In The News - 25 July 2022
Thanks for being a subscriber to AND Magazine. Here are a few of the things we’ve been reading today:
Washington Examiner: Hunter Biden evidence wrongly labeled disinformation by FBI: Whistleblower
The FBI’s investigation into Hunter Biden wrongly labeled verified evidence as “disinformation,” agency whistleblowers claimed.
Agents investigating President Joe Biden's son "opened an assessment which was used by an FBI headquarters team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease," according to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). Grassley revealed the claim after his office received "a significant number of protected communications from highly credible whistleblowers" about the investigation. The Republican claimed one of the communications shows "verified and verifiable derogatory information on Hunter Biden was falsely labeled as disinformation."
New York Post: Over 500,000 immigrant ‘gotaways’ at US border may be roaming the country
More than 500,000 known “gotaway” immigrants have crossed the border into the US but evaded capture since the start of FY 2022, according to a new report.
Multiple senior Department of Homeland Security sources confirmed the number to Fox News on Monday, revealing that there has been an average of more than 55,000 known “gotaways” per month.
“Gotaways” is a commonly used term for illegal immigrants who have been spotted crossing the border by agents or on camera but were not caught or processed by officials.
With less than three months left in the fiscal year, 2022 has already seen a massive increase in the “gotaway” from the previous year after DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testified in April that there had been more than 389,000 immigrants who evaded arrest in FY 2021.
Our Study: Critical Race Theories Have “Established a Beachhead at the Military Service Academies”
An analysis by our CriticalRace.org shows: “The good news is that CRT and related ideologies have not yet captured the military service academies … The bad news is that these ideologies have established a beachhead … and are likely to expand as part of a more general military wokeness campaign from the top down.”
Recession? No Problem. Just Pretend It Doesn’t Exist
In 2009, mired in the slowest recovery in American history, the Obama administration decided to dispense with antiquated economic metrics and cook up a new, non-falsifiable number that would better accommodate the president. And so, we were introduced to jobs, “saved and created.”
Every month, an administration economist, under the veneer of expertise, would trot out this fake statistic — one that had never been used by the Labor Department or Treasury Department or the Bureau of Labor Statistics or anyone else. And every month, the political media would dutifully report on it without much skepticism. Obama claimed his recovery plan would “save or create three to four million jobs over the next two years.” But once the “saved” part of “created and saved” was removed, we found out the economy had lost 2 million jobs, with unemployment reaching 9.4 percent. All of it was transparently stupid, yet it was flat-out genius compared to the messaging of the Biden administration.
Get ready for a very dumb debate over the word “recession.” It’s true, there’s no scientific definition for a recession because economics isn’t an exact science. Yet for decades, the media, government, economic textbooks, and dictionaries have all, more or less, defined a recession as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. But now, with the prospects of this week’s GDP report being in the red — the Atlanta Fed estimates GDP will contract 1.6 percent — the administration and media are engaged in a pedantic discussion over the real meaning of a recession.
“What is a recession?” the White House Council of Economic Advisers ponders. “While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle.”
It isn’t? It is true that on rare occasions, as the National Bureau of Economic Research did in the early ’90s, experts will declare a recession when there are non-consecutive quarters of negative growth, but not once has the media covered two consecutive quarters of contraction as anything but a recession.
Inflation Hammering Rural America, 91% Of Income Used Just To Live, Study Finds
Inflation in big cities is crushing residents right now, but it’s even worse in rural America, a new study found.
“Rural households are more vulnerable to inflation,” a report from Iowa State University shows. “In 2020, rural household post-tax incomes stood at $58,012. About 82% of rural incomes went towards expenses, leaving $10,661 in discretionary income for savings and unanticipated expenses.”
“However, by 2022 expenses rose by 18.5% overall. Earnings were not able to keep pace with inflation, rising by only 6.1%. The net effect cut rural discretionary incomes by -49.1% between June 2020 and June 2022, reducing the cushion to only $5,426. Expenses now consume 91% of rural take-home pay,” the report said.
Rural Americans saw more of a hike in prices than people living in cities did.
“Urban households were less affected by inflation, having higher post-tax incomes ($76,411) and more discretionary incomes ($16,414) in 2020,” the report said. “Over the past two years, expenses rose more slowly at 14.5%, while earnings for urban workers rose by 8.6% This cut discretionary income by only -13.1%, leaving a sizable cushion of $14,270.”
Dark Money Groups Are Funding The Left’s Court-Packing Agenda
It’s telling that House Democrats unveiled their latest effort to pack the Supreme Court at an event hosted by “dark money.” Hidden donors pushing an unpopular, radical agenda from the shadows is the left’s modus operandi.
Meet Take Back the Court, the “dark money” group that claims credit for “mov[ing] the window on court expansion” from the fringe to the Democratic Party’s mainstream—proof that the activist tail is wagging the Democratic dog.
We’re told by these far-left activists that the Supreme Court’s “extremist majority” is too politicized because it was “stolen” by right-wing boogeymen, who’ve captured the entire appointment and confirmation process with “dark money.” So Take Back the Court plans to put the fix in by adding four new seats for card-carrying “progressives,” scheme enthusiasts believe couldn’t possibly backfire in the future.
DARPA To Create New Technology Powerful Enough To See Through Concrete Walls
U.S. Military officials announced Friday a new program of teams from various sectors plan to create a subatomic particle compact source powerful enough to see through thick concrete walls, underground tunnels, and chambers hundreds of meters below the Earth’s surface.
In a press release, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) said the personnel would make deeply penetrating terrestrial muons, subatomic particles about 200 times heavier than electrons. Such particles could create energy beams up to hundreds of giga-electronvolts to scan or characterize materials for scientific discovery and national security.
Mark Zuckerberg's Education Platform Urges Schools to Spy on Parents
An education platform that's funded by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is encouraging schools to spy on parents, according to reports.
The digital learning platform Summit Learning is funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a charitable organization founded by the Facebook CEO and his wife.
It recommends that schools monitor some parents' online activity and "listen" in on their conversations.
Among the tips for spying on parents, the group advises teachers to monitor social media comments and Facebook groups that are public.
Summit urges schools should "listen to online conversations" from parents and offers instructions on how to do so.
Summit Learning's recommendations are in an internal portal that is not available to the public and can normally only be viewed by educators who use the platform.
