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Erie Times E-Edition Article-Do not blame the pandemic for kids’ lack of testing progress

Posted by M. C. on October 25, 2021

The standard government solution for a program that has been failing since for 60 years.

Schools need the extra funding the American Rescue Plan is bringing in, but that funding has to be targeted in ways that work.

Do not blame the pandemic for kids’ lack of testing progresshttps://erietimes-pa-app.newsmemory.com/?publink=1b6d1f548_1345f75

The results from the latest nationwide tests of student proficiency are grim. Downright depressing. For the first time in the 50-year history of these tests, the scores of 13-year-olds fell in both reading and math. Scores for 9-year-olds showed no improvement compared with 2012.

The gap in scores between white students and Black and Latino students grew.

Nor can anyone blame the pandemic for this. The tests were administered in very early 2020, before the pandemic shut down most in-person schooling.

The results come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, well-known for its biennial tests called ‘the nation’s report card.’ But this is a different iteration of NAEP tests given to students ages 9, 13 and 17, and less frequently. The Long-Term Trend Assessment looks at progress — or lack of it — over stretches of time. Scores were last reported for the 2012 tests. (The 17-year-olds weren’t tested in this latest round because the pandemic struck before their exams were scheduled to take place.)

No single test tells the whole story of what students are learning or achieving (and these scores are not broken down by state or school district). But the long-term results shouldn’t shock anyone; they’re pretty much in keeping with what the biennial NAEP tests have found: Many students are significantly below grade level on the basics. If students had been making even incremental progress over the previous eight years, that should have added up to at least a significant improvement.

If anything, scores should have been depressed in 2012 because for the previous few years, school budgets had been squeezed to the breaking point by the Great Recession.

From that point until the pandemic, more money was available for education.

Still, many factors could have contributed to the fall-off. The No Child Left Behind Act ended in 2015, and though it was a crazily rigid, narrow and punitive law, its replacement essentially allowed states to eliminate any real consequences for schools when students were doing poorly. Once schools ended programs and laid off large numbers of teachers during the recession, it could have taken some years to rebuild.

The improved economy meant that teachers often could find more lucrative work outside the public education system.

The nation can’t afford to play guesswork with this. It’s quite possible that President Biden’s proposal for universal preschool will make a real difference down the road. There’s evidence that high-quality preschool helps disadvantaged students significantly. But lack of such preschool isn’t an excuse for the backward slide we’re seeing.

The U.S. Department of Education should be putting its research muscle behind an effort to figure out what happened to the nation’s students over those eight years.

There’s still a problem, for example, with schools not using the reading curricula that have been proven to improve literacy. Or perhaps more money needs to go toward reducing the attrition rate among teachers; somewhere between 30% to 50% of them leave within their first five years.

The test results show that going ‘back to normal’ after the pandemic isn’t going to cut it. Schools need the extra funding the American Rescue Plan is bringing in, but that funding has to be targeted in ways that work.

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The Military Origins of Facebook

Posted by M. C. on October 25, 2021

Facebook’s growing role in the ever-expanding surveillance and “pre-crime” apparatus of the national security state demands new scrutiny of the company’s origins and its products as they relate to a former, controversial DARPA-run surveillance program that was essentially analogous to what is currently the world’s largest social network.

In light of this, it was no exaggeration when New York Times columnist William Safire remarked that, with TIA, “Poindexter is now realizing his twenty-year dream: getting the ‘data-mining’ power to snoop on every public and private act of every American.”

https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/04/investigative-reports/the-military-origins-of-facebook/

by Whitney Webb

In mid-February, Daniel Baker, a US veteran described by the media as “anti-Trump, anti-government, anti-white supremacists, and anti-police,” was charged by a Florida grand jury with two counts of “transmitting a communication in interstate commerce containing a threat to kidnap or injure.”

The communication in question had been posted by Baker on Facebook, where he had created an event page to organize an armed counter-rally to one planned by Donald Trump supporters at the Florida capital of Tallahassee on January 6. “If you are afraid to die fighting the enemy, then stay in bed and live. Call all of your friends and Rise Up!,” Baker had written on his Facebook event page.

Baker’s case is notable as it is one of the first “precrime” arrests based entirely on social media posts—the logical conclusion of the Trump administration’s, and now Biden administration’s, push to normalize arresting individuals for online posts to prevent violent acts before they can happen. From the increasing sophistication of US intelligence/military contractor Palantir’s predictive policing programs to the formal announcement of the Justice Department’s Disruption and Early Engagement Program in 2019 to Biden’s first budget, which contains $111 million for pursuing and managing “increasing domestic terrorism caseloads,” the steady advance toward a precrime-centered “war on domestic terror” has been notable under every post-9/11 presidential administration.

This new so-called war on domestic terror has actually resulted in many of these types of posts on Facebook. And, while Facebook has long sought to portray itself as a “town square” that allows people from across the world to connect, a deeper look into its apparently military origins and continual military connections reveals that the world’s largest social network was always intended to act as a surveillance tool to identify and target domestic dissent.

Part 1 of this two-part series on Facebook and the US national-security state explores the social media network’s origins and the timing and nature of its rise as it relates to a controversial military program that was shut down the same day that Facebook launched. The program, known as LifeLog, was one of several controversial post-9/11 surveillance programs pursued by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that threatened to destroy privacy and civil liberties in the United States while also seeking to harvest data for producing “humanized” artificial intelligence (AI). 

As this report will show, Facebook is not the only Silicon Valley giant whose origins coincide closely with this same series of DARPA initiatives and whose current activities are providing both the engine and the fuel for a hi-tech war on domestic dissent.

DARPA’s Data Mining for “National Security” and to “Humanize” AI

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, DARPA, in close collaboration with the US intelligence community (specifically the CIA), began developing a “precrime” approach to combatting terrorism known as Total Information Awareness or TIA. The purpose of TIA was to develop an “all-seeing” military-surveillance apparatus. The official logic behind TIA was that invasive surveillance of the entire US population was necessary to prevent terrorist attacks, bioterrorism events, and even naturally occurring disease outbreaks. 

The architect of TIA, and the man who led it during its relatively brief existence, was John Poindexter, best known for being Ronald Reagan’s National Security Advisor during the Iran-Contra affair and for being convicted of five felonies in relation to that scandal.

See the rest here

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Release of JFK records delayed again, with Biden citing Covid-19 and national security — RT USA News

Posted by M. C. on October 25, 2021

After 60 years everyone knows EXACTLY who the information will affect.

“I will splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the wind.” – JFK

And probably the FIB (J. Edgar Hoover in particular) also.

https://www.rt.com/usa/538279-biden-delays-jfk-files/

President Joe Biden has ordered the remaining files on President John F. Kennedy’s assassination to remain hidden until next December, citing the coronavirus pandemic. He’s not the first president to delay releasing the files.

In a memo on Friday, Biden wrote that the remaining files concerning the assassination “shall be withheld from full public disclosure” until December 15 next year, nearly 60 years after Kennedy was shot dead as his motorcade rolled through Dallas, Texas.

Biden’s memo states that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the National Archivist have been prevented from checking in with every agency affected by the files, and can’t determine whether releasing the unredacted documents would impact national security.

Therefore, Biden wrote, “temporary continued postponement is necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations.”

Some information already deemed appropriate will be released this December, while the remainder will stay secret until at least next December.

Although Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for Kennedy’s murder, he never stood trial as he was shot dead two days later by Jack Ruby. As a result, Kennedy’s murder has spawned countless conspiracy theories, and a majority of Americans still believe that sinister forces were behind the assassination.

These theories have persisted for decades, and in 1992, Congress ruled that all records surrounding the shocking murder “should be eventually disclosed to enable the public to become fully informed about the history surrounding the assassination.” However, multiple administrations since have stalled on this disclosure.

Former President Donald Trump promised via tweet in 2017 to allow the “long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened.” Despite Trump’s promise, a pledge that many thought he’d follow through on due to his status as a political ‘outsider’ in Washington, only a selection of material was released, and some of this material remained redacted.

Whenever the Biden administration releases the rest of these documents, they will at least be easier for the general public to view. At present, the 250,000 or so records released so far are viewable only at NARA’s location in College Park, Maryland. Biden’s memo orders NARA to digitize these files and make them available online.

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Watch “Don’t Be Deceived: The Fed Is The Main Culprit of Rising Prices” on YouTube

Posted by M. C. on October 24, 2021

By creating many trillions of new dollars out-of-thin-air, the Federal Reserve set in motion an economic disaster. The warnings are over. Infation is now here. Every excuse imaginable will be offered up as “reasons” for the economic pain. Don’t be deceived. The unconstitutional Federal Reserve is the problem.

https://youtu.be/pNBFgc0N2TM

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What Spooner Can Teach Us in Our Age of Neofascism | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on October 24, 2021

Lysander Spooner argued that there is “no treason” against the Constitution because it has no authority over Americans. Another nail in the Constitution’s coffin, and a powerful rejoinder to the neofascism of the hour, should be neo-Spoonerism: there is no treason against the federal government, because the federal government does not abide by the document which it claims as its foundational authority to govern.

https://mises.org/wire/what-spooner-can-teach-us-our-age-neofascism

Jason Morgan

Mises Wire readers are probably familiar with nineteenth-century American proto-libertarian Lysander Spooner (1808–87). Spooner’s radical challenges to statism are best summed up by the title of Murray Rothbard’s edited collection of Spooner’s greatest writings: Let’s Abolish Government. Spooner was a great American, an anarchist committed to the free administration of justice, anticollectivism, dismantling slavery, and preventing the federal government from setting up a new kind of nationwide statist enslavement on the ruins of the wartorn South.

Lysander Spooner’s most prominent work is probably his post–Civil War tract No Treason. Spooner wrote No Treason to argue that secession from the federal union is no crime.

Of this work, section 6, “The Constitution of No Authority,” stands out. In “The Constitution of No Authority,” Spooner saps the battlements of the federal edifice, the Constitution itself. The Constitution, he writes, is at best a contract, and even then at best a contract among the very few “who had already come to years of discretion” living at the time who were consulted on the document. The Constitution begins with “We, the People,” but Spooner pulled the curtain back on that rhetoric to argue that “the People” could mean, at most, the people alive and of majority age who had some say in how and when the document was signed and ratified. That is all.

“The Constitution,” Spooner writes, “so far as it was their contract [referring to the handful of people with a hand in making the document], died with them.” The entire sentence is emphasized in the original. Lest anyone miss the meaning, Spooner begins the section with his conclusion: “The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation.”

In other words, no one living in Spooner’s time, approaching a century since the Constitution was hammered out and inked at the bottom, can be said to be engaged in unconstitutional acts. Because there is no Constitution, Spooner says. Whatever it was, it ended when the people who signed it passed from the scene. The framers “had no natural power or right to make [the Constitution] obligatory upon their children,” he writes. Americans cannot and should not be bound by contracts which some people made among themselves long ago.

In short, because there is no Constitution, there is “no treason.”

(As for the arguments that voting and paying taxes count as tacit agreements to participate in the Constitution’s imagined governmental regime, Spooner demurs. People could vote without a Constitution as well as with one, he says, and paying taxes is akin to being the victim of highway robbery, to which no person would consent if he had the choice. So, neither voting nor paying taxes implies a personal ratification of the parchment from 1789.)

Spooner’s pioneering arguments against organized theft known as centralized government are especially powerful in our time. I would love to have read Spooner’s assessment of the 2020 “election,” for example, and his views on the “stimulus,” inflation, shortages, counterfeiting, polymorphic infrastructure, and imperialist boondoggles which the 1789 Constitution has placidly overseen. I think Spooner might have said, in a Massachusetts deadpan, “There is no treason in checking out of that mess. There is no reason not to.”

But if Lysander Spooner were alive today, and were reprising “The Constitution of No Authority,” he might take much farther some of the elements found in his original work. He might push his arguments so far as to give rise to a new kind of Spoonerism, a neo-Spoonerism. I think this neo-Spoonerism would be the natural complement to the original. For the obverse of the Constitution’s having no authority is the plain fact that no one who purports to uphold the Constitution actually does so. Not only is the document itself void—not a single soul among us having signed it, as Spooner argues at great length. But even if “We the People” had signed such a contract, it would still be void, because the counterparty, namely the government, has violated, I think it is no stretch to say, every single promise and clause. The Constitution is invalid on its face, and invalidated by egregious and habitual breach.

Spooner points this out in a narrowcast way in “The Constitution of No Authority.” He writes:

It is no exaggeration, but a literal truth, to say that, by the Constitution—not as I interpret it, but as it is interpreted by those who pretend to administer it—the properties, liberties, and lives of the entire people of the United States are surrendered unreservedly into the hands of men who, it is provided by the Constitution itself, shall never be ‘questioned’ as to any disposal they make of them. (pp. 22-23; emphasis in original)

The Constitution creates an absurdity, Spooner argues, in which the document claiming to safeguard our liberties makes us the “property” (Spooner’s term) of the government. On the Constitution’s own terms, the Constitution does the opposite of what it purports. This, too, Spooner says, is a mark against anyone’s having to abide by it.

But let us take a much broader view of the Constitution and its applications. Much has changed since Spooner’s day. Do those who claim constitutional authority abide by the Constitution? Do they legitimately work within the confines of the document which we are to believe gives them the right to govern “the People”? If they do not—that is, if the government itself does not follow the Constitution—then there is a second powerful argument extending from Spooner’s original insights and reinforcing them.

This is neo-Spoonerism, as I call it, or the argument that the Constitution has no authority in the broad sense as well as the narrow. Not only does the Constitution fail on the technical charges Spooner brought against it, such as that no one living today signed it and that the government which the Constitution sets up is the opposite of what it claims. But also, and perhaps even more damning, no one in government today even abides by this specious document in the first place. The Constitution is undone by itself, by reason, and by circumstances. The third, circumstantial indictment of the Constitution is what I refer to as neo-Spoonerism, an organic outgrowth of the Spoonerist philosophy.

To test this hypothetical neo-Spoonerism, choose any part of the Constitution at random and see whether it is being faithfully observed. For example, from Article I, Section VIII: “The Congress shall have the Power to … raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years.” This is evidently breached.

Or, from the Bill of Rights, Sixth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” On this, for a start, let us call the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and every Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act judge on the list to the witness stand. Just to get warmed up.

Or from the Bill of Rights, Eighth Amendment: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Civil asset forfeiture seems almost a parody designed to flout this Amendment, and the spirit of the Constitution as a whole.

This list could go on for quite some time. I did not even touch the Ninth or Tenth Amendments, by a faithful reading of which the majority of the federal Colossus would have to be torn down. The federal government is tracking and trammeling our speech, limiting our freedom of assembly, endangering us with reckless involvement in foreign wars, keeping political prisoners, staging coups against sitting presidents, forcing us to inject experimental serums, and shadowing journalists. Does it make “the People” any more than mocked fools to abide by the Constitution when the “people’s government” does no such thing?

Lysander Spooner argued that there is “no treason” against the Constitution because it has no authority over Americans. Another nail in the Constitution’s coffin, and a powerful rejoinder to the neofascism of the hour, should be neo-Spoonerism: there is no treason against the federal government, because the federal government does not abide by the document which it claims as its foundational authority to govern. Author:

Contact Jason Morgan

Jason Morgan is associate professor at Reitaku University in Kashiwa, Japan, and was a 2016 Mises Institute Fellow. For a list of his books and publications, see his personal site.

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Central Banks and Socialism Are Forever Linked Together | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on October 24, 2021

This momentous fact has not escaped the attention of socialist theorists. The Saint-Simonians in France had already grasped it at the beginning of the nineteenth century. They understood that the economy of a country could be controlled particularly easily and safely with the help of the printing press. A few years later, the demand for the “centralization of credit in the hands of the state through a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly” soon also held center stage in the 1848 Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels.

https://mises.org/wire/central-banks-and-socialism-are-forever-linked-together

Jörg Guido Hülsmann

It is well known that socialism is a shortage economy. It is the economy of inefficiency and corruption, of indifferent workers and of bigwigs, of lacking spare parts, of lacking funds, of failure, of permanent reform needs and of constantly unsuccessful reforms. This concerns in particular total socialism, as it was realized in the Soviet Union or under National Socialism. But it is no less evident in the numerous partial socialisms that are featured in the real existing welfare state, in its numerous state “systems.” Budget deficits year in, year out despite high contributions—that is the reality in the state pension system and in the state health system. The state education system is similar: declining student performance and growing illiteracy despite sky-rocketing expenditure. No private entrepreneur could afford to let the costs get out of hand in such a way. Anyone who is in competition has to keep improving. Only those who have a legal monopoly and can make use of taxpayers’ money if necessary do not need it.

Now there is one partial socialism that stands out from the usual array of failures. Here we see gains instead of losses. Here we often find all the other signs of a successfully run company, from the private legal form to the pinstripe-filled boardroom. We are talking about central banking. The term “central bank” actually refers quite clearly to a centrally planned economy. But when people talk about the Fed, the ECB or other central banks today, hardly anyone thinks that they are talking about an offspring of the socialist spirit. On the contrary, central banks are typically viewed as particularly “capitalist.” After all, what would be more capitalist than money? And what would be more closely related to money than a bank?

Upon closer inspection, however, it appears that this connotation may not be entirely correct. In the unbridled market economy, private property and competition prevail. Central banks, on the other hand, are usually state institutions. Even those central banks that are private-law organizations (as in the United States, Japan, and Switzerland) are subject to special laws and their directors are appointed by national governments. In addition, central banks always and everywhere enjoy a legal monopoly. Their banknotes and their deposit money are largely withdrawn from free competition. The market participants are compelled to use the money of the central banks.

This money is one of a kind. Indeed, it can basically be produced in unlimited quantities. The production of money by the private commercial banks is limited by their equity capital and also by the cash deposits of their customers. But central banks do not need equity or cash deposits. It is they who create cash. They can generate cash out of nothing and practically for free. Certain legal limits are set for them, but in times of crisis, as in 2008–09 and in 2020–21, these limits can be relaxed quickly and dramatically. If necessary, they can also be abolished entirely.

Central banks therefore have potentially tremendous power. If only let loose, they can control all of the economy and society. There is almost no limit to the number of new loans they can issue. The can provide these loans to some and deny them to others. And by implication they can also control the use of all available resources. After all, labour usually moves where it is best paid. Raw materials and capital goods are typically sold to those who offer the highest prices. If you control the printing press, you can also let the real resources flow exactly where you think it is right. Whether this use of funds is also profitable plays a rather subordinate role for central banks (unlike commercial banks). You do not have to work hard and invest well to cover losses. One push of a button is enough.

Central banks are therefore made for do-gooders. He who runs a central bank does not need to do painstaking educational work in order to bring about any social change. The humanitarian with the printing press can finance all changes he wishes for at the push of a button. He can just pay other people to do what he wants. He does not need any savings or capital for this. He does not need a democratic majority either. As long as he has the printing press under control, he could by and large give a damn about what other people think or wish.

This momentous fact has not escaped the attention of socialist theorists. The Saint-Simonians in France had already grasped it at the beginning of the nineteenth century. They understood that the economy of a country could be controlled particularly easily and safely with the help of the printing press. A few years later, the demand for the “centralization of credit in the hands of the state through a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly” soon also held center stage in the 1848 Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels.

Unsurprisingly, the enormous possibilities of creating money from nothing have been used again and again to finance state industrial policy and socialist experiments. In the 1970s, British historian Antony Sutton reported that some of New York’s Wall Street banks had financed the radical transformation of traditional European societies. They supported Lenin and Stalin as well as Adolf Hitler with billions of dollars. That would not have been possible without the refinancing from the American central bank.

In our day, too, the historical connection between the central banking system and political utopias is being brought back to life. This time it appears in the form of a “green” and egalitarian transformation of the economy and society. The directors of the ECB [European Central Bank] and the Fed have already officially committed to this.

The new humanitarians with the printing press are undoubtedly a great danger to humanity. They threaten everyone’s prosperity by channeling scarce resources into unprofitable (and therefore unsustainable) uses. But they also threaten the free social order as a whole, in that they are preparing to disempower the open competition of all social forces. They want to replace this competition with the rule of a nonelected leadership caste.

However, green central bank policy is not to be condemned primarily because it supposedly pursues ecological goals, but because a central bank comes into its own here. Central banks are by their very nature destructive. Even if they are not led by self-proclaimed ecologists and socialists, they favor the cousin, favoritism and the bigwig economy. The economists of the Austrian school have shown, among other things, that central banks always and everywhere weaken economic growth by undermining the propensity to save; that they are destabilizing the economy by fueling a debt economy; that they incite greed and avarice; and that they create blatant inequalities in income and wealth. Central banks cannot be reformed, they must be abolished.

This article is a translation of an article that has appeared in the German edition of the Epoch Times, in October 2021. Author:

Contact Jörg Guido Hülsmann

Jörg Guido Hülsmann is senior fellow of the Mises Institute where he holds the 2018 Peterson-Luddy Chair and was director of research for Mises Fellows in residence 1999-2004.  He is author of Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism and The Ethics of Money Production. He teaches in France, at Université d’Angers. His full CV is here.

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What’s the Opposite of Freedom of Speech and Worse than Censorship? – LewRockwell LewRockwell.com

Posted by M. C. on October 24, 2021

I won’t keep you hanging, it’s ForcedSpeak. That’s when a so-called “Authority” — nearly always a government entity — tries to force you to make a disclaimer or other statement against your beliefs and will.

Sort of Orwell’s NewSpeak but YOU have to do it.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/10/l-reichard-white/whats-the-opposite-of-freedom-of-speech-and-worse-than-censorship/

By L. Reichard White

What’s the opposite of freedom of speech and worse than censorship?

I won’t keep you hanging, it’s ForcedSpeak. That’s when a so-called “Authority” — nearly always a government entity — tries to force you to make a disclaimer or other statement against your beliefs and will.

Sort of Orwell’s NewSpeak but YOU have to do it.

Sounds like a knock-off from an old anti-NAZI or anti-communist Korean-War-era Hollywood propaganda flick doesn’t it? Maybe The Manchurian Candidate.

But it’s not Germany, China, Korea – – – or fiction. It’s Canada.

It’s Pastor Artur Pawlowski who grew up behind the Iron Curtain. He designated his church in Canada as sanctuary from the seriously destructive COVID nonsense narrative and it’s negative and often murderous results.

So, in the true spirit of current Cancel Culture tradition — you know, when you can’t answer someone with facts and logic, you disappear them — Canadian “authorities” arrested Pastor Pawlowski and closed his church.

But that was just the beginning. I think it’s better if Rev. Pawlowski briefly explains a few things, including ForcedSpeak, himself – – –

How long till ForcedSpeak shows up here?

HERE For updates, additions, comments, and corrections.

AND, “Like,” “Tweet,” and otherwise, pass this along!

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Facebook has ruined human social interaction and now Zuckerberg’s ‘metaverse’ wants to destroy whatever’s left — RT Op-ed

Posted by M. C. on October 24, 2021

Literally faced with the dilemma ‘Who’re you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?’ metaverse users will have the vision in those ‘lying eyes’ corrected with a few tweaks to their Oculus headset.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/DARPA-facebook-metaverse-zuckerberg-privacy-trap/

Helen Buyniski

Helen Buyniski

is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter

Having bulldozed most real-life relationships already, Mark Zuckerberg is now moving to strip away what’s left of our expectations of privacy by dragging us kicking and screaming into an online padded cell called the ‘metaverse’.

The emergence of all-too-perfect whistleblower Frances Haugen, backed by a bevy of PR valkyries declaring Facebook a profit-seeking hive of hate, might suggest to some that the social network’s goose is cooked. But while the government and censor-happy NGOs delusionally battle over how best to carve up Facebook’s carcass, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is busy leveling up, leaving the wreck of real-life social interaction behind while he crafts a new virtual holding pen for the millions daily glued to Facebook and Instagram.

Under fire politically for putting profits before users’ welfare – an attribute that describes every corporation in existence – Facebook’s m.o. has been clear since the platform’s early days. The platform exists to slurp up as much data as physically (and metaphysically) possible before the user realizes he’s being used and stops logging in. Now that there’s no longer any doubt about that in the public eye, Zuckerberg is free to go full Manifest Destiny, reaching into users’ minds in search of ever more data to pimp out.

“They trust me, the dumb f**ks,” Zuckerberg acknowledged confiding in a friend back in the platform’s early days, when Facebook was still busy wrenching social norms in the direction of full disclosure. But after more than 15 years of data leaks and other ‘accidental’ info spills, users no longer have any expectation of privacy. This places them in an ideal frame of mind to join the Facebook CEO’s metaverse. After all, if you’re going to pilot a virtual version of yourself around a virtual world, wouldn’t you want to tell the software as much about you as possible? Just to get the avatar right, of course.

Facebook has all but reduced online socializing to a choice of five reaction emojis, actively discouraging the expression of meaningful sentiment. Anything that forces the reader to think for more than a few seconds, let alone type out a response, reduces the potential of a “like” or reaction GIF. Users are thus encouraged to fill their timelines with as many banalities as possible. In the metaverse, the user won’t even have the option to display a complex emotional state – their avatar will presumably come with a fixed set of expressions, and the more time spent jacked into the system, the less likely the user will be able to actually feel emotions they can’t display online. Imagine forgetting what it’s like to feel nostalgic for pre-Facebook social interaction – you can bet the metaverse won’t offer that option.

The metaverse will also deal the killing blow to logic and reason, already dangling by a thread after Facebook taught users to outsource their critical thinking to dodgy ‘fact-checkers’. This insidious process began in earnest following the 2016 election and has left users unable to judge new information for themselves. Rather than teach critical thinking – or at least a healthy suspicion of whatever they read on the internet – Facebook and its partners in crime promised an angry Deep State that they’d protect Our Democracy™ itself by walling off controversial ideas. Multiple studies conducted since then have shown users actually becoming more trustworthy of fake news that fact-checkers haven’t gotten around to labeling. Oops!

The platform’s rogue’s gallery of ‘fact-checkers’ include the Atlantic Council (a warmongering think tank sponsored by the likes of NATO and Lockheed Martin), Snopes (run by a prostitute-loving cretin and his overweight cat), and Lead Stories (a group of embittered CNN employees determined to crush conservative viewpoints). They will be the gatekeepers of Zuckerberg’s metaverse, where their opinions, presented as facts, will become even more effective at crowding out reality. 

Literally faced with the dilemma ‘Who’re you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?’ metaverse users will have the vision in those ‘lying eyes’ corrected with a few tweaks to their Oculus headset. One need only think of the entire avenues of discussion that have been cut off since 2016 by newsfeed censorship and deplatforming alone to get a chill thinking of how easily ideas (and the people behind them) can be memory-holed in Zuckerberg’s digital playground.

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Are California’s Strict Emission Laws Causing US Supply Chain Chaos? – Watts Up With That?

Posted by M. C. on October 24, 2021

Not so fast: It is in part caused by a California Truck Ban which says all trucks must be 2011 or newer and a law called AB 5 which prohibits Owner Operators.

Traditionally the ports have been served by Owner Operators (non union). California has now banned Owner Operators.

Long term, truckers in California are not investing in new trucks because California has a law that makes them illegal in 2035. The requirement is to purchase electric trucks which do not exist.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/10/21/are-californias-strict-emissions-laws-causing-us-supply-chain-chaos/

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Governor Gavin Newsom just signed an executive order suspending weight limits on trucks servicing Californian ports. But does this order address the real cause of the problem?

Governor Newsom Signs Executive Order to Help Tackle Supply Chain Issues

Published: Oct 20, 2021

Formalizes state agencies’ partnership with the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to address state, national and global supply chain challenges

Directs state agencies to develop longer-term proposals that support port operations and goods movement for consideration in the January 10 Governor’s Budget

SACRAMENTO – Amid global disruptions to the goods movement supply chain, Governor Gavin Newsom today signed an executive order directing state agencies to identify additional ways to alleviate congestion at California ports. The executive order builds on earlier efforts this year by the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) to ease supply chain issues by engaging the diverse network of stakeholders along the supply chain to discuss key challenges and identify short-term and long-term solutions. Record demand for imported goods combined with capacity issues across the entire supply chain have slowed distribution at ports on the California coast.

“California’s ports are critical to our local, state and national economies and the state is taking action to support goods movement in the face of global disruptions,” said Governor Newsom. “My administration will continue to work with federal, state, labor and industry partners on innovative solutions to tackle immediate challenges while also bringing our distribution processes into the 21st century.”

Today’s executive order directs state agencies to continue coordinating with the Biden-Harris Administration Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force to address state, national and global supply chain challenges. The executive order also directs the Department of Finance to work with state agencies to develop longer-term solutions that support port operations and goods movement for consideration in the January 10 Governor’s Budget, which may include port and transportation infrastructure improvements, electrification of the goods movement system from port to delivery, and workforce development.

Additionally, today’s executive order directs state agencies to identify state-owned properties and other locations that could be available to address short-term storage needs once goods are unloaded from ships; to identify priority freight routes to be considered for a temporary exemption to current gross vehicle limits to allow for trucks to carry additional goods; and to create workforce training and education programs. AB 639’s (Cervantes, 2020) implementation is also expedited through this executive order.

Earlier this year, GO-Biz launched the California Supply Chain Success Initiative, a partnership with the California State Transportation Agency, the Port of Long Beach, and the CSU Long Beach Center for International Trade and Transportation to engage the diverse network of stakeholders along the supply chain to discuss key challenges and identify creative solutions. This effort, which brought together federal, state and local leaders, is focused on both short-term and long-term steps to address port congestion, including implementing a new 24/7 environment across the supply chain, a move the state worked with the Biden-Harris Administration on, improving collaboration, and exploring policies to remove obstacles and improve the movement of goods.

A copy of the executive order signed today can be found here.

Source: https://www.gov.ca.gov/2021/10/20/governor-newsom-signs-executive-order-to-help-tackle-supply-chain-issues/

A week ago, a Facebook post by Don Helms, who owns North Idaho RV Rentals, triggered a social media storm when he blamed changes to labor laws and California’s strict environment laws for causing supply chain chaos.

So ships are piling up at Long Beach waiting to get unloaded. The port is jammed full of containers with no place to stack more. The liberal media is blaming it on the trucking industry while the nation’s store shelves are becoming bare… Well there’s more to the story. Could Gavin Newsom and California’s liberal trucking laws be the blame ? 😛

The NEWS says the California port situation is caused by a driver shortage.

Not so fast: It is in part caused by a California Truck Ban which says all trucks must be 2011 or newer and a law called AB 5 which prohibits Owner Operators.

Traditionally the ports have been served by Owner Operators (non union). California has now banned Owner Operators.

Long term, truckers in California are not investing in new trucks because California has a law that makes them illegal in 2035. The requirement is to purchase electric trucks which do not exist.

And in the words of Paul Harvey, “Now you know the rest of the story”

BUSINESS
CARB to begin blocking certain trucks’ DMV registrations in 2020

Carriers domiciled in California with trucks older than 2011 model, or using engines manufactured before 2010, will need to meet the Board’s new Truck and Bus Regulation beginning in 2020 or their vehicles will be blocked from registration with the state’s DMV, the state has said.

The new “health-based requirements” will need to be met before a driver is allowed to register his or her truck through the Department of Motor Vehicles, CARB says. A new enforcement tool used by the DMV beginning in 2020 will automatically block 2010 and older trucks from registration

Source: https://www.facebook.com/don.helms.92/posts/4716554968400743

Establishment media sources like USA Today were quick to pour scorn on the idea that emissions laws could be the cause of the USA’s widespread supply chain chaos, and insist that most of the trucks servicing California are already compliant with the new laws.

But Gavin Newsom’s latest executive order in my opinion to an extent undermines that denial. Liberating trucks to carry more freight will have a very similar effect to allowing a few more trucks to service Californian ports.

I don’t know whether Don Helms’ claims are correct, but you have to admit it would be very interesting to see whether the freight backlog could be cleared, if California Governor Gavin Newsom permanently cancelled all California specific restrictions and workplace rules which might affect trucks servicing major Californian ports.

Even if some of the rules have not been applied yet, the prospect of more red tape and higher costs would be enough to drive large numbers of truck drivers out of the Californian market. Why would any truck owner operator want to work in California, when the Newsom administration has repeatedly promised to shut their business down?

Of course I’m not expecting any genuine outbreak of common sense. A sensible environmental decision from California’s radical green administration, even in the face of a national emergency, seems as likely as the prospect of witnessing a flock of winged pigs take flight into the glorious setting sun.

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Afghanistan Withdrawal: Sundays With the Military Industrial Complex – FAIR

Posted by M. C. on October 24, 2021

Twenty of the 22 unique featured guests from the United States had ties to the military/industrial complex.

https://fair.org/home/afghanistan-withdrawal-sundays-with-the-military-industrial-complex/

Julie Hollar

As US troops finally made their exit from Afghanistan after 20 years of occupation, the Sunday shows—which have always aimed to set Washington agendas—were filled with guests who had direct ties to the military/industrial complex.

FAIR analyzed three weeks of ABC‘s This Week, CBS‘s Face the Nation, CNN‘s State of the Union, Fox News Sunday and NBC‘s Meet the Press during the Afghanistan withdrawal (8/15/21, 8/22/21, 8/29/21). We recorded 36 featured guest appearances and 33 roundtable participant appearances. Those who appeared on more than one show were counted every time they appeared; there were 24 unique featured guests and 32 unique panelists.

Of the 24 unique featured guests, only two were not from the US: Roya Rahmani, the former ambassador to the US from Afghanistan, and Yasmeen Hassan, the Pakistani director of the NGO Equality Now. The two were interviewed jointly in one CNN segment (8/29/21)—the only segment in the study to center on the situation of Afghan women.

MIC ties

HR McMaster, Meet the Press

Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster (Meet the Press, 8/29/21): “We surrendered to a jihadist organization and assumed that there would be no consequences for that.”

Twenty of the 22 unique featured guests from the United States had ties to the military/industrial complex. These MIC associates accounted for 28 of US guests’ 34 appearances. They included 13 appearances by elected officials who are recipients of military industry PAC money, 12 appearances by current or former government officials who serve or have served as consultants or advisors to the military industry, and eight appearances by former members of the military. (Some guests had multiple ties.)

The two exceptions were National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who appeared five times, and career diplomat and former ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker (CBS, 8/22/21). Even these exceptions didn’t stray far from the MIC orbit: Crocker was cozy enough to the military to be named an honorary Marine in 2012, and Sullivan was a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a somewhat misleadingly named think tank that regularly takes five- and six-figure donations from various tentacles of the military/industrial complex.

No elected officials without military/industrial complex ties were invited on to discuss the situation in Afghanistan in the three weeks studied. Nor were any scholars, activists or civil society leaders aside from Hassan.

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