The oral arguments before the Supreme Court earlier this month is a reminder that our nation has a 66-year-old nuclear energy problem—and there is a ready and available solution in recycling used nuclear fuel.
Nuclear energy produces nearly 20 percent of our electricity. The fuel used to run our reactor fleet loses its intensity over time. That used, but not yet depleted, fuel is called Used Nuclear Fuel (UNF). There are 90,000 metric tons of UNF currently stored at reactor sites across 39 states in America, including approximately 4,000 metric tons in my home State of Texas.
In 1982, the federal government was made responsible by an act of Congress for removal and disposal of UNF from reactor sites, and has collected over $20 billion from reactor owners to pay for disposal of UNF. To date, the government has not removed any significant quantity of UNF from any site anywhere in America, including Texas, nor is there a current plan to do so.
As Secretary of Energy under President Trump’s first term, it became clear that any plan to move tonnage of UNF required some practical consent of the receiving state and local community, even if legal consent was not required by the 1982 Act.
The consequence of not solving this problem results in a financial loss to America and leaves the UNF at the numerous reactor sites across America. There have been private efforts to establish UNF interim storage facilities in West Texas and New Mexico. Though there has been some local acceptance of an interim storage facility in Texas or New Mexico, there has also been significant opposition. Resistance to those private interim storage proposals led to the NRC v. Texas case currently before the Supreme Court.
The Solution
We should rethink our approach. There are options we should consider other than storage of UNF, either temporarily on an interim basis or permanently. Our country should explore taking an entirely different path to achieve our ultimate goal: the removal of UNF from reactor sites. Recycling UNF makes much more sense than permanent storage and creates an energy source that is needed and currently unused.
The technology for recycling was first developed in the United States and has been used in France, Japan, Russia, the Netherlands, Australia, Italy, China, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland. I have personally toured many of these reprocessing facilities in other countries during my term as Energy Secretary.
The United States should establish a recycling policy so that the 90,000 metric tons of UNF in the country can be recycled and fabricated into mixed oxide fuel (“MOX fuel”). The resulting MOX fuel can be used in nuclear reactors to create reliable and clean energy.
Through establishing a recycling policy, the following four problems would be solved, and create economic opportunities:
First, the United States can solve the national problem of moving UNF away from reactor sites as it is obligated to do. Second, the U.S. can restart the discontinued payment program of the nuclear utilities for the removal of the UNF so that the Treasury can be replenished at the rate of $2 billion annually. Third, the concern of interim or long-term storage of UNF near our population centers is also addressed. Finally, MOX fuel can replace the 20 percent of U.S. nuclear fuel currently purchased from Russia.
The adoption of such a policy will create jobs and much needed energy for the grid as demand for energy skyrockets. Today, MOX fuel is widely used in Europe and Japan in their nuclear reactor fleet. America is behind its industrial neighbors in the treatment of UNF and needs to catch up.
Sometimes the greatest problems have simple and already discovered solutions.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Hegseth Circulated Secret Pentagon Memo On Preparing For War With China
Over the weekend The Washington Post revealed that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth distributed a memo in mid-March which ordered the Pentagon to prioritize its war-planning focus on potential future conflict with China.
The memo, called the Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance “outlines, in broad and sometimes partisan detail, the execution of President Donald Trump’s vision to prepare for and win a potential war against Beijing and defend the United States from threats in the ‘near abroad,’ including Greenland and the Panama Canal.”
It’s nothing new that the Pentagon considers China a ‘top pacing threat’ – but it does confirm that the Trump administration would likely be willing to go to war in the event of a mainland invasion of the self-ruled island.
The memo interestingly presented a strategy of “assuming risk” in Europe and other parts of the world, to refocus efforts on top nuclear-armed rivals.
The Pentagon’s force planning and new focus “will consider conflict only with Beijing when planning contingencies for a major power war” and leave the “threat from Moscow largely attended by European allies” – according to the report.
Hegseth wrote that China “is the Department’s sole pacing threat, and denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan — while simultaneously defending the US homeland is the Department’s sole pacing scenario.”
The memo urges NATO allies take on a “far greater” burden-sharing on defense, and puts Europe on notice in the event of greater threats from Russia:
Hegseth’s guidance acknowledges that the U.S. is unlikely to provide substantial, if any, support to Europe in the case of Russian military advances, noting that Washington intends to push NATO allies to take primary defense of the region. The U.S. will support Europe with nuclear deterrence of Russia, and NATO should only count on U.S. forces not required for homeland defense or China deterrence missions, the document says.
A significant increase in Europe sharing its defense burden, the document says, “will also ensure NATO can reliably deter or defeat Russian aggression even if deterrence fails and the United States is already engaged in, or must withhold forces to deter, a primary conflict in another region.”
As for Taiwan specifically, it lays out ways the Pentagon intends to help its ally bolster defenses, short of outright entering any direct conflict.
WaPo and others have said the Heritage Foundation think tank is the driving force behind the strategic ideas presented in the memo.
Secret Pentagon strategy memo on China and homeland defense has Heritage Foundation fingerprintshttps://t.co/EeTzPhlzEl
Hegseth’s plans specify a “denial defense” of Taiwan – according to the memo – which will include “increasing the troop presence through submarines, bombers, unmanned ships, and specialty units from the Army and Marine Corps, as well as a greater focus on bombs that destroy reinforced and subterranean targets.”
Topline: The City of Bell, California faced several scandals in the 2010s, culminating in corruption convictions for City Administrator Robert Rizzo and six other officials.
The “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn recounts a state audit that found $293,000 in possibly illegal spending by Rizzo and the city, but that was only the beginning. Rizzo and his colleagues were eventually charged with siphoning $5.5 million away from the city. That money would be worth $8.1 million today.
Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname “Dr. No” by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn’t stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.
Coburn’s Wastebook 2010 included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth more than $11.5 billion, including the beginning of Bell’s years of controversy.
Key facts: California Controller John Chiang found that Rizzo spent $293,000 in federal grants without approval from Bell’s city council and without signing actual contracts.
The total included $100,000 from a federal oil recycling program that Rizzo gave to a local company owned by Bell’s director of planning services.
Later investigations found absurd salaries for Rizzo and other Bell employees. Rizzo was paying himself an annual salary and benefits package of $1.5 million. Prosecutors alleged that at one point, his total pay had reached $12 million.
Four out of five city council members earned salaries above $100,000, even though the council met twice per year. The remaining councilman earned only $8,000.
At the time, a quarter of Bell’s population was living below the poverty line.
In 2014, Rizzo was sentenced to 10 to 12 years in prison and ordered to pay $8.8 million in restitution to the city. He got another 33 months in jail for federal tax fraud.
Summary: Today, Bell City Manager Michael Antwine II makes a salary of $205,000, while the poverty rate is still nearly 25%.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com
Trade Options Like Wall Street Professionals With These Two New Tools
Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff deadline (April 2) is looming, with big implications for traders. This wildcard event could tip sector flows, shift hedging activity, and force institutions to adjust, fast. Yet this market catalyst comes with its own set of risks and opportunities. The difference comes down to how well you can see a setup before it happens.
For those still trading based on valuation or headlines alone, that’s like playing checkers on a chessboard. Successful traders have long known that there is much more behind market movements.
Just take a look at SPX, one of the most liquid market instruments in the world. What caused price to violently retract from intraday highs on March 19 and 20? And why did price suddenly become particularly stable on March 24 after a tumultuous prior two weeks? As our derivative expert friends from SpotGamma write, it’s clear that something else is behind this market — something we’ve been tracking for years: options flows.
So, as part of our ongoing partnership with SpotGamma, and ahead of SpotGamma’s launch of their new and powerful tools – the Synthetic OI Lens and Compass Screener – both of which offer readers option-trading tools which until now were reserved only for Wall Street professionals, they present five options-driven trading insights to “weaponize” right now for those who want to stay sharp, trade with precision, and frontrun the herd.
1. Growth in Options Trading Isn’t Just a Fad. It’s the Market Now.
Next expiry options — better known as 0DTEs — aren’t just for a handful of meme stock speculators anymore. They make up more than 50% of all SPX options volume, up from just 17% in 2020. That means intraday flows are influencing price action more than ever.
And here’s the kicker: 88.5% of all options trading is happening on-exchange and retail.
Translation? The pros are watching your moves. And if you don’t understand how your trades affect hedging flows, you’re the one getting played.
Trading Edge: Monitor 0DTE gamma positioning before the open. SpotGamma’s HIRO and TRACE tools show where dealers are getting pinned, or forced to chase.
* * *
2. Fundamentals Light the Fuse, Options Flows Decide the Blast Radius
Netflix’s post-earnings jump in January? The market expected a 7% move. It ripped 14% higher, directly toward a $1,000 call wall SpotGamma flagged the day before.
“There are large positions up at $1,000… there is enough gamma that NFLX could move more than just 7%” – SpotGamma Founder Brent Kochuba, January 21, 2025
Why was this?
By reading the options market, it was clear that options flows could exacerbate any price movement — with no overhead resistance until the $1,000 strike for NFLX.
Trading Edge: Use SpotGamma’s Equity Hub to track support/resistance levels defined by options open interest — not lagging technicals. If there’s a wall of gamma, you’d better believe price will bounce or stall there.
* * *
3. Market Makers Are the Real Movers
Every option trade needs a hedge, and that hedge moves markets. If 100,000 calls are bought by traders for 0.50 delta contracts, the dealer has to buy 50,000 shares to stay neutral. This is why it’s a good idea to pay attention to monthly options expiration (OPEX). These market makers establish huge positions that often need to be unwound post-OPEX.
What does this mean? Pent-up volatility often is released – and by knowing where market makers are positioned, you can tell which names will be most impacted.
Just last week, we saw SPX reverse after hitting intraday highs on both March 19th and 20th – exactly where dealers had to sell to hedge. That Friday (March 21st) was OPEX, and these positions were closed out. This cleared significant overhead resistance and created room for a 1.7% rally in SPX on March 24th.
Trading Edge: SpotGamma’s HIRO and TRACE tools visualize this in real-time. Learn to read delta and gamma pressure. If you see selling pressure building from dealer hedging, don’t go long into it blindly.
* * *
4. Correlations Are Breaking. So Where Are Trading Opportunity?
It used to be simple: VIX signaled fear, and traders paid attention when it jumped. But that era of tightly coupled movement is fading fast. Why? The predictable relationships that made sense in the past no longer hold true
Today, stocks are moving on their own terms. Sector-based trading is giving way to single-name volatility — and for traders who can spot the breakouts hiding under the surface, this is a major opportunity.
Why this matters for your trading? Volatility and direction are no longer synced across the board, and edge can be found in the names that are out of alignment. This makes it critical to check where your stock falls before you trade it to determine whether it is trading with the market or an outlier.
Trading Edge: When implied volatility is low, but sentiment or skew is shifting fast, it’s often a signal that the market is mispricing risk. And that’s where smart traders strike.
So how do you find these setups before they move?
* * *
5. You’re Not Fighting the Banks Anymore, They’re Coming to Us
For years, institutional desks had exclusive access to the kind of flow data that moves markets. That information edge is now at your fingertips.
SpotGamma’s exciting new tools — the Synthetic Open Interest (OI) Lens and Compass — are leveling the playing field by exposing real positioning, market pressure, and hidden high-conviction setups ahead of each trading day.
Most open interest models assume dealers sell options and hedge passively. But in 2025’s flow-driven market, that’s not good enough.
The Synthetic OI Lens breaks the mold. It tracks actual order flow with enhanced data feeds and SpotGamma’s proprietary classification system, so you know if market makers are really getting long or short, and how market makers are likely to react.
In short, this lens shows whether pressure is building with or against your trade, so you’re not flying blind.
Trading Edge:Use Synthetic OI to spot when large long positions are building at key levels. That’s your cue to size up and ride the dealer flow.
Compass: Pinpoint High-Conviction Setups in Seconds
Compass is SpotGamma’s powerful new tool that maps directional skew vs. volatility across the entire market. You’ll instantly see where options are expensive or cheap and where directional sentiment resides — giving you a constant stream of high-probability setups.
Traders not only need the data, they need to be able to zero-in on opportunities amidst the noise. With Compass, you don’t need to flip through dozens of charts or data tables to access volatility and directional information.
By adding your name to the chart, you can quickly see correlation between names and which stocks may be outliers, giving you critical information to inform your trades
Compass highlights names worth your attention with Guided Mode. Explorer Mode puts you in the driver’s seat to choose which stocks you want to watch.
Trading Tip: Scan for stocks in Compass’s low IV / high bullish skew quadrant. That combo often points to cheap upside trades before the crowd piles in.
See It in Action — Find Your Edge in Any Stock
So for those readers who want to find trades most traders miss, SpotGamma is offering a free webinar on April 2 (just in time for the day’s market rollercoaster) that shows you how. Learn how to find trades others miss, using the Synthetic OI Lens and Compass.
SpotGamma will cover:
How to uncover real support/resistance using actual positioning—not lagging charts
Where to find high-reward setups like bullish risk reversals
How to scan your entire watchlist for volatility shifts in seconds
So for those who want smarter entries, faster trade ideas, and the data edge institutions traditionally kept to themselve, this is one to watch.
Cryptocurrency investors are increasingly moving capital into stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) in a bid to avoid volatility ahead of US President Donald Trump’s widely anticipated tariff announcement on April 2.
Increasingly, more capital is flowing into stablecoins and the real-world asset (RWA) tokenization sector, which refers to financial products and tangible assets such as real estate and fine art minted on the blockchain.
“Stablecoins and RWAs continue to see steady inflows of capital as safe havens in the current uncertain market,” crypto intelligence platform IntoTheBlock wrote in a March 31 X post.
“However, because these assets reside on-chain, even slight shifts in sentiment can trigger significant price movements, driven by the lower barriers to reallocating capital in real time,” the firm noted.
Stablecoins, total market cap. Source: IntoTheBlock
The flight to safety is mainly attributed to geopolitical tensions and global trade concerns, according to Juan Pellicer, senior research analyst at IntoTheBlock:
“Many investors were expecting economic tailwinds following Trump’s inauguration as president, but increased geopolitical tensions, tariffs and general political uncertainty are making investors more cautious.”
“This is not unreasonable, as even though global growth forecasts remain positive, growth expectations have decreased globally in recent months,” he added.
The prospect of a global trade war has heightened inflation-related concerns, causing a significant decline in both cryptocurrency and traditional equity markets.
Bitcoin has fallen 19% and the S&P 500 (SPX) index has fallen over 7% in the two months since Trump announced import tariffs on Chinese goods on Jan. 20, the day of his inauguration as president.
The April 2 announcement is expected to detail reciprocal trade tariffs targeting top US trading partners. The measures aim to reduce the country’s estimated $1.2 trillion goods trade deficit and boost domestic manufacturing.
Investor sentiment pressured by April 2 Trump tariff announcement
“Risk appetite remains muted amid tariff threats from President Trump and ongoing macro uncertainty,” Iliya Kalchev, dispatch analyst at digital asset investment platform Nexo, told Cointelegraph.
Meanwhile, RWAs reached a new cumulative all-time high of over $17 billion on Feb. 3, and are currently less than 0.5% away from surpassing the $20 billion milestone, according to data from RWA.xyz.
Some industry watchers said that Bitcoin’s lack of upside momentum may drive RWAs to a $50 billion all-time high before the end of 2025, as their increased liquidity will help RWAs attract a significant share of the $450 trillion global asset market.
Anti-Trump Comedian Booted From Performing At White House Correspondent’s Dinner
It goes without saying, but Donald Trump is no stranger to being ambushed. Beyond his unfortunate record of dodging bullets, the people involved in organizing Trump’s public appearances tend to set him up in captive situations for political embarrassment, either knowingly or unknowingly.
It happened when Trump attended his inaugural prayer service which was somehow led by a female Bishop (automatic red flag) who publicly chastised Trump for his campaign policies. It was later revealed that Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde is an LGBT and immigration activist that received millions of dollars in funding for helping illegal migrants enter the US.
Who made the choice to put Trump in a passive position with such a person?
Apparently learning from previous vetting errors, the Trump Administration has become far more careful. Far-left comedian and queer activist Amber Ruffin has been canceled from hosting the White House Correspondent’s Dinner’s traditional comedic interlude. The annual gala is an opportunity for journalists and media personalities to mingle with the Washington DC elite outside of the press room.
White House Correspondents Association President Eugene Daniels, who until recently was a reporter for Politico and is set to join MSNBC as a senior Washington correspondent, organized the speakers but ultimately cancelled Ruffin’s invitation.
“At this consequential moment for journalism, I want to ensure the focus is not on the politics of division but entirely on awarding our colleagues for their outstanding work and providing scholarship and mentorship to the next generation of journalists,” Daniels said in an email announcement.
Ruffin is a little known figure in comedy, yet, she was somehow chosen as a host for the WHCD, a position usually reserved for the top comedians of the day. Her humor is painfully woke and decidedly unfunny – Try finding a single legitimate laugh in this skit from her failed Peacock show.
Traditionally, the WHCD hires a comedic host to roast the crowd (and the president). However, in recent years the trend has shifted into a political struggle session in which Trump is specifically targeted for most of the ridicule. Even when Trump was not in the White House, he became the primary focus of guest comedian ire.
Amber Ruffin works for Late Night with Seth Meyers, and it was Seth Meyers (and others) that famously tried to humiliate Trump at a WHCD in 2011 over talk that he would run for president as a Republican; an action which many believe drove Trump’s desire to campaign in 2016.
Trump has not attended any of WHCD events during his time in office and some critics argue that he “can’t handle jokes” due to ego. But keep in mind that roasters are supposed to go after both political sides, not simply bash the people they disagree with.
In an appearance on the Daily Beast podcast, Ruffin said she was told by the WHCA that “you need to be equal, and make sure that you give it to both sides and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m going to be freaking doing that, dude, under no circumstances.'”
In other words, leftists view these events as opportunities for activism and propaganda, not as the fun and relaxed affairs they used to represent.
I am a political junkie and a political conservative. Like so many conservative political junkies, I spend a good portion of my waking hours trying to understand what the words and actions of Democrats actually mean. Like the Politburo of the former Soviet Union, the words of Democrats often bear little resemblance to the actions their words embody. “Equity” is an excellent example, as when Democrats say “equity,” they really mean highly inequitable policy solutions. Sometimes, however, Democrats deliberately fail to coherently describe the meaning of their actions, and then it becomes even harder to ascertain meaning. Such is the case with the basic economic policies of Democrats. Many on the right like to say that Democrats support socialism, but that’s not wholly true given how many capitalist components exist inside Democrat economic policies. Similarly, it is inaccurate to describe Democrat economics as being purely capitalistic because wealth redistribution is one of their core competencies. Some say that the Democrats enjoy government control of capitalist entities, rendering their economic persuasion fascist in nature. Yet, even that is inaccurate, given that fascist states view their economies as a source of nationalistic pride and strength, while Democrats tend to abhor nationalistic pride in the United States.
It’s not socialism. It’s not capitalism. It’s not fascism. What, then, is the overarching label that explains the economic policies and priorities of Democrats and their leadership?
It’s Grifterism.
(I did not invent that word, or at least that’s what Google tells me. However, I believe I am the first author to ever use that term to describe a formal system of national economic governance, so I’m going to run with it.)
Grifterism is, as the name suggests, a system run by and for the benefit of grifters. Webster defines the verb “grift” as “to acquire money or property illicitly.” Grifters have always been a part of human society, but it took the 21st-century Democratic Party to turn the idea into a comprehensive economic system. The best way to understand this system is to analyze the four classes of citizens upon which Grifterism relies, and into which all American citizens are divided one way or another: Billionaires, Productives, Dependents and, of course, Grifters.
(Before I explain these classes, I realize that there are some readers who will jump all over these categories and tell me I am being too absolute in describing them. Yes, Elon Musk is a good Billionaire. Yes, there are bad Productives who exploit the powerless. Yes, there are many entirely productive people in government who are not Grifters. Yes, the nice old blind lady down the street deserves the support given to the Dependent class. Yet, as the saying goes, these are the exceptions that prove the rule.)
On to the four classes of Grifterism:
1. The Billionaires: The Billionaires are the capital creators upon which much of the system relies. While the top 1% of income earners pay 46% of all federal taxes, estimates suggest the Billionaire portion of that demographic alone pays for somewhere between 5% and 10% of all federal taxes. While this Billionaire class is defined by that 5% to 10%, realize, too, that the Billionaires create the businesses that pay the executive salaries of so much of the rest of the 46%, so in effect, Billionaire-related taxes fund nearly half of the federal government’s gross revenue and are the de facto economic sponsors of the Grifter class. (In addition to the punishing taxes they pay, Billionaires also enjoy the privileged punishment of being endlessly vilified by the “Tax the Rich” likes of Bernie Sanders, AOC, and their brainwashed acolytes.)
Ah, yes, those poor, poor Billionaires. They are taxed and vilified to an extraordinary degree, seemingly all as punishment for their riches. However, they are actually complicit with the Grifters by funding Grifterism in exchange for their existence being tolerated, and when it comes to economic policies, they are actually on the same side as the Bernies and the AOCs, it’s just not that obvious.
You see, the Grifters rely on a vast regulatory state that makes it very, very difficult to found new, Billionaire-creating businesses—unless you are already a Billionaire. Regulatory regimes like Dodd-Frank, the 1934 Act, the CFPB and a host of other business-harassing federal regulations and agencies mean that the greatest wealth-creating businesses can only exist when they hire legions of white-shoe law firms and high-priced accountants to ensure compliance with the regulatory burden. As such, only Billionaire-owned companies have the wherewithal to fund such compliance measures, effectively creating monopolies that shut out anyone else from ever joining their club.
As an example, Dodd-Frank has done little for America other than ensure that the big banks are bigger and the small banks are fewer, all by imposing massive regulatory burdens on an ever-dwindling population of small banks. A regulatory scheme that was purportedly designed to help “the little guy” only helped the Billionaires, purposely and deliberately suppressing the ability of the Productives (more on them later) from climbing higher and threatening to join the elite circle of the Billionaires.
The tryst between the Billionaires and the Grifters gets even worse when considering the concept of regulatory capture—i.e., the Billionaires are busy writing the Grifters’ regulations that will govern the Billionaires. Remember when the health insurance industry wrote the Obamacare legislation? THAT is “regulatory capture.”
Between Billionaire-friendly, compliance-driven monopolies and regulatory capture, the symbiotic relationship between the Billionaires and the Grifters becomes clear. Yes, the Billionaires pay far more than their fair share of taxes and face constant verbal abuse from the Grifter class, but they have a wink-wink acceptance of that because they sit secure on their wealth thanks to the Grifters’ penchant for regulatory entropy.
It’s pretty good to be a Billionaire—but not so much our next two classes.
2. The Productives: The Productives are the most important class of Grifterism, and its most abused class. The Productives are the people who do and make the services and things upon which we all depend. They are doctors; they are farmers; they are the guys running the oil rig; they are long-haul truck drivers; they are your green grocer; they are your lawn guy; they are your dry cleaners; they are your plumber; they are basically the people who serve as the engine of a productive society. They create, and they rarely take. They are small business owners, but they are also the W-2 employees who work for those small businesses. Not only do the Productives serve as the essential lubricant for a functioning society, they also mostly pay that 56% of federal taxes not paid by the top 1%. America cannot survive without the Productives.
Many Productives are wealthy small business owners, while other Productives are hourly wage earners. But everyone in the Productive class knows this—it could all crash down at any moment. Productives live a life of insecurity—their business could fail, a recession could rob them of everything they ever worked for, and “at will” employees know that every day on the job could be their last. Being a Productive is stressful.
But the most stressful thing about being a Productive is that you lead your economic life at the mercy of the Grifters. If you are a Productive farmer, a Grifter might shut you down by forbidding you to grow crops or by making sure you cannot irrigate your land. If you invest your company’s worth in oil exploration equipment, a Grifter might bankrupt you with new regulations. Even that Productive dry cleaner you go to weekly has to worry about a Grifter destroying their business because they accepted a shirt with a bloodstain.
Examples like what I cite above are seemingly infinite and often totally opaque to a Productive, until such time as a Grifter arbitrarily decides to enforce one of the millions of regulatory laws few even are aware of and shuts the Productive down.
Thus, while Productives are the class that society cannot live without, all Productives live an economic life of uncertainty, constantly teetering on the razor’s edge of failure, knowing that they exist only because of the largesse of Grifters, and those same Grifters can destroy them at any time with the click of a pen.
It ain’t easy being a Productive.
3. The Dependents: This is a tricky one. It’s kind of self-explanatory—Dependents are people that depend on government handouts to live. In many ways, this is just fine—an important function of any decent government is to ensure that people who are wholly incapable of taking care of themselves enjoy a social safety net. The nice widow lady up the block with crippling rheumatoid arthritis deserves our help. Alternatively, some Dependents are temporary—the Productive who lost his job deserves a safety net for several weeks until he finds a new place to be productive. These types of people are not what make Dependents worthy of shame.
It’s the able-bodied Dependent who would rather live on the dole than become a Productive that is shameful. It’s the young man on disability who really isn’t disabled. It’s the mother who has more children because her government pay-out goes up with each kid she births. These are the shameful Dependents. Dependents pay no taxes, live on the fruits of the Billionaires and the Productives, and give only one thing back—their loyal votes for the Grifters. Dependents are actually part of the Grifters’ big con, and the Grifter class has a symbiotic relationship with Dependents, just as it has with the Billionaires.
However, it is actually no fun being a Dependent. It’s too easy to become addicted to an idle life just above the poverty line, and in that regard, Dependents are not doing any exploiting; they are being exploited—by the Grifters.
4. The Grifters: Well, we’re finally here. By now, you probably have a pretty good idea of what the Grifters are up to, but let’s be clear that this class consists of more than just government workers. The Grifter class includes all of the intelligentsia: the university professors, the traditional journalists, the lobbyists, the Hollywood elite, the “BigLaw” attorneys, and, most of all, the NGO crowd. Further, not every government worker is a Grifter—the military, the police, the justice system, and many other government offices that provide what economists call “Public Goods” all house highly necessary government employees. (Those employees are not Grifters—they are Productives, but unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of government workers are in fact Grifters.)
But let’s get back to the NGOs (a term I use in this article interchangeably with non-profit entities), as they reveal the true level of perfidy perpetuated by the Grifters. If you have been paying attention for the last two months, you are probably aware that DOGE and brilliantly relentless and patriotic volunteer data analysts like Data Republican have uncovered the widespread prevalence of U.S. federal agencies taking your tax dollars and using them to fund dubious efforts by various NGOs. This wicked grift cycle goes like this: (1) Taxpayers pay taxes required because Grifters establish programs that require funding; (2) Congress approves such funding in the vaguest possible terms of intent and appropriates those funds to a federal agency run by Grifters; (3) the Grifters in that agency interpret Congress’ intent in the broadest manner possible and provide funds to NGOs that employ other Grifters with six-figure salaries; and (4) that NGO then engages in some sort of woke cause such as training transgender farmers—a cause very few taxpaying voters would vote for if they only knew about it.
The cycle of grifting prospers beyond just NGOs: the universities receive taxpayer funding to indoctrinate our youth; the lobbyists curry favor with the Grifters to improve their business opportunities; the journalists cycle in and out of government, spreading the Grifter ethos as truth; Hollywood pays homage to it all, infecting American brains with woke ideas that Grifterism is noble; the BigLaw attorneys become rich navigating the vast regulatory schemes that are the lifeblood of Grifterism, and the members of the Grifter class constantly cycle in and out of the various organizations that benefit most from their economic parasitism.
The Grifters are the only class of Grifterism that fully benefits from the corrupt system; in fact, the system exists by, for, and because of the Grifters—almost all of whom are voting for Democrat candidates who themselves wallow in the pig trough of Grifterism. “But wait!” you may say, “Government workers are not Billionaires, they are not wealthy. How is that a grift?” Grifters in government generally enjoy wages in excess of the national median income; they are entitled to retirement plans largely unheard of in the private sector; they have healthcare and other benefits that far exceed those of equivalent private workers; and, most of all, they enjoy job security that is unmatched by any other sector of American society. Most Grifters are unfirable—they have life tenure. Finally, they have the power to pull the strings of the entire Grifter class for their own benefit—back-scratching and beak-wetting are their secret ways of communication.
Grifterism exists by, for, and because of the Grifters. The Grifter class allows the Billionaires, the Productives, and the Dependents to exist, but only so long as they provide the resources necessary for the Grifters to thrive. Understanding this system—and the fact that the system is almost exclusively the province of Democrats—perfectly explains why Elon Musk and DOGE are treated as existential threats by Democrats. That is because Elon Musk and DOGE are, in fact, existential threats to Democrats. If Grifterism unravels, so do the lifestyle, beliefs, and lifelong motivations of most Democrats. Democrats treat DOGE as a life-or-death matter. Patriotic Americans should do the same. Unraveling Grifterism is the essential act in making America great again, and vocal, robust support for DOGE is a task all patriotic Americans should embrace. Grifterism must end if we are ever to be truly free, and if we are ever to have small, non-intrusive government and genuine economic opportunity, Grifterism must be extinguished as the metastasizing cancer that it is.
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Cynical Publius is the nom de plume of a retired U.S. Army colonel, veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, and reformed denizen of the Pentagon (where Grifterism still thrives) who is now a practicing corporate law attorney. You can follow Cynical Publius on X at@CynicalPublius.
Jeffrey Epstein Victim Says She’s In Renal Failure, Has ‘Four Days To Live’
Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, 41, says she’s got ‘days to live’ – writing on Instagram that she’s in renal failure as a result of injuries sustained after a collision with a bus.
“This year has been the worst start to a new year, but I won’t bore anyone with the details but I think it important to note that when a school bus driver comes at you driving 110km as we were slowing for a turn that no matter what your car is made of it might as well be a tin can,” she wrote on Sunday.
“I’ve gone into kidney renal failure, they’ve given me four days to live, transferring me to a specialist hospital in urology. I’m ready to go, just not until I see my babies one last time, but you know what they say about wishes.”
Her father, Sky Roberts, responded to her post: “Virginia my daughter, I love you and praying for you to get the correct treatment to live a long and healthy life. If there is anything in this world I can do to help you, please let me know. My spirit with you now and holding your hand.”
According to Sky, a retired engineer living in Floriday, Virginia is “suffering.”
Giuffre’s representative, Dini von Meuffling, “Virginia has been in a serious accident and is receiving medical care in the hospital. She greatly appreciates the support and well wishes people are sending.”
As one of the most prominent Epstein victims, Giuffre has been speaking out for years about her sexual abuse at the hands of Epstein and friends. In 2021, she filed a civil lawsuit in New York against Prince Andrew, who she accused of rape. She also said that Epstein’s ‘madam’ Ghislaine Maxwell had trafficked her to London to have sex with Andrew when she was 17. She agreed to an out-of-court settlement with Andrew in 2022 – which is believed to be in the millions of dollars, while Andrew – who’s denied all allegations, has been forced to step down from royal duties (since the rest of the royal family totally aren’t longstanding uncaught pedophiles).
Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking following her 2021 conviction. Following the settlement, Giuffre retreated from public life and moved to Perth, Australia with her husband Robert and their three children – though recent reports suggest that she and her husband have become estranged.
“The current conflict between Europe and America is not reducible towards contrasting approaches towards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
– Frank Furedi on Substack
“Contrary to Western media’s trash talk, Russian military has not been degraded. If anything, it has been significantly upgraded.”
– Alex Krainer
You’re going to see what a truly consequential span of weeks, looks like, as Western Civ goes into full churn on April’s doorstep.
Remember, TS Eliot called it the “cruelest month.”
Too many uncomfortable things are converging, too many ongoing operations are unwinding, too many tensions are breaking.
The conclusion of “Joe Biden’s” Ukraine War fiasco looms. You can tell because The New York Times published a gigantic piece Sunday detailing how the Pentagon and the CIA actually ran all of Ukraine’s tactical operations out of a base in Wiesbaden, Germany — after building a colossal Ukraine war machine post our 2014 color revolution in Kiev. Since the very start of the hot war in 2022, we did all the targeting for the weapons we gave them and planned their every move. What a surprise! (Not.)
The motive behind all that, as conceived by US neo-cons and NATO neo-morons, was to “weaken” Russia, bust it up, and seize its resources. All the sanctions piled on only induced Russia into an import-replacement campaign that actually strengthened its economy, while the war led to a revolution in Russian war-fighting tactics and advanced weaponry. Now, the whole thing is ending in Ukraine’s defeat and the West’s humiliation.
The Times could have published this in 2023-24, but it would have been a major embarrassment for “Joe Biden” and his shadow managers moving into the election. They put it out just now because the jig is up and the paper desperately needs to pretend that it’s ahead of events to preserve the last shreds of its credibility.
Mr. Trump, the uber-realist, knows that the Russians are going to roll up in Ukraine this spring and there is increasingly not much that can be done about that, except to try to put the best face on it — which is, that it wasn’t his war. As long as the coke freak Zelensky remains in charge, Ukraine will be negotiation-unworthy, as the Russian phrase goes. So, US-Russia peace talks were largely diplomatic showbiz. Both Putin and Mr. Trump were painfully aware of this, and hence, Mr. Trump’s latest performative bluster about “more sanctions” will probably not amount to anything.
And also hence, the synchronized idiocy on display in France, Germany, and the UK. They were all-in on the neo-con scheme that is now falling apart and its failure has driven them plumb crazy. As the US drops out of the stupid proxy war, they declare their intention to take it from here and go beat-up Russia. Their war-drums are teaspoons beating on so many quiches.
Soon-to-be chancellor Friedrich Merz proposes an 800-billion-Euro debt spree to finance the re-arming of Germany, which, just now, is utterly incapable of war. He is insane.
German industry is collapsing from a lack of affordable natural gas (as arranged by “Joe Biden” blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, danke schön). Turning Volkswagen factories to missile production will not help the German people one bit. It probably will remind them about the Weimar hyper-inflation, though.
Macron pledges to put French boots on the ground in Ukraine. Ain’t gonna happen.
Today, his stooge judiciary found political rival Marine LePen guilty of a Mickey Mouse offense in order to bar her from running against him in the next election. Ain’t gonna work. He will provoke the biggest national uprising since the Bastille. His government will be too busy putting down French Revolution 2.0 to play war games in history’s graveyard of armies. Maybe he’ll try nukes. I’m sure that’ll work — if you’re eager to see Russian hypersonic “hazelnuts” rain down on the Île-de-France.
And then, there is the amazing idiot PM Keir Starmer in the UK, calling on his “coalition of the willing” to step up and intervene in the lost cause that is Ukraine.
How many hands went up on that call? For practical purposes, the Brits have no war-fighting capacity whatsoever, and no resources for generating such capacity. And, anyway, they are facing some dreadful combo of a civil war / internal jihad against their own indigenous population, plus an economic collapse cherry-on-top.
In short, Europe has so many incipient existential problems that the whole story is about to shift its focus from the already-sealed fate of Ukraine to the very dark prospects for the core nations of Old-World Western Civ.
I wouldn’t plan a vacation there this year.
Meanwhile, expect a pile-up of consequence in our own sore-beset USA in the upcoming cruelest month. Today, the DOGE team visits the CIA. It could spell an end to decades of mad frolics emanating from that gigantic black box of black ops. Director John Ratcliffe has cordially invited Mr. Musk’s technicians and he is probably eager to discover exactly what mischief has been hidden from him by the immense, secretive, foul bureaucracy he lately assumed command over.
The Epstein materials recently recovered out of the FBI’s rogue New York offices of the agency are considered so critical by Director Patel that he assigned 1000 agents to review and process the docs full-time. That includes redacting names of many additional sex-trafficked children. Expect to see the release of a lot of that in the next thirty days with dire reverberations in the celebrity realms of politics, finance, and showbiz.
JudgeGate is moving toward its climax at the same time. Tuesday this week, Rep. Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on the DC circuit’s lawfare offensive against Mr. Trump’s executive authority. It would be nice to hear from DC district judges James Boasberg, Amy Berman Jackson, Tanya Chutkan, Beryl Howell, and Amir Ali, who have been zealously active in what looks like a coordinated lawfare campaign against the chief executive. Norm Eisen is not a judge, but he is the central conductor of the lawfare orchestra, and he has a bit of ‘splainin’ to do. One can even imagine something like a RICO referral emerge from that rather brazen operation. Anyway, the whole matter is going to land in the Supreme Court before April is out.
Also expect a lot of movement in the Covid-19 story coming out of the newly-reorganized CDC, NIH, FDA, NIAID, and other corners of the public health bureaucracy. Evidence is piling up fast of tragic and awful blowback from the Covid vaccine. There is too much to be ignored any longer and momentous decisions must follow, starting with taking the Pfizer and Moderna shots off-line. The entire regime of data collection, processing, and public release is about to change and the nation will be shocked by what gets disclosed.
Then there are the financial markets.
They do not like the kind of shifts in public perception that return of consequence must bring. Gold alone is sending out a very vivid distress signal for everything else pretending to be an asset or a form of collateral. The equity markets have been wobbling for weeks. Look out below as the Easter eggs roll.
Mark Zuckerberg is back in the hot seat, this time facing explosive allegations that Meta deliberately swiped millions of books from notorious digital pirate sites LibGen and Anna’s Archive to train its cutting-edge AI model, Llama 3.
According to recently filed court documents, Meta executives were allegedly openly discussing their desperate need for high-quality content, acknowledging in a damning email, “Books are actually more important than web data.” To that end, the company allegedly turned straight to piracy hubs stacked high with stolen literary treasures – without a second thought or a single cent paid to their rightful owners, according to Forbes.
Meta staff turned to LibGen, home to more than 7.5 million pirated books and 81 million stolen research papers, to fill that gap. They did the same with Anna’s Archive.
…
In recently filed court documents, Meta, led by founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is alleged to have deliberately and explicitly authorized a raid on LibGen—and Anna’s Archive, another massive digital pirate haven—to train its latest AI model, Llama 3.
The fallout has infuriated authors worldwide whose life’s work may have been quietly scooped up and fed into Zuckerberg’s latest technological brainchild without credit, consent, or compensation.
As the article notes, Meta’s 2024 financial statements showcase revenues topping a staggering $164 billion, with profits nearing $62 billion. Clearly, Meta had the means and muscle to fairly compensate creators, publishers, and researchers. Instead, they allegedly chose to steal that content for training purposes.
Critics argue this saga is more than just corporate greed;
They might even have acted as the leader in LLM input data and created licensed arrangements that respected an author’s rights. Imagine if the company had the corporate culture to be a leader on one of society’s latest and most important questions: Who owns content in the LLM?
Coincidentally, Meta’s “focus on long-term impact” core value states: “We emphasize long-term thinking that encourages us to extend the timeline for the impact we have, rather than optimizing for near-term wins.”
It seems very clear that Meta was indeed optimizing for near-term wins in this case, instead of outlining a corporate culture and leadership position of collaboration and authenticity.
Meta’s defense, meanwhile, leans on the “fair use” argument – suggesting their AI transforms stolen content into something sufficiently new. But legal experts stress fair use typically applies to educators, reviewers, and critics – not trillion-dollar tech giants profiteering off mass commercial data harvesting.
The author of the Forbes piece checked The Atlantic‘s Alex Reisner’s LibGen tracking tool and made a disturbing discovery: all five of their own published books were found pirated and included in Meta’s dataset.
A major class-action lawsuit has been filed alleging copyright infringement and unfair competition – while other firms “are likely guilty of similar sins,” according to the author.
Ultimately, this saga goes beyond Meta alone. The entire AI industry’s insatiable thirst for data urgently needs clear ethical guardrails. Tech giants must form sustainable, fair partnerships with content creators or risk stifling creativity, undermining intellectual property rights, and eroding public trust.
