Authored by Pepe Escobar,

Let’s start with that phone call. The Kremlin readout is quite sober – but it does reveal a few nuggets. There is no comprehensive deal – yet – between Moscow and Washington. Far from it: we are just in the initial tentative stage of talking and talking about several interconnected dossiers.

President Putin gave absolutely nothing away. The agreed-upon pause on attacks on energy infrastructure – not energy and (italics mine) infrastructure – spells out as Putin imposing a stop on dangerous Ukrainian hits on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.

That may be lost among all the Western hysteria; but there are two absolute conditions expressed by Moscow for anything in this riddle to start complying with objective reality – and not muddle along as a reality show narrative trainwreck:

1.“The settlement in Ukraine must take into account the unconditional need to eliminate the root causes of the crisis, Russia’s legitimate security interests.”

2.“The key condition for preventing the escalation of the conflict should be a complete cessation of foreign military aid and the provision of intelligence information to Kiev.”

US special envoy Witkoff is spinning that ceasefire “details” will be ironed out on Sunday in Saudi Arabia. No matter the amount of shrieking, Kiev will have to accept it.

Putin-Trump did not spend over 2 hours just talking hockey, hazy Black Sea navigation prospects and a quite limited energy infrastructure missile strike one-month pause.

In this incandescent juncture, what matters is off the record. And that might as well have been Iran. And the prospect of serious Hard Rain fallin’.

I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard

A certain psychopathological entity in West Asia is obsessed to ram all its opponents through the mouth of a graveyard. Putin must have had the chance to explain to Trump that Russia respects the UN Charter and abides by international law. Russia and Iran – top BRICS members – signed a comprehensive strategic partnership last January in Moscow. Russia provides detailed ISR/air defense/EW intel to Tehran.

A proverbially hysterical narrative now imprints the notion that Tel Aviv – courting Trump 2.0 backing – is ready to inflict airstrikes on Iran to “prevent it from going nuclear”. Tehran, as detailed by Ayatollah Khamenei, has no interest whatsoever in building a nuclear weapon.

There’s no way Russia will allow Israel – with crucial American backing – to wreak havoc on Iran. Even as Tehran is already capable to react to any attack, with devastating consequences. Without nuclear weapons – and even without Russian direct help.

Operation True Promise 2 – True Promise 3 is still on hold – had already demonstrated that Israel is absolutely defenseless against wave after wave of sophisticated Iranian missiles. Were the US under Trump 2.0 to be involved in a direct attack, all US military bases in West Asia would be incinerated, plus severe punishment to vassals hosting these bases. End result: oil prices skyrocketing, massive global economic crisis.

I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken

While the self-proclaimed peacemaker was on the phone polishing the newest iteration of his Art of the Deal, genocidal psychopathological Zionists with hammers a-bleedin’ were unleashing wild wolves on displaced newborn babies – huddling in tents ablaze in Khan Yunis.

And ten thousand EUrotrash talkers with their tongues all broken were mute on genocide but ready to erupt in shrieking delight pledging loyalty – and billions in funds – to the envoy of the former self-proclaimed Emir of Al-Nusra, a moderate head-chopper turned Hugo Boss-clad President.

All yelled a Eurovision-tinged Sieg Heil to the protégé’s mercenary “army”, duly backed by Qatari, British and European masters: ISIS-clad Salafi-jihadis, al-Qaeda remnants, assorted takfiris, Chechens, Uzbeks, Uighurs, a movable Terror Inc. on tour slashing Alawites, Christians, Shi’ites and even moderate Sunnis, facilitating the evisceration of Syria and the “donation” of large swathes of Syrian sovereign territory to Tel Aviv.

The Zionist SS Brussels Medusa von den Lugen gleefully showered the moderate head-chopper gangs – al-Qaeda R Us – with 2.5 billion euros. It was Qatar that pressured the European Commission (EC) to invite Jolani’s henchman turned Foreign Minister, Asaad al-Shaibani to the 9th Brussels Conference for Donors on Syria – even as at least 7,000 Alawites and Christians were being “slaughtered” by his goons, according to a Greek Member of the European Parliament, Nikolas Farantouris, who visited Damascus on March 8-9 and met, among others, with the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch and the Near East.

In parallel the Exceptionalist “peace through strength” circus ringmaster – dubbed across vast swathes of the Arab street as “The Marmalade Moron” – brutally started bombing Ansarallah in Yemen, to force unbowed warriors to ditch their unwavering support for Palestine and wallow in submission.

Additionally, “Bomb, bomb, bomb – bomb bomb Iran” was back as the crypto-Beach Boys theme song, because in the end Tehran must by all means be turned into Syria, Jordan, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, South Yemen: a pitiful Quisling Zionist regime.

The destabilized but not broken Axis of Resistance is fighting titanic, simultaneous battles against the Axis of Genocidal Zion on several fronts: the psycho-killers in Tel Aviv; the Jolani mercenary army in Syria, de facto ground troops of Israel, simultaneously supported, ideologically, by Zionist Arab regimes and assorted Salafi/takfiri Islamic outfits blessing the massacre against Palestinians; the Eurotrash liberal totalitarians, who are financing Jolani; and Washington/Pentagon-bombed Ansarallah in Yemen.

Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, leader of Ansarallah, made it all very clear in his March 16 speech:

“Our decision to support the Palestinian people, including our move to block Israeli maritime navigation, that clearly targets the Israeli enemy and no one else, is aimed solely at pressuring Israel to open the crossings, allow the entry of humanitarian aid, and put an end to the starvation of Gaza.”

So Ansarallah will not be broken – whatever the Empire of Chaos throws against them:

“The US is the one turning the sea into a battlefield, thereby directly impacting maritime navigation and global trade. Our decision was only targeting Israeli ships, and will now extend to US ships, but they are the ones who turn the sea into a battlefield and threaten maritime navigation. It is essential that all nations recognize who truly threatens international waters and the movement of ships.”

Compared to Yemeni courage, EUrotrash cowards might yearn, in their wildest dreams, to sound like thunder but are more likely to drown under a massive wave of irrelevance – to the sound of drummers whose hands are a-blazin’, bangin’ the Syria jihadi song. They shouldn’t even bother to whisper – because nobody is listenin’.

I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’

The batshit crazy Estonian chick with the IQ of an undernourished worm, masquerading as EU foreign policy chief, wants no less that 40 billion euros for “military aid” to country 404. Hungary, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal emitted a resounding “No”: after all none have even a sliver of that kind of money.

Even Germany hasn’t signed off on its own €3 billion pledge – although the accumulated dementia never stops: the future BlackRock chancellor is convinced that “Putin has declared war on all of Europe.”

No one on Trump 2.0 even bothers to address a word to the Estonian worm: yes, “nobody is listenin’.” Batshit crazy – and irrelevant.

For Trump 2.0, the whole EUro trash Cage aux Folles spectacle is irrelevant: from the €800 billion ReArm Europe military scam to the Macron-Starmer Dumb and Dumber politico double down, both clowns so eager to deploy 30,000 unsuspecting cannon-fodder items to country 404 when their “security” simply will not be guaranteed by Mama Pentagon.

The message is as stark as Hard Rain: you may not even qualify as a convenient tool for us anymore. At best you may be repositioned as a – rotten – basket of resources. You’re on the menu. Like the former Global South in the previous century. Now it’s your turn.

The imperial projections of a bunch of Hollow Men

The possibility remains that bombastic “peace through strength” Trump is trying to weave a web of deceit facing chess-master Putin while the EUrotrash set up a Syrian-style buffer – with European troops securing Ukraine’s most sensitive zones. All that would be masking the Zio-con axis, once again, revamping their obsession on “eliminating” Iran from the new Primakov triangle in BRICS (Russia-Iran-China instead of Russia-India-China).

According to this purely wishful thinking script, profiting from a “weak” Iran the Empire of Chaos would once again be reigning supreme in West Asia, manipulating energy prices to undermine Russia’s economy while compromising China’s energy security.

The key spanner in these proverbially childish works – a mere imperial projection – is that Putin is not trying to be part of the imperial club. Putin and several of the Security Council members in Moscow have accumulated piles of doctorates on Western deceit, coups, outright lies, blatant betrayals and hardcore geoeconomic sabotage.

Putin, Medvedev, Patrushev, Naryshkin, Lavrov, they all know that this war the current, breathless circus ringmaster is trying to end was always about breaking Russia, as well as containing China, and designed mostly as a Hail Mary pass to salvage the fast-declining Empire of Chaos.

And all that brings us to Spengler, as re-examined in this superb analysis, and to where Hard Rain is mostly gonna fall with no mercy.

When it comes to Europe, we are now dealing with Faustian men that don’t even qualify as T. S. Eliot’s hollow men, as “Europe has forgotten how to breed conquerors.” The Spenglerian metaphor for “the suffocation of a young civilization by the corpse of an old one” does apply. Yet Russian was never Faustian: more like Tolstoyan.

All of us who have been spending quality time in Russia after the start of the SMO do carry the feeling that it’s as if “the Third Rome was always waiting, biding its time, watching as Europe gutted itself on the altar of its own hubris.”

Now Russia seems to have shed “its Western skin”, turning to “its own roots – Eurasian, Orthodox, steppe-born.” I was personally overcome by this cultural/spiritual illumination not only in white nights in Moscow, Kazan or Vladivostok, but mostly while traveling in the black soil of Novorossiya – where the “rules-based international order” came to die.

The fragmented West is indeed trapped in a Baudrillard-style total simulation of its own making – while Russia is operating full tilt in objective reality. And indeed “this is why the West cannot win in Ukraine. It fights as a bureaucratic entity, not as a people. And Russia, for all its flaws, fights as a people.”

The current Hollow Men masquerading as Europe’s political “leaders” tough should not be underestimated. They will get their revenge – over their own European fellow citizens.

Cue to Christine “Vuitton” Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank (ECB): “The digital euro is more crucial than ever.”

Translation: all European bank accounts will eventually be transferred to the ECB. Now couple that with the proclamation by the Toxic Medusa in Brussels: “This month [March 2025] the European Commission will present the Savings and Investment Union. We will turn private savings (italics mine) into much-needed investments.”

Extra translation: it’s the private savings of European citizens that will be stolen and invested in 800 billion warmongering euros for Europe’s “defense” against the perennial “Russian threat”. Hard Rain – on each and every European citizen.

You may be asking why a beat poem structured as a psalm, composed on a typewriter in Greenwich Village in New York City in 1962, slightly before the Cuban missile crisis, by a 21-year old recently arrived from an industrial belt in Minnesota is telling our big story today of hubris and deceit. That’s the unconquerable power of Art.

I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number

Pellets of poison will be flooding the waters; souls may be forgotten – especially those of the Hollow Men; some – across the Global Majority – may be even resourceful enough to emerge from the depths of the deepest black forest; but most of all, as the executioner’s face remains quite well hidden, many will finally be able to see who he really is.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

A study by Summit Defense Criminal Lawyers ranks U.S. states by arrest likelihood, based on police presence and arrest rates.

Using law enforcement data normalized per 100K people, it calculates a Crime Arrest Risk Score by summing police personnel and comparing it to arrest rates. Higher scores indicate a greater chance of arrest in criminal cases.

Among the key findings, the study found South Dakota ranks first among states with the highest likelihood of arrest, reporting 5,878 arrests, the highest rate nationwide. Louisiana follows in second place, boasting the largest police presence at 350 officers, increasing the chances of lawbreakers being caught.

It also found, incredibly, that New York takes third place, with 10,450 first-line supervisors of police and detectives, the highest in the country, making arrests more likely for criminals, the study says. 

Wyoming ranks fourth, with an arrest rate of 3,681 per 100K and 271 officers per 100K residents, giving it a score of 81. North Dakota takes fifth place, recording 4,033 arrests per 100K, the second-highest among top-ranking states, with a score of 77. Illinois follows in sixth, featuring a strong police presence of 288 officers per 100K and a total of 36,190 officers statewide, achieving a score of 71.

Florida ranks seventh, with a large police force of 55,310 officers, including 8,310 first-line supervisors, and an arrest rate near 3,700 per 100K.

New Hampshire takes eighth place with 252 officers per 100K residents and an arrest rate of 3,385 per 100K, earning a score of 68.

Tennessee follows in ninth place, reporting 245 officers per 100K and an arrest rate of 3,523 per 100K. Finally, Alabama rounds out the top ten with 269 officers per 100K, 12,600 patrol officers, and a Crime Arrest Risk Score of 67.

“The criminal justice system can vary significantly from state to state, leading to differing approaches in handling crimes. Arrest rate variations across states may stem from differences in state laws, sentencing guidelines, and enforcement priorities, all of which impact how offenses are handled. In such a complex legal environment, having experienced legal counsel is crucial for ensuring fair treatment and safeguarding one’s rights,” a spokesperson from Summit Defense Criminal Lawyers concluded. 

You can view the whole study here. 

Authored by Ana Kasperian via RealClearInvestigations,

Francesca Padilla was awakened by the sound of screaming people and breaking glass. Soon she could hear the tortured howls of her neighbor’s dog Togo as the bungalow right next to her Venice home was engulfed in flames.  

“It was yelping so loud–the sound isn’t the usual dog sound–it was suffering,” another neighbor told a local newspaper. “It was suffering.” The homeowner, Dr. Courtney Gillenwater, a pediatrician, was at work when the fire started around 3 a.m.  Her neighbors tried and failed to break into her bungalow to rescue Togo. But the Husky-mix ultimately died, and Gillenwater’s home in this Los Angeles neighborhood was destroyed.

Gillenwater suspected that drug addicts from the growing homeless encampment nearby started the April 2021 fire because she had asked city officials to remove a dumpster behind her house where they would congregate. 

Her neighbor, Padilla, also believes the homeless were the culprits. “Anyone can see the correlation between homeless encampments and the rise of fires,” she said. “We have people cooking drugs out in the open right across the street. Is that not a recipe for disaster?”

Initially, firefighters with the Los Angeles Fire Department also suspected arson, telling reporters candidly at the time that they believed someone threw something over Gillenwater’s fence to start the fire. But soon the department issued a statement declaring in euphemistic bureaucratese that “there is no evidence that indicates the involvement of a person experiencing homelessness.” Four years later, the cause of the blaze remains officially unsolved. 

The 2021 fire is now viewed by some Los Angeles residents as a symbol of the city’s failure to control the spread of homeless encampments that have become a major cause of fires in the city. While LA’s leaders have been quick to point to climate change and faulty power lines for the recent historic fires that razed large swaths of the city, critics say they have intentionally downplayed the role played by the city’s swelling homeless population.

A new investigation by KCAL News using LAFD data found that since 2019, the number of fires connected to a homeless person has increased by the thousands. In 2024 alone, there were nearly 17,000 such fires.

A separate investigation by NBC4’s I-Team tallied nearly 14,000 homeless fires a year earlier. The report found that some of the fires were sparked as a result of encampments illegally tapping into the city’s electrical system to power items in their tents. Regardless, the upward trend in these types of fires is clear. The 13,909 homeless fires in 2023 were nearly double the number in 2020 when 43% of all citywide fire incidents involved a homeless person. Today, more than half of the fires do, even as the homeless account for less than 1% of the city’s population.

Gigi Graciette, a reporter for Fox 11 television, says fire officials have been advised to evade questions about homeless fires from local journalists.  “Even when [high-ranking fire officials] know for a fact how a fire … was indeed connected to an encampment or to an unhoused individual, they are not to say that,” Graciette said during a February 21 broadcast. “They are just to say it’s under investigation,” she continued.

Graciette noted that “many chiefs, many battalion chiefs, many captains are extremely frustrated to see their men and their women risking their lives on fires” at the same encampments repeatedly, including one whose squatters have taken over an abandoned office building in the working class neighborhood of Van Nuys. “It was there that a battalion chief told me ‘we’ve been to this one building ten times and I’m not allowed to speak about it,’ “ Graciette said. “That’s just the politics at play here.”

Fire officials do speak up from time to time, as did Capt. Freddy Escobar, president of United Firefighters of Los Angeles City, last June after fire crews responded to a homeless encampment fire that has recurred at the same site in the Sepulveda Basin. In highlighting the department’s frustration with city leadership, Escobar described how fire crews were expected to respond to the same encampment fire over and over again. “It was caused by the homeless and we nearly lost a firefighter over this,” he said. “I’m asking the city of Los Angeles, where is the outrage for what’s happening in the city? Because what we’re doing today is not working.”

A dozen firefighters were injured due to a sudden explosion as they battled the blaze. One member of the fire crew sustained severe injuries, including head trauma and a severed ear, which had to be reattached by doctors after he was airlifted to a nearby hospital. The Los Angeles Police Department later confirmed that multiple suspicious devices were found at the encampment where the fire started, preventing fire crews from returning. Instead, a helicopter was used to douse the fire with water and extinguish the blaze.

Located in the heart of the San Fernando Valley, the Sepulveda Basin is surrounded by parks, fields for competitive sports and a long bike path. The area is also home to the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve, a favorite among local birdwatchers due to its diverse variety of avian species. 

Last June, San Fernando Valley Audubon Society treasurer Pat Bates told the Los Angeles Daily News that her organization had been worried about the fire risk posed by the makeshift multi-story structures, propane tanks and construction materials they’ve discovered throughout the wildlife reserve. She and her colleagues estimated that roughly 150 people were living there, with some in desperate need of mental health treatment. 

The president of the SFV Audubon Society even recalled witnessing a screaming man waving a machete during a recent field trip for around a dozen third-grade students. No one was harmed. But the incident highlighted what Escobar put bluntly: what the city is doing is not working. Bates agrees. “We are very frustrated,” she said. “Why is anybody allowed to bring construction materials in and live there?”

Bates isn’t the only one asking such questions. Business owners and residents alike have been lobbying local leaders to be proactive and do something about the risks associated with the open fires commonly seen in encampments. Among the critics is commercial property owner John Alley, who is furious that open fires continue to be an issue in Santa Monica and Westlake, where the city’s notoriously crime-ridden MacArthur Park is located.

“Every night, on the sidewalks across MacArthur Park and in MacArthur Park, there’s two types of fires,” Alley says he told L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. “There’s the fires which are used to cook meth and the others are used to stay warm,” Alley continued. 

Bass called Alley on January 4, mere days before massive wind-fueled fires tore through and leveled the Pacific Palisades and Altadena. “I said [to Bass] there’s going to be a problem there, and if these fires burn buildings and people die, it’d be very embarrassing for you Mayor to have to come back early.”

Alley secretly recorded his exchange with Bass and felt justified in doing so because he “felt my life and the safety of my tenants and their hard-working employees were in danger.” Alley says the crime in the area, including drug trafficking, shootings and stabbings, has gotten so bad that police often refuse to escort firefighters in MacArthur Park for protection. “If firefighters don’t have their backs covered, they’re not going to be safe,” Alley asserted. “But the problem is the police … are staying two and three blocks away from the park at night. The police are afraid, not enough of them.”

Mayor Bass did not respond to RealClearInvestigations’ request for comment for this article.

Alley’s claims have been brushed off by anti-police activists as nothing more than paranoid musings. In reality, the gang MS-13 has had a foothold in MacArthur Park for years, and several transgender sex workers have been stabbed to death by gang members seeking to rid the area of them. But they’re not the only victims. For decades, gang members have been charging a weekly fee to street vendors, drug dealers, sex workers, homeless individuals and even legal business owners in the area. In 2021 the Los Angeles Times detailed a horrific incident involving the killing of a 3-week-old baby who was struck by gunfire after 18th Street gang members opened fire on a street vendor who refused to pay them $50. 

A 2023 report commissioned by the LAFD detailed the challenges facing the Fire Department in dealing with its the high volume of homeless-related calls. Aside from battling blazes, the LAFD also responds to medical emergencies throughout the city, which has proven to spread their resources thin in the context of an ever-expanding homeless population. 

“Over the course of late 2021 and into 2022, the City and County rolled out a pilot project for the delivery of alternative, non-urgent patient care—including mental health and homeless program diversion; however, this is not enough,” the report stated. “The alternative response program needs to scale massively and quickly to lower the workload placed on fire units back down to moderate and serious emergencies.”

Two Calls Per Hour

To highlight how homeless-related emergency calls were overburdening the LAFD, the report cited that “in 2020, Fire Station 9 in the east downtown area responded to 18,986 incidents—an average of 52 per day, or two per hour,” and recommended that the city “shift low-acuity EMS incidents from firefighter-staffed rescue ambulances in very high-incident-demand areas to non-firefighter-staffed, low-acuity units to include medical, mental health care, and homeless resources.” 

Further, the report recommended that “well over 100 new non-firefighter personnel must be hired” for homeless response measures. Two years later, data show that the LAFD continues to be more severely understaffed than almost any other major city, with only one firefighter for every 1,000 residents. By comparison, other major cities like Chicago, Dallas and Houston have closer to two firefighters per capita. 

“This is a woefully understaffed fire department,” Escobar said during a tearful interview with CNN last January. “We’re either going to have a fire department that’s going to reflect 2025, or we’re going to have a fire department that’s going to reflect the 1960s.” 

Ironically, data show that the LAFD was actually better-staffed back then. In a December 2024 memo that has since been deleted from the city’s website, former Fire Chief Kristin Crowley drew attention to the fact that the city has fewer fire stations today than it did in 1960 despite the population growing from 2.5 million to 4 million by 2020. 

Bass faced fierce backlash after having slashed more than $17.5 million from the Fire Department’s operational budget months before January’s devastating wildfires. But she still denies the cuts despite overwhelming evidence otherwise. 

In fact, the Mayor originally proposed trimming LAFD funding by $23 million for fiscal year 2024-2025. But that plan was never adopted. Later, a leaked memo City Hall sent to division fire chiefs and captains, following a tense meeting between Bass and Crowley one day before the fires, communicated that the Mayor was looking for an additional $49 million in cuts. The memo suggested that as many as 16 fire stations could shutter, but also clarified that “this is a worst-case scenario and is NOT happening yet.” 

Nevertheless, the eventual $17.5 million cut from the department’s operational budget did hamper the LAFD’s response to the fires. It resulted in firings of civilian workers, for example, including mechanics who repair fire trucks. In announcing Crowley’s demotion later, Mayor Bass claimed that “a thousand firefighters could have been on duty the morning the fires broke” but “were sent home.” Bass did not mention the department’s 75 fire trucks that were sitting idle because mechanics were not available to repair them. 

Burning Acreage, and Money for Homeless

The city has endured annual increases in both the number of fires and acres burned, but Bass has consistently dedicated more taxpayer resources to nonprofits serving the homeless than to the LAFD, which is tasked with protecting millions of people. While $837 million was budgeted for the fire department in fiscal year 2023-2024, $1.3 billion was allocated for the homeless. As with the fire budget, funding for homelessness was also reduced in the 2024-2025 budget, but its amount was still higher than that of the LAFD.

Also of concern is how the city’s homeless funding is being spent. A new audit commissioned by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter shows that the city has failed to track the performance of homeless programs that received a total of $2.4 billion in grants. Auditors argue that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which chooses grantees, lacked “uniform data standards and real-time oversight” and that “increased the risk of resource misallocation and limited the ability to assess the true impact of homelessness assistance services.”

The audit maintained that LAHSA’s missing data and lack of oversight “made it challenging” to determine how program funds were used and “whether they achieved the intended outcomes.”

One example highlighted in the audit was a nearly $2.1 million contract LAHSA head Va Lecia Adams Kellum approved for Upward Bound House’s housing assistance program. Adams Kellum breached ethics rules by approving the contract because her husband holds a senior position with the organization. But LAHSA made two amendments to the organization’s existing contracts to increase the grant amount to $2.4 million. The latest judge-mandated audit found that LAHSA had no performance reports for Upward Bound House.

Bass has little to show for the many billions she has poured into alleviating the homeless crisis. A federally mandated annual count found that 75,312 people were homeless on any given night across the county in January 2024. That represented a slight 0.3% improvement from the year before when the homeless tally totalled 75,518 people. And while the fire department was suffering from chronic underfunding, city comptroller Kenneth Mejia discovered that $513 million of the $1.3 billion in homeless funding was never spent. 

LAFD’s Honorary Fire Chief Paul Scrivano speculated that the city’s failed approach was not the bug but a feature of their leadership. “If the problem goes away, the money goes away,” Scrivano said on the Wisenuts Podcast. “So, the problem will never go away. This is an industry.”

A little over a year after the Venice fire took the dog Togo’s life, in October 2022, one hundred firefighters battled for more than 80 minutes to put out another fire in Venice that locals say was started by the homeless. A home that was under renovation was completely destroyed and five others sustained serious damage. Neighbor Glenn Searle says he personally witnessed several homeless individuals entering the property that was being renovated. “I can say that all day before there were homeless living in here and using the toilet all day,” he revealed to CBS. When asked if the Fire Department had any suspicion that the blaze was started by a homeless person, an LAFD spokesperson had “no comment.”

Pilots of a Delta flight that crashed spectacularly at Toronto’s Pearson Airport last month received a critical warning of a rapid descent less than three seconds before slamming onto the runway and flipping upside-down in a fiery wreck, new findings reveal.

The dramatic crash occurred Feb. 17 when Delta Air Lines Flight 4819 – operated by regional carrier Endeavor Air – made a catastrophic landing at Pearson after arriving from Minneapolis, according to a preliminary report by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB).

All 76 passengers and four crew members managed to survive the terrifying incident, though 21 were injured and hospitalized. Miraculously, everyone was released within days.

Investigators revealed Wednesday that the plane’s ground proximity alert system sounded a frantic warning just 2.6 seconds before touchdown, registering an alarming descent rate of 1,100 feet per minute – above Transport Canada’s maximum allowable rate of 1,000 feet per minute for commercial landings.

The aircraft was hurtling toward the runway at roughly 250 kilometers per hour (136 knots) just moments before disaster struck.

Upon impact, the plane’s landing gear collapsed, ripping off a wing and triggering a dangerous jet-fuel leak that instantly ignited, engulfing the craft in flames as it skidded violently down the runway. The plane then rolled sharply onto its right side and flipped upside-down, shearing off a significant portion of its tail.

“The flight crew had to exit through the emergency hatch located on the ceiling of the cockpit,” TSB lead investigator Ken Webster revealed in a chilling video update.

Seconds after emergency responders cleared the plane of all passengers, a powerful explosion erupted near the left wing. Investigators are still probing its mysterious cause.

Initial inspections uncovered no obvious mechanical defects or issues with flight controls. The TSB’s continuing investigation will focus on metallurgical analysis of the damaged wing, pilot training, landing protocols, cabin safety procedures, and passenger evacuation.

“This investigation will take some time, as many questions remain unanswered,” Webster admitted, adding “The TSB will continue to work toward determining the full sequence of events that led to the accident.”

In response to the harrowing ordeal, Delta has offered survivors $30,000 each in “no strings attached” compensation. But the drama doesn’t stop there—at least two lawsuits have already been filed stateside, with a Canadian law firm reporting multiple passengers have hired them seeking further damages.

The TSB’s investigation—backed by the FAA, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, Delta’s incident response team, and Mitsubishi (the aircraft’s manufacturer)—continues, promising more explosive revelations in the weeks to come.

Authored by Selena Zito via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Small businesses have been the backbone of the United States since its founding. The Hotel Saxonburg, which has also been known as the Vogeley House, the Belvedere House, the Laube House and the Central Hotel, opened in 1835 and has lasted most of our nation’s existence.

Yesterday, the new owners abruptly closed the hotel after purchasing it two years ago. This not only shuttered the historic restaurant and hotel that served as a cultural touchstone for nearly 200 years, but it also caused people to lose their jobs.

Because the business was small, those job losses, likely around 50 people total, were a statistic that didn’t gain attention from the national press. However, when you consider that more people in the U.S. work for small businesses than any other sector, those numbers start to add up.

According to the Small Business Administration, which draws its data from the U.S. Census Bureau, over 60 percent of U.S. businesses are small businesses. They range from employing a handful of people (think your favorite food truck) to 100 people (think a local machine shop).

Before 2020, most Americans worked for small businesses that employed under 500 people. The last four years have upended that number. Now, only 53 percent of Americans work for businesses with 500 or more workers.

In short, the U.S. is no longer a nation of small businesses. In February, the Business Dynamics Statistics from the Census Bureau showed that shift. It also showed that the biggest change of all has been the increase in the number of people working for companies with 10,000 or more workers and the decrease in the number of people working at firms with under 100 workers.

Case in point: Last year, there was a story about a local independent grocery, Ferri’s, that closed after 70 years in a snowball effect that began with the unexpected shuttering of the small independent pharmacy located inside the grocery.

The beloved family grocery posted a note on the building’s large glass front windows and on Facebook, saying they were closing “with a heavy heart” after serving as “a cornerstone of our community and … fostering connections that have spanned generations.”

Ferri’s general manager, Gary Silvestri, said the loss of rent and traffic from the pharmacy had a significant impact, as it was 20 percent of the grocer’s business.

Another factor was the economic pressure of Target being located a couple of miles to the east, Walmart a few miles to the west, and Giant Eagle, a massive local grocery store chain, within a half mile of Ferri’s. All three of those companies employ well over 10,000 people and have the buying-power advantage to lower prices over a mom-and-pop grocery.

Jeff Hastings of Wholesale Central, the leading publisher of content for the wholesale merchandise industry, wrote that ever since the dawn of the big-box store in 1962, the year Walmart, Kmart and Target all opened their doors, small local businesses, from hardware stores to clothing and shoe stores to pharmacies and groceries, have struggled to compete.

He cited the 2006 Walmart move into the west side of Chicago as an example. Eighty-two local stores went out of business and cost an estimated 300 retail jobs in neighboring ZIP codes.

It isn’t just groceries, restaurants or hotels that are falling to larger entities with 10 to 100 employees. Small local gas stations, clothing stores and even small insurance companies that either close or merge with larger companies are also losing ground as big companies expand.

Locals in Saxonburg were sad that the hotel closed and that people lost their jobs, but they also felt confident that someone would come along and revive the historic hotel and restaurant as a gathering place for the community and visitors.

The good news for small businesses, and why many economic experts expect a turnaround, is the surge in construction, manufacturing, retail, and service industries in January of this year. Optimism levels exceed the 51-year average, according to the latest Small Business Economic Trends survey from the National Federation of Independent Business Research Center.

That quarterly report revealed that the overall small business population is signaling renewed confidence despite persistent economic challenges. That just might turn around this current trend.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Authored by Luis Cornelio via Headline USA,

Two MSNBC hosts were forced to eat their own words on Tuesday after blindly repeating a now-retracted AP report about Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard supposedly referring to President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin as “very good friends.”  

MSNBC set the record straight last night and corrected false reporting about DNI Tulsi Gabbard. pic.twitter.com/b7MZEW1zwj

— Alex Pfeiffer (@Pfeiffer47) March 19, 2025

The AP had to walk back its demonstrably false report, as it was revealed Gabbard had been talking about Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. 

Ali Velshi and Stephanie Ruhle, the insufferable anchors of The Last Word and 11th Hour, respectively, were left scrambling after parroting the AP’s debunked claim in a desperate attempt to smear the Trump administration. 

As reported by the Daily Caller, Velshi said his show had “reported on excerpts of an interview between the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and an Indian TV news network in which she said that Trump was good friends with the world leader.” 

He added, “Now we said that world leader was Vladimir Putin, but the full interview was subsequently released and it showed that Gabbard was referring to Donald Trump and the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.” 

Ruhle echoed Velshi’s retraction nearly verbatim, which was likely written by attorneys to avoid legal repercussions.  

“Last night, we reported on excerpts of an interview between the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard and an Indian TV news network in which she said that Trump was good friends with a world leader,” Ruhle said, according to the Caller. 

“Now we said that world leader was Vladimir Putin, but the full interview shows that Gabbard was referring to Trump and Indian Prime Minister Modi. We cleared that up,” she admitted. 

The AP itself issued a press statement retracting its false claim: 

“The Associated Press has withdrawn its story about U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard saying President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘are very good friends.’ Gabbard was talking about Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The AP will publish a corrected version of the story.” 

Alexa Henning, Gabbard’s spokesperson and seasoned Republican communicator, minced no words in response to the AP, scolding their reporting as “total trash.” 

“This is why no one trusts the maliciously incompetent and purposefully bias media,” Henning said. 

“If this isn’t a clear example of pushing a solely political narrative, then nothing is.” 

Trump on banning the AP from the Oval Office & Air Force One:

“That’s the way life works. Thank you for the question.” 🤣 pic.twitter.com/U9tSEe0pCP

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) February 18, 2025

The AP scandal comes just weeks after Trump revoked the news outlet’s special access to the Oval Office, citing their misleading and false reporting.

The wave of terrorism fueled by far-left groups aligned with the Democratic Party has spread internationally and is potentially linked to another incident in which dozens of Teslas were damaged at a showroom in Ontario, Canada, this week.

Canadian news channel CP24 reports that 80 Tesla vehicles in Hamilton, Ontario, were vandalized at Canada’s largest Tesla Service Center at CF Lime Ridge Mall, 999 Upper Wentworth Street.

Here’s more from the media outlet:

Hamilton police say they are investigating a “series of mischiefs” after dozens of Tesla vehicles were damaged at a local dealership this week.

According to police, officers were called to a Tesla dealership, located at 999 Upper Wentworth Street, on Wednesday for a report of damage to some of the store’s inventory.

Police arrived to discover that “upwards of 80” Tesla vehicles parked outside had sustained damage, including deep scratches and punctured tires.

“Police are currently reviewing CCTV camera footage and are asking the public for their assistance in solving this crime,” investigators said in a news release issued Thursday.

A separate report from Tesla blog Drive Tesla provided more color on additional Tesla attacks across Canada: 

While this is the largest incident of vandalism involving Tesla vehicles, it’s far from the first. In recent weeks, Teslas have increasingly become targets of vandalism and attacks. One of the most significant incidents occurred in Nanaimo, British Columbia where a Tesla Supercharger station was deliberately set on fire last week.

A similarly shocking event took place in London, Ontario, just a few days later when a Tesla Model S was intentionally set on fire at CF Masonville Mall.

Yesterday, climate activists targeted a Tesla store in Montreal, spray painting the facade of the building in a protest against Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

In the US, the unhinged Democratic Party has waged a massive assault on Tesla. Far-left anarcho-terrorists have firebombed Tesla vehicles and Supercharger networks, while leftist NGOs target showrooms with rent-a-protesters. 

DEVELOPING: Video provided to the Review-Journal shows several @Tesla vehicles engulfed in flames after Las Vegas police say they were set on fire by an individual early Tuesday morning.
UPDATES→ https://t.co/sZQr9j1E5A pic.twitter.com/uXeLsdpTVl

— Las Vegas Review-Journal (@reviewjournal) March 18, 2025

Unhinged Radical Democrat Congresswoman Jasmine Crocket…

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO:

Tonight, Radical Democrat Congresswoman @JasmineForUS Jasmine Crockett spoke on a CALL TO ACTION call organized by the @Tesla Takedown organizers who have been vandalizing and attacking @elonmusk’s Tesla Showrooms and charging stations across the country and all… pic.twitter.com/eqbPsseIhJ

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) March 20, 2025

Soro is gearing up for color revolution operations.

Rogue Soros-Funded NGO Plots Multi-City Assault On Tesla As Domestic Terrorism Escalates https://t.co/fWK6bxZTfg

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 20, 2025

Failed 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee wished death on the American company.

If you need a little boost during the day, check out Tesla stock 📉 pic.twitter.com/KBEh6pOZLW

— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) March 19, 2025

TDS infects Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson. 

Rick Wilson, 2015: Put a bullet in Donald Trump.

Rick Wilson, 2025: Kill Tesla.

Rick Wilson knows exactly what he’s doing. pic.twitter.com/KRv99ujJkR

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) March 19, 2025

Democrats are doubling down with Communist revolutionary tactics in their effort to try to kill an American company. It looks pretty miscalculated for the imploding party polling at record-low levels with voters. This type of revolutionary behavior by the left should further energize the common sense/center-right. 

What’s particularly alarming is the incident in Canada, which appears to be a foreign group inflicting harm on an American company. Unacceptable.

Authored by Kimberley Hayek via The Epoch Times,

Major corporations are choosing to not sponsor San Francisco’s 2025 Pride parade and street fair, the event organizer said.

“This year, many long-time corporate sponsors have withdrawn their support, leaving a critical gap in funding,” said Suzanne Ford, executive director of San Francisco Pride, in a statement on the organization’s website.

Scheduled for June 28 and 29, the 55th Pride celebration is part of an annual event that hosts “the largest LGBTQ+ parade in the world.”

Companies including Comcast, Anheuser-Busch, alcoholic beverage company Diageo, Benefit Cosmetics, and wine company La Crema have decided not to sponsor the event this year, Ford told local Fox affiliate KTVU in an interview published March 15.

While the businesses cited a lack of funds, Ford suspects the real reason is the country’s political climate under President Donald Trump, KTVU reported.

In January, Trump rolled back diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and programs and declared that the federal government would recognize only two sexes.

He also directed the military to exclude individuals with a gender identity inconsistent with their sex from service, which was blocked in a preliminary injunction on March 18 by a federal judge.

Ford told KTVU the five companies’ donations accounted for approximately $300,000 of the $1.2 million fundraising goal. 

Pride organizers are now scrambling for new sponsors for this summer’s festivities, which include parties, concerts, and the parade.

The Epoch Times reached out to the companies and San Francisco Pride and did not hear back by publication time.

The first installment of San Francisco Pride took the form of a small march on Polk Street and a gathering in Golden Gate Park in June 1970.

Major companies that participated in the 2024 parade include Hilton, Visa, Apple, IKEA, Merck, eBay, and Amazon, according to the organizer.

Earlier this month, the Pride organization also announced that it had terminated its relationship with Meta, the Menlo Park-based company that owns Facebook and Instagram, after company representatives made it clear they no longer wanted to be involved, Ford said.

“I’m both proud and sad that we don’t have a relationship with Meta,” Ford told ABC7 on March 4. “That was discontinued last year. So, at this moment, and I don’t see it being rectified, Meta will not be included.”

A federal judge Thursday issued a two-week temporary restraining order (TRO) preventing Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing personally identifiable information from the Social Security administration.

US District Judge Ellen Hollander of Maryland also ordered DOGE to delete any personally identifiable data they may possess. The ruling come after labor unions and retirees asked for an emergency order limiting DOGE access to the agency and its vast troves of personal data, AP reports.

“The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion,” wrote Hollander, an Obama appointee.

The order still allows DOGE to access ‘redacted or anonymized data and records of SSA.’

According to the Trump administration, DOGE has a 10-person team of federal employees investigating the Social Security Administration, seven of whom have been granted read-only access to agency systems or personally identifiable information. The government has argued that DOGE access doesn’t significantly deviate from normal practices inside the agency whereby employees can search databases.

*  *  *

Down to our last few green Waxed Canvas Hats!

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Established via executive order on January 20, 2025, DOGE aims to cut federal spending, reduce the size of the federal workforce, and modernize government technology.

In mid-February, acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Michelle King, resigned after a standoff with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) over access to sensitive government records.

Today’s ruling follows a string of judicial DOGE-blocking – as their access to records across the federal government have prompted disputes with senior officials at various agencies. Perhaps most prominently, the highest-ranking civil servant at the US Treasury Department quit after similarly refusing to grant Musk’s team access to the Bureau of Fiscal Service, which manages over $5 trillion in annual payments.

On February 8, 2025, Judge Paul A. Engelmayer in New York blocked DOGE from Treasury records after 19 states, led by NY AG Letitia James, sued over cybersecurity threats. Subsequent rulings, like Judge Deborah Boardman’s February 24 TRO on Education and OPM data, reinforced limits on DOGE’s reach. These cases established that DOGE’s “need-to-know” basis for PII access was unproven.

The same day that King quit, Musk posted what he says could be the ‘biggest fraud in US history‘ in which millions of ‘people’ over the age of 100 are collecting payments.

According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!

Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security 🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/ltb06VX98Z

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2025

King – who worked at the agency for over 30 years, left her position this weekend after refusing to give DOGE staffers access to sensitive information, such as the fraudulent payments to ‘vampires’ – with at least one recipient being older than the United States itself.

To that end, DOGE has removed the names of 3.2 million individuals from the Social Security database, many of whom were listed as 120 years of age or older. The agency has now marked them as deceased.

“For the past two weeks, @SocialSecurity has been conducting a major cleanup of its records. Approximately 3.2 million number holders, all listed as age 120+, have now been marked as deceased. More work remains to be done,” the agency posted on X.

Musk shared the post, responding “Cleaning up the dead people database.”

Cleaning up the dead people database https://t.co/KtVUpshpvl

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 18, 2025

The Supreme Court Needs To Step In

In response to the spate of Democrat judges blocking just about every Trump move of import, investor Joe Lonsdale hopes that “The Supreme Court’s going to step in and make some sound rulings here and stop activist judges from violating the Constitution by their interference. It is going to be a big issue.”

.@JTLonsdale: Supreme Court Must Correct Activist Judges’ ‘Interference’ Against DOGE

“I’m glad you mentioned it because it was so ridiculous. The ruling was so misguided that it thought Congress had created USAID, which is not correct. It was actually created by executive… pic.twitter.com/flMw6Xplvm

— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) March 20, 2025

Update (1630ET): As expected, President Trump is holding an event Thursday afternoon at the White House centered on his plans to overhaul the Education Department.

🚨 TRUMP: “I will begin eliminating the federal Department of Education once and for all.”

“We’re pleased to be joined by [the] LAST Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon.” @EDSecMcMahon

LET’S GO!! pic.twitter.com/gxxv4k6Jv1

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) March 20, 2025

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said all the critical functions of the Department of Education will remain, ahead of President Trump signing an executive order to dismantle the federal agency.

“The Department of Education will be much smaller than it is today. As you know, the president’s executive order directed Linda McMahon to greatly minimize the agency. So, when it comes to student loans and Pell Grants, those will still be run out of the Department of Education,” she told reporters at the White House, referring to McMahon, the Education secretary. 

“The great responsibility of educating our nation’s students will return to the states. Any critical functions of the department … will remain,” Leavitt added.

Leavitt’s comment comes as the president said he wants the department completely eliminated, but that would require an act of Congress, which is unlikely to happen since 60 votes would be needed in the Senate.

In her first comments on the executive order, obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller, McMahon explains that the department “will continue to support K-12 students, students with special needs, college student borrowers, and others” while working with the states to give them control over education.

“Closing the Department does not mean cutting off funds from those who depend on them — we will continue to support K-12 students, students with special needs, college student borrowers, and others who rely on essential programs. We’re going to follow the law and eliminate the bureaucracy responsibly by working with Congress and state leaders to ensure a lawful and orderly transition,” McMahon says in her statement.

“With today’s action, we take a significant step forward to give parents and states control over their children’s education. Teachers will be unshackled from burdensome regulations and paperwork, empowering them to get back to teaching basic subjects. Taxpayers will no longer be burdened with tens of billions of dollars of waste on progressive social experiments and obsolete programs. K-12 and college students will be relieved of the drudgery caused by administrative burdens — and positioned to achieve success in a future career they love,” she continues.

The executive order does not abolish the department, but rather sizes it down as it calls for “uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”

*  *  *

As Zachary Stieber detailed earlier, via The Epoch Times, President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on March 20 that will facilitate the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education, taking a step toward fulfilling a campaign pledge.

The order, which has been under preparation for weeks, will be signed at a White House event with several Republican governors and state education commissioners in attendance, as confirmed by the White House. The plan was first reported by USA Today.

Trump will direct his recently confirmed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take all required steps to prepare for the closure of the Education Department and transfer its authority to the states, according to a White House fact sheet obtained by NTD TV, sister media of The Epoch Times.

According to the fact sheet, the order also aims to ensure that, throughout the process, there is no disruption in the delivery of services, programs, and benefits that Americans rely on.

The order also instructs that any programs or activities receiving remaining Department of Education funds will not promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) or gender ideology.

The Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

McMahon, confirmed by the Senate on March 3, said in her first message to employees—titled “Our Department’s Final Mission”—that her “vision is aligned with the president’s: to send education back to the states.”

She added, “Our job is to respect the will of the American people and the President they elected, who has tasked us with accomplishing the elimination of bureaucratic bloat here at the Department of Education—a momentous final mission—quickly and responsibly.”

The Department of Education employed about 4,200 workers before its recent termination of around 1,300, and the buyout of another 600.

The agency’s current form stems from a 1979 law that made it independent by splitting it from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

The federal government’s role in education, according to the White House, has failed students, parents, and teachers.

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores demonstrate that student achievement has not improved, despite more than $3 trillion invested since the Department of Education’s inception in 1979, according to the fact sheet.

Trump promised on the campaign trail to abolish the Department of Education, alleging it is responsible for indoctrinating America’s youth.

Continue reading at The Epoch Times

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