Category: Goobermint

NSA finally admits to spying on Americans by purchasing sensitive data. Violating Americans’ privacy “not just unethical but illegal,” senator says.

The National Security Agency (NSA) has admitted to buying records from data brokers detailing which websites and apps Americans use, US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) revealed Thursday.

This news follows Wyden’s push last year that forced the FBI to admit that it was also buying Americans’ sensitive data. Now, the senator is calling on all intelligence agencies to “stop buying personal data from Americans that has been obtained illegally by data brokers.”

“The US government should not be funding and legitimizing a shady industry whose flagrant violations of Americans’ privacy are not just unethical but illegal,” Wyden said in a letter to Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines. “To that end, I request that you adopt a policy that, going forward,” intelligence agencies “may only purchase data about Americans that meets the standard for legal data sales established by the FTC.”

Wyden suggested that the intelligence community might be helping data brokers violate an FTC order requiring that Americans are provided “clear and conspicuous” disclosures and give informed consent before their data can be sold to third parties. In the seven years that Wyden has been investigating data brokers, he said that he has not been made “aware of any company that provides such a warning to users before collecting their data.”

The FTC’s order came after reaching a settlement with a data broker called X-Mode, which admitted to selling sensitive location data without user consent and even to selling data after users revoked consent.

In his letter, Wyden referred to this order as the FTC outlining “new rules,” but that’s not exactly what happened. Instead of issuing rules, FTC settlements often serve as “common law,” signaling to marketplaces which practices violate laws like the FTC Act.

According to the FTC’s analysis of the order on its site, X-Mode violated the FTC Act by “unfairly selling sensitive data, unfairly failing to honor consumers’ privacy choices, unfairly collecting and using consumer location data, unfairly collecting and using consumer location data without consent verification, unfairly categorizing consumers based on sensitive characteristics for marketing purposes, deceptively failing to disclose use of location data, and providing the means and instrumentalities to engage in deceptive acts or practices.”

The FTC declined to comment on whether the order also applies to data purchases by intelligence agencies. In defining “location data,” the FTC order seems to carve out exceptions for any data collected outside the US and used for either “security purposes” or “national security purposes conducted by federal agencies or other federal entities.”

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Just me, but if Texas is going to buck a tyrannical DC about the border, why not about building LNG plants and drilling for more and telling DC where they can go and how to get there?

Land Commissioner Says Biden Stopped Approval of LNG Exports in Retaliation of Texas’ Defiance

The Texas Land Commissioner is accusing President Joe Biden of deliberately ending the approval of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) exports. 

Dawn Buckingham believes Biden is playing political games with Texas after the state “took a bold stand in defending our border against foreign invaders.”

Stopping the approval of(LNG) exports looks “more like retaliation than a sound policy decision,” Buckingham said. 

On January 26, Biden announced he was placing a “temporary pause on pending decisions of Liquified Natural Gas exports.” This was the same day the Department of Homeland Security sent a letter to the State of Texas demanding access to Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas. 

Buckingham called the decision “reckless,” saying that it was done in spite rather than of policy decisions. 

“I will always defend Texas’ right to energy independence and stand up for the hardworking families and countless Texas schoolchildren this move will harm,” the commissioner said.

In defense, Biden claimed his decision was aligned with his policies to “tackle the climate crisis at home and abroad. While MAGA Republicans willfully deny the urgency of the climate crisis, condemning the American people to a dangerous future, my Administration will not be complacent.”

Texas is the largest exporter of natural gas in the United States and the third-largest in the world.

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We are witnessing the mass memory-holing of the lockdown era.

I would prefer to refrain from using World War II analogies to discuss the Covid hysteria era, but it serves as the greatest modern parallel to the topic of accountability for all of the crimes, sabotage, and negligence committed by the people in charge in the name of combatting a virus.

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Say it’s 1946 in Berlin, and you were one of the few outspoken Germans who managed to make your dissident opinions heard while escaping the wrath of the Nazi regime. You were one of the few who made your way through the Holocaust and World War II with a clean moral slate, fighting The System every step of the way.

But you were a cup of courage in a sea of cowardice, and much worse. You just witnessed the vast majority of your countrymen either moving in lockstep with the bad guys or remaining silent in the face of the Third Reich’s systematic extermination campaign.

“Moral courage can be lonely indeed. People don’t mind being trapped, as long as no one else is free. But stage a break, and everybody else begins to panic.” – William Deresiewicz When I look back at the times of Covid hysteria, I think most about outliers and rule followers, and what separates courageous people from cowards.

Now that this horrific era has passed, you and your allies want accountability, and you want it now. In the aftermath of the bad times, German society seems to be realigning away from the immoral horrors, and the masses have openly embraced your worldview.

But unlike what actually happened after World War II, you’re still living in a German society without a denazification program, because the war didn’t end in the defeat of your ruling class. In fact, there has been no change in government whatsoever. The structure of the Bundeskabinett is virtually identical. The same people who were in charge during the times of evil and horror remain in place today, but they’re not nazis anymore. In fact, they now oppose nazism, they say. It’s clear that they don’t want to talk about those times.

How exactly would you intend on holding these people accountable?

Structurally speaking, that’s exactly where we find ourselves in America today. The very same ruling class that panicked the masses and instituted authoritarian dictates over the rebranded flu — which also proceeded to parasitically debase the wealth and prosperity of society — remain in charge today.

Very few, if any of the people in government today continue to defend the policies they put in place from 2020 to 2022. Some of them are indeed hooting and hollering about issues we’re all passionate about, but in a way that seeks to redirect attention away from their actions during this time.

They were complicit, or worse, actively undermining our rights when it mattered, and a true inquiry would drag those Covid skeletons out of the closet for the world to see. An accountability process wouldn’t just implicate the likes of Fauci and Pharma, but the entire system itself.

And it’s not just the ruling class that doesn’t want Covid accountability.

The ugly truth is that a vast majority of our fellow Americans embraced the hysteria, and many took to aligning with the people in charge to target and demonize the small minority who spoke out against the collective overreaction to the “pandemic.” This is an era that most would simply rather not relitigate. For both the people in the halls of power and most of the population, they benefit by both recalibrating their politics to the current majority view, but also by sweeping this multi-year disgrace under the rug.

We are witnessing the mass memory-holing of the lockdown era, which will allow for the bad guys to get away with it, because nobody seems to want to look in the mirror.

OPINION: The true intent of the Democrats’ anti-militia bill is to infringe on firearm training
This bill paints a target on the back of every law-abiding gun owner.

As a law-abiding citizen of this great country, I can form my own militia if I so choose, appoint myself colonel, enlist my friends as privates or PFCs, and we can run around the woods until we all keel over from heatstroke or heart attacks — whatever comes first. It’s all perfectly legal, at least for now.

We have the right to criticize our government. We can sit around the campfire at our secret militia base nursing our sore muscles and fire ant bites and talk about how Joe walks like a penguin, or how it would take Kamala a good 20 minutes just to tell you you’re on fire. It’s all perfectly legal and protected speech, at least for now.

We have the right to train with our firearms. We can draw from a holster, shoot while moving, practice CQB and send as much lead downrange as our bank accounts will allow. It’s all perfectly legal conduct, at least for now.

However, a new bill making its way through Congress known as the “Preventing Private Paramilitary Activity Act of 2024,” would make all of this illegal or at least suspicious enough to draw scrutiny from the feds. More importantly, it would paint a target on the back of every single American gun owner, which is the actual intent of this ill-conceived and extremely unconstitutional legislation.

To be clear, if Joe Biden ever signs this bill, the second he puts down his crayon the feds will flock to local gun ranges in numbers that will make it nearly impossible for actual members to find a place just to park. This bill would give them license to investigate anyone who trains with a gun in order to determine whether they’re a militia member — and don’t think for a second that they won’t.

The FBI recently investigated law-abiding Americans whose sole transgression was shopping at a Cabela’s or a DICK’s Sporting Goods. Evidently, the FBI, the country’s so-called premier law enforcement agency, wasn’t aware DICK’s stopped selling guns and ammunition eons ago. Nowadays, the most dangerous thing on their shelves is a pickleball paddle.

When the Framers wrote the Second Amendment, militia membership was not only encouraged, it was required. All able-bodied men were instructed to own a firearm, powder and shot and to keep them clean and serviceable in the event they were ever needed. Now, under the guise that it might be militia-related, a handful of lawmakers are trying to criminalize firearm training — especially anything tactical. In my humble opinion, it is just another step toward their ultimate goal of total civilian disarmament.

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Here’s the ‘executive actions‘  I roll on the floor, laughing…..
This reminds me of ‘yak items’ on union contract negotiations

  • The U.S. Department of Education will take new action on safe firearm storage by sending a letter to school principals across the country explaining the importance of safe storage and encouraging them to communicate with parents, families, caregivers, and the broader community about how safe storage can protect students in school and in their communities.
  • The U.S. Department of Education will also issue a new communications template that principals and school leaders can use to engage with parents and families about the importance of safe firearm storage, and encourage more people to take preventive action by safely storing firearms.
  • The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) will release a guide to safe storage of firearms in order to provide subject matter expertise on different types of storage devices and best practices for safely storing firearms. This is the most comprehensive guide on safe storage ever released by the federal government.

SloJoe couldn’t executive order his way out of wet paper bag on this subject

Biden Pushes For More Gun Control

President Joe Biden is coming for your guns— if you needed any more of a reason to vote him out of office.

On Thursday, the White House announced that Biden would use executive action to further restrict law-abiding American citizen’s right to the Second Amendment.

However, this time, the president’s actions will be designed to take action against gun storage.

Biden’s executive action will “promote safe storage of firearms that implement President Biden’s Executive Order on promoting safe gun storage in order to reduce gun violence and make our communities safer,” according to a White House statement.

In the 14-page document that outlines how gun owners can store their weapons to prevent children or others in the home from accessing them, the White House claims that safe storage of firearms can reduce “school shootings, youth suicides, unintentional shootings, and theft of firearms.”

The Biden Department of Justice is expected to release guidelines in a nationwide letter to school principals. The note urges school staff to talk to parents of school children about gun storage safety, providing them with a communication template school leaders can use when talking with parents about firearm storage.

The president has been promoting gun control since day one of his presidency. Rather than addressing the underlying problems when it comes to gun violence, Biden has politically pushed divisive measures that could damage American’s right to keep and bear arms while, at the same time, failing to make the nation safer.

In the past, Biden has said he wants to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and to require background checks for all gun sales. He also has said he is eager to take on the National Rifle Association.

“Only three percent of gun-related homicides every year are committed by rifles of any kind,” Amy Swearer, Senior Legal Fellow, Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, said. “They are far, far less dangerous if you’re just looking merely at how criminals use guns. What is actually used in the vast majority of gun deaths and gun crimes is not these guns. So again, even if you get past these constitutional issues, is this even a policy that’s going to make Americans meaningfully safer? And the answer is no. Frankly, it’s not designed that way. It’s designed as this political pushback against scary-looking guns.”

In stark contrast, Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, is currently facing three federal gun charges that accuse him of possessing a gun as a drug user and lying on a federal form when he bought it.

As Hunter Biden heads to trial, he must lean heavily on the Second Amendment to avoid prosecution. Ironically, at the same time, his presidential father is taking drastic steps to diminish 2A. Biden is expected to make gun safety a focus of his re-election campaign this year.

It isn’t surprising that gun safety groups, who are outspokenly against the Second Amendment and have close ties to the Biden White House, have been silent on the issue.

“In retrospect, it’s clear that Osama bin Laden emerged the victor of 9/11:”

To Save America, Abolish the TSA

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: “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.” Nevertheless, like so much else in the Bill of Rights, those sentiments are no longer valid, especially when you’re shuffling your way, shoeless and beltless, through the sheep pens of the Transportation Security Administration, George W. Bush’s gift to the American traveling public.

In retrospect, it’s clear that Osama bin Laden emerged the victor of 9/11. He brought down the Twin Towers and took a chunk out of the Pentagon, severely wobbled the American economy, destroyed the freedom of the skies, set the American government haring after all sorts of villains but not a single enemy it would name, and made himself a martyr. Worst of all, because of the actions of 19 Muslim hijackers, most of them Saudi nationals but all of them members of the Islamic ummah, he panicked the U.S. government into presumptively criminalizing more than 300 million American citizens with the passage of the Patriot Act and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and of the TSA, a mortal sin that will live in infamy.

What about safety? Surely you jest. To previous generations of Americans, the idea of trading liberty for safety would have been laughed out of court, but a fearful, feminized society won’t even hesitate. Curtail your freedom of movement and subject yourself to intrusive, sometimes bodily, inspection every time you wish to travel by plane? Why not? If it saves just one life…

Feel safer yet?

More than twenty years later, it’s clear to everyone who flies that what we have is not safety, but safety theater — the illusion of safety, conducted by uniformed government employees of last resort whose mission as it has evolved is not to provide the phantasm of “security” but to obstruct, hamper, harass, and hinder Americans as they attempt to go about their lives. “The Transportation Security Administration marked another year of progress,” reads a blurb on their website. You can bet more “progress” will be forthcoming in 2024.

And was this unconscionable violation of the plain language of the Constitution met with the universal opposition, disdain, and outrage that it deserved? Of course not. From 1968 to 1972 there was a spate of airplane hijackings by Cuban radicals; “On to Cuba!” became a punch line on late-night comedy, and the introduction of metal detectors at airports and the presence of sky marshals put an end to it. After 9/11, the appearance of one failed “shoe bomber” has meant your shoes come off forever. And while the new, improved, intrusive TSA might manage to scoop up some weapons inadvertently packed in luggage from those parts of the country where guns or knives are part of everyday life, it misses many, many more — up to 70 percent. Possibly it has discouraged a few terrorists from attempting to emulate the late sheikh of Araby, but why bother? After all, why hijack a plane when you can just walk across the undefended, roundheeled southern border, get free transport — no ID necessary! — into the interior and there bide your time?

Note that the ongoing “unarmed” (so far) invasion from the south is referred to as a “humanitarian crisis” in the Soviet Newspeak jargon of the news media, when in fact it’s an… unarmed (so far) invasion from the south and thus a national-security matter. Not to the Biden administration, however, especially as personified by the hapless, malevolent, and soon-to-be-impeached Alejandro Mayorkas, the current Secretary of Homeland Security.

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What’s Behind the Lack of Compliance With Illinois Gun Registration Mandate?

Yesterday we covered the latest figures on registered “assault weapons” released by the Illinois State Police, which shows a continued and widespread non-compliance with the Protect Illinois Communities Act. We’re following up that post on today’s Bearing Arms Cam & Co with Dan Eldridge, the owner of Maxon Shooter’s Supplies and Indoor Range in Des Plaines, Illinois. Dan’s been taking a look at the newest data as well, and has plenty to say about the lack of affidavits filed with the Illinois State Police both ahead of and after the January 1 deadline.

According to his calculations, if roughly 1-in-5 Illinois gun owners possess one of the now-banned firearms, then less than 5 percent of them have complied with the state’s requirement that they submit an affidavit to that effect with the Illinois State Police. Eldridge says there’s certainly civil disobedience taking place, but he believes some of the non-compliance stems from uncertainty and ignorance about the law.

“The state police produced a number of documents that are supposed to guide people through the process; should this be registered, should this not be registered. But it’s incomplete and full of flaws,” Eldridge explained.

“They also didn’t promulgate this law very well. They have everybody’s mailing address on the FOID card. They could have sent a letter with an explainer saying this is the law and you have to do this, this, and this.

They didn’t figure out the ‘this, this, and this’ particularly well, but more than that, there are people out there who own guns who aren’t as plugged in to gun rights as you and I and your audience are.

They’re going about their lives, and who would expect that his or her turkey gun needs to be registered? Who would expect that their kid’s 10/22 rifle needs to be registered? So there’s that aspect of ignorance of the law as well.”

Dan and I both agree that non-compliance, for whatever reason, appears to be highest in downstate locations like Pope and Pike counties, where just 0.4 percent of all FOID holders have submitted affidavits. But even in places like Cook County fewer than 1 percent of FOID card holders have submitted affidavits, and the counties with the highest rates of compliance, like McLean and Lake counties, have seen less than 2 percent of FOID holders file affidavits with the state police.

Eldridge pointed out that Cook County has had its own “assault weapons” ban in place for years, which has probably cut down on the number of FOID holders who possess one of those items. But he also notes that the universe of guns banned under PICA is much bigger than the county-level bans, so even in the Chicagoland area it appears there’s a large amount of non-compliance with the registration mandate. Again, not every FOID card holder has a gun that must be registered, but there’s simply no way that the number of gun owners who fall under the provisions of the Protect Illinois Communities Act is anywhere close to the paltry number of affidavits on file.

One of the primary reasons why gun owners may be holding off is that they’re hoping the law will be overturned. Keeping track of the multiple lawsuits that have been filed can be a challenge all its own, but Eldridge says the case brought by the Federal Firearms Licensees of Illinois, along with three other lawsuits, are on a fast-track before U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn, and he’s hoping that we’ll have a good decision from the judge as early as mid-April.

If the state appeals to the Seventh Circuit and no undue delays take place in the appellate court issuing its own opinion, Eldridge says he’s hopeful that the Supreme Court could grant cert for the term that begins in October of this year. Given that many downstate sheriffs and some state’s attorneys have said they have no plans on enforcing the law, it wouldn’t surprise me if many gun owners in those locales have decided there’s more potential reward than risk in not complying with the state’s demand to register firearms the legislature has made illegal.

In fact, attorneys for the state of Illinois are now contending that the risk of prosecution for failing to register is basically non-existent. In arguing to dismiss a Fifth Amendment claim against PICA, the attorney general’s office recently declared that no gun owner needs to worry about their right to avoid self-incrimination by registering after the deadline has passed.

In their response to a Fifth Amendment challenge to the state’s gun ban and registry in the Southern District of Illinois federal court, attorneys for the state say the right against self-incrimination isn’t violated by the registry.

The state’s lawyers argue the registration is a “voluntary benefit that exempts owners of certain” firearms from “otherwise applicable criminal penalties.” They also argue the “government has no authority to impose” penalties on those that don’t register and the idea someone would be prosecuted for what they file is “not real.”

“[T]he fanciful chain of events they have dreamed up has no serious chance of coming to fruition,” the filing said.

Then why impose a deadline or make possession of an unregistered firearm a criminal offense in the first place? “Allow us to keep this law because we promise we won’t enforce it” is an odd argument to make, and not one that Judge McGlynn is likely to find persuasive. For now, both the gun registry and the gun and magazine ban at the heart of PICA remain in place, but compliance with the registry remains an outlier among Illinois gun owners.

This makes no sense whatsoever, but then most goobermint doesn’t

State: ‘Government has no authority’ to impose penalties for not registering banned guns
Data shows 5,900 registered banned guns in Illinois after Jan. 1

(The Center Square) – The state of Illinois says “government has no authority” to impose criminal penalties for those not registering banned firearms.

Illinois State Police have updated the gun ban registration numbers to include those who registered after the Jan. 1 deadline. On top of the 29,357 individuals who registered before the deadline, 5,867 have registered since. The total of those registering before and after the deadline of 35,224 is 1.46% of the state’s more than 2.4 million Firearm Owners ID card holders.

Also updated is a list of how many individuals registered banned items per county. Cook County had the highest numbers of those registering at 6,364. Pope County had the fewest at five.

Lawsuits against the gun ban and registry continue in state and federal court.

In their response to a Fifth Amendment challenge to the state’s gun ban and registry in the Southern District of Illinois federal court, attorneys for the state say the right against self-incrimination isn’t violated by the registry.

The state’s lawyers argue the registration is a “voluntary benefit that exempts owners of certain” firearms from “otherwise applicable criminal penalties.” They also argue the “government has no authority to impose” penalties on those that don’t register and the idea someone would be prosecuted for what they file is “not real.”

“[T]he fanciful chain of events they have dreamed up has no serious chance of coming to fruition,” the filing said.

The filing is part of the ongoing litigation that plaintiffs’ attorney Thomas Maag predicts will get to the merits of the issues in the months ahead.

“It was clear from what [Judge Stephen McGlynn] said that he said that the lawyers should not plan on missing any breaks over the summer,” Maag told The Center Square. “That the judge wants to have a trial on the merits before June.”

Separately in state court last week, an Effingham County judge denied attorney Thomas DeVore’s attempt to reinstate his gun ban challenges that were vacated last year after the Illinois Supreme Court sided with the state in the case brought by state Rep. Dan Caulkins, R-Decatur.

DeVore said he’s taken the case to the appellate court.

“The judge just kicked the can down the road, he didn’t stop this case,” DeVore told The Center Square. “And the Illinois Supreme Court in their ruling in Caulkins did one good thing, is they gave me a roadmap on how I can win the arguments on equal protection.”

DeVore contends the state saying exempt classes of people, like active duty and retired police, security and prison guards, have specialized training is a “legal fiction.”

“If you break them down, you will find that almost none of them have a duty to protect the public order and the training,” he said.

All preliminary attempts in state and federal court at blocking the law from being implemented have not resulted in the law being overturned. It’s expected the issue will be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court.

A stupid, ignorant populace is easier to control

Public Education’s Alarming New 4th ‘R’: Reversal of Learning.

Call it the big reset – downward – in public education.

The alarming plunge in academic performance during the pandemic was met with a significant drop in grading and graduation standards to ease the pressure on students struggling with remote learning. The hope was that hundreds of billions of dollars of emergency federal aid would enable schools to reverse the learning loss and restore the standards.

Four years later, the money is almost gone and students haven’t made up that lost academic ground, equaling more that a year of learning for disadvantaged kids. Driven by fears of a spike in dropout rates, especially among blacks and Latinos, many states and school districts are apparently leaving in place the lower standards that allow students to get good grades and graduate even though they have learned much less, particularly in math.

It’s as if many of the nation’s 50 million public school students have fallen backwards to a time before rigorous standards and accountability mattered very much.

“I’m getting concerned that, rather than continuing to do the hard work of addressing learning loss, schools will start to accept a new normal of lower standards,” said Amber Northern, who oversees research at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a group that advocates for academic rigor in schools.

The question is—why did the windfall of federal funding do so little to help students catch up?

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Sordid Lessons from Uvalde School Shooting; Justice Department Cites “Cascading Failures.”

WHEN SECONDS COUNT, THE POLICE ARE MINUTES AWAY JUST NOT COMING

The U.S. Department of Justice released its findings yesterday on the May 2022 school shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, which left nineteen children and two teachers dead and another 17 wounded. The report, “Critical Incident Review Active Shooter at Robb Elementary School,” found what it called “cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training” also using terms such as “critical failure,” “breakdown,” demonstrations upon leadership “of no urgency,” policy “training deficiencies” and more on the part of mostly local law enforcement officials. The word “failure” appeared dozens of times throughout the report.

The report noted that law enforcement officers were on the scene within 3 minutes of the first 911 call, yet the threat was not eliminated until more than an hour later.

The central issue was found to be a failure by law enforcement to treat the scene as an active shooter situation upon arrival. Specifically, first-on-the-scene responders, including the commanding officer reportedly shifted the response to that of a barricaded shooter…despite 911 dispatchers relaying they had received calls from children inside the classroom four minutes after officers arrived. Leadership also failed to establish a clear command structure, leaving many arriving support officers confused and without clear orders. 

Officials received intense criticism in the aftermath of the attack, with more than 75 minutes passing after the initial police response and before action was taken against the shooter, during which multiple calls by students were made to 911.

Former Uvalde Acting Police Chief Mariano Pargas and Uvalde school district Police Chief Pete Arredondo, neither who are still on their jobs, is where much of the initial blame has been placed as they were both ultimately in charge. Indeed, many families of the victims and within the community of Uvalde want officials who were responsible for the botched response to face criminal charges, according to the Texas Tribune. According to the Associated Press, local officials are still “weighing whether to bring charges.”

What added more pain and disgust to the situation for many Americans at the time of the massacre was the scene of police officers, who we now know went from “active shooter” mode to dealing with what they simply were communicating as a “barricade situation,” keeping understandably panicked parents—some getting text messages and calls from their children inside the school—from entering to save their children.

To review the complete 610-page Justice Dept. report, click here.

The Electric-Vehicle Cheating Scandal: A government rule makes them look nearly seven times as efficient as they are.

It’s hard to think of a worse environmental scandal in recent years than Volkswagen ’s 2015 diesel-emissions cheating. The German automaker was rightly pursued by regulators, enforcement agencies and class-action lawyers.

The scandal ended up costing Volkswagen an estimated $33 billion in fines and financial settlements—and revealed that diesel-emissions cheating was endemic. In 2020 Daimler AG made a $1.5 billion settlement over emissions cheating in Mercedes-Benz diesel vehicles. (One of us helped secure that settlement.) Last year engine maker Cummins agreed to pay $1.7 billion to settle claims that it skirted diesel-emissions standards.
In all of these cases, regulators punished carmakers that had cut corners and misled the public. But when it comes to electric cars, the government has a cheating scandal of its own. That scandal, grabbing far fewer headlines, is buried deep in the Federal Register—on page 36,987 of volume 65.
When carmakers test gasoline-powered vehicles for compliance with the Transportation Department’s fuel-efficiency rules, they must use real values measured in a laboratory. By contrast, under an Energy Department rule, carmakers can arbitrarily multiply the efficiency of electric cars by 6.67. This means that although a 2022 Tesla Model Y tests at the equivalent of about 65 miles per gallon in a laboratory (roughly the same as a hybrid), it is counted as having an absurdly high compliance value of 430 mpg. That number has no basis in reality or law.
For exaggerating electric-car efficiency, the government rewards carmakers with compliance credits they can trade for cash. Economists estimate these credits could be worth billions: a vast cross-subsidy invented by bureaucrats and paid for by every person who buys a new gasoline-powered car.
Until recently, this subsidy was a Washington secret. Carmakers and regulators liked it that way. Regulators could announce what sounded like stringent targets, and carmakers would nod along, knowing they could comply by making electric cars with arbitrarily boosted compliance values. Consumers would unknowingly foot the bill.
The secret is out. After environmental groups pointed out the illegality of this charade, the Energy Department proposed eliminating the 6.67 multiplier for electric cars, recognizing that the number “lacks legal support” and has “no basis.”
Carmakers have panicked and asked the Biden administration to delay any return to legal or engineering reality. That is understandable. Without the multiplier, the Transportation Department’s proposed rules are completely unattainable. But workable rules don’t require government-created cheat codes. Carmakers should confront that problem head on.

Op-Ed: HB 114 – Destruction Of State Firearm Industry Act

This dangerous legislation, prefiled at the Roundhouse by Los Alamos State Representative Christine Chandler, targets the already heavily regulated firearm industry with potential litigation intended to make it impossible to remain in business in New Mexico.

This specific, aggressive targeting of the singular industry necessary for the citizens to exercise a constitutionally protected right weaponizes the civil justice system and will create a vacuum into which unlicensed and unregulated persons and entities will likely step.

Bad actors in ANY industry who engage in unconscionable, unfair, or deceptive trade practices are already held to account by the state’s existing Unfair Trade Practices Act. Federally licensed firearm manufacturers and retailers who violate gun laws commit federal felonies and face prison time, heavy fines, and revocation of their license by the ATF. So why is HB 114 being filed?

HB 114 creates new civil violations associated with “false advertising” and actions that “negatively impact public health, safety, or welfare” that apply only to the firearm industry. Activist attorneys general, district attorneys, and gun control organizations are explicitly authorized to litigate against members of the firearm industry and drive them out of business. HB 114 provides a template for destruction that can and will be used against any industry disfavored by certain elected officials and progressive interest groups.

In the interim joint legislative hearings leading up to the 2024 session, in which the bill author participated, lawmakers repeatedly stated that they wanted to target unlawful manufacturers and sellers of illegal firearms and firearm products.  HB 114 sweeps up lawful and legitimate firearm industry members in a web of subjective, vague civil law that applies only to them and no other industry.

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 It’s the groceries, stupid: Why the pundits are puzzled by Biden’s putrid polls.

By regularly griping about the supposed mystery of why so many voters say they prefer Donald Trump or another Republican, President Biden’s pundit backers mainly expose their own elitist ignorance.

Because if they’d been shopping to feed their families these last few years, they would have noticed the average grocery bill has shot up 25%.

And wage growth hasn’t remotely kept pace: It rose less than inflation for Biden’s first two years, and while the 2023 stats aren’t final, it wasn’t a ton better last year.

Inflation has eased some in recent months, but remains well above 3%  —  and may well spike back up as Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping create new global supply-chain disruptions.

Perhaps because they drive electric vehicles, the pro-Biden pundits may have missed the huge hike in pump prices on his watch  —  a daily nightmare driven largely by his policies.

And while Democrats may find it convenient to forget, plenty of voters will recall how this president spent months insisting inflation was “transitory” even as it was raging up toward 9%.

Oh, and few pundits are all that young, so they also lack personal experience of how high interest rates (raised to combat Bidenflation) are a huge reason why buying a first home is increasingly out of reach for the middle class.

All a huge contrast with the three pre-COVID Trump years, when median, inflation-adjusted incomes rose more than 10%  —  and lower-income earners made faster gains than they had in decades.

Of course it’s not just the economy: Anti-Biden voters also see the collapse of border enforcement  —  and are more likely to feel the impact of the illegal migrant surge than the nation’s elites.

Voters also likely recall the disaster that was Biden’s bugout from Afghanistan (which he insists was a “success”)  —  and can’t help noticing the major wars in Europe and the Middle East that erupted after that brutal sign of beyond-weak American leadership.

Leadership that looks even weaker every time the fast-aging prez does any public speaking that doesn’t involve a teleprompter (and sometimes even then).

This president’s poll ratings are under water on just about everything, and the reasons are pretty obvious to the average Joe and Jane.

Bottom line: The pundit class’ confusion over Biden’s unpopularity is just one more proof of George Orwell’s maxim: “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.

The Likely Lab Leak and the Covid Cassandra.

I thought I was done with writing about Covid-19. But Covid-19 isn’t done with me—or with any of us.

I’m writing this precisely four years after Chinese health officials first announced the emergence of a mysterious new form of pneumonia in the city of Wuhan. “No obvious human-to-human transmission has been observed,” the officials added in that December 30, 2019, release. (Already, the Chinese were lying.) Today, Covid cases are ticking up for the umpteenth time. And documents keep coming to light that expose how American officials and scientists similarly suppressed unsettling facts about the pandemic’s origins.

While the death rate from each new wave of Covid keeps dropping, the disturbing revelations about our public health leaders keep getting worse. In December 2023, a new disclosure revealed how leading U.S. virus experts lobbied to conduct dangerous gain-of-function research at the substandard Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory. The latest leak provides yet more evidence that the pandemic likely emerged from a lab experiment gone awry, and that U.S. scientists actively covered up their possible role in that world-historical catastrophe.

After both the 1986 Challenger explosion and the 9/11 attacks, bipartisan commissions were convened to investigate the disasters. Covid has killed more than a million Americans and has cost our economy at least $14 trillion. And yet we see no great urgency to investigate the pandemic’s murky origins or prevent a recurrence. Republicans in Congress continue to hold productive hearings. But, according to the New York Times, the Biden administration is “privately resisting” pressure to create a 9/11-style commission on the pandemic. The press has largely moved on. And the public health officials most deeply involved in the debacle—including Anthony Fauci and his National Institutes of Health (NIH) colleague Francis Collins—continue to tap-dance around the truth, even after leaving their posts.

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There’s Proof Biden’s Border Crisis Was Intentional… And It’s Being Covered Up.

As soon as it became clear that Joe Biden was going to be inaugurated as president, illegal immigrants started flooding our nation’s southern border.

During Donald Trump’s time in office, the number of illegal border crossings dropped dramatically—an undeniable result of Trump’s zero-tolerance policy for illegal immigrants. The border wall also worked well in stopping people from crossing illegally. But when Biden became president, things changed. On his first day in office, he signed an executive order halting border wall construction. As anyone could have predicted, illegal immigration skyrocketed after Biden took office. Within months of Biden taking office, the number of illegal border crossings shot up to six times more than what the Obama administration deemed to be crisis level, and it’s only gotten worse.

The White House has repeatedly sought to blame Republicans for the crisis that they don’t official recognize as a crisis, but confidential documents obtained by the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) have pulled the curtain back on the border crisis, revealing that the historic influx of illegal immigrants is entirely by design.

According to a lawsuit by IRLI against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the agency ceased the 287(g) program under Joe Biden. The 287(g) program enables the removal of illegal migrants involved in serious criminal activities such as child rape, attempted murder, assault, carjacking, and other criminal offenses. The program gives local law enforcement the ability to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to capture illegal immigrants who have committed crimes and bring them to federal custody for arrest and deportation.

Sure sounds like a sound program, doesn’t it? To most people, yes. But to the Biden administration, not so much. The program was canceled in January 2021, soon after Joe Biden took office. The agency never provided any explanation for the decision.

“It is ironic that the Biden administration insists it is ‘the most transparent in history’ when, in reality, it has repeatedly attempted to change immigration laws without congressional authorization and then tried to hide the evidence of its misdeeds from the American public,” IRLI Director of Investigations Matt O’Brien explained.

Our sister site Townhall has more:

Flash forward to September 2023, the IRLI filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to ICE, requesting to obtain internal documents regarding the agency’s suspension of the 287(g) program. However, the government did not comply with a rule that they must reply within 20 days. ICE authorities have yet to respond.[…]

Twenty-three agreements between local law enforcement and ICE were set to go into effect before Biden suspended the program. However, they were canceled after the president took office. Currently, ICE has 287(g) relationships with nearly 140 law enforcement organizations nationwide.

“Increased cooperation between ICE and local law enforcement is critical and makes our communities safer, so of course, this administration wants to limit that effort,” IRLI Executive Director Dale Wilcox said in a statement. “There is no benefit to this country or its legal residents by keeping criminal aliens in the country, yet it appears to be a priority of this White House. The American people own those emails, yet we are not allowed to see them because it might embarrass this administration and expose their extremist agenda.”

yeah, I want these kinds of people as Air Traffic Controllers

FAA’s Diversity Push Includes Focus on Hiring People With ‘Severe Intellectual’ and ‘Psychiatric’ Disabilities

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is actively recruiting workers who suffer “severe intellectual” disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website.

“Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring,” the FAA’s website states. “They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”

The initiative is part of the FAA’s “Diversity and Inclusion” hiring plan, which says “diversity is integral to achieving FAA’s mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond.” The FAA’s website shows the agency’s guidelines on diversity hiring were last updated on March 23, 2022.

The FAA, which is overseen by Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation, is a government agency charged with regulating civil aviation and employs roughly 45,000 people.

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