Authored by John Seiler via The Epoch Times,

As we head toward the end of another year, I’m remembering several friends who left in 2022 for cheaper states. And I’m thinking about several other friends who are planning on leaving in 2023 or 2024.

The fact is California is difficult, often impossible, to live in if you’re in the middle class. The wealthy can afford to live here, although they often leave too, because that 13.3 percent top income tax rate really digs in, especially when they dream of moving to 0 percent Texas, Florida, or Nevada. The poor suffer, but California has a generous welfare state, so it’s easier in many ways for low-income residents than living in another state.

It’s the middle class, the rock bed of any society, that bears the brunt of California’s brutal living conditions—amidst the sublime weather. There are three areas where the middle class is hammered: taxes, high housing costs, and a broken education system. Let’s look at them as we peer toward 2023: a little winter organizing of our political mentalities.

1. Taxes.

 The middle class does not pay that 13.3 percent rate on millionaires, but it does pay what long was the “top” tax: 9.3 percent. California’s income tax rates were indexed for inflation in 1978. But that was only after a decade of inflation pushed the middle class into the then-top rate of 9.3 percent. That is, today the middle class pays at a rate originally intended only for the very rich.

The middle class in no other state pays income taxes that high. Of the states, seven have no income tax at all. And 37 have a top rate below 9.3 percent.

Here are the five states after California with top income tax rates above 9.3 percent: Hawaii at 11 percent; New York 10.9 percent; New Jersey 10.75 percent; Oregon 9.9 percent; and Minnesota 9.85 percent.

However, for the middle class, the percentage is lower. For someone making $80,000 a year, here’s the marginal percentage tax rate for a single filer:

• California 9.30

• Oregon 8.75 (and no state sales tax)

• Minnesota 6.80

• New Jersey 6.37

• New York 5.97

• Hawaii 5.86

Year after year, that adds up. Moreover, in California, $80,000 really isn’t middle class, but lower middle class. Admittedly, New York, New Jersey, and Hawaii also are high-cost states in many areas.

But those states have much lower taxes for the middle class. And it’s easier to be in the middle class in those states because most things, especially taxes and property, are cheaper.

2. Housing. 

At Chapman University’s 45th Economic Forecast, held Dec. 13 and co-sponsored by The Epoch Times, economist and President-emeritus Jim Doti brought up an interesting number I hadn’t heard before. “Home prices increased 400 percent since 1990” in California, he said. “5.2 percent per year. Overall inflation then was 2.6 percent—roughly half. Home prices increased two times CPI,” the consumer price index.

I came to California just before that, in 1987, and rented a nice one-bedroom apartment in Huntington Beach for $600 a month. In 1993 I moved to a nearby place and the price was about the same, $700 in the late 1990s. The rent crept up over the years to $1,000 in 2010, still tolerable. Then the rent started soaring, and I had to move. Today those two places rent for $2,429. My income sure didn’t go up four times in that period.

The median price for a home in 2021 was $854,280 in Los Angeles County and $1.2 million in Orange County—although both have dropped a bit in 2022. And the median price for all California was $554,866 in 2020, lower because the Inland Empire and other inland areas are cheaper.

But here are the median home prices in the other states I listed above for their relatively high income taxes:

• Hawaii $636,451

• Massachusetts $422,856

• Oregon $361,970

• New Jersey $335,607

• New York $321,934

And here are some states with no income tax:

• Washington $409,228

• Nevada $301,753

• New Hampshire $296,163

• Florida $ $245,169

• Texas $207,301

But according to the U.S. Census bureau, the median household income in California in 2021 was only $84,097, compared to $70,784 for the national median. That is, it’s 19 percent higher in the Golden State—which hardly covers the vastly greater expense of taxes and housing in California.

Which makes me wonder why I’m still living here. These two things—the highest taxes and second-highest housing prices—make it almost impossible for the middle class to accumulate capital to buy a home, start a business, or even raise a family.

3. Education. 

I’ve written several articles here in The Epoch Times on the horrible state of the public schools in California, such as “Lessons From Running for California Schools Chief: Interview,” on Nov. 14. Test scores, already among the worst among the 50 states, dropped further during the excessive COVID-19 school lockdowns.

Then there’s the politically correct social engineering pushed on the students, beginning with critical race theory, now mandated in state schools under the guise of “ethnic studies.”

No wonder several of my friends left because they didn’t want their kids indoctrinated. A couple other friends with toddlers are planning to leave the next couple of years before the kids go to kindergarten.

Private schools are an option but cost money the middle class doesn’t have. Home schooling is another option but takes dedication some families don’t have, and is next to impossible if both parents are working—itself virtually a necessity in this expensive state.

Some school boards are kicking back against the indoctrination. Temecula Valley Unified School District on Dec. 13 banned critical race theory, while also adopting a resolution condemning racism. But few districts do this. And how long can Temecula and other districts hold out on the side of the parents and students against the pressure from the state government and the powerful teachers unions?

Conclusion: Adios, Middle Class

It’s simply impossible to be in the middle class in California, especially if you have kids. It’s no wonder more people keep leaving. At the Chapman Forecast, Doti provided the latest data, “Net domestic migration has been negative since 2011,” meaning more people leaving for other U.S. states than came here. “For the most recent year, 2021, it was negative 280,000.” If that keeps up, during the 2020s decade, California would lose 2.8 million people to other states.

Gov. Newsom touts his “California Way” as a contrast to the policies of the conservative governors of Florida and Texas. “They’re doubling down on stupid, and we will not follow their path, we’re going in a completely different direction,” he boasts. But the out-migration shows the state’s middle-class residents themselves are going in a completely different direction from Newsom—out of the state.

The MSM, which spent the better part of five years celebrating whenever a conservative news outlet was banned, suppressed, or demonetized by big tech, are suddenly turning Elon Musk’s temporary ban on a handful of left-wing journos into a First Amendment catastrophe.

To recap, Twitter on Thursday suspended several left-wing reporters without explanation – with Musk later suggesting they had ‘doxxed’ him at some point. Those kicked off the platform include, Keith Olbermann of MSNBC, Ryan Mac of the NY Times, Anthony Webster of Bellingcat, Donnie O’Sullivan of CNN, Micah F. Lee of The Intercept, Matt Binder of Mashable and Drew Harwell of the Washington Post.

The media reacted as if Musk had just committed two January 6ths and a 9/11 on their First Amendment rights – while remaining completely tone-deaf to their own behavior – such as when journalist Alex Berenson was kicked off the platform and had to sue his way back under Twitter’s previous management.

imagine being this out of touch where this is an actual headline https://t.co/wDKm4U0Kel

— Barbarian Capital (@BarbarianCap) December 16, 2022

The Washington Post‘s resident doxxer Taylor Lorenz flipped out and complained in a “Twitter Spaces” forum about being doxxed herself.

“It’s just so rich to hear him [Musk] complain about doxxing and harassment,” said Lorenz. “I mean, I am doxxed and harassed constantly on this app. That doesn’t mean that everything on this app has to be moderated, but I do think users deserve more control over their own experience.”

Taylor Lorenz is complaining on Twitter spaces about being doxxed and harassed. The irony!

Also her contact at Twitter was fired 😂. No more special treatment! pic.twitter.com/pbmj3THv8e

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 16, 2022

CNN called the banning of Donie O’Sullivan “impulsive and unjustified.”

WaPo executive editor Sally Buzbee said Musk’s decision “directly undermines” his stated ‘free speech absolutism.’

The suspension of [Post reporter] Drew Harwell’s Twitter account directly undermines Elon Musk’s claim that he intends to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech. Harwell was banished from Twitter without warning, process or explanation, following the publication of his accurate reporting about Musk. Our journalist should be reinstated immediately. -Sally Buzbee

Democratic operative lawyer Marc Elias suggested that ‘big media’ may not remain on Twitter – after the New York Times issued a statement Thursday evening calling the bannings “questionable and unfortunate,” and called for Twitter to offer an explanation. On Friday, the paper privately asked staff not to fight with Musk on Twitter, Semafor reports.

let’s find out https://t.co/mRPPw876Tk

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 16, 2022

Sorry Marc, they aren’t going anywhere.

Instead, NBC News temporarily suspended senior reporter Ben Collins for his “editorially inappropriate” coverage of Musk.

“NBC News had already benched one of the journalists who has reported on Twitter and been harshly critical of Musk. NBC News temporarily suspended tech reporter Ben Collins from covering Musk on NBC and MSNBC airwaves” – Semafor https://t.co/8VDqQrFC60

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 16, 2022

Even Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) admitted that “Twitter is a tragic necessity for elected officials.” 

Rep. @RitchieTorres won’t leave Twitter, “a tragic necessity for elected officials” https://t.co/92lxPhRXUk pic.twitter.com/xVkcZsnaXr

— Ben Smith (@semaforben) December 16, 2022

As usual, (actual) journalist Glenn Greenwald has a spot-on take:

Watching the same liberal corporate journalists who explicitly agitated for a regime of social media censorship suddenly and righteously wrap themselves in the flag of free speech is simultaneously nauseating and hilarious – but also encouraging and inspiring. Welcome, indeed!🙏 https://t.co/o2UZhEwfe9

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 16, 2022

Continued:

Every *genuine* free speech advocate I’ve ever known has tried to convince people to object to censorship *on principle*. But knowing many are bereft of principles – eg liberal journalists – we try the tactical approach: this regime is bad because it will be used against you.

I’d be genuinely happy if this were a transformative moment: where liberals who’ve spent years demanding online censorship now see its evils since it’s directed at them and their friends. But of course it’s not that: they’re complaining because they think *they* should be exempt.

CNN and NYT journalists and executives: “Wait. When we were demanding more of this, we didn’t mean that this should be done to *us*! This was supposed to be used only against right-wing cretins, conservative journalists, and other species of peasants — not against **us**.”

Just last month, EU officials were threatening @ElonMusk with sanctions and other legal reprisals if he doesn’t censor more.

Now they’re threatening him with sanctions due to last night’s bans.

Do you see the issue? Zero principles. Just whether the right people are censored: pic.twitter.com/Uv46J6jJJ0

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 16, 2022

Yet another conservative journalist objecting to the Twitter bans. I can count on one hand the liberal employees at major media corporations who ever objected to Big Tech censorship before last night. They wanted more of it. This is what “principles” are:https://t.co/78a16kP0ZF

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 16, 2022

Authored by Autumn Spredemann via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

As the snow flies and temperatures plummet, regulatory agencies and analysts alike warn that residents in multiple U.S. states are at an elevated risk of dangerous winter blackouts.

States such as Texas and North Carolina, and also the Great Lakes and New England regions are in the highest risk category, according to a report from the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC).

Meanwhile, a “large portion” of the U.S. power grid is at risk of insufficient electricity supplies during peak winter conditions, the agency concluded in the same analysis.

Although climate change advocates claim that severe weather events are the primary culprit, energy insiders say tight fuel supplies and an outdated electric grid play a critical role in potential blackouts.

Conservative estimates this year put the cost of critical power grid and infrastructure upgrades at $4 trillion, with the use of supplemental nuclear power; the price tag jumps another $500 million without nuclear energy.

The Biden administration approved a $13 billion stopgap measure on Nov. 18 to “modernize and expand” the power grid. However, people in the energy industry say it will take months or years for U.S. residents to see the difference.

Falling Behind

“There is a significant gap to upgrade aging grid infrastructure to meet net-zero mandates and maintain reliability, and we are running out of time,” analyst Kim Getgen told The Epoch Times.

Getgen is the CEO and founder of Innovation Force, which tackles complex issues such as America’s energy crisis. She says the Biden administration’s infrastructure investment is a good start, but it’s exactly that, just a start.

“Upgrading aging infrastructure, system hardening, and resilience measures while complying with the evolving set of new cyber and physical security threats will require even more investment,” Getgen said.

She added that the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the U.S. power grid a C- grade on its 2021 Infrastructure Report Card.

Getgen maintains that a greater level of investment is needed, saying, “we can’t maintain the millions of miles of distribution and transmission lines that deliver the power, and we can’t harness the potential of renewable clean power.”

And although upgrades are crucial, some energy specialists say the U.S. electrical grid won’t become efficient overnight, or even by next winter.

“It’s important to remember that something as complex as the electricity grid takes time to change,” Ted Kury, director of energy studies at the University of Florida, told The Epoch Times.

Working in the university’s Public Utility Research Center, Kury says the regulatory process for new utility projects moves slowly, no matter how much money is thrown at it.

“It’s a process with numerous safeguards, but that also means it takes more time. It’s reasonable to think that we’ll start seeing impacts in the next few years,” he said.

Eric Hendrick, senior consultant in risk management at Customized Energy Solutions, agreed with Kury’s assessment.

“Given the politics involved in any legislation, it’ll take some time before any of these funds trickle down to the states that need the funds,” Hendrick told The Epoch Times.

During a press statement, John Moura, the director of reliability assessment for NERC, said there are “more areas at risk” of blackouts this winter amid power generation and fuel supply challenges.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm also noted in a November brief that 70 percent of the nation’s power grid is more than 25 years old.

Grid upgrades aside, strained natural gas and coal supplies are also, quite literally, fueling higher power-outage risks.

Fuel Factor

Not only are millions of Americans facing a greater risk of losing power this winter, they’ll also be paying more for energy.

Homes that run on natural gas can expect to pay 28 percent more. For those using heating oil, a 27 percent price spike is expected, and a 10 percent increase is likely for households that rely on electricity alone for heat.

The increases are due to a combination of higher market prices and demand, according to an Energy Information Administration analysis.

And with the continued push toward Biden’s net-zero energy goals, an additional 11,778 megawatts of coal generation was retired in 2022. Meanwhile, the demand burden has shifted heavily toward natural gas, which is already encountering supply issues.

Read more here…

Authored by Jeff Louderback via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Nearly two years after newly elected President Joe Biden ordered a halt to construction on the project, the Department of Homeland Security announced on Dec. 13 that it will work to close gaps along the southwest border of the wall between the United States and Mexico.

Biden’s 2020 campaign promise was that he would not build “one more foot” of the border wall, which was one of former president Donald Trump’s most prominent objectives.

The Biden administration is confronted with finding solutions to address the end of Title 42, which is set to expire on Dec. 21. DHS has said that could lead to an estimated 9,000 to 14,000 illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico into the United States every day.

Created as part of the Public Health Service Act under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944, Title 42 was designed to prevent the introduction of contagious diseases in the United States.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the Trump administration invoked the order to restrict migrant entry into the United States.

For the 12 months ending Sept. 30, 2022, Customs and Border Protection stopped migrants more than 2,766,582 times, compared with 1.72 million times in fiscal year 2021, which was the previous high.

Once Title 42 is lifted, the number of migrants that Border Patrol agents must process will “likely be double or greater,” according to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General report released in September.

In addition to closing seven “small gaps” in the wall in the Yuma, Arizona, sector and filling in another space in the El Paso, Texas, sector, crews will also work on environmental issues surrounding the wall and finish building roads, according to DHS.

Overall, the new work will occur in the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector, which includes western Arizona and part of eastern California, and the El Paso sector, which covers western Texas and New Mexico.

Early in his tenure, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas indicated last year that gaps would have to be closed, but DHS has been slow to move forward with the task.

The gaps have allowed illegal immigrants to enter the United States and add to the record number of illegal border activity that has escalated since Biden took office in January 2021.

Building the border wall was one of Trump’s most widely discussed campaign promises in 2016. The Trump administration erected more than 450 miles of fencing and planned on adding around 300 more miles of construction.

After Biden took office, crews were permitted to fill in holes and tie down loose materials, but they were ordered to halt construction.

A Government Accountability Office audit conducted in 2021 discovered that 69 miles of the wall constructed during the Trump administration includes all of the technology and the roads.

Construction at some parts of the wall created environmental issues that need repairs, which will take place as part of the new project, according to DHS.

This work will include installing drainage systems, adding safety features to roadways, and remediating some construction sites between El Paso and San Diego, DHS said.

“Prior to work, the Department of Homeland Security will work closely with stakeholders, including impacted landowners, tribal, state and local elected officials, and federal agencies to seek input and help on prioritizing potential remediation activities within each sector,” the DHS said in a statement.

Border Patrol agents have frequently emphasized the importance of a wall to help control illegal immigration.

In El Paso, Border Patrol said its agents are stopping migrants around 2,400 times a day on average compared with approximately 1,700 each day in previous months.

The migration rate across from Mexico into Texas has recently spiked with the rapidly approaching end to Title 42.

Migrants processed under the policy are not permitted to request asylum in the United States and are removed from the country.

On paper, Title 42 covers the Canada and Mexico borders and migrants of all nationalities. It has mostly been used along the southern border to remove illegal immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador from the United States.

One of Biden’s first actions as president was ending the “Remain in Mexico” policy implemented under Trump.

Under that law, asylum-seekers were required to remain in Mexico while their asylum claims were processed. Figures showed that the policy discouraged false asylum claims and decreased the number of illegal immigrants.

Blackstone Inc.’s stock is down 42% year-to-date. The $68 billion Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust (BREIT) informed investment advisors and portfolio managers last month who plowed money into the fund that redemption requests in November and December would be capped. Recall BREIT’s redemption request policy is 2% of NAV can be redeemed per month or 5% per calendar quarter. This was the first-time BREIT faced redemption limits, spooking money managers. Then the Blackstone Private Credit Fund (BCRED), one of the largest investment vehicles with a portfolio of corporate loans, was subjected to redemption limits as now the Securities and Exchange Commission investigates. 

BREIT and BCRED enforcing redemption limits have been the chatter on Wall Street. Earlier this month, we shared a “BREIT Advisor Guide” that was emailed to money managers with a Q&A section to keep their clients calm and prevent a further run on the fund.

Over the last several years, the non-tradeable funds have been massive outperformance vehicles for wealthy clients. Now there’s a sense of panic given the challenging macro conditions as the Federal Reserve risks sending the economy into a hard landing in the second half of 2023 due to overtightening. Investors fear these non-tradeable funds could become illiquid despite good performance and are pulling out funds and asking questions later. 

BREIT’s Advisor Guide to money managers blamed the increased redemptions on Asia.

 Bloomberg noted the same thing:

BREIT’s success has started to complicate its future. It’s attracted investors from all over the world, meaning it is exposed to the trends in a wider array of markets. In Asia, the strong dollar caused BREIT to become a bigger position in leveraged portfolios of wealthy Asians. When home markets tanked, a slew of Asian investors faced margin calls and turned to the parts of their portfolios that could be readily turned to cash — including the Blackstone trust.

Now the only issue is that someone yelled fire, and investors are panicking, which has caught the attention of the SEC, according to people familiar with the matter. Here’s what they told Bloomberg:

The regulator is trying to understand the market impact and circumstances of the events, and asked how the firms met redemptions and if affiliates sold before clients, one of the people said. The inquiries aren’t any indication that either firm is under investigation or committed any wrongdoing.

Here’s a timeline of BREIT’s redemptions via a recent note by Barclays.

Problems for Blackstone are worsening. Financial Times, citing sources, said the New York-based investment manager could delay the launch of the Blackstone Private Equity Strategies Fund, or BXPE, due to the unresolved issues surrounding BREIT and BCRED, dismal fundraising conditions, volatile financial markets, and an aggressive Fed tightening monetary conditions to tame inflation. 

These issues are “casting a shadow over the entire industry,” said Sheldon Chang, president of CrowdStreet Advisors. He said, “it will prompt a review of semi-liquid funds and their structure. People will tend to get overly conservative.”

Blackstone has sent its top executives to financial media outlets to counter the redemption panic. President Jon Gray went on CNBC the other day to calm fears. At a conference, Steve Schwarzman, Blackstone’s chief executive officer, said that BREIT’s redemptions were due to investors needing liquidity for other reasons rather than issues with the fund. 

What appears to be happening is that investors are exiting hard-to-trade assets ahead of the possible recession next year. People are building cash as the risk now is that the Fed could cause a hard landing. 

Authored by Bryan Jung via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Congress is negotiating more than 7,500 “pork-barrel spending” earmarks totaling $16 billion for a year-long omnibus spending bill.

The annual fiscal spending bill, which is meant to keep the federal government funded, will expire at the end of the current fiscal year, in September 2023.

A ban on earmarks was instituted in the House of Representatives since 2011, when Republicans controlled the chamber; but House Democrats recently revived them last year, with provisions to increase transparency.

House Republicans Cave on Earmark Spending, Outraging Fiscal Conservatives

However, the House Republicans voted to retain earmarks for annual spending bills after they won a slim majority in the midterm elections, outraging fiscal conservatives.

The $16 billion in proposed pork barrel spending projects for next year currently dwarfs the $9.7 billion in earmarks passed through the fiscal spending bill for 2022, reported Bloomberg.

Members in both houses are now attempting to negotiate a deal and avoid a year-long stopgap measure that would not include earmarks for lawmakers’ favorite pet projects.

The caving of House Republicans on earmarks is a significant victory for caucuses and members in swing districts, but a defeat for conservatives intent on reining in spending to reduce the federal deficit and waste.

Fiscal conservatives lost an earlier 158–52 closed-door vote at the GOP conference on Nov. 30, giving Republican leaders the power to bring spending bills to the floor that contain local funding for members’ favorite projects, reported Bloomberg.

Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) told Bloomberg that he opposed the decision on earmarks because he remembered “the bad old days” when it was abused by members for personal gain, and he believed that his peers were swayed by an argument that Congress members need to take back control of spending decisions.

“There’s an argument saying, look we do have certain things that have federal nexus, how do you do that open and transparent?” Schweikert said.

“But it can’t be buying a museum for someone to curry favor in the district.”

Certain retiring senators would be among the “biggest winners” if a deal on the omnibus was agreed upon, such as Senate Appropriations Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who got $213 million in earmarks; Vice Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), with $656 million in earmarks; and Senate Armed Services ranking member Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), with $511 million in earmarks, Bloomberg Government reported.

Earmark Appropriations Surge for Fiscal Year 2023

As noted, the general omnibus framework agreement includes over 7,500 earmarks totaling $16 billion in 2023 appropriations bills that could make it into the overall annual spending package, reported Bloomberg Government.

The omnibus spending package comprises 12 separate appropriations bills, which span more than 2,500 pages of text, according to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Bloomberg Government reported a total of 3,123 earmarks from the Senate, which will cost taxpayers $7,780,973,000, and 4,386 earmarks totaling $8,231,999,565 from the House, in next year’s appropriations bills.

Both chambers have proposed a combined 7,509 earmarks totaling $16,012,972,565.

However, the total of earmarks are slightly less than 1 percent of the roughly $1.7 trillion government spending bill that lawmakers expect to pass before the end of the year, Bloomberg reported.

Lawmakers in both parties reached a compromise in 2022, by agreeing to apply a 1 percent cap on new earmarking after it was revived for the fiscal package that year.

The Congressional Research Service defines earmarks as a benefit to “a specific entity or state, locality, or congressional district other than through a statutory or administrative formula or competitive award process.”

They consist of spending provisions or “pork” that members of the House and Senate attach to bills that are likely to pass and signed into law.

Many lawmakers enjoy adding earmarks into bills for projects in their districts, but they also have the reputation of being abused as a reward for members’ key donors and special interests.

Congressional leaders also like the use of earmarks to convince members of their caucus to vote with the party line by providing favors for their districts or states back home.

“If Congress extended all spending in the current Continuing Resolution for the remainder of FY2023, the U.S. would spend $1.707 trillion in discretionary spending,” wrote Romina Boccia of the Cato Institute in October.

“Add to that the $4.2 trillion (without subtracting off‐​setting receipts) in mandatory spending the Congressional Budget Office projects for FY2023, and the federal government is projected to spend nearly $6 trillion this year.”

“And even these staggering figures likely understate next year’s federal spending footprint since they do not account for spending by the CHIPS Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, nor the most recent student loan forgiveness by executive order.”

House Passes Short-Term Funding Measure to Avoid Last-Minute Shutdown

The House approved a stop-gap spending measure on the evening of Dec. 14 to extend funding for federal agencies through Dec. 23 and avoid a partial government shutdown.

The final vote was 224–201, with nine House Republicans joining Democrats, giving Congress further time to craft a larger annual spending package.

Republican leaders in the House opposed the stop-gap legislation, calling it an “attempt to buy additional time for a massive lame-duck spending bill in which House Republicans have had no seat at the negotiating table,” reported CBS News.

“This Continuing Resolution is a simple date change that keeps the government up and running as we negotiate the details of final 2023 spending bills,” announced the Chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, a Democrat.

“I am encouraged by the agreement we have reached on a framework that provides a path forward to enact an omnibus next week. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees are working around the clock to negotiate the details of spending bills that will be supported by the House and Senate.”

The problems for Elon Musk continue to pile up in all directions around him. 

Of the many outstanding issues Musk and Tesla (not to mention Twitter) are dealing with is a 2017 lawsuit that called the company a “hotbed for racist behavior.” The plaintiff in that case, Marcus Vaughn, is now trying to add more than 100 workers to the lawsuit. 

Tesla meanwhile has asked a California appeals court to force the complaint into private arbitration, which would prevent a class action status, Bloomberg reported Thursday. 

Five years ago, Vaughn had claimed that “racial discrimination and harassment were widespread at Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California”. The company punched back in a blog post and fired three employees after looking into some of the incidents in question. 

Vaughn said he heard the “N-word” used at least 100 times while working at Fremont. He also said that employees called the factory “the plantation” or “slaveship.” 

Vaughn’s lawyers certainly smell blood in the water at Tesla – they also represented a former elevator operator at the company who won a $137 million jury verdict over the company last year for discrimination. 

That case is now in appeals and is expected to be settled within 90 days, Bloomberg noted. 

Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times,

The recently revealed censorship that has plagued Twitter in recent years is “criminal,” according to former White House COVID adviser Dr. Scott Atlas, as it allowed “lies to be imposed on the public” during a pandemic that wrought untold damage worldwide.

“When correct science policy is blocked, people die, and people died from the censorship,” Atlas, a special coronavirus adviser during the Trump administration and contributor to The Epoch Times, said in an interview.

Atlas was speaking days after Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, released troves of internal files showing how the previous Twitter team built a blacklist to limit disfavored tweets’ visibility without the knowledge of those using the platform. Among those flagged was Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, whose tweet criticizing pandemic lockdowns shortly after joining the platform last August got him on the “trends blacklist” preventing the amplification of his tweets.

But such revelations, Atlas said, are “only the tip of the iceberg.”

“There’s a far larger story here that we need to hear,” he said, which he considers “far more nefarious and more systemic than isolated tweets being pulled down.”

“This seems to be criminal behavior, and I think it needs to be investigated in the courts,” he said.

The Censorship of 2020

Atlas wants to direct attention back to 2020, when health officials followed in the Chinese Communist Party’s footsteps to implement blanket COVID-19 lockdowns.

In November of that year, while Atlas was still on the White House’s coronavirus task force, Twitter took down his post that argued mask-wearing was not effective in curbing the spread of the virus—a decision celebrated by some proponents of the measures, including fellow task force member Dr. Deborah Birx.

“One would think that the American public should hear what the adviser to the president is saying during the pandemic of 2020. Yet Twitter decided to simply block that discussion from the public,” he said.

Both Twitter and Facebook that August also removed a video from President Donald Trump in which he said children are “almost immune” to COVID-19. That same month, Facebook said it had deleted 7 million pieces of content it deemed to be COVID-19 misinformation over the second quarter of 2020.

Despite most states having a mask mandate until early this year, a number of studies found children and teenagers to be at a far lower risk of getting or dying from COVID-19, even with the emergence of new variants. But the “censorship of 2020,” be it deleting individual tweets, suspending accounts, or blocking the amplification of posts, had done its damage.

“When decisions were being made in 2020 and imposed upon the public, that’s when censorship counted the most,” Atlas said.

The absence of alternative viewpoints manipulated not only the public, but government officials as well, Atlas said.

“It created this illusion that there was a consensus among science and public health policy experts that lockdowns should be imposed; it created and perpetrated lies that if you were opposed to lockdowns, you were choosing the economy over lives, and that if you were opposed to lockdowns, you were somehow calling for letting the infection spread without any mitigation whatsoever,” he said.

“They absolutely contributed to policies that killed massive numbers of people and destroyed children and low-income people, who are the most vulnerable. That’s why it’s criminal.”

Atlas has been a vocal critic of COVID-19 lockdowns since early on in the pandemic, saying that “targeted protection was the logical, safer, and ethical way to manage the pandemic.” In May 2020, he wrote an article for the Hill warning about the “millions of years of life” such policies would cost Americans.

Learning loss aside, the pandemic restrictions led to an explosion of child abuse, drug overdoses, mental health issues, and obesity among youth, who were deprived of normal social interaction and forced to continue schooling through remote learning.

Collectively, America’s social media and legacy media, “coupled with incompetent bureaucrats running the policy and ignorant university professors have left a sinful legacy of damage,” said Atlas—the reason for the massive loss of trust in public health agencies that people depend for guidance in future crises.

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey recently said his “biggest mistake” while at the company was to “invest in building tools for us to manage the public conversation, versus building tools for the people using Twitter to easily manage it for themselves,” a decision he said has “burdened the company with too much power.”

Late last month, Musk announced an end to the COVID-19 “misleading information” policy, which has resulted in 100,000 pieces of content cut from the platform and more than 11,000 account suspensions.

Atlas welcomed the gesture but thought that more individuals need to “rise up” for real change.

“There should be a public outrage that is massive,” he said.

He believes those the American public elected to represent them haven’t done their part.

“Where are our elected officials in this, where are they?” he asked. “If they can’t act, simply for ensuring free speech, they should all step down.”

‘Distortion’ Around Vaccine Mandates

A recent study published in Nature of over 15,000 citizens across 21 countries shows that people who have received COVID-19 vaccines are far more likely to be prejudiced against the unvaccinated than the other way around, which Atlas saw as yet another illustration of how social media censorship has shaped public opinion through suppressing critical information.

More than 5.47 billion people worldwide have received at least one dose of one of the COVID-19 vaccines, accounting for roughly 70 percent of the world population, despite a “thorough, detailed understanding of efficacy and side effects from the vaccines,” Atlas noted.

But because of the lockdown mandates, which he called “pseudo-scientific,” throngs of workers in healthcare, education, and the military lost their jobs and hospitals suffered staffing shortages, causing backlogs of patients needing vital treatment for other non-COVID-19 diseases.

In perpetrating a “false narrative,” social media platforms have deviated from their promised role as a digital town hall and a visible source of information, and instead allowed themselves to be a tool for harm, said Atlas.

“We are living in an Orwellian society if this sort of censorship is allowed to keep going.”

Atlas faced considerable pressure in 2020 for airing his views on COVID-19 and resigned after four months of repeated clashes with other members of the task force. But he said this “character assassination” won’t stop him from doing what he believes is right.

He quoted English writer G. K. Chesterton: “Right is right even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong even if everybody is wrong about it.”

Thousands from around the world, he said, have written to him encouraging him to keep speaking up, including some “whose family members had committed suicide from the lockdowns and many in the health profession who said they were “afraid to step forward.”

“We need people with integrity to rise up when the pressure is on, and when you do that, you empower other people to speak up.”

Authored by Jonathan Turley via jonathanturley.org,

Despite my support for Elon Musk’s continuing efforts to reduce censorship and restore free speech protections on Twitter, I have been critical of some of his moves from his use of polls on restoring certain posters to the suspensions of media figures this week. However, this morning, I was struck by the European Union (EU) rushing into the controversy to threaten, again, sanctions against Musk. The EU is apparently aghast that Twitter could suspend media even temporarily after ignoring the bans on conservative media for years under the old management.

I understand Musk’s view of such tracking as a form of doxxing (particularly after a man reportedly used the information to attack the car with one of his children inside). Doxxing has long been subject to suspension. Indeed, figures connected mainstream media from CNN to the Washington Post have been previously accused of doxxing. Liberal groups were accused of doxxing conservative justices and others, including dangerously posting information on the children of Justice Amy Coney Barrett. It does not seem to matter when the targets are conservative, Republican, or libertarian.

However, it was the appearance of the EU that was most jarring. We have been discussing efforts by figures like Hillary Clinton to enlist European countries to force Twitter to restore censorship rules. Unable to rely on corporate censorship or convince users to embrace censorship, Clinton and others are resorting to good old-fashioned state censorship, even asking other countries to censor the speech of American citizens. It is an easy case to make given the long criminalization of speech in countries like France, Germany, and England.

The EU responded immediately by threatening Musk that restoring free speech could result immediate sanctions or an entire ban.  Now, EU commissioner Vera Jourova warned that the EU’s Digital Services Act was preparing to act to defend press freedom: “Elon Musk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon.”

Jourova’s self-righteous tirade was almost comical given the EU long-standing attacks on free speech and silence of prior media suspensions. Jourova insisted “[The] EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights. This is reinforced under our Media Freedom Act.”

Really? Where was Jourova and the EU when Twitter was aggressively suspending media like the New York Post for publishing the true story of Hunter Biden’s laptop? How about the slew of conservative writers and experts barred for questioning official accounts on issues ranging from Covid to climate change?

…How about the slew of conservative writers and experts barred for questioning official accounts on issues ranging from Covid to climate change? The past suspension of writers like Greg Piper, Alex Berenson, and others was not nearly as concerning for the EU.

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) December 16, 2022

Not surprisingly, the EU is threatening to use the unprecedented anti-free speech law recently passed by the body.

For years, some of us have denounced the EU’s efforts to pass the Digital Services Act, a roadmap for state censorship on the Internet. It is the Western embrace of Chinese style speech controls on the Internet. The chief censor in the West has been Breton, who has shown open contempt for free speech values.

Breton has made no secret that he views free speech as a danger coming from the United States that needs to be walled off from the Internet. He previously declared that, with the DSA, the EU is now able to prevent the Internet from again becoming a place for largely unregulated free speech, which he referred to as the “Wild West” period of the Internet.

Jourova has also been a leading anti-free speech voice globally. She has pressed the United States for greater and greater censorship, declaring “democracies may die in noise and cacophony.” She wanted the tiddy silence and order that comes from state imposed censorship.

Now, however, Jourova is deeply upset that some are being suspended as part of an anti-doxxing rule. Of course, the past suspension of writers like Greg Piper, Alex Berenson, and others was not nearly as concerning for the EU. The “red line” was only crossed when favored media were subject to such suspensions. The fact that this comes soon after threatening Musk not to restore free speech rights only makes the EU’s position more maddeningly conflicted and obtuse.

While I disagree with the scope of this action, I still support his efforts at Twitter in the fact of an all-out-war declared by an alliance of political, media, and business interests. Musk has dismantled one of the most massive censorship systems in the world. Many of us in the free speech community will not hesitate to call him out when he is wrong, but the EU and many of these anti-free speech figures can spare us the transparent outrage after years of supporting censorship.

Just last month, EU officials were threatening @ElonMusk with sanctions and other legal reprisals if he doesn’t censor more.

Now they’re threatening him with sanctions due to last night’s bans.

Do you see the issue? Zero principles. Just whether the right people are censored: pic.twitter.com/Uv46J6jJJ0

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 16, 2022

The Russian government has said one of its diplomats stationed in Africa was hospitalized Friday after opening a letter bomb, which detonated upon opening. 

“Dmitry Sitiy, who runs the Bangui branch of Russian House, a state-funded cultural center that promotes Russian culture around the world, collected a parcel addressed to him from a DHL office earlier on Friday, according to a source in the Russian Embassy cited by news agency RIA Novosti,” The Moscow Times writes, citing state sources.

“The parcel — which had no return address on it — later detonated when Sitiy opened it at his home. Sitiy was hospitalized, although the severity of his injuries remains unclear,” authorities detailed.

Police in the Central African Republic, or CAR, called it a terrorist act, describing further that the diplomat had previously received death threats.

“Earlier, he received the first package, and when he opened it, there were threats in it,” CAR police chief Bienvenue Zokoue said. “He contacted me so that I could help him identify the person who sent it.”

Russia’s foreign ministry subsequently described that the mail bomb was a deliberate attempt by nefarious entities to “harm” ties between Moscow and the CAR government. 

“We strongly condemn this criminal action, which is clearly intended to hinder the activities of the Russian House in Bangui and, more broadly, to harm the successful development of friendly relations between our two countries,” the ministry said.

It’s unclear if the mail bomb attack is related to the ongoing Ukraine war, but the last month has witnessed a string of mysterious parcel bomb incidents at European as well as Ukrainian consulates and embassies across Europe. The US Embassy in Madrid at one point even had a mail bomb sent to it, which was intercepted by security services before it arrived on the grounds in a December 1st incident.

Dmitri Sytiy, the nominal founder of Wagner-linked Prigozhin firm Lobaye Invest in the Central African Republic, reportedly hospitalized after being injured by a mail bomb. Prigozhin blames France via Concord Press Service on VK. https://t.co/Gsy6pWm4eq

— Jack Margolin (@Jack_Mrgln) December 16, 2022

One aspect to tensions over Russia’s presence in central Africa is the activities of Wagner Mercenaries. French officials in the same region have complained of the threat and shady activities of the Putin-linked Russian security firm, so it’s possible the mail bomb attack on the diplomat may be related to these ongoing tensions, and also could be related to the Ukraine conflict.

Some reports are saying Sitiy is in serious condition, and CAR authorities along with the Russian Embassy are conducting a full investigation.