Mountains of evidence released by House Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee today point to a decade and more of influence peddling and financial fraud involving President Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and brother, James, and multiple business associates.

These documents will be reviewed on Thursday in the first special impeachment inquiry hearing of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.

Newly revealed materials confirm that Hunter Biden was traveling the world to sell influence and access to the Biden “brand,” meaning his father, Joe Biden.

Hunter has even referred to access to his father as “the keys” to “my family’s only asset.”

In just the last day, we have discovered:

A $250K wire for Hunter Biden in 2019 from China with Joe Biden’s address as the beneficiary.

The wires were from Wang Xin and Jonathan Li, the latter of whom ran a Chinese private equity fund (BHR) which Hunter was listed as being on the board of directors. Hunter also arranged for a meeting between Li and Joe Biden while Joe was VP, while Joe allegedly gave Li’s son a letter of recommendation.

Emails showing a U.S Attorney would not allow FBI agents to investigate the Bidens for FARA violations.

One document confirmed rumors that at one point the FBI and IRS investigated Hunter Biden for possible violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), a federal law requiring disclosure of any lobbying activities on behalf of foreign powers. “Please focus on FARA evidence only,” Delaware Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf emailed agents in August 2020 concerning a possible search warrant application.

Test message showing that James Biden suggested it was normal for Joe Biden to be involved in his son’s business.

In an affidavit to the committee, Ziegler suggested agents believed there was evidence in a series of WhatsApp encrypted text messages that Joe Biden was involved in the CEFC business deal and others before it, but the FBI’s interview with James Biden was constructed to avoid asking those questions.

To back up the claim, Ziegler attached a summary of one text messages between James Biden and Hunter Biden from 2018. “This can work, you need a safe harbor. I can work with you father alone !! We as usual just need several months of his help for this to work. Let’s talk about it. It makes perfect sense to me. This is difficult to fully vet without talking,” the uncle wrote Hunter Biden.

A memo showing that Burisma received Joe Biden’s talking points from lobbyists ahead of his trip to Ukraine.

Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings received Joe Biden’s planned talking points ahead of his December 2015 trip to Ukraine, according to a newly released memo from lobbying firm Blue Star Strategies.

Blue Star Strategies sent the memo to Burisma on Dec. 2, 2015, after an apparent call with “senior administration officials” and detailed then-Vice President Joe Biden’s messaging strategy for his trip to Ukraine, the memo shows.

And finally, and perhaps most damningly, as Kyle Becker highlighted, Hunter Biden signed off on a Burisma memo to the Ukrainian prosecutor who replaced Viktor Shokin that warned not to continue further investigations.

“Moreover it is imperative that allegations of criminal activity made to the media about Burisma and/or Nikolay Zlochevsky come to an end.”

And there is more, much more…

Is that enough “evidence” for the “there is no evidence” misinformation-spreaders to fold?

We highly doubt it… but tomorrow’s hearing will give us a glimpse at the Democrats’ plan…

Democrats are staring at a mountain of emails, text messages, bank records, AF2 logs, White House visitor logs, FBI docs, whistleblower statements & witness testimony and insist there’s no “smoking gun.”

This is the same shameless party that impeached Trump. TWICE.

Not only…

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) September 27, 2023

While the proceedings will initially convene in that committee’s hearing room in the Rayburn House Office Building, the inquiry – authorized Sept. 12 by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) – is being led by oversight panel chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.).

As Mark Tapscott detailed earlier via The Epoch Times, Republicans have portrayed the initial hearing as merely a summary or review of the evidence obtained to date, but Mr. Comer announced Sept. 26 that his panel received in response to subpoenas two previously unknown wire transfers to Hunter Biden from Chinese businessmen with numerous links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

“On July 26, 2019, Hunter Biden received a $10,000 wire from Wang Xin. On August 2, 2019, Hunter Biden received a $250,000 wire from Jonathan Li and Tan Ling. Both wires originated in Beijing and Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home is listed as the beneficiary address for both wires,” Mr. Comer said in a statement. The transfers directly contradict claims by the President and Hunter Biden’s lawyer that no funds were received from China.

In addition, Mr. Comer pointed out that “evidence shows Joe Biden developed a familiar relationship with Jonathan Li during his vice presidency and prior to these payments to Hunter Biden. Devon Archer, a Biden business associate, described [to the oversight committee in closed-door testimony] how Joe Biden met with Jonathan Li in Beijing, China, had a phone call with him, and later wrote college recommendation letters for his children.”

Then on Sept. 27, Mr. Smith’s panel made public 700 pages of additional evidence provided by two IRS whistleblowers who were deeply involved in the government’s long-running investigation of Hunter Biden’s failure to pay taxes on income he received in 2014 and 2015.

The Ways and Means panel made the new evidence public following a closed-door executive session in which all 18 Democrats opposed the release.

The new materials made public by Mr. Smith indicated the Biden family received at least $19 million in income from entities in at least 23 countries around the world which was channeled through 20 shell companies.

The income was ultimately received directly or indirectly by multiple members of the Biden family, including the president while he was vice president.

The materials also included numerous references in emails and telephone messages to the senior Biden playing an active role in what Mr. Smith described to reporters during a Capitol Hill news conference following the executive session as “a complex and lucrative enterprise operated by the Biden family to enrich themselves to the tune of at least $20 million, with much of Hunter Biden’s share going unreported for taxes.”

Mr. Smith further claimed the new evidence makes clear that “then Vice President Joe Biden’s political power and influence was ‘the brand’ that Hunter Biden was selling all over the world. Even more alarming, the Biden family foreign influence peddling operation suggests an effort to sway U.S. policy decisions.”

The tranche of materials includes an August 2020 email from Lesley Wolf, a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney helping to oversee the investigation of Mr. Biden, telling investigators to redraft a search warrant to remove mention of “political figure 1.”

That was a reference to then-presidential candidate Joe Biden, according to Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), chairman of the panel.

“It’s about a two-tiered system of justice. If Joe Biden’s name had been Smith or Jones or Johnson, he would not have been excluded from this search warrant. But he was. And we wouldn’t know that if the whistleblowers had not come forward,” Rep. David Kustoff (R-Tenn.), a former U.S. attorney and member of the committee, told reporters.

The backgrounds of the witnesses for the hearing suggest the impeachment inquiry’s summary of evidence will focus on three major areas.

Witness Bruce Dubinski is a Florida-based forensic accountant who specializes in cases involving white-collar crime and financial fraud.

He has testified as an expert witness in multiple federal and state bench and jury trials.

Republican leaders of the impeachment inquiry have repeatedly described their efforts as “following the money,” and they have pointed to more than 170 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) from financial institutions to the Department of Treasury concerning the movement of funds among the 20 Biden shell companies as evidence of money laundering in an attempt to conceal the sources of income to the family.

Mr. Dubinski is expected to shed additional light on the significance of the SARs and how the funds flowed from foreign sources to the shell companies and then to members of the Biden family, including several grandchildren.

Former Assistant Attorney General Eileen O’Connor will be the second witness providing testimony to the impeachment inquiry. She oversaw the Tax Division of the Department of Justice during the presidency of  George W. Bush from 2001 to 2007.

Ms. O’Connor has since specialized in civil and criminal tax disputes, from the administrative investigative phases through trial litigation and appellate processes. Committee members will likely quiz her closely on issues and evidence related to the government’s investigation of Hunter Biden’s failure to report income and pay taxes on it.

She will also be questioned about the significance of the failed plea deal rejected in July by a federal judge that would have enabled the president’s son to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and a felony gun charge, and which would have granted him immunity from all future prosecutions.

Professor Jonathan Turley of the George Washington University Law School will be the third witness. Mr. Turley is a constitutional law authority who frequently testifies before committees of both chambers in Congress, including during the first impeachment hearings of the 117th Congress against President Donald Trump.

A Fox News Contributor, Mr. Turley is a frequent commenter on controversial legal and political developments in the nation’s capital, and he has also served as a legal analyst for CBS News and NBC News on high-profile controversies. Committee members will likely seek his insights on constitutional issues related to impeachable activities and federal ethics laws and regulations.

Democrats condemn the impeachment inquiry as a waste of time, especially coming with only hours until the federal government could be forced to shut down if Congress has not adopted a 2024 budget by midnight Saturday, the end of the current fiscal year.

Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), the Ranking Member of the Ways and Means Committee, issued a statement following the closed executive session in which he labeled the hearing “a distraction from my colleagues’ inability to govern and from their inability to fund the government. Amid their chaos, they’ve failed to convince their own colleagues of the necessity of their political stunt, let alone the American people.”

The Massachusetts Democrat, who preceded Mr. Smith as Chairman, added that “millions of women and children are at risk of losing their food assistance because of my colleagues’ disinterest in governing. How are we supposed to tell our constituents that Fox News hits were more important than their next meal? Or what are we supposed to say to the 2.2 million American workers who may go without a paycheck when Republicans shut down the government? For this Republican majority, regardless of evidence, all roads lead to impeachment. It’s a sad day for the Congress and for the American people.”

Finally, The Daily Caller reports that an email obtained by a CNN producer showed Hunter Biden expected all of the “stuff” regarding his criminal wrongdoings to disappear once his father, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden, became president, according to documents the House Ways and Means Committee released.

Justin T. Cole, the Office of Communications Director for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), notified the agency’s chief and deputy chief a CNN producer reached out about their investigation into Hunter’s tax and gun crimes, according to an email the Ways and Means committee released. Cole apparently said the CNN producer possessed an email from Hunter saying he believed he would be off the hook once his father became president and that he was unwilling to accept a plea deal.

“Producer has an email from Hunter saying he expected all of this “stuff” to go away when his dad becomes President,” Cole wrote.

Commentary by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

On March 6, 2020, the mayor of Austin, Texas, canceled the biggest tech and arts trade show in the world, South-by-Southwest, only a week before hundreds of thousands were to gather in the city.

In an instant, with the stroke of a pen, it was all gone: hotel reservations, flight plans, performances, exhibitors, and all the hopes and dreams of thousands of merchants in the town. Economic impact: a loss $335 million in revenue at least. And that was just to the city alone, to say nothing of the broader impact.

It was the beginning of U.S. lockdowns. It wasn’t entirely clear at the time—my own sense was that this was a calamity that would lead to decades of successful lawsuits against the Austin mayor—but it turned out that Austin was the test case and template for the entire nation and then the world.

The reason was of course COVID but the pathogen wasn’t even there. The idea was to keep it out of the city, an incredible and sudden fallback to a medieval practice that has nothing to do with modern public health understanding of how a respiratory virus should be handled.

“In six months,” I wrote at the time, “if we are in a recession, unemployment is up, financial markets are wrecked, and people are locked in their homes, we’ll wonder why the heck governments chose disease ‘containment’ over disease mitigation. Then the conspiracy theorists get to work.”

I was right about the conspiracy theorists but I had not anticipated that they would turn out to be right about nearly everything. We were being groomed for extended national and global lockdowns.

At this point in the trajectory, we already knew the gradient of risk. It was not medically significant for healthy working-age adults (which still to this day the CDCs does not admit). So the shutdown likely protected very few if anyone.

The extraordinary edict—worthy of a tin-pot dictator of a dark age—completely overrode the wishes of millions, all on the decision of one man, whose name is Steven Adler.

“Was the consideration between maintaining that money, effectively rolling the dice, and doing what you did?” asked Texas Monthly of the mayor.

His answer: “No.”

Clarifying: “We made a decision based on what was in the best health interest for the city. And that is not an easy choice.”

After the shocking cancellation, which overrode property rights and free will, the mayor urged all residents to go out and eat at restaurants and gather and spend money to support the local economy. In this later interview, he explained that he had no problem keeping the city open. He just didn’t want people from hither and yon—the dirty people, so to speak—to bring a virus with them.

He was here playing the role of Prince Prospero in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death.” He was turning the capital city of Texas into a castle in which the elite could hide from the virus, an action that also became a foreshadowing of what was to come: the division of the entire country into clean and dirty populations.

The mayor further added a strange comment: “I think the spread of the disease here is inevitable. I don’t think that closing down South Bay was intended to stop the disease from getting here because it is coming. The assessment of our public health professionals was that we were risking it coming here more quickly, or in a greater way with a greater impact. And the longer we could put that off, the better this city is.”

And there we have the “flatten the curve” thinking at work. Kick the can down the road. Postpone. Delay herd immunity as long as possible. Yes, everyone will get the bug but it is always better that it happens later rather than sooner. But why? We were never told. Flatten the curve was really just prolong the pain, keep our overlords in charge as long as possible, put normal life on hold, and stay safe as long as you can.

Prolonging the pain might also have served another surreptitious agenda: let the working classes—the dirty people—get the bug and bear the burden of herd immunity so that the elites can stay clean and hopefully it will die out before it gets to the highest echelons. There was indeed a hierarchy of infection.

In all these months, no one ever explained to the American public why prolonging the period of non-exposure was always better than meeting the virus sooner, gaining immunity, and getting over it. The hospitals around the country were not strained. Indeed, with the inexplicable shutdown of medical services for diagnostics and elective surgeries, hospitals in Texas were empty for months. Health care spending collapsed.

This was the onset of the great demoralization. The message was: your property is not your own. Your events are not yours. Your decisions are subject to our will. We know better than you. You cannot take risks with your own free will. Our judgment is always better than yours. We will override anything about your bodily autonomy and choices that are inconsistent with our perceptions of the common good. There is no restraint on us and every restraint on you.

This messaging and this practice is inconsistent with a flourishing human life, which requires the freedom of choice above all else. It also requires the security of property and contracts. It presumes that if we make plans, those plans cannot be arbitrarily canceled by force by a power outside of our control. Those are bare minimum presumptions of a civilized society. Anything else leads to barbarism and that is exactly where the Austin decision took us.

We still don’t know precisely who was involved in this rash judgment or on what basis they made it. There was a growing sense in the country at the time that something was going to happen. There had been sporadic use of lockdown powers in the past. Think of the closure of Boston after the bombing in 2013. A year later, the state of Connecticut quarantined two travelers who might have been exposed to Ebola in Africa. These were the precedents.

“The coronavirus is driving Americans into unexplored territory, in this case understanding and accepting the loss of freedom associated with a quarantine,” wrote the New York Times on March 19, 2020, three days after the Trump press conference that announced two weeks to flatten the curve.

The experience on a nationwide basis fundamentally undermined the civil liberties and rights that Americans had long taken for granted. It was a shock to everyone but to young people still in school, it was utter trauma and a moment of mental reprogramming. They learned all the wrong lessons: they are not in charge of their lives; someone else is. The only way to be is to figure out the system and play along.

We now see epic learning loss, psychological shock, population-wide obesity and substance abuse, a fall in investor confidence, a shrinkage of savings reflecting less interest in the future, and a dramatic decline in public participation in what used to be normal life events: church, theater, museums, libraries, fairs, symphonies, ballets, theme parks, and so on. Attendance in general is down by half and this is starving these venues of money. Most of the big institutions in large cities like New York, such as Broadway and the Met, are on life support. The symphony halls have a third empty seats despite lowering prices.

It seems remarkable that this three-and-a-half year-long war against basic liberty for nearly everyone has come to this. And yet it should not be a surprise. All ideology aside, you simply cannot maintain much less cultivate a civilized life when governments, in combination with the commanding heights of media and large corporations, treat their citizens like lab rats in a science experiment. You only end in sucking away the essence and vibrancy of the human spirit, as well as the will to build a good life.

In the name of public health, they sapped the will to health. And if you object, they shut you up. This is still going on daily.

The ruling class that did this to the country has yet to speak honestly about what transpired. It was their actions that created the current cultural, economic, and social crisis. Their experiment left the country and our lives in shambles. We’ve yet to hear apologies or even basic honesty about any of it. Instead, all we get is more misleading propaganda about how we need yet another shot that doesn’t work.

History provides many cases of a beaten down, demoralized, and increasingly poor and censored majority population being ruled over by an imperious, inhumane, sadistic, privileged, and yet tiny ruling class. We just never believed we would become one of those cases. The truth of this is so grim and glaring, and the likely explanation of what happened so shocking, that the entire subject is regarded as something of a taboo in public life.

There will be no fixing this, no crawling out from under the rubble, until we get something from our rulers other than public preening about a job well done, in ads sponsored by Pfizer and Moderna.

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

Tomorrow morning years of politically-motivated upward drift in US economic “data” will get their come to Jesus moment of gravitational reacquaintance: at 8:30am ET on Thursday, alongside the final Q2 GDP print (expected unchanged at 2.2%) the BEA will also publish its once-every-five-years revision of GDP from Q1 2005 to Q1 2023, which according to Morgan Stanley will lead to a sharp downward revision, of as much as 80bps from Q2 GDP, and could potentially even indicate economic contraction in the first half of 2023.

There are several reasons why GDP may be revised right off the proverbial cliff, but chief among them is the previously discussed record divergence between GDP and GDI, two series which – in theory – should be identical.

Besides GDP, Gross domestic income (GDI) and select income components will also be revised from Q1 1979 through Q1 2023, but as Morgan Stanley explained previously, the likely drift in revisions will be toward a lower GDP and higher GDI. This is how the bank’s chief US economist Ellen Zentner explained it previously:

GDP will likely be revised down toward GDI. Not only does the GDI/GDP gap tend to close in absolute terms, but we also find evidence that GDP usually converges toward GDI in YoY% rates. Exhibit 4 shows the relationship between the percentage point difference between GDI and GDP before the revision (latest quarter available before revision, YoY%) and the change in GDP growth rate after the revision (pp difference after vs before). There is a positive link between the two variables suggesting that a negative GDI/GDP difference like the one we have now might result in a downward revision to GDP. In Exhibit 4 we show two linear fits, one using the 20-year sample and the other only focusing on the revisions where the GDI/GDP gap closed, with a stronger link between the variables. Using the predictions from these simple models, we would expect to see a downward revision to 2Q 23 YoY% GDP of as much as -50bp to -80bp

And while we discussed all this and more previously, a key question some may ask is what is the reason behind the massive divergence between GDP and GDI?

For the answer we go to a recent note from JPM chief economist Michael Feroli who correctly notes that one dark cloud hanging over the US economic outlook all year has been the very weak performance of real gross domestic income (GDI), which has contracted 0.5% over the past four quarters.

As noted before, GDI should equate with GDP, and past research has indicated that averaging GDI with GDP (also called GDO, or gross domestic output) provides a better measure of the underlying growth of economic activity than either measure viewed in isolation. Obviously, incorporating GDI clearly sends a more downbeat message about the economy’s recent performance, and suggests that the surge in the US Dollar and 10Y yields are just huge headfakes, and once the revised data is released we could see a brutal mean reversion in both the greenback and US Treasuries.

But going back to the key question – what is behind the record difference between GDP and GDI – Feroli answers that this is the result of previously omitted net interest payments by the Federal Reserve, which will be corrected by tomorrow’s data revision, thereby boosting GDI. By itself this revision would close about half of the gap between these two broadest measures of the size of the economy.

As Feroli explains next, “consistent with their legal status, the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs) consider the Federal Reserve banks to be financial corporate businesses.” Their contribution to GDI has so far been in corporate profits, which track closely to the net income of the Federal Reserve system. Recently, the profits of the Federal Reserve banks have rapidly deteriorated, contributing to the weakness in GDI.

This deterioration has been the result of ballooning interest payments on the Fed’s liabilities as short-term interest rates have increased (this would also explain the confusion experienced by Albert Edwards recently when he looked at a variation of this chart to conclude that it was “The Maddest Macro Chart I Have Seen In Many Years“).

So to address the unprecedented collapse in Fed profits as a result of soaring interest rates…

… In June, the BEA discussed how in the upcoming annual revision of the NIPAs they will begin recording interest paid by the Federal Reserve banks. Like corporate profits, net interest payments are an element of corporate operating surplus, which is an element of GDI. This methodological revision updates the NIPAs to keep them more consistent across accounts considering the Fed’s relatively newfound ability to pay interest.

What does this mean for the record statistical discrepancy using between GDP and GDP? The answer comes from data pulled from the Fed’s balance sheet and administered interest rates. (Although the BEA documentation is ambiguous, JPM assumes that all paid liabilities will be recorded, including those for the overnight reverse repo facility).

This inclusion would cut in half the statistical discrepancy in 2Q23, bringing it down from 1.8% of GDP to 0.9%.

In other words, this revision would still leave real GDI growth negative in 4Q22 and 1Q23 – suggesting that GDP would also be revised negative for two quarters, potentially springing an unexpected recession on the US – but would raise the annualized growth in those quarters by about 1%-pt.

The inclusion of Fed interest payments in GDI isn’t the only component that will be revised later this month. The inclusion of more complete data could push estimates of GDP and GDI either up or down. That said, JPM agrees with Morgan Stanley that there is a tendency for GDP and GDI to be revised toward each other. This fact, suggests that while GDI may not look so worrisome in another three weeks, GDP will also see some very substantive haircuts which may effectively eliminate much if not all purported “growth” in 2023.

Finally, Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid agrees, and in a recent note he writes that while tomorrow’s revisions could make GDI look more healthy (interest payments add income to parts of the economy) they could “also make interest costs in the economy look more realistic and hurt fundamental models of interest cover for those indebted.” As such, “the revisions are potentially an important event and could make us think differently about the US economy in the recent past and therefore the future” especially if it is revealed that due to faulty data, the Fed kept hiking in the first half of 2023 even though true GDP was flat if not outright negative.

And if the sharp historical revision to GDP wasn’t enough, the coming plunge in Q4 GDP on the back of…

• The resumption of student loan payments, which will subtract (at least) 0.5% (and likely much more) from quarterly annualized GDP growth
• The government shutdown which will reduce quarterly annualized growth by 0.2% for each week it lasts
• The ongoing UAW auto strike which reduces quarterly annualized growth by 0.05-0.10% for each week it lasts.

…which will almost certainly push the economy into contraction, should be sufficient to put a sharp stop to any further surge in either the dollar or US interest rates.

More in the GDI/GDP reports from JPM, DB and Morgan Stanley

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The looming government shutdown has some Americans worried about what would happen to their Social Security payments if the end-of-the-month deadline passes with no resolution to the gridlock in Washington and parts of the federal government start to grind to a halt.

It appears increasingly likely that Congress will fail to pass the 12 appropriations bills that fund various federal government agencies by the Sept. 30 deadline.

Failure to pass the bills would mean many government operations are halted and hundreds of thousands of federal employees are furloughed—including those at the Social Security Administration (SSA), which administers the Social Security system.

But while some Social Security operations might be affected by a shutdown, legal experts say Social Security recipients need not worry about one thing—their money.

“As a Metairie disability lawyer, every time a government shutdown is in the news, I get calls asking ‘Is Social Security affected by a government shutdown?'” Louisiana-based attorney Loyd J. Burgeois said in a note on his website.

Mr. Burgeois said that staffing would be limited at SSA offices as many employees would be furloughed.

Some operations might be affected by a government shutdown—such as halts to processing of new Social Security claims, as happened during the 2013 shutdown.

“During the Clinton-era shutdown, new Social Security claims were not being processed because the agency furloughed 61,415 employees,” Mr. Burgeois said. “As the shutdown wore on, the agency adjusted its plan and recalled workers to start processing new claims.”

However, while some SSA operations would be impacted, Mr. Burgeois said Social Security checks will continue to be sent out.

“Social Security benefits are considered mandatory spending and are paid from the program’s trust fund, and therefore, the agency has the funds to continue paying benefits,” he said.

A law passed by Congress in 1996 provides special protections for Social Security benefits and such benefits are considered mandatory spending—and aren’t affected by a government shutdown.

During the last two shutdowns, the SSA continued mailing checks throughout the shutdown.

“When the government shut down in 1995 and again in 2013, all social security payments continued to be sent out in time. This included social security disability,” the team at Gray, Sowle, Iacco, Richards, a Michigan-based law office, wrote in a blog post.

They expect that, “just like the previous government shutdowns that social security disability payments will continue.”

The team at Gray, Sowle, Iacco, Richards said that they also expect that hearing officers would most likely continue to hold Social Security disability and SSI hearings in the event of a shutdown.

While new hearings were not scheduled during the 2013 shutdown, the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR) still held previously scheduled hearings, but staffing was limited.

Ten years ago, 66 percent of U.S. adults above the age of 50 worried that Social Security would run dry within their lifetime, according to the Nationwide Retirement Institute, which has been polling Americans annually about their perceptions of and concerns about the Social Security system.

Today, that figure is significantly higher, with a whopping 75 percent saying they’re concerned that Social Security will run out of funds within their lifetime, according to the latest 2023 edition of the survey (pdf).

The increased worry about the state of the Social Security fund is eclipsed by the growth in the share of adults aged 50 and above who say they have no source of retirement income aside from Social Security.

Just over one in five (21 percent) said all they have to count on for retirement is Social Security, up sharply from 13 percent in 2014.

A recent projection by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) estimates that the Social Security trust fund, which consists of two smaller funds—the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) trust fund and the Disability Insurance (DI) trust fund will be insolvent in 2033.

“Upon insolvency, the law mandates that the OASI trust fund can only spend in amounts equal to incoming trust fund revenue, which means that all 70 million retirees, dependents, and survivors—regardless of age, income, or need—will see their benefits cut by 23 percent,” the analysis states.

This means that, in 2033, annual benefits for the average newly retired dual-income couple would be cut by over $17,000.

“For a typical dual-income couple retiring in 2033, we estimate this would represent an immediate $17,400 cut in current dollar annual benefits and an immediate $13,100 cut for a typical single-income couple,” the analysis states.

The CRFB analysis also says that any 2024 presidential candidate who promises not to touch Social Security is “implicitly endorsing a 23 percent across-the-board benefit cut” for some 70 million retirees when the fund runs out of money within 10 years.

The US Central Intelligence Agency’s Open-Source Enterprise division will soon roll out with a ChatGPT-like large language model (LLM), which is to serve as a tool for federal and intelligence agencies to more easily and quickly access intel and information.

Director of the CIA’s Open-Source Enterprise division, Randy Nixon, explained that source information can be sifted and returned to individual intel analysts faster than ever before. “We’ve gone from newspapers and radio, to newspapers and television, to newspapers and cable television, to basic internet, to big data, and it just keeps going,” Nixon told Bloomberg.

“We have to find the needles in the needle field,” he added. In addition to literally hundreds of thousands or millions of classified files, analysts often rely on gathering open-source information for their assessments as well. For example this could include culling public social media apps like Facebook or X.

“Then you can take it to the next level and start chatting and asking questions of the machines to give you answers, also sourced,” Nixon continued. “Our collection can just continue to grow and grow with no limitations other than how much things cost.”

He explained further that the AI platform will be available and used by Washington’s 18 different intelligence branches, including federal law enforcement, such as the FBI. It’s also expected that the US military will have access, though it remains that security protocols and preventing leaks will be a big question, given the vast amounts of classified materials which will be at the tool’s disposal.

There’s also the question of privacy, especially following the Edward Snowden revelations of a decade ago showing that the NSA had in prior years regularly swept up the data of innocent American citizens, violating their Fourth Amendment protections.

According to a prior Bloomberg report which questioned the NSA over the impact on privacy:

“The intelligence community needs to find a way to take benefit of these large models without violating privacy,” Gilbert Herrera, director of research at the National Security Agency, said in an interview. “If we want to realize the full power of artificial intelligence for other applications, then we’re probably going to have to rely on a partnership with industry.”

“It all has to be done in a manner that respects civil liberties and privacy,” Herrera claimed in that prior interview. “It’s a tough problem,” she added, further admitting that “The issue of the intelligence community’s use of publicly trained information is an issue we’re going to have to grapple with because otherwise there would be capabilities of AI that we would not be able to use.”

The future of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) is bright at #CIA. We’re always looking to build strong partnerships with the visionaries of today … and tomorrow.#CIASXSW #EmergingTech #FutureofIntelligence #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning

— CIA (@CIA) March 13, 2023

But we highly doubt the US government’s top intelligence officials will be overly concerned with “limiting” AI’s power due to the Bill of Rights and concerns over individual privacy.

Another interesting aspect to the CIA working on its own version of ChatGPT is the question of competition with China’s significant advances in AI. The new Bloomberg report highlights the mounting pressure US intelligence faces in the wake of more advanced Chinese capabilities. Beijing is looking to become the global leader in the AI field by 2030, and is already considered by many to be a world leader in the technology:

In an ominous glimpse into the nation’s use of the programs, in 2021 China developed a ‘prosecutor’ that could identify and press charges with a reported 97 percent accuracy. 

In contrast, America’s law enforcement sphere has also come under fire for struggling to utilize the power of AI in investigations, but Nixon said the new program will aid in condensing the unprecedented levels of information floating through the web.

But it remains that in the West there is a much more robust legal concept of individual rights, free expression, and autonomy – compared to communist China. On this front, concerning a CIA-built AI chatbot, what could possibly go wrong?

After all, the American public doesn’t want to find itself living in a society modeled on “Minority Report” merely for the sake of ‘keeping up’ technologically with rival superpowers (however, in some ways we are already there).

Authored by Megan Redshaw via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Shrimp have become the latest addition to a growing list of food sources targeted by mRNA gene therapy technology. An Israeli company seeking to bring mRNA vaccines to shrimp farming has raised $8.25 million from a group of venture capitalists to promote and improve animal health in marine species through its orally administered RNA-particle platform.

ViAqua, a biotechnology company, created an RNA-based vaccine product that uses ribonucleic acid interference (RNAi) to manipulate gene expression in shrimp. RNAi is a biological process where RNA molecules are used to inhibit gene expression or translation by neutralizing targeted mRNA molecules.

The vaccine comes in the form of a coated feed supplement designed to enhance resistance to white spot syndrome virus (WSSV)—a viral infection that causes an annual loss of about $3 billion and a 15 percent reduction in global shrimp production. ViAqua suggests RNA molecules can inhibit the expression of genes that cause disease with every meal containing its coated product.

According to a 2022 proof-of-concept study, the nanovaccine was roughly 80 percent effective in a lethal WSSV challenge model and exhibited excellent in vivo safety profiles. Yet the risks of altering gene expression in shrimp and the effects of consuming vaccinated shrimp are unknown.

“Oral delivery is the holy grail of aquaculture health development due to both the impossibility of vaccinating individual shrimp and its ability to substantially bring down the operational costs of disease management while improving outcomes,” said Shai Ufaz, CEO of ViAqua in a press release. “We are excited to bring this technology to market to address the need for affordable disease solutions in aquaculture.”

One day after the Mayo Clinic’s endorsement of Hydroxychloroquine was highlighted for use in Covid-19 patients, they scrubbed the page and then blamed a 3rd party vendor for supplying the information.

The original page read: “Hydroxychloroquine may be used to treat coronavirus (COVID-19) in certain hospitalized patients,” which was highlighted various people and oulets, including ZeroHedge, and former Trump official Peter Navarro.

Yeah, we need some new ones

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 25, 2023

Now, the Mayo Clinic redirects people to a “safe” page.

Of course, pro-vax (we assume) outlets pounced on the fact that this information has been there since at least May of 2020.

Which means… by the transitive properties of woke outrage, the Mayo clinic has been spreading misinformation for three years? Cancel them!

One day after Mayo Clinic’s endorsement of Hydroxychloroquine was highlighted here, they scrubbed the page, deleted the URL and are forwarding to a “safe” page.

See for yourselves

Page as it is now: https://t.co/anzWt9Y5xY

And on Sept 25: https://t.co/T3yBCPKslm https://t.co/sFtXiCnQgG pic.twitter.com/mBPfQsiVKm

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 27, 2023

Meanwhile, an analysis of dozens of studies on Hydroxychloroquine and COVID-19 reveals a 72% lower mortality risk when taken early, and a 41% lower mortality risk when given early into hospitalization (when both HCQ and Ivermectin are known to be less effective vs. at first symptoms).

See the full study results here…

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. food stamp program is losing around $1 billion a month owing to alleged fraud and errors, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) has warned.

The lawmaker issued the warning in a Sept. 26 press release announcing new legislation aimed at combating the alleged billions of dollars in monthly losses from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which allows low-income families with benefit cards to buy basic food items at approved grocery stores.

Known as the “Snap Back Inaccurate SNAP Payments Act,” the legislation would slash spending by nearly $1 billion a month by ensuring all errors—regardless of the amount—be counted.

The bill also directs state governments to stop handing out benefits to individuals who are not eligible, requires states to pay back what they owe, and directs states to recollect SNAP overpayments, ensuring that each household only receives exactly what they are eligible for.

Additionally, the legislation will hold states accountable for payment error rates to incentivize better management of funds, and improve the accuracy of SNAP payment error rates by requiring all errors to be reported.

The number of Americans enrolled in the SNAP program increased from 35.7 million in 2019 to 41.2 million in 2022, according to data released earlier this year by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Meanwhile, SNAP costs rose from $60.3 billion in 2019, the last year before the COVID-19 pandemic, to a record-setting $119.5 billion in 2022.

States Must ‘Pay the Piper’

However, Ms. Ernst said seven states—Florida, Virginia, Wisconsin, Texas, Louisiana, Alaska, and Mississippi—have “intentionally manipulated” the amount of SNAP payments they were making to residents and ultimately pocketed $60 million.

The Justice Department has since settled those allegations of improper manipulation of the SNAP program with various state agencies across those seven states and recovered more than $60 million in connection with its investigation.

“Families across the country are going hungry while bureaucrats are jumping the line to gobble up SNAP dollars, either as a meal ticket to beef up state budgets or a self-serve buffet of benefits for themselves or others who do not qualify,” the senator said in Tuesday’s statement. “I’m snapping back! It’s time for states at fault to pay the piper and eat the costs of their taxpayer waste. Instead of overserving bureaucrats, let’s end the waste and set a place at the table for hungry families,” Ms. Ernst added.

The Iowa Republican noted that the majority of errors from the food stamp program are owing to “overpayments” or benefits paid to recipients who are not actually eligible to receive them.

In June, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that states had an overpayment error rate of 9.84 percent.

In 2022, there were approximately $11.2 billion in overpayments reported, however the exact number is unknown because the USDA excludes errors totaling $54 or less.

Speaking to The Washington Times, Ms. Ernst said the state of Maryland is one of the worst offenders, paying out benefits to more than 86,000 residents who did not qualify for the SNAP program. Despite the error, the state has “no plans” to try and get the money back, she said, with officials citing the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the senator.

Benefit Fraud Cases on the Rise

In recent years, an increasing number of fraud cases relating to the food stamp program and other federal programs, particularly in the form of organized schemes run by those actually running such programs, have also been prosecuted across the United States.

They include in Delaware, where seven people employed by the Department of Health and Social Services and were responsible for issuing Electronic Benefit Transfer cards stole nearly $1 million in federal food benefits, and in Florida, where two owners of a convenience store allegedly ran a huge food stamp scam amounting to around $88,000.

Just last week, a Romanian national was sentenced to 24 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $2,980 in restitution after pleading guilty to swiping Los Angeles County food and assistance payments from legitimate beneficiaries.

Fraud and errors relating to food assistance programs are not the only problems.

The SNAP abuse is part of approximately $3 trillion in improper payments made by federal agencies since 2004, according to Adam Andrzejewski, founder and CEO of watchdog Open the Books, which is more than the entire annual GDP of France.

Among the “worst offenders” are the departments of Health and Human Services, Treasury, Labor, and Education; and the Small Business Administration (SBA), according to Open the Books, although the latter agency has insisted that its accuracy rates are “high.”

“This is the definition of a dinner-table issue. Senator Ernst has identified a kind of improper payment that strikes right at the heart of an American’s life – their need to feed themselves and their families nutritious foods,” Mr. Andrzejewski said in a statement. “While we’ve demonstrated that fraud runs rampant across government, stealing right from our plates is an especially pernicious way to make your ill-gotten gains.”

Update (1450ET):

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that all Philadelphia Fine Wine & Good Spirits stores are closed on Wednesday after looters targeted at least 18 locations on Tuesday night. 

The decision to shutter more than two dozen Fine Wine & Good Spirits locations was “in the interest of employee safety and while we assess the damage and loss that occurred,” Shawn M. Kelly, press secretary for the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, said in a statement. 

The stores will reopen “when it is safe to do so and when the damage is repaired,” Kelly said.

He continued, “We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience,” and “we appreciate their patience and understanding.”

Here’s what happened last night when teen looters targeted retail shops: 

🚨#BREAKING: All philly liquor stores have been closed today after at least 18 were broken after last night’s mass looting in Philadelphia pic.twitter.com/0Btz2jASv2

— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) September 27, 2023

X user Andy Ngô said Dayjia Blackwell, also known as “Meatball,” was one of the 20 arrested last night following the mass looting of Lululemon, Footlocker, Apple, and liquor stores. 

Dayjia Blackwell, aka known as “Meatball,” posted livestream videos inciting #BLM rioting and looting in Philadelphia. She was one of the approximately 20 who was arrested following mass looting targeting a liquor store, Lululemon, Footlocker, Apple and others. https://t.co/Avrtbe5Rnx pic.twitter.com/C68OpSThKt

— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) September 27, 2023

Elon Musk commented on one video: “America is going full Joker.” 

America is going full Joker

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 27, 2023

Democrat-controlled cities are imploding in real time as leaders could care less about law and order. At the same time, the Biden administration is waging war on the Second Amendment, which will only leave law-abiding taxpayers defenseless against criminals. 

*   *   *

As progressive leaders across major cities fail to enforce law and order, America’s youth is quickly spiraling out of control. 

The latest example occurred during the overnight hours in Philadelphia’s Center City area, where a crowd of 100 young people looted retail shops, according to local media Fox 29. 

Police Commissioner John Stanford said the teens began looting stores around 2200 ET, which sparked a massive police presence across Walnut Street between 15th and 18th streets. 

“What we had tonight was a bunch of criminal opportunists take advantage of a situation and make an attempt to destroy our city,” Stanford told reporters. He said, “It’s not going to be tolerated.” 

Videos posted on X show Foot Locker, Apple, Lululemon, and Fine Wine & Good Spirits were targeted by the looters. 

DEVELOPING: Video shows looting in Philadelphia’s Center City neighborhood

pic.twitter.com/g4Ghyu17Ke

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) September 27, 2023

Looters target Foot Locker, Apple, Lululemon, and Fine Wine & Good Spirits, leading to intense police confrontations and a state of anarchy in Philadelphia’s Center City.

Apple Store: 02:48
Lululemon: 05:00
Fine Wine & Good Spirits: 09:22 pic.twitter.com/EAQ81grl0k

— BoreCure (@CureBore) September 27, 2023

Philadelphia getting looted, Center City pic.twitter.com/h0d4ZQz9s2

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) September 27, 2023

Yoooo Philly really a tubi movie rn 😂😂 first Center City not Cottman #CenterCity #Phillylooting pic.twitter.com/sYIAu5YYFR

— 𝙈𝙄𝙎𝙎𝙄𝙊𝙉1𝙈𝙄𝙇𝙇𝙄𝙊𝙉 (@215Nunu) September 27, 2023

Everything in Center City Philadelphia is free with promo code: “the Big Guy 2024.”
pic.twitter.com/Ogd8gIFTGg

— Charles R Downs (@TheCharlesDowns) September 27, 2023

EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF: Looting in Philadephia’s Center City after all charges dismissed against cop in fatal traffic stop shooting. #Philadelphia #Philly #Looting pic.twitter.com/DW2NdbEcfb

— Jonathan Choe Journalist (Seattle) (@choeshow) September 27, 2023

There were also reports of retail shops outside of Center City that were targeted. Fox 29 said looting was reported in North Philadelphia, where GameStop and Walmart stores were hit. Also, a Family Dollar in West Philadelphia was ransacked. 

Stanford said 15-20 people were arrested. He noted a “caravan” of cars loaded with looters was going from retail store to retail store. 

Fox 29 pointed out the looting occurred on the same day a Philadelphia judge dismissed charges against a former police officer in the killing of a 27-year-old. Stanford said the looting had nothing to do with a peaceful protest earlier Tuesday. 

“This had nothing to do with the protests,” Stanford said, adding, “What we had tonight was a bunch of criminal opportunists take advantage of a situation to make an attempt to destroy our city.”

Thank progressive city leadership, not just in Philadelphia but across many major metro areas, for pushing failed social justice reforms that only embolden criminals. 

Corporate media is seemingly ignoring the spike in out-of-control youth nationwide. Nonetheless, we have been closely monitoring the situation:

• April: Baltimore Mayor Calls For Citywide Curfew After All Hell Breaks Out
• April: All Hell Breaks Out In Chicago As Hundreds Of Teenagers Wreak Havoc
• May: Dramatic Video Shows Rogue Pack Of Teens Beating Up Marines In California
• August: Shocking Video: Gun-Strapping Kids Roam’ Grand Theft Auto’-Style Around St.Louis Suburb
• September: “Murdered That Man For Laughs”: Shocking Video Of Out-Of-Control Teens In Vegas
• September: “They Were Laughing”: Rogue Gang Of Teens Brutally Beat Gas Station Clerk In Lawless Seattle

Meanwhile, elite billionaires and the radical left do little to revive law and order. They’re more focused on disarming law-abiding citizens while metro areas implode. 

It’s time for law-abiding citizens to demand law and order from the government. After all, the government is supposed to be working for taxpayers – not the other way around.  

This crime chaos, stemming from failed social justice reforms and now open southern border policies, has spread into suburbia (read: here). 

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

False and misleading information about COVID-19 vaccines and heart inflammation is being spread widely, including by doctors.

That includes claims that data clearly show myocarditis, or heart inflammation, is more prevalent after COVID-19 infection when compared to COVID-19 vaccination.

“Teen boys have been up to five times as likely to have heart inflammation after having a COVID infection than after getting vaccinated,” Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said in a video encouraging nearly all Americans to get one of the new COVID-19 vaccines.

A similar claim was made by Dr. Scott Rivkees, Florida’s former surgeon general, to ABC.

Dr. Rivkees, presented with studies that have found people in at least some populations are at a higher risk of myocarditis after vaccination when compared to after a positive test, doubled down on his claim.

“In articles that compare risks of myocarditis from COVID vs. following vaccination … the risk of myocarditis is greater after COVID than after vaccination,” Dr. Rivkees, professor of the practice of health services, policy, and practice at Brown University, told The Epoch Times via email.

In one of the papers, English researchers found a higher risk for men under 40 who were vaccinated with Moderna’s shot.

Nordic researchers also identified a higher risk for men under 40, as well as some females.

German researchers found 655 cases related to a COVID-19 vaccine, versus 77 related to COVID-19.

The CDC researchers found a higher rate of cardiac complications after a positive COVID-19 test than after COVID-19 vaccination in 40 U.S. health care systems. They did not include all COVID-19 infections.

Dr. Rivkees later sent meta-analyses that confirm the COVID-19 vaccines increase the risk of myocarditis, with no tabulations for the risk following COVID-19.

Dr. Rivkees was quoted by ABC as countering recommendations from Florida to people under 65 to avoid new COVID-19 vaccines, which have virtually no clinical trial data behind them.

“The risk of myocarditis from the virus is far greater than the risk of myocarditis from the vaccine,” Dr. Kawsar Talaat, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, told MIT Technology Review. Dr. Talaat did not provide any citations. A request for comment returned an away message.

CBS News reporter Alexander Tin wrote in an article that “research shows people are more likely to develop myocarditis from a COVID infection than from the vaccine.” Mr. Tin did not link to any of the purported research and declined to comment on the record.

In guidance on its website, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services says that COVID-19 poses more of a risk than COVID-19 vaccination.

Officials pointed to the same CDC paper cited by vaccine proponents.

That report, published by the CDC’s quasi-journal, analyzed electronic health records from 40 U.S. health care systems and counted cardiac complications following a positive COVID-19 test or COVID-19 vaccination. Then they compared the rates and claimed people were at higher risk after a positive test.

“For post COVID-myocarditis, they only included young people with an official COVID diagnosis in the health system,” Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, an epidemiologist in California, told The Epoch Times via email.

“So not only was this a non-representative sample because these were a subset of the sickest children who were seeking medical attention but happened to also have a COVID positive test,” she added. “At the same time they underestimated the total number of children infected by only including those with a health system associated positive result (so this shrinks the denominator and increases the myocarditis rate per infection),” she said.

Those choices would inflate the rate of post-COVID myocarditis cases, she said.

The researchers did include in the paper calculations for post-vaccination myocarditis as high as 360 cases per million second doses in 12- to 17-year-old males, or as high as one in 2,800 second doses.

The CDC “glossed over” those calculations, Dr. Hoeg said. “I don’t know how many parents would have taken the chance on vaccination if they had known this risk of myocarditis was around 1/3,000 according to the CDC’s own study, which was consistent by the way with data from Hong Kong.”

Dr. Hoeg and Ms. Krug previously authored a paper that found the risk of cardiac complications to young, healthy males from COVID-19 vaccines was higher than the risk from COVID-19.

CDC officials did not present any data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Starting in mid-2021, the CDC has analyzed reports to the system and verified some of them before regularly updating reported rates.

The CDC, asked for the data, would only provide a study that covered VAERS reports lodged through Oct. 23, 2022. The study found nine reports of myocarditis or pericarditis, seven of which were verified by medical record review.

Asked for more current data, the official said the study “is the most recent publicly available data we have on the topic” and that more current data would be made available to the public “when appropriate.”

An Epoch Times search of VAERS turned up 98 myocarditis, pericarditis, or myopericarditis reports following bivalent vaccination through Sept. 8. Ms. Krug counted 10 reported cases that were or appeared to be myocarditis or pericarditis among 12- to 29-year-olds.

Dr. Rivkees said the Vaccine Safety Datalink data “show that the risk of myocarditis following COVID boosters is very rare.” He did not comment on the lack of VAERS data.

Dr. Walid Gellad disagreed.

Without the VAERS data, “no risk benefit can accurately be calculated for young people,” Dr. Gellad, director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Pharmaceutical Policy and Prescribing, wrote on X.

Dr. Rivkees said he also felt the vaccines would prevent deaths in children, pointing to observational papers on older versions of the shots. Two were non-peer reviewed studies from the CDC.

The agency also missed or ignored a safety signal for myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination.

Outside researchers have also downplayed the cases by citing how symptoms resolved quickly in many patients, while abnormalities on imaging and symptoms persisted in some. They’ve also made false claims about deaths from post-vaccination myocarditis.

“No deaths from myocarditis post-mRNA COVID-19 vaccination have been reported in the USA, with very rare deaths reported worldwide,” U.S. researchers wrote in a review article in 2022. By then, multiple deaths had been reported in the United States alone. Dr. Stephanie Chin, the study’s corresponding author, did not return a query.

In another example from late 2021, Chinese researchers falsely said, “so far, all adults and adolescents with myocarditis/pericarditis following COVID-19 vaccinations, including those reported in the current study, have been mild cases.” They cited a single study from California.