Last fall, the Biden administration – scant on accomplishments, embarked on a campaign to pressure airlines to ditch billions in so-called “junk fees” charged to travelers who want to check bags or change flights.

“You should know the full cost of your ticket right when you’re comparison shopping to begin with,” said Biden last September, adding that the move would help families “pick the ticket that actually is the best deal for you.”

While travelers were over the moon, flooding the DOT with letters urging it to adopt the policy, the airlines predictably pushed back, suggesting the move was both illegal and impossible.

Doug Mullen of Airlines for America, which represents giants like American, Delta, and United, cautioned against such transparency, arguing that it “would only cause customers confusion and frustration.”

“The department should not regulate in this area,” said Mullen.

This stance, however, contrasts starkly with how much coin the airlines are banking on said fees – as airlines raked in over $6.7 billion in baggage fees alone last year, the Washington Post reports in a rare act of journalism (perhaps written to explain why yet another Biden initiative is failing).

Fees, fees everywhere…

The federal push to reduce fees extends far beyond airlines – with auto dealers, ticket merchants, cable giants, banks and other industries sapping money from consumers via sneaky, unnecessary charges.

[T]he Biden administration has broadened its efforts to expose or eliminate “junk fees” throughout the economy, touching off a groundswell of opposition from airlines, auto dealers, banks, credit card companies, cable giants, property owners and ticket sellers that hope to preserve their profits.

Behind the scenes, these corporations have fought vigorously to thwart even the most basic rules that would require them to be more transparent about hidden charges, according to a Washington Post review of federal lobbying records and hundreds of filings submitted to government agencies. The fees together may cost Americans at least $64 billion annually, according to a rough White House estimate, underscoring its efforts to deliver financial relief to families grappling with high prices.

In the banking sector, the administration’s attempts to limit credit card late fees have been met with staunch opposition. The industry, having profited over $14.5 billion from these fees, forewarns a legal battle, indicative of the broader corporate pushback.

Opponents include Citrigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Visa, whose various lobbying groups have been working to brute-force Washington DC to oppose the efforts. In May, the American Bankers Association joined two others in telling the CFPB that capping late fees would force them to reduce rewards offered to new and existing customers. The lobbyists also questioned whether the bureau even has the legal standing to act in the first place.

“The late fees are imposed because they work to deter late payment,” the ABA and its allies told the agency.

Cable giants, including Charter and Comcast, have similarly responded via lobbying groups – resisting federal efforts to provide consumers with accurate data on service charges. Casinos, insurers, owners of large apartment complexes, and ticket sellers have also fought new federal regulations that would punish them if they conceal their true prices.

Some ticket sellers have called for new rules that would require them to display the full, total price of a performance up front, including any service fees. But some companies still do not fully adhere to the practice: Ticketmaster, for example, only does so for some shows, though its parent company, LiveNation, promised the White House to be more transparent earlier this year.

The Biden administration, meanwhile, continues to push. Lael Brainard, the director of the White House National Economic Council, emphasized the administration’s commitment: “We know that junk fees resonate with American consumers. They don’t like being taken for suckers.” This sentiment underscores the administration’s strategy to align with consumer interests, perhaps with an eye on the upcoming elections.

Amid a torrent of legal threats, Biden has repeatedly called on Congress to pass a comprehensive bill that sets the rules for when and how companies can charge extra fees. But even some of the more popular, bipartisan efforts to promote price transparency have faltered in an ever-divided, heavily lobbied Capitol.

A proposal from two unlikely allies, Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), would mandate that ticket sellers show their full prices upfront. The duo released the Ticket Act this summer, after a public outcry about major outages and steep fees on Ticketmaster sales for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.But the bill remains stuck in the upper chamber after Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) blocked a vote out of a belief that such regulation is unnecessary, according to two legislative aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe his stance.

The Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are at the forefront of enforcing these changes. Samuel Levine, director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the FTC, highlighted the misleading nature of hidden fees: “If a consumer is led to believe something costs $10, and it costs $20, they’ve been misled.”

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

It took the widely reported, repellent, and exempt wave of anti-Semitism and violent pro-Hamas protestors harassing Jews, finally to convince Americans that their own hallmark universities are illiberal centers of mediocrity and intolerance—and increasingly unsafe…

Of course, Americans had long known that something had gone wrong at their colleges. They had increasingly encountered college graduates who were poorly educated in basic skills and lacked general knowledge—and yet highly politicized, and intolerant of different views and opinions. Ignorant but arrogant is a sad way to start an adult life.

College, the public knew, has certainly eroded from our cherished idea of a four-year idealized respite from adult employment. It once was intended to be a place where youth learned to be open-minded, tolerant, skilled, and eager to learn the nature and traditions of Western civilization, art, literature, languages, philosophy, and history.

Instead, all too often “college” has now descended into a six-to-seven-year misadventure that nationwide often results in only half those enrolled ever receiving degrees. Nearly all sink deeply in student debt. And yet for all the borrowed tuition money, few prove capable of writing analytically, speaking articulately, or knowing the general referents, past and present, of their very civilization.

Students, especially at the elite campuses, learn to mouth monotonously accusations of “genocide.” “apartheid,” “colonialism,” or “imperialism.”

But they lack the ability to define these nouns.

As a result, they so often name drop empty slogans in the context of supposed Western sins.

Again, October 7 brought these sorry facts to national attention. Adolescent screamers on video showed no awareness that dropping leaflets and sending texts to avoid collateral deaths is not “genocide.” Most chant the “river to the sea” with no clue that it resonates the very ethos of mass murdering, mutilation, and dehumanization of Jewish elderly, women, children, and infants in the most savage fashion on October 7.

Accusatory students who scream “apartheid” seemed to have no clue that a fifth of Israel’s population is Arab, with citizenship rights that vastly exceed those in all other Middle East nations.

They have no notion of the ancient and long connections of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, or how in the world the revered Al-Aqsa Mosque found itself atop the far more ancient Herod’s Jewish Second Temple sanctuary.

As far as “colonialism” and “occupation” goes, they are clueless that the longest, non-Arab colonial rule of Palestine was the more than 300-years of often brutal Ottoman/Turkish imperialistic control.

Nor do they have much knowledge of the repeated and combined efforts of far larger and richer Arab nations to wipe tiny Israel out, especially during the full-scale wars of 1947-48, 1967, and 1973.

Instead, politically correct orthodoxies, not the knowledge or logic, of a student, became the hallmark of an “educated” American graduate. Students and faculty were considered “moral” for proclaiming their devotion to diversity, equity, and inclusion, without a clue that historically unity, equality, and fairness were the better aspirations. Without formal study in civics and ethics, students learned that any means were justified to advance political aims merely asserted as morally superior to others.

After October 7, it proved a small campus step from years of institutionalized racially separated graduations, dorms, and campus centers to singling out and often segregating Jewish students from campus spaces.

At Arizona State, Jewish students had to be escorted by police from a campus debate event. Even 20 years ago administrators would likely have expelled those threatening violence—or been forced to resign themselves. Today, they are terrified of mostly foreign students who abuse their visas and seem to despise the host they dare not leave to return home.

Administrators at prestigious MIT admit that some of their foreign students are openly harassing Jews. But the university will not expel such anti-Semites in fear they might lose their student visas and thus have to return to their Middle-East homes and stew about their own miscreant behavior and ingratitude to their hosts. Instead, for college administrators, entitled, and full-tuition paying children of Middle East’s elites are seen as cash cows whose money masks their bigotry.

As a result, cynical MIT grandees now simply warn Jewish students where and where not it is safe to walk on their own campuses. And thus, they confirm the embarrassing reality that the university is either unable or does not wish to stop the systematic anti-Jewish hatred on their own turf.

Yet since when did such student guests in the United States feel empowered to shut down bridges during commute hours, tear down American flags on Veterans Day, and scout out and hunt-down Jewish-Americans on campus?

If universities canonize critical race theorist Ibram Kendi, who insists that “anti-racism” requires good racism to combat bad racism, then is it any wonder that professors of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and various studies courses at UC Davis or Stanford prominently harassed and threatened Jewish students, or at Cornell cheered on news of Hamas’s murder spree?

If campuses drop the SAT requirement, and no longer rank comparative high-school grade point averages, but instead rely on racial and ethnic quotas and “diversity statements” for university admissions, is it any surprise that insecure and passive-aggressive students feel entitled and exempt from any ramifications for their venom?

And if campuses are fixated on race and superficial appearances, and reward those who are supposedly not guilty of “white privilege,” it is easy to understand why anti-Semites believe they can justify their hatred by assuming Jews are guilty for being white, and they themselves exempt for being nonwhite bigots.

If the endowments of our top universities have reached record-setting multibillion-dollar levels, and if the billion-dollar annual income on those massive sums are non-taxable on the pretense campuses are apolitical and teach inductively rather than indoctrinate, then is it such a shock that exempted huge budgets lead to more staffers than students?

At Stanford, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that there were 16,938 graduate and undergraduate students, but they were out-numbered by the combined total of 15,750 administrators and their staffers, and 2,288 faculty. Would it not be easier and perhaps even cheaper just to hire one tutor for each student and forgo the administrators?

If anti-Semitic and racist professors enjoy life-long tenure, and if such guaranteed lifetime employment has de facto eliminated conservative voices among the faculty, why would any bigot mouthing genocidal chants ever worry about his job security?

So again, ignorant and arrogant describes what the public has concluded of campuses in the last few weeks.

In contrast, there is little such anti-Semitic violence at community colleges or trade schools, where the majority of students attends, and must work to pay for their education, and learn skills in a world apart from therapeutic gut courses.

In truth, a multiple-choice American history test at a junior college now demands more knowledge from a student than the weaponized essay requirement of an Ivy-League -studies class.

Taxpayers soon will no longer wish to subsidize elite education, especially when campuses no longer can guarantee their graduates are broadly educated and their professional and graduate programs can no longer turn out top-flight experts and specialists.

So, what happened to America’s once monopoly on global excellence in higher education?

In a word, there was too much money—and too little accountability. Tuition soared faster than the rate of annual inflation. The federal government subsidizes almost $2 trillion in student loans, regardless of the quality of education the student receives, and often with the expectation there will be few if any consequences when indebted but poorly educated students’ default on their repayment obligations.

The professors who harass students, and rant endlessly off topic about current politics, are often not audited or reviewed on the quality of their scholarship and teaching as much as their political views, and their racial, gender, and ethnic status. Most have little knowledge of the reality outside the academic world—having spent their entire lives as students and then faculty confined to campus. Tenure is seen as a birthright rather than an ossified privilege only accorded to a tiny fraction of the workforce on the pretense that faculty should be heterodox, independent thinkers, without ideological blinders.

So, to save us from the monsters we created, Americans must get the government out of the student loan business. We must demand that universities’ endowments back their own student loans.

The government should tax endowment income and end lifelong tenure. Universities must expel and deport foreign students who violate campus laws as they violently act out their various hatreds.

Reinstate the SAT for admissions, and end racial quotas. And require a national SAT-like exit exam to reassure the public that graduates at least know more when they leave college than when they enrolled—an increasingly dubious assumption.

But most important of all: the public should stop giving money to elite institutions. To continue such philanthropy is akin to supplying heroin to an addict, gas to a fire, or fireworks to children.

Do not consider our prestigious schools any longer necessarily prestigious. Many are not. Do not hire a graduate simply because she graduated from Yale, or he attended Stanford—unless one prefers to risk dealing with an employee poorly schooled but likely to act out a pampered victim status and to disrupt a workplace.

Update (2015ET): Texas AG Ken Paxton has officially opened an investigation into Media Matters for potential fraudulent activity: 

The Office of the Attorney General (“OAG”) is opening an investigation into Media Matters for potential fraudulent activity.

Under the Texas Business Organizations Code and the Deceptive Trade Practices Act, the OAG will vigorously enforce against nonprofits who commit fraudulent acts in or affecting the state of Texas.

Attorney General Paxton was extremely troubled by the allegations that Media Matters, a radical anti-free speech organization, fraudulently manipulated data on X.com (formerly known as Twitter).

“We are examining the issue closely to ensure that the public has not been deceived by the schemes of radical left-wing organizations who would like nothing more than to limit freedom by reducing participation in the public square,” said Attorney General Paxton.

*  *  *

Early Saturday morning, Elon Musk posted that his social media platform X will be “filing a thermonuclear lawsuit” against left-leaning non-profit Media Matters and “all those who colluded” for “completely misrepresenting” the real user experience on X.

Musk added that X would file the lawsuit on Monday (today), which prompted even more malarkey on X as the day wore on with so many pro-censorship leftists clinging to the hope that Musk was not going to follow-through, with one CNBC reporter going so far as claiming “Musk may have been lying, like he has done before.”

Well, he wasn’t lying, and time’s up for the Media Matters manipulators…

The lawsuit, just filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas Fort Worth Division, alleges the organization’s tactics were manipulative and deceptive.

The suit claims:

Media Matters has opted for new tactics in its campaign to drive advertisers from X. Media Matters has manipulated the algorithms governing the user experience on X to bypass safeguards and create images of X’s largest advertisers’ paid posts adjacent to racist, incendiary content, leaving the false impression that these pairings are anything but what they actually are: manufactured, inorganic, and extraordinarily rare.

Media Matters executed this plot in multiple steps, as X’s internal investigations have revealed.

First, Media Matters  accessed accounts that had been active for at least 30 days, bypassing X’s ad filter for new users. Media Matters then exclusively followed a small subset of users consisting entirely of accounts in one of two categories: those known to produce extreme, fringe content, and accounts owned by X’s big-name advertisers. The end result was a feed precision-designed by Media Matters for a single purpose: to produce side-by-side ad/content placements that it could screenshot in an effort to alienate advertisers.

But this activity still was not enough to create the pairings of advertisements and content that Media Matters aimed to produce.

Media Matters therefore resorted to endlessly scrolling and refreshing its unrepresentative, hand-selected feed, generating between 13 and 15 times more advertisements per hour than viewed by the average X user repeating this inauthentic activity until it finally received pages containing the result it wanted: controversial content next to X’s largest advertisers’ paid posts.

Media Matters omitted mentioning any of this in a report published on November 16, 2023 that displayed instances Media Matters “found” on X of advertisers’ paid posts featured next to Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist content. Nor did Media Matters otherwise provide any context regarding the forced, inauthentic nature and extraordinary rarity of these pairings.

However, relying on the specious narrative propagated by Media Matters, the advertisers targeted took these pairings to be anything but rare and inorganic, with all but one of the companies featured in the Media Matters piece withdrawing all ads from X, including Apple, Comcast, NBCUniversal, and IBM—some of X’s largest advertisers. Indeed, in pulling all advertising from X in response to this intentionally deceptive report, IBM called the pairings an “entirely unacceptable situation.” Only Oracle did not withdraw its ads.

The truth bore no resemblance to Media Matters’ narrative. In fact, IBM’s, Comcast’s, and Oracle’s paid posts appeared alongside the fringe content cited by Media Matters for only one viewer (out of more than 500 million) on all of X: Media Matters. Not a single authentic user of the X platform saw IBM ’s, Comcast’s, or Oracle’s ads next to that content, which Media Matters achieved only through its manipulation of X’s algorithms as described above. And in Apple’s case, only two out of more than 500  million active users saw its ad appear alongside the fringe content cited in the article—at least one of which was Media Matters.

Media Matters could have produced a fair, accurate account of users’ interactions with advertisements on X via basic reporting: following real users, documenting the actual, organic production of content and advertisement pairings. Had it done so, however, it would not have produced the outcome Media Matters so desperately desired, which was to tarnish X’s reputation by associating it with racist content. So instead, Media Matters chose to maliciously misrepresent the X experience with the intention of harming X and its business.

Further, X CEO Linda Yaccarino – who has reportedly been under pressure all day by various ad companies to resign – defended the company in a statement on Monday.

“If you know me, you know I’m committed to truth and fairness,” she posted.

“Here’s the truth. Not a single authentic user on X saw IBM’s, Comcast’s, or Oracle’s ads next to the content in Media Matters’ article. Only 2 users saw Apple’s ad next to the content, at least one of which was Media Matters. Data wins over manipulation or allegations. Don’t be manipulated. Stand with X.“

Public’s Michael Shellenberger noted that:

“Despite the lack of verified evidence behind Media Matters’ claims, its tactics are highly effective.”

Sllenberger concluded, by asking on X:

Why is Media Matters leading a disinformation campaign and advertiser boycott against Elon Musk’s X?

Who is Media Matters, exactly?

And what’s its real agenda?

…before going into detail on Substack about why Media Matters is a Democratic Party front-Group:

The attacks on X make clear that the real concern of Democratic Party elites is their lack of control over the public conversation.

From 1996 to 2016, Democrats felt they controlled the elite policy and political conversation through the news media. After that appeared to fall apart in 2016, and as Democrats, including Podesta, blamed social media for Clinton’s loss, they stepped up their effort to take control over Twitter and Facebook, which they did, demanding and winning the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop, and deplatforming Trump.

The strategy of Democratic Party leaders, including Clinton, Podesta, and Obama, has been, since 2016, to label Trump-supporting Republicans as racists, Nazis, and antisemites. The attacks on Elon Musk’s X must be taken in this context.

The real agenda behind the Media Matters attack on X is the same as the one behind the Democrats’ attack on Trump and the Republicans. Democrats want to control the conversation.

Without censorship, voters can see that the border is a disaster, the Ukraine war was a tragic failure, and that Democrats have been censoring them.

…

…we must have greater control over the content we receive through social media platforms.

And we must no longer trust the news media, a trend which is already well underway, including, increasingly, among Democrats.

Is this the beginning of the end of the Censorship Industrial Complex?

One thing is for sure, we are glad not to be the head of Media Matters, Angelo Carusone, who tonight faces his own company’s existential threat from a man with the deepest pockets in the world.

Media Matters President Angelo Carusone (left), Elon Musk (right)

Read the full lawsuit below:

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A new IRS tax on gig workers would result in additional documentation that will create confusion among individual taxpayers as the agency does not have “centralized leadership” to deal with the expansion, according to a watchdog.

Starting this year, a new IRS rule required that third-party payment networks like PayPal, Venmo, Amazon, and Square issue Form 1099-K when a user receives more than $600 in gross sales from goods and services transactions in a single year. Earlier, the threshold of gross sales was over $20,000.

As a result, many taxpayers who never received Form 1099-Ks in the past will receive them this year, according to a Nov. 15 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). This could “exacerbate confusion among some taxpayers, such as gig workers, who may not understand the taxability of their payments and taxes owed.”

“For example, some of these taxpayers may not know how to calculate profit or loss and may not understand the information reported on the form. This puts them at risk of inaccurately reporting their incomes to IRS or not meeting their tax obligations.”

The IRS calculated that the new rule would result in 44 million Form 1099-Ks being filed in 2024, which is an increase of roughly 30 million. The tax agency “does not have a plan” to analyze these data to support its enforcement and outreach activities. “This limits its understanding of changes in taxpayer burden,” GAO said.

GAO also pointed to challenges facing the IRS with regard to its handling of “information returns.”

Information returns are filed by third parties like employers, businesses, banks and include Form W-2 for employee wages and Form 1099-K filed by payment networks. IRS compliance programs use these information returns to identify potential fraud and noncompliance among taxpayers.

However, “IRS lacks centralized leadership to make strategic decisions related to the use of information returns across the agency,” the GAO report stated.

“Thanks to Democrats, more Americans who mow lawns or sell concert tickets and used couches through Venmo or PayPal will have those transactions scrutinized by the IRS starting in January 2024 thanks to a lower reporting threshold for IRS form 1099-K,” said a Nov. 16 press release from the committee.

The GAO report “shows that the IRS will send at least 30 million new 1099-K tax forms to Americans’ mailboxes come January, even though the agency has no plan on what to do with the new information—and it is unlikely most Americans will understand how to fill them out.”

Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) called the additional tax forms “a new years’ nightmare for millions of Americans and a mess for the IRS.”

The 1099-K form applies to people who are engaged in activities like gig work and casual sales who make side or extra income via selling their services or goods. 1099-K is an “information return” form submitted by third parties like PayPal. Individual taxpayers can use these returns to complete their tax filings. The IRS uses 1099-K to verify income and taxes reported by taxpayers.

The policy to reduce the gross sales threshold from $20,000 to just $600 was included in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The rule was initially supposed to come into effect during tax year 2022. However, the IRS postponed it to the 2023 tax year.

“The Biden Administration itself had to deploy a legally dubious delay of this policy for a year precisely because it is unworkable. The whole plan is just another effort by Washington Democrats to use the IRS to target working families,” Mr. Smith said.

“According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, over 90 percent of this new tax burden will fall on middle-class families and gig workers who will be caught in the crosshairs of the Democrats’ tax scheme.”

In the report, GAO recommended that the IRS develop a plan to systematically evaluate information returns to improve compliance and minimize fraud and reporting burden.

It also asked the tax agency to determine the “most appropriate thresholds for payment information reporting” like Form 1099-K.

The report “shows the IRS is ill-equipped to handle the implementation of this new policy while at the same time it does not even know if it will help the agency carry out its responsibilities,” Mr. Smith said.

“Like with so much of the Democrats’ tax policies, this is a solution in search of a problem—one that will confuse Americans and put them in danger of inaccurately assessing their own tax liabilities.”

Taxing Americans’ Side Incomes

The Coalition for 1099-K Fairness, whose members include the likes of PayPal, Airbnb, Etsy, and eBay, said that millions of Americans and micro-businesses will receive 1099-Ks “often in instances where there is no tax liability whatsoever, causing fear, confusion, frustration, and overreporting of taxable income.”

A February 2022 survey by the coalition found that most casual sellers are only conducting small amounts worth of sales transactions online. It pointed out that 86 percent of them made less than $5,000 in gross revenues from items sold online in 2021.

For 89 percent of survey respondents, selling was not their primary source of income. And 47 percent of people were unaware of the new IRS reporting requirements.

People who engage in such side income activities have to provide personal information, including Social Security number or employer identification number (EIN) to the third-party app through which they conduct transactions.

Once the transactions hit the $600 threshold limit, the third party will send a 1099-K to the individual. In case the person did not provide their personal information and the transaction hit the $600 limit, the third party will withhold 24 percent of the payments collected via the app.

This amount will be sent to the IRS and will not be returned to the individual. However, the amount can be reported on the person’s tax returns.

Via The Cradle,

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian held a phone call with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, on Sunday to discuss regional developments and attempts to end the war in Gaza.  

Amir-Abdollahian stressed that significant efforts are needed to stop the violent displacement and killing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and voiced his wish for Moscow to play a more active role in trying to bring an end to what he described as Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign.

“Resistance will determine the final outcome,” Amir-Abollahian noted. The two foreign ministers also spoke about the US role in the war, saying that Washington was planning on extending the violence rather than taking action to bring it to an end.  

“The [US] claims to be seeking an end to the war, but in practice, it escalates the intensity and spreads the sphere of the [US]-Zionist war,” Amir-Abdollahian said.  

For his part, Lavrov expressed that he was disappointed with Israel’s refusal to stop the attacks on Gaza and made note of the need to continue discussions set to put an end to the war and free captives.  

“The schedule of upcoming contacts and a number of other topical issues on the bilateral and international agenda of mutual interest were also touched upon,” the Russian foreign ministry media brief said, noting that the Iranian side that initiated the call.  

The two nations have been prominent in their attempts to bring the war between Palestinian factions and Israel to an end. Amir-Abdollahian previously revealed that Iran has been holding back-channel communications with the US to bring peace to the region.  

Tehran has voiced that it doesn’t want a regional conflict to break out:

Russia’s Lavrov warns Israeli provocations may drag Iran, Hezbollah into Gaza warhttps://t.co/xYEMJt4sKshttps://t.co/xYEMJt4sKs

— Press TV (@PressTV) November 15, 2023

“We said that Iran does not want the war to spread,” Amir-Abdollahian said in an interview with the Financial Times on 16 November. “But due to the approach adopted by the US and Israel in the region, if the crimes against the people of Gaza and the West Bank are not stopped, any possibility could be considered, and a wider conflict could prove inevitable.”

On November 15, Lavrov said Russia told Israel: “You cannot buy security, which we are convinced you need, by delaying the creation [of a] Palestinian state, and by [criminally] reducing the territory which was designed for the Palestinian state by the United Nations.”

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

New US House Speaker Mike Johnson struck a blow for liberty and justice last week when he finally authorized the release of all the tapes from the January 6, 2021 “insurrection.”

We were told by no less than President Biden himself that this was the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

The FBI was unleashed by the Biden Administration to hunt down hundreds of participants in this “insurrection” and lock them up in the gulag where they awaited trial in torturous conditions – many in solitary confinement.

A Congressional Committee was set up under then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi to “get to the bottom” of the “Trump-led insurrection.” It did not include a single Representative nominated by the opposition Republican Party, but rather two “Republicans” – Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger – who could be relied on by Pelosi and the Democrats to toe the line.

In short, the whole thing was an old-fashioned Soviet show trial, where the evidence was kept secret and the pre-determined verdict – guilty – was to be used to tighten the grip of the ruling regime and intimidate any further dissenters into silence.

The message was clear: “speak out against the ‘perfection’ of the 2020 election and you may find yourself in the gulag along with the insurrectionists.”

It was terrifying and profoundly anti-American.

And, as we finally can see for ourselves thanks to Speaker Johnson, it was a huge lie. The new video shows demonstrators shaking hands with police officers once they entered the Capitol Building. They were welcomed into the building by officers who even held the doors for them to enter! They had no way of knowing that they would soon be rounded up and locked away.

Does that mean no crimes were committed on January 6th? Not at all.

The tapes already released were carefully chosen to single out examples of violence and other possible criminality.

But the full release of the tapes demonstrates beyond a doubt that the endless propaganda that this was a coordinated attempt to overthrow the government was false.

And as for that violence and mayhem on January 6th?

How much of it was instigated by undercover FBI agents?

New footage clearly shows officers outside the building firing on protestors with no warning.

That must be why, in hearing after hearing, Biden Administration officials like Attorney General Merrick Garland have refused to tell Congress the number of federal agents present and their roles in instigating violence.

The release of this evidence should immediately result in the release of all non-violent protestors awaiting trial or serving their sentences.

Those in power responsible for promoting this lie should take their places in the jail cells.

This delayed justice will not help protesters like Matthew Perna, however.

Though the new video release clearly shows him calmly walking inside the Capitol in the presence of unconcerned police officers, when Merrick Garland’s Department of “Justice” announced they would seek terrorism charges against him, Perna, in despair, decided to hang himself in his garage.

Yes, there was an insurrection of sorts.

Those in power hated Donald Trump so much that they were willing to torture and even murder their fellow Americans to keep him from the presidency.

Unless these people are brought to justice, we will have no Republic left to defend.

Authored by Sophie Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A black market Chinese biolab in Reedley, California, located about 25 miles southeast of Fresno, received more than $1.3 million in unexplained payments from banks in China while in operation, according to U.S. lawmakers.

The illegal biolab had thousands of vials and other containers, some labeled with potentially deadly infectious agents on site, including HIV and Ebola, according to officials.

On Nov. 15, Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R–Calif.) and Rep. Jim Costa (D–Calif.) discussed their concerns about the lab at a press conference with local officials and the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

“We’re thinking about how COVID really came out of China and a lot of questions that are there in line, that we would allow a Chinese nationalist to come to this country and to set up a private lab,” Mr. Costa said during the press conference. “And what we found is that all it takes to set up a private lab in America is to get a business license.”

The committee also issued a 42-page report on the issue which criticizes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other federal agencies for not fully investigating the site or helping dispose of the hazardous substances.

“Local officials spent months repeatedly trying to obtain assistance from the CDC,” the report stated, noting “the CDC refused to speak with them and, on a number of occasions, it was reported by local officials that the CDC hung up on them mid-conversation.”

Local officials received a similar response when they reached out to other federal agencies, according to the report.

The research lab came to light in December 2022 when Jesalyn Harper, a code enforcement officer for the city, noticed a green garden hose protruding from the back of a warehouse that was believed to be vacant.

According to the report, Ms. Harper initially referred the case to Fresno County and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

However, approximately two months later, the FBI informed her it had closed its investigation because “the Bureau believed that there were no weapons of mass destruction on the property,” the report stated.

Local officials obtained an inspection warrant in March, according to the report, and again searched the warehouse. They found what appeared to be blood and tissue samples, along with unlabeled vials and other biological material, raising concerns of possible pathogens.

The warehouse space also housed nearly 1,000 lab mice, nearly 200 of which were found dead. Lab workers said that the mice were designed “to catch and carry the COVID-19 virus,” according to the report.

After repeated requests by local and state officials, the CDC ultimately responded to the site in May 2023 and found thousands of vials containing at least 20 “potentially infectious” agents, including SARS-CoV-2, chlamydia, E. coli, streptococcus pneumonia, HIV, hepatitis, herpes, rubella, and malaria, sparking serious concerns regarding biosecurity, according to the report. However, the CDC had identified the agents based only on the labels on the samples, said the report.

Despite offers from city officials to cover testing expenses, the CDC declined to conduct tests or examine the unlabeled vials and samples, said lawmakers.

The report stated, “Even though it had not tested any samples from the Reedley Lab, the CDC concluded that ‘[t]here was no evidence of select agents or toxins.’”

Meanwhile, local and county officials, along with a contracted hazardous waste removal firm, continued to investigate and clean up the site, which confirmed and expanded on their prior findings.

“Local officials and contractors reported that they found a freezer labeled ‘Ebola’ with silver sealed bags found inside consistent with how the Reedley Biolab operators stored sensitive biological and other materials,” the report stated.

Ebola is considered a “select agent,” according to the committee.

The report criticized the decision made by the CDC to not test the materials, saying it could have endangered local residents.

“CDC’s refusal to test left local officials unable to assess the danger to the City of Reedley community or inform the community about what steps, if any, it should take to protect public safety,” the report said.

Mr. McCarthy echoed the message.

“The CDC and others hung up on them, ignored them, until Congressman Jim Costa called them,” he said at the press conference. “But when the CDC showed up they should’ve done what was right then, and they did not. They did not test the pathogens. They did not even find all of them. They left a freezer with Ebola in it, and we know how lethal that is and what could happen, especially in the Central Valley,” said Mr. McCarthy.

In response to a request for comment, a CDC official with knowledge of the investigation said the CDC “strongly disputes the report’s conclusions critical of the agency.”

In China, he held a top position in a state-controlled company with ties to Chinese military-civil fusion activities. The illegal biolab also received over $1.3 million in unexplained payments via wire transfer from People’s Republic of China (PRC) banks during its operation.

However, the total amount Mr. Zhu received may be significantly higher, the report stated, due to the committee’s limited access to data and records.

A complaint filed Oct. 18 shows Mr. Zhu, 62, came to the United States from China under the alias Qiang “David” He in 2021. Mr. Zhu identified himself as Qiang He multiple times to officials from various agencies and claimed he could speak on behalf of two companies, Universal Meditech, Inc. and Prestige Biotech Inc.

However, fingerprints from Qiang He matched the fingerprints obtained from Mr. Zhu when he came into the country seven times between 2003 and 2008.

He faces a maximum of three years in prison for the misbranding charge and five more years for the false statements charge, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of California.

As per court records, from December 2020 to March 2023 Mr. Zhu and accomplices purportedly engaged in the unauthorized manufacturing, importation, sale, and distribution of hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 and other test kits in both the United States and China.

In addition to the charges for the Reedley biolab, the committee found Mr. Zhu is a wanted fugitive in Canada with an approximately $242 million judgment against him for stealing intellectual property.

“At a minimum, the Reedley Biolab shows the profound threat that unlicensed and unknown biolabs pose to our country,” the report states in its conclusion. “At worst, this investigation revealed significant gaps in our nation’s defenses and pathogen-related regulations that present a grave national security risk that could be exploited in the future.”

Brad Jones and Lear Zhou contributed to this report.

Bronx-raised rapper Cardi B turned on Democrats and New York City Mayor Eric Adams for controversial budgets last week that would affect schools, libraries, firefighters, police, and much more. 

Cardi B, whose real name is Belcalis Almánzar, was once a mega supporter of the Biden administration. Now she’s going through the ‘angry’ regret phrase as New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced 5% across-the-board budget cuts that will impact all residents. The cuts are primarily driven by the Democrat’s open southern border policy that has flooded the metro area with more than 100,000 illegals.

During a live stream, which was reposted on social media, she started off with, “I’m an angry a$$ b**ch right now … I’m an angry b**ch … I’m about to go off right now.” 

She noted, “If something happens to me – it’s because I’m speaking the truth.” 

The first round of truth: “There is a $120 million budget cut in New York that is going to affect schools, public libraries, and the police department. And a $5 million budget cut in sanitation,” she continued, warning, “B**ch, we’re going to be drowning in f***ing rats.” 

Cardi B then turned on Democrats: “I’m not endorsing no f***ing president no more.” She exclaimed President Biden “can fund two wars” but can’t fund cities. 

“What’s going to happen to my nieces, what’s going to happen to my nephews, what’s going to happen to my cousins, my aunts, my friends that are living in the hood?” she asked.

“You all doing budget cuts on the biggest city in the United States… This shit is getting out of hand. They don’t want to say the word, but we’re going through a recession right now,” she continued. 

“I’m from the Bronx, I don’t want to see my sh*t affected … Everybody be like ‘New York is dirty,’ and it is dirty,” the rapper said, adding, “And we’re going to get even dirtier with the f***ing budget cut.” 

On the subject of police department budget cuts, she warned: “Crimes are gonna go through the roof because there is a police safety budget cut.” 

Cardi B is more based than we give her credit for.

She says America can’t afford to fund two wars. She’s right. pic.twitter.com/Z0jPvq593a

— Layah Heilpern (@LayahHeilpern) November 20, 2023

And just like that, Democrats lost another key supporter. 

Last week, we noted that one progressive think tank warned the Biden administration that the multi-month promotion of ‘Bidenomics‘ has been an utter failure. Also, polling data for Biden continues to sour ahead of the 2024 presidential election cycle. 

By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

Chinese refiners switched from drawing to building oil inventories again in October, at a rate of over half a million barrels daily.

That’s according to calculations made by Reuters’ Clyde Russell and based on official import and processing figures from Beijing.

Russell reported that Chinese refiners were adding crude to inventories at a rate of 560,000 barrels daily in October as production inched down while imports of crude ticked up.

This is in keeping with refiners’ behavior for most of the year. Per Russell, Chinese refiners added to inventories for seven of the ten complete months since the start of 2023 and drew from inventories during the remainder.

Normally, refiners draw on inventories when international oil prices start climbing. This year, they drew from inventories in the months of April, July, and September.

The net changes in inventories over the ten months since January amount to additions at an average daily rate of 680,000 barrels.

China’s imports last month averaged 11.53 million barrels daily, which was slightly higher than the average for September, at 11.13 million bpd. The same month the government issued a new batch of oil imports, raising the overall import quota for 2023 to a level 14% higher than the total for 2022.

However, domestic demand for oil has been weakening, at least according to analysts. The reason for the weakening was a combination of factors, including lower refining margins, higher levels of inventories in both fuels and oil, and a slower-than-expected pick-up in air travel.

These lower refining margins pushed down processing rates to 15.05 million bpd, Reuters’ Russell reported, which was down from 15.48 million bpd in September—a record high.

Meanwhile, as refiners in China run out of fuel export quotas, these exports are set for a potentially significant decline this month. According to one energy data provider, OilChem, the decline could be as steep as 40% for November.