,” suggested that people who were presymptomatic or asymptomatic accounted for a large proportion of secondary infections.
This particular study estimated that 44 percent of secondary cases were infected during the presymptomatic stage, while concluding that “disease control measures should be adjusted to account for probably substantial presymptomatic transmission.”
The authors of the study admitted that it had several limitations, however, including potential “recall bias” that may have tended towards a delay in recognizing first symptoms.
“The incubation period would have been overestimated, and thus the proportion of presymptomatic transmission artifactually inflated,” meaning that the study may have exaggerated the proportion of people who spread the virus before showing symptoms, they said.
Another study from July 2020 called “The Implications of Silent Transmission for the Control of COVID-19 Outbreaks” went even further, suggesting that people were most infectious during the presymptomatic phase and concluding that silent transmission was the “primary driver of COVID-19 outbreaks and underscore the need for mitigation strategies, such as contact tracing, that detect and isolate infectious individuals prior to the onset of symptoms.”
That study relied on a range of assumptions and models, with different presymptomatic, asymptomatic, and symptomatic transmission rates calculated based on a complex mathematical model from another study.
Findings from earlier studies like the ones cited above led public health officials to argue that silent spreaders were a big factor in COVID-19 transmission and so to recommend that everyone should mask up.
