Budget; What Budget?

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Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Our leaders have failed at a national balanced budget. They do not even begin to address whether we are anywhere near the possibility of a balanced budget.  Charges are flying back and forth about whether anyone wants to cut Social Security and/or Medicare as some demagogue the issue.  It is time to take a simple “helicopter” view of what is actually happening.

In 2022, our federal government spent $6.48 trillion.  The breakdown:

  1. Social Security — $1.22 trillion, comprised of three parts: Payments to seniors $1.03 trillion, $144.7 billion for disability; $48.4 billion – other.
  2. Defense – $1.03 trillion, composed of $759.8 billion for defense and $271 billion for veterans.
  3. Medicare $756.1 billion.
  4. Transfers to states – $1.21 trillion.
  5. Transfers payments – $619.3 billion. Only $36.3 billion of that is paid for by the recipients as those are payments related to unemployment insurance.
  6. Interest payments – $483.5 billion.

The government received $5.03 trillion in revenue:

  1. Payroll Taxes – $1.50 trillion comprised principally of $1.09 trillion Social Security and $344 billion for Medicare.
  2. Income taxes and other taxes — $3.50 trillion.

Clearly, there are many items to discuss.  First, you can see that Social Security already has expenditures exceeding collections.  There is no fund saved somewhere to make up the difference. If there were no massive payments for disability and “other,” the fund would be solvent. No question that there are many deserving recipients of disability benefits but there are many who are not.  The disability recipient pool expands dramatically any time there is an economic downturn, and no one polices that.

Notice the expenditures for Medicare are more than twice the revenues.  This is after significant increases in the tax base occurring in the ACA passed during the Obama Administration.  Not clear how this can possibly get close to being balanced.

Why so much money is paid out to the states instead of the states making their own tax collections remains a mystery. Over $600 billion of this is for medical care programs. That means the federal government is funding over $1 trillion for unfunded medical care.

The taxpayers of the states are unwilling to vote themselves to be taxed, but the feds are willing to simply print more money.  The feds enjoy supplying the funds because it gives them control over the state and municipal governments.  Without all these transfers the budget would have been close to balanced. 

The interest payments are already skyrocketing with the return to more normal interest rates.  Our irresponsible elected officials were willing to incur greater debt when the interest rates were much lower.  They had to know that would change and we would have a serious problem.  The massive amount of interest has already increased from over $300 billion to $783 billion annualized and it is a good bet that will go higher.

Some people keep harping on the fact that we should increase tax collections on wealthy individuals and corporations.  We have already increased tax collections as the reduced rates spurred higher collections.  The top 1% of earners pay 40% of income taxes while earning a far smaller share of that income. Does anyone really believe we can close this $1.45 trillion budget imbalance simply by collecting more from large corporations and the very financially successful ones? If we collected 100% of high-earners’ income we would still be nearly a trillion dollars short of a balanced budget.  Seems implausible to me. 

If we combine the four factors of defense, social security, medical care, and interest payments, the current amount being paid out is $4.4 trillion. That is almost the entire revenue of the federal government.  Since two of those expenses are programs people have paid into to receive benefits and defending the country is the primary aspect of what the federal government should be doing, there is little flexibility.  The problem is everything else the federal government does and for the most part badly.

Our President is spending much time criticizing Republicans about phantom proposals to cut Social Security and Medicare. On the other side, Republicans are swearing fealty to an unsustainable system.  Biden appears unwilling to negotiate on reducing any element of the budget to create a positive atmosphere to raise the debt ceiling. He is proposing even greater levels of expenditures. All of these talking points may change but currently makes little sense.

The CBO (Congressional Budget Office) has stated unless there is a change, the increase in the national debt will be $19 trillion over the next decade. The CBO likewise stated federal spending on Social Security and Medicare will explode over the next decade.

You can evaluate for yourself whether our current national finances are sustainable year after year with trillion-dollar deficits. It seems to me something has to change and change quickly.

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This article was published in Flash Report and is reproduced with permission by the author.

 

 

Goldwater Sues City of Phoenix for Hiding Union Records from the Public

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Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

The city of Phoenix and its union enablers have shut the public out of its most recent contract negotiations—a process that is funded by Phoenix taxpayers and affects where their money is spent—in violation of Arizona’s Public Records Law. Today, the Goldwater Institute sued the city to bring these public records to light.

If you care about transparency, these latest rounds of negotiations got off on the wrong foot. Before negotiations with the city commence under Phoenix’s “Meet and Confer” ordinance, public-sector unions are required by city code to submit draft contract proposals for public comment. Despite following this protocol in the past, the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association (PLEA)—the union that represents most of the city’s police officers—decided to ignore the legal requirement this time around. By doing so, the union prevented the public from providing input on its proposals before the start of negotiations. The city acknowledged that the union’s refusal to provide a public draft of its contract proposals violated city code, but then did nothing to hold the union accountable for taking away the public’s seat at the table.

“The public’s business should be done in public, not behind closed doors,” says Goldwater Institute Staff Attorney Parker Jackson, lead attorney on the case. “The city of Phoenix has a duty to comply with state law—and the city’s own code—so that residents can find out what their government is up to.”

After Phoenix agreed to proceed behind closed doors, the Goldwater Institute stepped in and requested records relating to the negotiations, including any draft agreements and proposals received or created by the city. First, the city claimed that no draft agreements or draft proposals existed. Then, when Goldwater asked for the information again, the city denied the request, claiming that releasing such records “would hinder the negotiations process.” The city later said that it had at least some of the requested records but claimed that disclosing them “would harm the best interest of the City.”

Of course, this ignores the fact that the city is supposed to be negotiating on the public’s behalf. And that those negotiations are funded by the public. And that the negotiations involve matters of pure public concern regarding how government employees will conduct the public’s business. And that the negotiations process should not have started without public input in the first place. And that, as a result, these records are obviously public records under Arizona law.

That’s why the Goldwater Institute filed suit against the city today, asking the court to compel the city to stop hiding records about union negotiations from the public.

Fortunately, Arizona has broad public records laws requiring open and transparent government. Although there are limited exceptions allowing the government to withhold certain confidential records, these records do not fit within any of the legally recognized exceptions. In fact, Arizona courts have said that when analyzing the so-called “best interests of the state” exception, they look to the overall interests of the public, not just the government.

Labor agreements are particularly important documents for the public to see. Not only do they outline compensation and other policies for government employees, but they are also sometimes used to hide wasteful, corrupt, and unconstitutional practices like taxpayer-funded release time or dues deduction revocation restrictions. (Phoenix is guilty of both.)

This is not the first time a government entity and public-sector union have worked in tandem to hide information from the public or to benefit unions at taxpayer expense. Goldwater client Nicole Solas has recently confronted similar public records and open meetings violations by her Rhode Island school district and the local teachers union. And Goldwater is also pushing back against both local and federal government entities that want to use restrictive contractual provisions to trap their employees in public-sector unions.

In Arizona and across the country, the Goldwater Institute will always fight for open, transparent government and to protect taxpayers.

You can read our complaint here.

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This article was published by Goldwater Institute and is reproduced with permission.

Vast Expanse Of US Military Hardware Positioned At Polish Port

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A Baltic monitoring media outlet has published footage of an enormous amount of American military equipment being prepared to move from the Port of Gdynia in Poland.

The expanse of military hardware is being described as equipment belonging to the US Army’s 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division. Some Eastern European media reports are claiming that at least a portion of the equipment, which looks multiple football fields in length, are bound for Kiev.

Hundreds of heavy military vehicles can be seen in the footage, including armored personnel carriers, tanks and armored trucks.

Despite claims that the equipment is bound for Ukraine, a source which widely circulated the footage, “Baltic Security”, wrote that it’s at the Polish port “in preparation for redeployment to the continental United States after serving in the Operation Atlantic Resolve.”

Russia’s Sputnik noted that “Some Polish and Ukrainian media outlets, however, did not think twice about claiming that part of the military hardware seen in the video would be redeployed to Ukraine, where Russia continues its special military operation.”

But it remains that “Neither the White House not the Pentagon have commented on the matter yet.”

“The footage comes as the US had already committed more than $100 billion worth of security and military assistance to Kiev since the beginning of the Russian special operation,” the state publication continued. Given how desperate that Ukrainian front lines, particularly in Bakhmut, are right now for more ammo and equipment – it would be surprising if these rows upon rows of hardware aren’t in the end headed for Ukraine.

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Continue reading this article at Zero Hedge.

Biden Admin Gives Tucson $900k For Equity-Focused Bike And Pedestrian Bridge

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The Biden administration gave the city of Tucson $900,000 to build a biking and pedestrian bridge. The city’s initiative is one of 45 projects nationwide to receive a portion of $185 million in funds, the only one in Arizona to receive this round of funds.

The bridge would provide a pathway over the I-19 highway to Nebraska Street, as part of the Atravessando Comunidades Project. The funds will cover approximately 56 percent of the total project cost: $1.6 million in total.

The funds come from President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funds allocated to the Department of Transportation (DOT) Reconnecting Communities Program (RCP). In a press release issued on Tuesday, the DOT revealed that it prioritized projects it perceived as benefiting economically disadvantaged communities, as well as engaging in equity and environmental justice. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) assisted DOT in selecting which projects should get federal funding.

10 other Arizona cities, counties, and one nonprofit were denied the IRS funds.

The city of Winslow petitioned for $377,200 for a transportation study on railway-created barriers to mitigate lack of access and opportunities for impacted communities; the city of Eloy petitioned for $400,000 to plan for the revitalization of the Sunland Gin Corridor; Apache County petitioned for $1.28 million to reconstruct Stanford Drive (County Road 8235); Native Promise, a tribal advocacy nonprofit, petitioned for over $1.75 million to reconnect Navajo relocatees through the Pinta Project; the city of Buckeye petitioned for $420,000 for an overpass at Durango Street, over $1 million for road and bridge construction along Watson Road, and $724,000 to plan for Rooks Road and Baseline Road; the city of Bullhead petitioned for $1.6 million to improve a multimodal parkway; the city of Phoenix petitioned for over $5 million for a “cultural corridor”; the city of Kingman petitioned for over $40.8 million for a Rancho Santa Fe Parkway traffic interchange; and the city of Eloy petitioned for over $24.3 million for Sunland Gin Corridor construction.

The DOT explained that Tucson received the funding because of the project’s focus on equity. The project description stated that the predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods of South Tucson were cut off from the Santa Cruz River and the rest of Tucson by the I-19 highway in the early 1960s. The DOT claimed that these neighborhoods experienced over 60 years of air and noise pollution, surviving a food desert, and struggling from more limited economic opportunities.

This isn’t the first round of funding Tucson has received for a bridge. The Biden administration awarded the city $25 million to rebuild the 22nd Street bridge last August.

Last August, Buttigieg used the city of Tucson as the location for his major reveal of $25 million in funding through Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) grants. At the time, Buttigieg also cited equity as a reason for choosing Tucson as the recipient of these exclusive funds.

“It’s also important from an equity perspective because it connects the downtown Tucson and the communities and opportunities there to historically underinvested in communities to the east,” said Buttigieg.

Phoenix also received RAISE grants last year: $25 million for a bridge over the Rio Salado river connecting downtown Phoenix and South Phoenix, spanning along the river from Central Avenue to State Route 143 near the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.

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This article was published by AZ Free News and is reproduced with permission.

China Openly Infiltrates Our Political System, and America’s Media Doesn’t Seem to Care

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Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

The American media has been liberal for decades, but the utter disregard for the truth that pervades much of the reporting today is something new. With all the alarm over misinformation on the Right, little attention has been paid to the much broader form of misinformation that dominant corporate media perpetrates today.

One of the biggest stories of our time is the way Communist China has co-opted so many leading American institutions and individuals. How is it that America, a country committed to human rights, is freely trading with China, a country currently operating slave labor camps? That’s a serious and important question, but it’s one the media barely addresses.

Many well-intentioned Americans believed that free trade would liberalize China and provide low-cost goods, ultimately helping American families. In reality, free trade fueled Communist China’s rise, minus the promise of liberalization. Moreover, these policies left America overly dependent on Chinese-made goods, including key products needed for America’s security, its health care, and even, astoundingly, its military.

More broadly, the loss of American manufacturing has harmed many formerly thriving American communities and helped upend the American political system. It turns out that free trade theory may not work out when one party is a developed free economy and the other is a mercantilist system marked by corruption and slave labor.

In addition to the American leaders who botched these policies through well-meaning intentions, there are others who were economically or politically conflicted. Many American companies made billions by moving factories to China. Wall Street made even more by financing the whole thing. Some American companies and elite institutions were flat-out co-opted by Chinese interests.

The Chinese Communist Party has an organized effort to influence American policymakers and business leaders. Most Americans don’t even know they’ve been targeted by Communist Party operatives. They are drawn in by the potential for financial gain or by a desire to bring the two countries closer together.

The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Philip Lenczycki is one of the leading American reporters covering the Chinese Communist Party’s influence operations in the United States. With his 20 years of experience traveling frequently to China, six years living in China full time, fluency in Mandarin, a master’s degree in Chinese language and culture, and sources all over China, plus being the top student at Harvard’s Beijing Academy, it’s hard to point to a more well-equipped reporter elsewhere in American media.

Lenczycki recently made two astounding discoveries, which he detailed in a series of articles. First, he revealed how Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., served for over a decade as the “honorary president” of an organization whose leadership includes several individuals who’ve belonged to alleged Chinese intelligence front groups. Lenczycki also revealed that Chu was named “honorary chairwoman” of an alleged Chinese intelligence front group back in 2019.

Second, Lenczycki exposed how Dominic Ng, CEO of East West Bank, recently appointed by President Joe Biden to represent the U.S. at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings, had been a member of at least two groups allegedly linked to Chinese Communist Party intelligence efforts.

Top U.S. leaders associating with groups linked to alleged Chinese intelligence efforts is, of course, a huge story. Yet the corporate media didn’t touch it.

Republican members of Congress called for investigations as a result of Lenczycki’s reporting. The Democrats’ response to all this was basically their standard playbook in 2023: Ignore the facts altogether and claim the whole thing is driven by racism. When the facts aren’t with you, change the subject and attack the messenger.

That’s not good behavior; in fact, it’s utterly juvenile. But it’s how politics often works.

Reporters are supposed to be different. They are supposed to search for the truth. They are supposed to ask tough questions. Of course, the legacy media did not do that. In reporting on the whole incident, corporate media outlets have yet to examine the actual facts Lenczycki unearthed. They instead summarily wrote his work off as “unsubstantiated.”

Lenczycki’s reporting is well-documented and, more importantly, it’s on the web for anyone to analyze. Any reporter who felt the need to further substantiate it could go to his articles, find links to the source materials and experts who commented, and do all the necessary substantiation. But not a single corporate media reporter did that. Why?

They don’t want to get to the truth. They don’t like where it may lead. It’s much cleaner to call it “unsubstantiated” or “racist” and write it off. This is the same way reporters handled the Hunter Biden laptop story, the story of whether COVID-19 came from a lab in China, and so many other story lines that they do not want to explore for political reasons.

It’s important to note that Lenczycki never once alleged in his reporting that either Ng or Chu knowingly were doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party. He didn’t allege that because he doesn’t know if it’s true. What is true is that both parties have troubling ties to alleged Chinese intelligence front groups.

Besides tarring those looking into these serious allegations as “racists,” both Chu and Ng have defended themselves either by totally denying any affiliations with these groups or by downplaying any ties as having fizzled out years ago.

There could be some truth to that, but these top American leaders’ mere associations with parties that do the bidding of the increasingly brutal Chinese Communist state is worthy of more scrutiny. This is doubly true in this case, where the subjects’ excuses don’t line up with all the available facts. And if it’s all innocent, then it seems really odd that these alleged Chinese intelligence groups are busy scrubbing their websites to try to cover their tracks retroactively.

The corporate media has not pressed Ng and Chu on any of this. Chinese Communist influence operations in America is not a story that interests them. Besides NBC News, none of the media outlets branding Lenczycki’s reporting as “racist” even reached out for comment—a journalistic norm that Lenczycki offered to both Ng and Chu numerous times, without success.

The story of the Chinese Communist Party’s influence operations in the U.S. is in many ways part of the story of our time. America’s financial and political leaders put in place policies that helped China’s communists at the expense of the American middle class.

Many of America’s major media outlets were part of the problem. They took millions of dollars to run Chinese Communist propaganda for many years. Included among the news outlets that ran this paid propaganda were The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. More recently, all the major D.C. newsletters—Axios, Playbook, and Punchbowl—are on the Chinese dole. Semafor was even more bold: It enthusiastically announced a partnership with a barely concealed Chinese influence group.

Maybe that explains why they’re all so uninterested in the story. Maybe it isn’t money. Maybe academic notions of racial intersectionality and “Asian hate” have paralyzed them into submission.

In either case, this much is clear: China is aggressively targeting American leaders and institutions, and it is succeeding. That’s a huge story. We at the Daily Caller News Foundation aren’t intimidated by the name-calling; if the legacy media won’t cover it, we certainly will.

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This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

The Sex-Ed Industrial Complex Revolves Around Planned Parenthood And Is Fueled By Your Tax Dollars

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Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Schools have assumed an outsized role in sex education in the past 50 years. Today, schools propagandize on behalf of transing kids, kinky sex, and coming out as gay. But this isn’t a problem just in leftist enclaves — schools in red states are promoting the same propaganda as schools in blue states. How can this be happening, even in supposedly conservative jurisdictions?

Planned Parenthood, as we show in our new report from the Claremont Institute, carefully controls and coordinates the entire policymaking process to promote its goal of sexual revolution. In Congress, it seeks riders and findings to make the funding of abstinence-only sex education more difficult; it has spearheaded the effort to favor programs that reduce sexual risk as opposed to avoiding sexual risk.

This process results from concerted action at the highest levels of government, led by an iron triangle of activist pressure groups, legislative allies, and aligned administrative activists. Planned Parenthood is grooming children to be the vanguard of sexual perversity and degeneracy in a new, sexually liberated America.

Not only does the influence of Planned Parenthood spearhead the sexual revolution in America’s schools and beyond, but its activity also illustrates how Big Government funds and supports leftist political activity more generally. The left depends on funneling national tax dollars toward its favored causes — and conservatives have all but abandoned the field to such efforts.

Congress has established at least four funding streams for sex education. Both the Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) and Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) initiatives are competitive grant programs left over from the Obama era. Two Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (SRAE) programs, passed in the Trump administration, were originally designed to emphasize abstinence-only-until-marriage education. These four programs, housed within Health and Human Services, cumulatively dispensed $228 million through 243 grants between 2020 and 2023.

Planned Parenthood and its affiliates dominate the grant process. According to our study of award winners, nearly $167 million, comprising 80 percent of HHS sex education funding, went to grantees partnering with Planned Parenthood. Seventy-nine percent of successful programs used Planned Parenthood-endorsed curricula. Planned Parenthood and its affiliates won 86 percent of TPP funds, 90 percent of PREP funds, and about three-quarters of SRAE funds.

Planned Parenthood’s main work comes from carefully priming and directing the grantmaking process within the administrative state. First, Planned Parenthood and its affiliates developed National Sexuality Education Standards (NSES) and, in conjunction with the CDC, they developed the Health Education Curriculum Analysis Tool (HECAT). The NSES and HECAT are leading edges of the sexual revolution.

The second edition of NSES, published in 2020, requires teaching gender identity to kindergarteners and puberty blockers to third graders. NSES also requires teaching about abstinence — but it is the new abstinence, which allows for vaginal sex in the backseat of the car so long as one uses a condom. Almost half of America’s school districts have adopted Planned Parenthood’s sex education standards as curricula.

Planned Parenthood and affiliates then design curricula to satisfy their own NSES and HECAT standards. In fact, there is a ratchet built into the grant programs so that ever more radical curricula can be developed. Twenty-five percent of TPP funding must go to the development of new sex education products — so that the leading edge of the sexual revolution can be inched forward with monies from the federal government. One such innovative program is a $1.5 million grant to the Center for Innovative Public Health Research, which developed Girl2Girl, an education program for “girls who are into girls.” Today’s innovative programs are tomorrow’s staples like Making Proud Choices! or Reducing the Risk, each used in hundreds of school districts around the country.

Grantees must also select from curricula deemed “medically accurate” by HHS. Planned Parenthood has mastered the art of having curriculum designated “medically accurate” through TPP Evidence Review. Of more than 600 studies evaluated under TPP Evidence Review, only 24 of them were approved for use in schools, and Planned Parenthood endorsed or created 17 of them.

All of this is possible because the granting agencies within HHS are staffed with left-wing political activists who bend the administration of programs to like-minded groups. HHS itself has a department-wide commitment to leftist sexual ideology in its Equity Action Plan. In the context of sex education, this means pursuing “equity” between gays and non-gays or transgender-identifying people so that groups supposedly on the outs in American society have a chance to become grant recipients.

Thus the iron triangle is complete: Congress appropriates and issues friendly amendments; bureaucrats direct a process that favors aligned interest groups like Planned Parenthood; Planned Parenthood receives grants, develops curriculum, sells other curricula, and shapes the standards by which grants are evaluated. Breaking into this process is not easy for groups that do not already share the values and goals of the movement.

Only Congress can break up this iron triangle of radicalism. The public is wondering how we are losing children to these degenerate ideologies. The answer is not simple, but part of the solution is easy to identify: Defund national sex education programs and refuse to teach them at the state level.

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This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

Med School Walks Back Alleged Race-Based Programs After Federal Investigation

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The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) revised or eliminated several scholarships and programs accused by medical watchdog Do No Harm Senior Fellow Mark Perry of being discriminatory after a federal probe was launched, Do No Harm reported.

Perry filed a complaint in September 2022 against eight scholarships and programs offered by the university that he claimed violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prevents race-based discrimination, and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prevents discrimination based on sex, according to Do No Harm. The Department of Education (DOE) Office for Civil Rights, which investigated the matter, informed Perry Feb. 28 that the case was closed after finding “credible information indicating that the complaint has been resolved,” the letter reads.

The university made several changes to programs called into question by Perry.

The Underrepresented in Medicine Visiting Student Program, which originally was available to Black/African American, Native American, Hispanic and Pacific Islander students, was renamed to become the Achieving Health Equity by Advancing Diversity (AHEAD) — Visiting Student Program. The program is available to students from underrepresented groups, students with disabilities, rural communities, first-generation students, LGBTQ students “and other students interested in diversifying the physician workforce and/or addressing healthcare disparities in the communities they serve,” according to its website.

The university confirmed to the OCR that it revised the language on its scholarship website to clarify that it does not discriminate against students of various statuses and backgrounds, the letter reads. The scholarships are “designed to promote a diversified health care workforce” and “all students are welcome to apply,” according to its website.

MUSC removed several programs from its Student Diversity Programs website including its Student Diversity Transition Forum, Visiting Externship Program, Student Ambassadors and Peer Mentors Program and its Residency Diversity Forum, according to Do No Harm. Its Mentoring Ensures Medical School Success program now reads it “does not exclude any students based on race, ethnicity or sex,” according to the website.

“Do No Harm is pleased that The University of South Carolina School of Medicine chose to eliminate its discriminatory and unlawful scholarships,” Laura Morgan, Do No Harm program manager, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “This decision shows that they are well aware that adopting racially discriminatory admissions practices under the guise of inclusivity is not only lowering standards in the name of diversity, but is in violation of federal law.”

MUSC did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

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This article was published by The Daily Caller and is reproduced with permission.

China Expert: CCP Is Bringing War to American Soil

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China expert Gordon Chang tweeted March 8 that the U.S. is going to be fighting a war with China on American soil. While he’s not, of course, infallible, and we can pray that he will be wrong, it is true that the evidence is in his favor. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been buying up land around US military bases, it has infiltrated every level of American government and institutions, it has at least four illicit police stations in America, and it told its people that it was at war with the US back in 2019. Why couldn’t the CCP shut down our grid and even bomb us?

It seems pretty clear from Chinese encroachments around the world and the language they use, particularly against the US, and what experts on China have said, that the Chinese aim to have a global empire, either through direct ownership or tributary states (just as many globalists think they want one world government, the CCP plans to rule the government). It would not be at all surprising if China were to try and take out the US in particular, since the US traditionally stands as the guardian of liberty in the world. Although, of course, under the current illegitimate president, who is a Chinese puppet and almost certainly being paid off by the CCP, it would probably be a lot easier takeover than a large-scale land war.

China practices “civil-military fusion,” where everything in the economic and tech spheres is directly accessible to the Chinese military. In China, and thus in Chinese operations around the world (and, as said above, the CCP has thoroughly infiltrated America, including US businesses), there is no division between the economic and the military.

Chang also warned recently that CCP plants are almost certainly entering the U.S. through the wide open southern border. I reported on how Chinese state media‘s piece on important world leaders with whom CCP dictator Xi Jinping met at the G20 did not include Joe Biden, even though Biden had been parading around in a Mao Zedong costume there and Biden met with Xi at the summit.

Remember too that the Chinese Communist Party is the greatest mass murderer of all time. It has come to power and stayed in power through mass murder and genocide.

If a key China expert tells you to prepare for war, and China has already announced to its citizens it is at war, it might be well to prepare for war.

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This article was published by Pro Deo et Libertate and is reproduced with permission.

Dear Mitch McConnell: You Were Not Elected To Do The Bidding Of Chuck Schumer And CNN

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Manu Raju is a Democrat activist and CNN reporter who camps out in congressional hallways to ask questions that help advance his party’s political agenda. He’s done it for years. Whether the Democrats are doing their Brett Kavanaugh smear, impeachment shenanigans, Russia-collusion hoax, or anything else, he’s there to ask questions that help his team. He’s been doing it for so long that you’d have to be something of an idiot to fall for it, much less more than once.

So, for example, when corporate media and other activists were pretending that New York Republican Rep. George Santos’ deceptions about his biography were the most important issue facing Americans, Raju was there. He asked Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, if he was disappointed Speaker Kevin McCarthy hadn’t called on George Santos to resign. Romney did not mock him for the question or turn the conversation to issues that actually matter, such as the open border, inflation, a troubled economy, attacks on parents, or the rise of China. He gladly took up Raju’s question as an opportunity to bash the Republican speaker.

Then Raju ran over to McCarthy and asked him what he thought about Romney’s weak response. “Romney should be disappointed that Swalwell hasn’t resigned,” McCarthy said, not even pausing for a second to dignify the stupidity of the question.

Boom. Easy. Effective.

McCarthy seems to have a quaint notion that he should follow an agenda other than the one set by leftist media and other activists. He recently provided journalist Tucker Carlson access to Jan. 6 footage. When it was announced, CNN and other leftist groups got upset. But nothing compares to the angry reaction when Carlson showed some of the footage on his top-ranked Fox News program on Monday night. The program showed footage indicating that the Jan. 6 Committee had falsely conveyed the circumstances of Sen. Josh Hawley’s evacuation from the Capitol, had falsely added audio to clips, had not pursued evidence that mysterious protester Ray Epps had lied about his whereabouts, and had concealed evidence that Jan. 6 protesters who had entered the Capitol were not treated as threats.

The media and other partisans shrieked in horror that this footage was being shown to the American people. It burst through the media-enforced narratives about the day.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., took to the Senate floor to call for the censorship of Fox News, where this author is a contributor, and prevention of more footage being made available to Americans. He said Carlson exercising his freedom of the press was a threat to democracy.

As one former White House reporter put it, “It’s frightening to see Senate leaders demand a media company ‘stop’ reporting on the government, police, issues of law and justice.”

Surely this would be an opportunity for the otherwise weak and feckless Senate Republicans to show some backbone, right? Wrong.

Romney said that showing Americans footage from Jan. 6 meant Carlson had gone “off the rails,” and compared him to Alex Jones. He also went after McCarthy for being transparent with the American people. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., took a break from working on an amnesty bill to tell Raju that Carlson showing new footage of the protest that countered the left’s narrative was “bullsh-t.” South Dakota Sens. Mike Rounds and John Thune, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, and North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer also fell for the media campaign against Carlson.

Leading the group was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Raju invited him to bash McCarthy. It’s not saying much, but McConnell was at least smart enough to decline that opportunity. But he did take the opportunity to attack a media outlet for daring to say something different than what a police leader said. Really. He said, “It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict this in a way that is completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks.”

Let’s leave aside the abject offensiveness of the Republican leader saying journalists must simply repeat what governmental authorities say and not show video footage “at variance” with what the government says. What is McConnell doing? Seriously? The man only rarely speaks on camera to reporters, so his decision to do so is intentional. He brought a prop — the statement from the government official — to wave around for the camera.

Even if he didn’t agree with every journalistic decision Carlson made, he could have said any number of things to serve the American people — and Republican voters — instead of serving Chuck Schumer and CNN.

He could have said he welcomed the transparency regarding the footage from Jan. 6, that Pelosi’s manipulation of that footage was sinfully wrong, and that it should not have taken two years to get this footage to the American people.

He could have said something in defense of the First Amendment-protected right of assembly and to petition government for a redress of grievances. He could have reminded Americans about how awful it is that left-wing rioters are routinely allowed to firebomb or otherwise desecrate Christian churches, pro-life pregnancy centers, the Mark O. Hatfield federal courthouse, police precincts, the Atlanta site of the cop-training facility, the Keystone pipeline, and downtown Seattle.

He could have talked about the importance of election integrity and security, noting that the 2020 election — and the radical changes to the laws and processes governing it in the months leading up to it — had been bad for the country. He could have mentioned how Big Media and Big Tech conspired to meddle in that election, and that messing with people’s elections is a major problem in this country and something about which Americans have every right to be upset.

He could have said Carlson’s journalism was a reminder that one can never trust narratives from corporate, left-wing media such as CNN, the outlet where Raju works. He could have listed the lies and deceptions put forth by that network, such as the recent news that they intentionally suppressed journalism about the Wuhan Institute of Virology because they thought it might help their political opponent Donald Trump. He could have mentioned their years-long Russia-collusion hoax. He could have mentioned their lies about Kavanaugh, in which they falsely and repeatedly portrayed him as a serial gang rapist.

If he wanted to be something of a squish, but not a complete squish, he could have even said, “I think Tucker might have been a little too dismissive of the violence we experienced, but he did a remarkable service by airing so much important video that Democrats tried to hide.”

When Raju ran over to McCarthy to do his damage control over the Jan. 6 footage, McCarthy handled it with ease. Raju asked a loaded and inaccurate question and asked McCarthy whether he regretted giving the American people a chance to see the footage.

In the clip above, McCarthy also reminded CNN about how it had negligently handled information about secure locations for Capitol personnel. Boom. Easy. Effective.

And new Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance took to Twitter to criticize reporters for asking him to bash Carlson but not asking about Schumer’s push for censorship of non-leftist media.

Instead of doing things like that, McConnell copied the political framing and approach of Schumer, and ran off to Raju to supercharge the left’s latest bogus narrative.

Republicans, you have a serious problem.

In the middle of the midterm elections, McConnell went out of his way to sabotage candidates and their voters, once again pushing Democrat narratives about “candidate quality.” McConnell, the country’s least popular politician, did nothing to stop Romney from running a shadow campaign against a sitting GOP senator, fellow Utah Sen. Mike Lee. After he led the Republicans in the Senate to a loss, he responded by helping Democrats pass their $1.7 trillion omnibus bill, cheerleading for Biden’s Ukraine war, and campaigning with Joe Biden.

Instead of punishing Romney for his act of sabotage against fellow Republicans, he punished the victim by removing him from a powerful committee. Other Republican senators have also been punished by the famously vindictive and petty McConnell for not supporting his re-election as Republican leader.

Elon Musk, of all people, said it best when he tweeted of McConnell, “I keep forgetting which party he belongs to.”

It is a cruel joke on the nation that this guy is still the titular leader of Senate Republicans in Washington. Are there not even a sufficient number of adults in the Republican conference who have the stones to say something — to do anything — on behalf of Republican voters? Or are they just weak, mute cowards? At what point do they have the guts to say: “Mitch, enough is enough. Whatever limited good you may have done in the past, you cannot be a leader in the party when you defecate, day after day, year after year, on the voters you purport to represent.”

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This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

Are We Medicating Millions of ADHD Children without Scientific Justification?

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Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

“As glasses help people focus their eyes to see,” medical experts from the American Academy of Pediatrics rule, “medications help children with ADHD focus their thoughts better and ignore distractions.” In their view, as well as in the view of multiple other expert consortiums, the most appropriate way to treat the “lifelong impairing condition” of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is by taking stimulant medications on a daily basis.

Although stimulants, as suggested by their name, are frequently abused for stimulating (potentially addictive) sensations of high energy, euphoria, and potency, they are often compared to harmless medical aids, such as eyeglasses or walking crutches. Numerous studies, we are told, support their efficacy and safety, and evidence-based medicine dictates that these substances will be administered to children with ADHD as the first-line treatment.

There is only one, huge problem. ADHD is currently the most common childhood disorder in Western-oriented countries. Its ever-increasing rates are now skyrocketing. The documented prevalence of ADHD is not about 3 percent, as it used to be when the disorder was first introduced in 1980. In 2014, a survey by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that over 20 percent of 12-year-old boys were diagnosed with this “lifelong condition.”

In 2020, thousands of real-life medical records from Israel suggested that over 20 percent of all children and young adults (5-20 years) received a formal diagnosis of ADHD. This means that hundreds of millions of children around the world are eligible for this diagnosis and that most of them (about 80 percent), including very young, preschool children, will be prescribed with its treatment-of-choice, as if regular use of stimulants is indeed comparable to eyeglasses.

Stimulant brands for ADHD, such as Ritalin, Concerta, Adderall, or Vyvanse rank at the top of the best-selling lists of medications for children. Indeed, the American dream may play a significant role in the proliferation of such cognitive enhancers in the US, but the rush for the magic pills crosses national borders. In fact, the ‘semi-final’ countries that are currently ‘winning’ the Ritalin Olympics, according to the International Narcotics Control Board, are: Iceland, Israel, Canada, and Holland.

But what if the scientific consensus is wrong? What if the medications for ADHD are not as effective and as safe as we are told? After all, stimulant medications are powerful psychoactive substances, which are prohibited to use without medical prescriptions, under federal drug laws. Like all psychoactive drugs, which affect the central nervous system, stimulant medications are designed to penetrate the blood-brain barrier – the specialized tissue and blood vessels that normally prevent harmful substances from reaching the brain. In this way, stimulant medications are essentially impacting the biochemical processes of our brain – that miraculous organ that makes us who we are.

In my new book ADHD is Not an Illness and Ritalin is Not a Cure: A Comprehensive Rebuttal of the (alleged) Scientific Consensus, I do my best to answer these disturbing questions. The first part of the book offers a step-by-step refutation of the notion that ADHD meets the required criteria for a neuropsychiatric condition. In fact, a close reading of the available science suggests that the vast majority of the diagnoses simply reflects common and pretty normative childhood behaviors that underwent unjustified medicalization. The second part of the book uncovers the massive evidence that exists against the efficacy and safety of the treatment-of-choice for ADHD.

Hundreds of studies, published in well-recognized, mainstream academic journals tell a totally different story than the one told by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Stimulant medications are nothing like eyeglasses. Of course, it is impossible to summarize an entire book here, but I do wish to outline three principal failures in the common comparison between stimulant medications and eyeglasses – or any other daily used, harmless medical aids for that matter, such as walking crutches.

Even without considering the specific criticism about the validity of ADHD, the very comparison between organic/bodily conditions, which are typically measured through objective tools, to amorphic psychiatric labels that rely exclusively on subjective assessments of behaviors, is inappropriate and misleading. The ‘brain deficit’ and the ‘chemical imbalance’ that have been associated with ADHD are unproven myths. Stimulants do not ‘fix’ biochemical imbalances and they can easily be used also by non-ADHD individuals to enhance cognitive performance (even though these individuals are not assumed to have this alleged ‘brain deficit’).

As opposed to visual impairments that restrict the individual’s everyday functioning, regardless of school demands, the primary impairment in ADHD is manifested in school settings. Eyeglasses and walking crutches are needed outside of school premises as well, even during weekends and holidays. ADHD, in contrast, seems to be a ‘seasonal disease’ (despite endless efforts to exaggerate and extend its negative outcomes to non-school-related settings). When schools are closed, its daily medical management is often no longer needed. This simple real-life fact is even acknowledged, to some extent, in the official Ritalin leaflet, which states that: “During the course of treatment for ADHD, the doctor may tell you to stop taking Ritalin for certain periods of time (e.g., every weekend or school vacations) to see if it is still necessary to take it.”

Incidentally, these ‘treatment breaks,’ according to the leaflet, “also help prevent a slow-down in growth that sometimes occurs when children take this medicine for a long time” – a noteworthy point that brings us to the third, and most important error in the comparison between stimulant medications and other daily, physical/medical aids, such as eyeglasses.

The benign examples used by proponents of the medications, such as eyeglasses or walking crutches are not regulated by the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance. Typically, these medical aids do not cause serious physiological and emotional adverse reactions. If stimulant drugs are as safe as experts say, like “Tylenol and aspirin,” why do we insist that they will be medically prescribed by licensed physicians? This question has philosophical and societal implications. After all, if the medications are safe and helpful to various populations (i.e., not only to people with ADHD), what is the moral justification to prohibit their usage among non-diagnosed individuals? This is unjustified discrimination. Moreover, why are we condemning (non-diagnosed) students who use these medications to improve their grades? If regular use of Ritalin and alike is so safe, why not place them on the pharmacies’ shelves, next to the non-prescription pain relievers, moisturizers, and chocolate energy bars?

The last rhetorical questions illustrate how far the eyeglasses metaphor is from the clinical reality and the scientific evidence regarding ADHD and stimulant medications. ADHD medications are not fundamentally different from other psychoactive drugs that cross the blood-brain barrier. At first usage, they may trigger intense sensations of potency or euphoria, but when used for prolonged periods, their desired effects subside, and their unwanted negative effects start to emerge. The brain recognizes these psychoactive substances as neurotoxins and activates a compensatory mechanism in an attempt to fight the harmful invaders. It is this activation of the compensatory mechanism, not the ADHD, that might cause the biochemical imbalance in the brain.

I realize that these last sentences may sound provocative. I therefore encourage readers not to ‘trust’ this short article blindly, but to dive with me into the deep (and sometimes dirty) water of the scientific literature. Despite the academic orientation of my book, I made sure to make the science available to most readers through plain language, illustrative stories, and real-life examples. And even if you disagree with some of its content, I am positive that, by the end of the reading, you will ask yourself, like I did: How is it possible that such critical information about ADHD and stimulant medications is being hidden from us? Does it really make sense to compare these drugs to eyeglasses? Are we medicating millions of ADHD children without proper scientific justification?

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This article was published by Brownstone Institute and is reproduced with permission.