The letter doesn’t provide many specifics. I doubt Mayorkas will give any answers soon.
“FEMA has wasted taxpayer funds, misappropriated funds, and left other federal, state, and local responders without deployment orders on the ground,” wrote Gaetz. “As reported and further confirmed by my office, hundreds, if not thousands of service members were deployed by the Department of Defense to North Carolina and have sat idle, waiting for FEMA.”
Gaetz continued: “We have confirmed FEMA employees deployed, on the clock, awaiting orders in the hotel. FEMA pre-disaster aid was withheld, exacerbating the emergency. It is also public that NGOs have purchased airline tickets for migrants through the use of FEMA funds.”
Gaetz wants Mayorkas to answer these questions by October 11:
(1) What policies and regulations of the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA prevent emergency funds from being wasted on illegal immigrants, including what conditions are placed on grantees of the agency?; and
(2) Of FEMA’s total budget for FY 2024, what portion of funds can be guaranteed to have been spent solely on American citizens, and what portion of funds was or may have been spent on noncitizens?; and
(3) In FY 2024, what portion of funds in the Disaster Relief Fund have been spent on non-disaster-relief programs, such as providing services to illegal aliens or providing routine training to FEMA employees authorized out of general appropriations?
The last sentence below is Angel Reese got one vote. What’s not said is that ratings and ticket sales are only a third of when she and the Indiana Fever are playing. This includes the playoffs which stopped being interesting to the country when the Fever were eliminated.
She is the show that people for the first time want to watch in the WNBA. She was cheap shot fouled all year and was trashed racially and sexually for being a straight white girl. The top racist was Dawn Staley, coach of U of South Carolina.
She played through it and got the reward, along with many records set. I hope the WNBA stops cutting its’ own throat and promotes her for the league’s sake, even if she doesn’t fit the mold and likes guys.
Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark was named the WNBA Rookie of the Year, the league said on Thursday, receiving 66 of 67 votes from a U.S. panel of sportswriters and broadcasters.
Television viewership records were smashed as sharpshooter Clark beat the all-time collegiate scoring record in her final year at Iowa, turning the sport of basketball on its head.
She kept the momentum going in a breakout debut year in the WNBA, setting the single-season record with 337 assists and the all-time rookie records of 769 points and 122 three pointers made.
Clark helped lead the Fever to their first playoffs appearance since 2016, where they lost 2-0 in the best-of-three first round to the Connecticut Sun.
“Thank you to the many people who have supported me as I’ve been able to live my childhood dream,” Clark said in an Instagram post on Wednesday. “I’m filled with gratitude as I reflect on this past year of my life.”
It was the second year in a row that a Fever player brought home the Rookie of the Year honor after Aliyah Boston won in 2023.
Angel Reese, a forward for the Chicago Sky, received one vote.
Whole cities in NC are being wiped out and forgotten by the Harris/Biden administration. Not only do they not care, they aren’t even pretending to care. Other than a photo op meeting and some token supplies, the only salvage and hurricane recovery being done is by churches and Samaritan’s Purse. North Carolina is flyover country and most likely will go red so they don’t care.
The one entirely liberal city in trouble, Asheville, is so blue it won’t matter what they do as nothing will change that area from blue to red.
In a staggering admission that is sending shockwaves through social media, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Sec. Alejandro N. Mayorkas admitted that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) does not have enough funding to last through the remainder of the 2024 hurricane season.
The announcement comes as FEMA is conducting search-and rescue-operations in remote sections of Appalachia six days after Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida and moved north, causing widespread destruction and the deaths of at least 183 people across six states. President Biden has in recent days approved major-disaster declarations for the states affected by the storm.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” Mr. Mayorkas told reporters on Wednesday while en route to meet with officials in South Carolina. “We are expecting another hurricane hitting — we do not have the funds, FEMA does not have the funds, to make it through the season.”
The proposal to grant the agency more money may work, but it will require members of Congress to return to Washington, D.C., and provide the necessary legislative approval.
Nike (NKE.N) shares fell about 8% in early trading on Wednesday after the sportswear giant withdrew its annual revenue target, leaving investors guessing on the timeline for a turnaround under incoming CEO Elliott Hill.
The company on Tuesday also called off its investor day set for Nov. 19, while CFO Matthew Friend said pulling the outlook would give Hill “much-needed flexibility to evaluate Nike’s strategies and business trends”.
“Just how quickly a turnaround can happen is up in the air … There’s not anything really that I could say at this point gives us a definite timeline or early hints to what is in store for the future,” said Jessica Ramirez, senior analyst at Jane Hali & Associates.
Last month, Nike named veteran executive Hill as CEO in place of John Donahoe as demand dropped and rivals such as On Holding and Hoka gained market share, especially in high performance and innovative running shoes categories.
The company’s forward price-to-earnings ratio for the next 12 months, a benchmark for valuing stocks, was 27.98, compared with 27.08 for Deckers (DECK.N) and 35.14 for Adidas (ADSGn.DE).
Hill is set to take over on Oct. 14 and investors were pinning their hopes on the analyst day for clarity on Nike’s strategy until it canceled the Nov. 19 event. Nike did not provide a fresh date.
“These next few months as we go into year end, (Nike is) going to leave investors with a lot more questions than answers and we didn’t get any answers,” said Jay Woods, chief global strategist at investment banking firm Freedom Capital Markets.
Nike said on Tuesday it had to offer higher promotions to help drive sales in the quarter and signaled a weaker holiday quarter even as it expects a “slight second half improvement” in revenue from the launch of new premium models.
Most things in Portland are not like the rest of the country or world, and that is where they are headquartered. They are famous for being in bed with China as well as the most woke of athletes and causes.
They have billions to burn through before they have an issue, but there are a lot of people that are tired of their woke crap. I buy anything other than Nike just on their liberal woke principles. alone
If they are going to sponsor athletes who hate the rest of the country (Kaepernick, James, Rapinoe, etc) than you deserve your fate.
I’m glad that Tiger Woods is out of their grasp now.
United Sets New Diversity Goal: 50% of Students at New Pilot Training Academy To Be Women and People of Color
United Airlines is only major U.S. airline to own flight school: United Aviate Academy
United Aviate Academy plans to train 5,000 new pilots by 2030 – at least 50% women or people of color
Scholarship commitments from United and JPMorgan Chase ensure highly qualified, motivated, eligible applicants won’t be turned away for financial reasons
United Aviate Academy now accepting applications; and aims to enroll first 100 students this year
As if I needed another reason not to fly, I don’t want unqualified pilots or mechanics. I want to get there safely and not crash.
Of course, DEI and woke ruin everything they touch. Get woke, go broke
In reality, the hardest hit was Asheville, the San Francisco of the East. So reliably blue that they don’t have to worry about it switching. Everywhere around it is Red and like East Palestine, if it’s not a blue state or area, no help is going to be given there either.
What can help explain the apparent federal level indifference to the nightmare brought from Florida’s Big Bend up to Appalachia from hurricane Helene?
I have a theory, and it has to do with Idaho that I think @ComfortablySmug would appreciate.
The young men and women of this country want life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They are beginning to chart a new course that doesn’t include indoctrination programs from elite colleges and universities.
The authors, Phillip W. Magness (senior research faculty and director of research and education at the American Institute for Economic Research) and David Waugh (managing editor at the American Institute for Economic Research), assessed complex data obtained from surveys that evaluated the political views of higher education faculty [e.g., Carnegie Commission on Higher Education Faculty Survey (1969–1984), UCLA-Higher Education Research Institute Faculty Survey (1989–2016)]. The information confirms trends that Legal Insurrection has long noted: Since 2001, 2001 higher education faculty positions have taken a hard, and “professors on the political left are now approaching a supermajority.”
A hyperpoliticized academy does not bode well for students, faculty, or anyone interested in serious learning. For many students and for an increasing share of the general public, this has turned the educational experience from one of intellectual pursuit into pure activist sophistry. The only remaining question, then, is how long the public will continue to pay for a university system that no longer aligns with its values or educational priorities.
The answer is: Not much longer.
Unfortunately for the leftists dominating American higher education today, graduating students still have to earn a living. So, Gen Z is beginning to vote with its feet and is opting for 2-year trade schools free of hyped-up moral outrage and outrageous expenses.
Community colleges offering vocational programs witnessed one of the highest numbers of student enrollment in fall 2023, as students opting for higher education showed a slight improvement overall from declines seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
Those community colleges with a focus on vocational programs saw registrations climb 16 percent, an increase of 112,000 students, substantially higher than the rate seen before COVID, when it rose 3.7 percent. Associate degree programs jumped more than 2.2 percent, to 96,000 students.
The interest in vocational education began to see increases in sign-ups going back to three years ago, Jennifer Causey, senior research associate at the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, told Newsweek.
“Since Fall 2021, vocational programs have started to see upticks in enrollments, and specific program families such as Mechanic Repair Technologies grew 11.2 percent this fall alone,” she said.
Legal Insurrection reported Sunday on the havoc wreaked by Helene across the southeast Friday and Saturday, particularly the devastation that unfolded in western North Carolina and their neighbors in eastern Tennessee by what remained of the hurricane once she hit those areas.
Some mistakenly believe that once a weather event stops being a hurricane or tropical storm, the cities that are still in the path of what’s left are, for the most part, in the clear.
But that is most certainly not the case, as Helene had been downgraded to a tropical depression before she reached the mountains and foothills of North Carolina. By the time she moved on, rain totals for some areas reached as high as nearly 30″, leaving historic flooding in her wake.
The images and videos, of course, are staggering. Heartbreaking. This is an area where it’s not uncommon to hear about mudslides/landslides simply from having a few hours of rain from a random storm that rolled through, causing temporary road closures. Unlike the NC coast, it’s simply not built to endure that much rain and high winds.
As far as national news outlets go, they’re covering it but much of what I’ve seen has been frustrating, as they’re treating it like it was merely a bad storm and not something that quite literally has changed the topography of a large swath of the western part of this state.
As for Biden and Harris, the POTUS was indeed at the beach this past weekend and Harris indeed was participating in swanky fundraisers out west, the optics of which were horrible and which would have been slammed by the Usual Suspects had our president been a Republican. Their insensitivity absolutely should be called out. Their rules and all.
But beyond that, Biden has pretty much done what he needed to do in an official capacity to pave the way for federal assistance. And both he and Harris have issued statements about the situation:
During a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Sunday, Trump accused President Joe Biden of “sleeping” at his beach house in Delaware and dragged Vice President Kamala Harris for holding fundraising events in California over the weekend “when big parts of our country have been devastated by that massive hurricane.”
[…]
Harris has been briefed by Criswell, according to the White House, and Biden has approved disaster declarations for numerous states and major disaster declarations for certain counties that will help provide temporary housing assistance, as well as grants and low-interest loans to help people with home repairs. Both urged the public to take the storm seriously ahead of landfall.
[…]
Biden was at his beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, over the weekend, where he received briefings about Helene’s devastation from Criswell and Homeland Security Adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall, according to the White House pool report. He urged the agencies to speed up the deployment of search and rescue teams into North Carolina, where people are stranded without cell service or electricity.
And thank the Lord for that. Nothing makes me happier than to get rid of this useless pile of crap that let certain groups of grifters exploit social mores and common sense laws to act the fool. Almost all of them did it for money or what I call get evenism. That of course is some perceived justice for their butt-hurt feelings of not getting their way, so they acted up. Almost all of what they based their activism on was or is wrong, factually, morally, or any other way.
It’s always about power and money
Let’s just get back to acting like human beings and not SJW or revenge-bots because of being ignorant.
Seriously, most of these tech companies, like most companies, were really just setting goals and saying they were doing “green” stuff but weren’t actually doing much of anything
It’s Climate Week in New York, and dominating the conversation has been the apparently insatiable appetite of artificial intelligence for power.
The subject has been much in the news. Just last week, we learned that the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania will be restarted to supply electricity to Microsoft Corp.’s data centers.
Then Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported that ChatGPT creator OpenAI had pitched the Biden administration on its vision for massive data centers that may each consume enough power to run an entire city.
Alarmingly for climate hawks, it’s become clear there’s not enough low-emission energy — nuclear or otherwise — to satisfy AI, and natural gas will be key.
Indeed, the country’s energy companies already plan a slew of new gas-fired power projects. That could complicate the energy transition and threaten President Joe Biden’s lofty goal of ridding emissions from the grid by 2035.
Full story at the link above, but the key is they weren’t doing anything anyway other than saying they were. This is about money and they would claim anything for EPS and profit.
College admissions expert sends shocking message about Ivy League prestige: ‘Is it worth the investment?’
What’s in a name like Harvard, Yale, Brown or Princeton? If you ask college admissions strategist Greg Kaplan, the answer might surprise you.
It’s an age-old question that resonates among a slew of ambitious soon-to-be college students and their aspirational parents caught in the fervor of the rankings race, pursuing the dream of “going Ivy” – or having some other elite university’s name stamped on their resume – with unrelenting zeal.
But Kaplan warns that such tunnel vision can obscure what truly matters in the search for success.
“We really have to ask ourselves, ‘what are our kids learning at these schools and is it worth the investment?’ Because if they’re going to be exposed to this groupthink where there’s no room for civil discourse, that is unacceptable because they’re not equipped to go into the real world. And what you see is our young people who are getting fired from tech companies because they’re using their jobs as a chance to do political protest, and then they’re complaining about it,” Kaplan said in a recent interview with Fox News Digital.
“We really have to ask ourselves, ‘what are we getting in return for this? And are they going to be able to do what they want to do?’ It’s okay to spend less on college because guess what? That allows you to invest more in their futures, so I think when someone says, ‘I’m going to community college, I’m going to transfer,’ that’s fantastic. You’re increasing the return on investment.”
The California-based expert works with families to help students gain admission to colleges of their choice – looking beyond recognizable names to help students get accepted to schools that are great matches for them.
Big news: Weeks ago I began communicating with executives at @CaterpillarInc to let them know that I was planning to expose their woke policies. Today they’re making preemptive changes.
The Federal Reserve’s decision to cut interest rates marks a new chapter in the D.C. Cartel’s long march toward the bankruptcy of our nation.
Although the Fed’s move to cut rates and expand the money supply may provide some relief from higher interest rates for consumers and businesses, it does so at the expense of fueling the fires of inflation.
With prices for essentials rising over 20%, this move doesn’t prioritize the interests of the American people. Here are the five key things you need to know about the Fed’s rate cut and what it’ll mean for you and your family.
Let’s see, less than 2 months before an election that the deep state is potentially losing, the total debt they have to pay interest on just went over 1 trillion, and it goes on from there.
While a $100 bill may seem like it holds the same value across the US, a fascinating new report shows that is far from the case.
Massive differences in the cost of living – from groceries to housing to gas – across the country mean a so-called ‘Benjamin’ will buy much less in some areas than others.
In fact, the purchasing power of $100 can vary as much as 26 percent across states, the study found. It goes furthest in Arkansas and buys the least in California.
The report by GOBankingRates used a Government index that compares costs for goods and services among each of the 50 states.
Varying prices mean Americans might be able to live comfortably in one state on a certain salary, but struggle to make ends meet with the same paycheck in another, it found.
Nearly three in five young Africans said that they are either very or somewhat likely to consider emigrating to another country in the next three years, according to the African Youth Survey 2024 by Ichikowitz Family Foundation.
As Statista’s Anna Fleck details below, this marks a seven percentage point increase from 2022, when the last survey wave was conducted, likely driven by the improving freedom of movement post-pandemic.
Where young people from Rwanda who are considering emigrating said that it would likely only be temporary (90 percent), those in Nigeria (45 percent), Ghana (44 percent) and Congo Brazzaville (41 percent) were among those more likely to say they would make a permanent move. The 2024 poll included 5,604 people aged between 18 and 24 year olds across 16 countries: Botswana, Cameroon, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia.
Main reasons cited as motivations for moving abroad included economic reasons (selected by 43 percent of respondents), education opportunities (38 percent) and due to corruption in respondents’ respective home countries. The latter option, corruption, saw an increase of three percentage points since the survey wave in 2022. In South Africa, corruption was cited as the top reason for young people considering emigrating in 2024 (38 percent) as well as in Gabon (32 percent).
First, it was unions, then DEI, and now unions again. No wonder they can’t keep their planes in the air or bring back astronauts from the ISS.
Boeing Management has let the company go to shit. Get rid of the unions and the diversity and build a plane that I trust getting on. Competition is a good thing, it makes better products at cheaper prices, unlike Unions.
SEATTLE—Boeing’s BA 0.89%increase; green up pointing triangle biggest labor union went on strike, halting production of its best-selling jets and dealing the latest blow to the struggling aerospace giant.
Thousands of machinists who build Boeing’s 737, 777 and 767 jets walked off the job shortly after midnight Pacific time Friday, after rejecting a labor deal struck between the union’s leaders and Boeing’s executives. The contract offered 25% wage increases over four years.
Union leaders of the 33,000-member International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers chapter said about 94% of their members voted to reject the contract and 96% voted to go on strike. The officials said they would seek to return to the negotiating table with the company.
The strike will deal a financial blow when Boeing is bleeding cash and piling up debt following January’s Alaska Airlines accident in which a door plug blew off a 737 MAX jetliner in midair. A prolonged stoppage threatens to further strain the industry’s supply chain and exacerbate jet shortages for airline.
The power toolmaker Stanley Black & Decker has now joined a number of U.S. companies who have chosen to halt certain DEI and LGBTQ workshops, policies, and campaigns after facing ongoing boycott calls from consumers.
The company, which is behind brands like DeWalt, Black and Decker, and Stanley, has in recent days removed pages about its “equity training” workshops and multimillion dollar giveaways to “racial equity” groups.
However, the company’s website still currently has a tab that is titled “Our Inclusive Culture,” which goes on to state: “We’re building a company culture where inclusiveness is a reflex, not an initiative. Where there is a deep sense of pride, passion and belonging that transcends any role, business unit, language or country. Where all employees feel valued, heard and positioned to do their best work every day.
“… the ideological vision has failed. We need to acknowledge that …”
Italy Seeks Reversal of EU’s 2035 Combustion Engine Ban
By Alberto BrambillaSeptember 07, 2024 at 11:45AM EDT
Bloomberg) — Italian officials said the European Union’s plan to ban sales of new internal combustion engines from 2035 should be reviewed.
“The ban must be changed,” Energy Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin said on the sidelines of the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, on the shores of Italy’s Lake Como, on Saturday.
Pichetto Fratin called the decision by the EU “absurd,” and dictated by an “ideological vision” along with a state-controlled approach to policy-making within the bloc. The plan needs changing in order to reflect different market realities amid the European auto industry’s slowdown, he added.
Industry Minister Adolfo Urso also backed a change, urging the incoming European Commission to anticipate the review of the plan to early 2025, from 2026. “In an uncertain landscape which is affecting German automotive industry, clarity is needed to not let the European industry collapse,” Urso said in Cernobbio.
These greentards are delusional. Carbon and petroleum are not the danger they claim, nor is electricity the panacea they propose
In a 19-word post on X this past Sunday, President Joe Biden admitted that he has been lying to the public for years. It didn’t make news, partly because Biden is now irrelevant. But it should. Because Kamala Harris is now repeating the lie.
“Since I took office,” Biden posted, “we’ve recovered all the jobs lost during the pandemic. And added over 6 million more.”
Since I took office, we've recovered all the jobs lost during the pandemic.
In this graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Jenna Ross, we look at price differences across EU countries using data from Eurostat. Countries that are dark blue have the lowest relative prices to the EU average, while countries that are bright blue have the highest relative prices.
Relative prices were determined by the currency needed to buy the same product volume in different countries, calculated using actual individual consumption of goods and services and the exchange rate in each country.
EU Countries: Most to Least Expensive
Luxembourg has the highest prices among EU countries, at 52% higher than the EU average. In particular, education is pricier than anywhere else in the EU at 276% above average.
The country also has the highest wages in Europe, which helps support higher costs.
My wife’s relatives are in Denmark. They brag about free medical and education. They talk about pensions for life, but here’s where I point out that it’s not free.
The biggest chuckle is when my wife gets way more Social Security than the Danish pension, and she only worked here part of the time.
On September 3, 2024 the non-profit first amendment legal firm America First Legal (AFL) filed a complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against the Williams-Sonoma corporation for its extensive DEI racial hiring policies that specifically favor some skin colors over others.
Williams-Sonoma, a kitchenware and home furnishings retailer with brands including Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, Pottery Barn Teen, West Elm, Williams Sonoma Home, Rejuvenation, Mark and Graham, and GreenRow, proudly represents to the public and its shareholders and investors that race, sex, and national origin are motivating factors in its hiring, employment, and contracting practices.
As outlined in Williams-Sonoma’s 2024 Annual Report, their Equity Action Plan and Equity Action Committee led to “approximately 68.1% of our total workforce identified as female and approximately 41.1% identified as an ethnic minority group.” The company boasts higher management, comprising “56.6% of Vice Presidents and above identified as female.”
Williams-Sonoma’s Equity Action Committee also appears to reward executives for making race, color, sex, or national origin a motivating factor in hiring and other employee practices. The Equity Action Plan tracked and set goals for the diversity of the company, board members, and board nominees. It then designed the “Associate Equity Network Groups” that benefit some workers and disfavor others, specifically white, male, and religious Americans.
In other words, this company demands race and sex be considered as a qualification for a job, regardless of the person’s skills, experience, or talent, and it also demands that whites and men be put on the back of the bus, considered last in all hiring decisions, merely because they are either white or male.
Republicans ‘raced out to buy a crapload of guns because maybe they were finally going to get their chance to shoot a Black person,’ Penzey’s Spices CEO wrote in a customer email.
Just two weeks after a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based spice company held a “Republicans are Racist” sale over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, it is dealing with a massive loss of business and openly begging for new customers.
Penzey’s Spices CEO Bill Penzey, who routinely uses his company’s email list to send anti-Republican screeds, sent a newsletter earlier this month in which he accused GOP voters of fantasizing about killing African Americans.
“Remember how Republicans, going against a mountain of evidence to the contrary, once again lied and said BLM [Black Lives Matter] wasn’t a peaceful movement but instead terrorists inciting violence throughout the country and then raced out to buy a crapload of guns because maybe they were finally going to get their chance to shoot a Black person?” he wrote. “What a bunch of racists.”
In a follow-up email Friday, Penzey acknowledged this allegation had cost his business a substantial number of newsletter subscribers.
Volvo has announced it will be getting rid of its plan to sell only fully electric cars by 2030.
The auto manufacturer announced on Wednesday, that it is now aiming for 90-100% of its global sales to be either pure electric or plug-in hybrid at that point.
The Swedish company said this will “allow for a limited number of mild hybrid models to be sold, if needed.”
The latest move by Volvo comes after Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen have both previously announced a shift in their respective EV strategies.
“An electric car provides a superior driving experience and increases possibilities for using advanced technologies that improve the overall customer experience,” Jim Rowan, CEO of Volvo Cars, said on Wednesday in the written statement.
“However, it is clear that the transition to electrification will not be linear, and customers and markets are moving at different speeds of adoption,” he continued.
Molson Coors Tuesday became the latest major U.S. company to walk away from diversity, equity and inclusion policies, the New York Post reports.
One outspoken man, anti-woke activist Robby Starbuck, is the reason why the brewer of Foster’s and Miller High Life has joined Ford, Lowe’s, Harley-Davidson, John Deere and Tractor Supply to drop controversial DEI tactics.
That puts Starbuck’s track record at six for six.
“Companies are starting to realize the whole DEI thing has been a house of cards,” Starbuck says. “Somebody just had to press the cards. The majority of CEOs in America are very happy to have an excuse to get rid of this stuff.”
Corporate America embraced DEI after a police officer killed African American George Floyd in 2020 during an arrest.
Conservatives say they are in favor of giving minorities better employment and educational opportunities, but that they are against setting unrealistically aggressive targets for hiring or board memberships when they are antithetical to running a profitable, successful business — or become a form of racism unto themselves.
Ford Motor Co. has joined the ranks of companies that have pulled back on diversity, equity and inclusion policies while facing pressure from conservative groups.
CEO Jim Farley sent a memo to all employees early Wednesday outlining the changes, including a decision to stop taking part in external culture surveys and an annual survey by the Human Rights Campaign that measures workplace inclusion for LGBTQ+ employees.
“We will continue to put our effort and resources into taking care of our customers, our team, and our communities versus publicly commenting on the many polarizing issues of the day,” the memo said. “There will of course be times when we will speak out on core issues if we believe our voice can make a positive difference.”
Farley wrote that Ford is mindful that employees and customers have a wide range of beliefs “and the external and legal environment related to political and social issues continues to evolve.” The company, he wrote, has been looking at its policies during the past year.
I don’t know why these companies thought it was a good idea to go woke and against their customer base, but dollars matter, and dumping this nonsense is the best business decision.
Maybe their quality will come back now that meritocracy is back in charge.
DEI and Woke have destroyed everything they touched. It’s about time to get rid of this kowtowing to race hustlers
I knew the answer to this before I even opened the article, but here goes.
In the United States, companies, unions, trade associations, and other organizations invest billions of dollars each year to lobby Congress and federal agencies.
In 2023, over 12,000 different lobbyists in the U.S. spent a a record $4.3 billion on lobbying activities, according to Open Secrets, a non-profit research group tracking money in U.S. politics. This was up from $4.1 billion in 2022—and the highest annual total so far.
Organizations either hire lobbying firms or employ in-house lobbyists to meet with government officials, seeking to influence government decision-making.
This chart shows the total expenditures on lobbying activities by the top 10 industries that invested the most in lobbying the U.S. Congress and federal agencies in 2023, using data from Open Secrets.
Which Industries Spent the Most On Lobbying?
The Pharmaceuticals and Health Products industry was the biggest industry spender in the U.S. in 2023, investing a total of $382.6 million towards lobbying.
Fight! Fight! Fight! In the past two months it has become very clear that if Americans are willing to stand up to the left and its Marxist bigoted agenda, Americans will win.
Since late June, five different university systems have shut down their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion offices. Each is listed below, in chronological order:
And this list does not include the University of Florida, which in March shut down its own DEI office because the state legislature not only banned such offices, it cut the budgets of them.
Though it is true these states are all solidly conservative with legislatures largely controlled by Republicans, this fact on its face proves that voting can make a difference, with Florida the biggest proof. Unlike the other states, Florida had for decades been a swing state between the Democrats and Republicans. Voters however changed that in the past decade, so that today the state legisilature is solidly Republican. The result has been a definitive policy shift acting to eliminate these racist Marxist programs from state-financed universities.
There is no reason similar changes cannot be forced in other battleground states. Nor should we consider it impossible in the coastal states (California, Oregon, Washington, New York, Massachusetts, etc) where Democrats maintain full control. DEI concepts are inherently racist and divisive, and serve only to encourage anger, resentment, and hate across all ethnic groups. Ordinary voters recognize this routinely, when they make the effort to look.
Nor are things changing solely in the unversities because of the willingness of voters to force change. The boycott of Bud Light because of its endorsement of the queer agenda last year is having profound impact on corporate culture. In just the last few months a number of major companies have announced the elimination of their own DEI departments and programs, also listed below in chronological order:
This evolution began in January with the launch of a new strategic framework, and today, we wanted to share the next step in our work. First, we believe we must make some changes to account for the ever-changing landscape. This includes: •Ensuring executive incentives and employee goals are tied to business performance; •Removing our quantitative workforce and supplier diversity ambitions; •Ending participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index survey; and •Reviewing training programs for consistency with an evolved strategy.
Translation: going woke cost us money and business and we need to make money.
It seems like every week another company is announcing the closure of their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion departments, or scaling back their corporate activities and donations focused on social causes and deciding to spend more time on…you know, things that actually have to do with their business.
In recent months, companies like Tractor Supply and John Deere have both announced changes in their corporate policies after coming under fire for their sponsorships of things like pride parades and festivals and their participation in DEI efforts companywide.
The changes have largely come as a result of pressure campaigns by conservative activist Robby Starbuck – and his latest target was the iconic motorcycle brand Harley-Davidson.
On his Twitter, Starbuck has criticized Jochen Zeitz, the German CEO of Harley who took the job in 2020 after formerly serving as CEO of footwear brand Puma, for his role in starting an organization called “The B Team” with billionaire Richard Branson. Among its goals, The B-Team seeks to phase out fossil fuels (which is weird for a motorcycle company) and “transform food systems” by reducing emissions. The group also lists as their priorities promoting “global cooperation and inclusive representation.”
CHICAGO—The Daily Signal is on the ground at the Democratic National Convention, where Democrats will formally nominate Vice President Kamala Harris for president and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz for vice president.
We saw crowds begin to form on Sunday and filmed anti-Israel protesters breaking through the security perimeter on Monday.
Tony Kinnett is an investigative columnist for The Daily Signal and a radio host at WIBC in Indianapolis.
CHICAGO—The Daily Signal is on the ground at the Democratic National Convention, where Democrats will formally nominate Vice President Kamala Harris for president and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz for vice president.
We saw crowds begin to form on Sunday and filmed anti-Israel protesters breaking through the security perimeter on Monday.
Don Harris was referred to glowingly by fellow Marxist Economics Professor John Gurley as “one of the leading young people in Marxist economics.”
The below article about Marxist economics professor Don Harris, Kamala Harris’ father, was posted at the Stanford University newspaper on May 13, 1975, when his daughter was just 10 years old.
The Stanford Daily article laughably claims that economic students at Stanford in 1975 were clamoring to learn more about Marxist economics, so the university accommodated them by offering Kamala’s father a position. Don Harris was referred to glowingly by fellow Marxist Economics Professor John Gurley as “one of the leading young people in Marxist economics.”
The 45-year-old Stanford Daily article, titled “Marxist Offered Economics Post,” was posted first on Trevor Loudon’s website Keywiki.org, where more information is posted about the father of the Democrat Party’s Vice Presidential Candidate. See Loudon’s articles at the Epoch Times about Kamala Harris’ own socialist ties, as well as a prophetic article from August 2019 about the forces surrounding Kamala Harris and why she was chosen to be the Democratic nominee for President.
BREAKING: Libs of TikTok has obtained insider training material from @AdvanceAuto detailing a complete DEI takeover of company policy & culture.
It includes race-based hiring practices discriminating against White people and encouraging employees to snitch on fellow workers who… pic.twitter.com/FXe709uQep
Harley-Davidson is facing biker backlash over fears that the American motorcycle manufacturer born with the renegade image is now identifying as woke.
“@harleydavidson has been one of the most beloved brands in America but recently on CEO Jochen Zeitz’s watch, they’ve gone totally woke,” filmmaker Robby Starbuck shared with his more than 528,000 followers on X in late July.
The bike brand’s apparent decision to volunteer for the culture wars in America has been a high-octane topic at the 84th annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota this week, according to both attendees and numerous social media postings.
It’s time to expose Harley Davidson.@harleydavidson has been one of the most beloved brands in America but recently on CEO Jochen Zeitz’s watch, they’ve gone totally woke.
Let’s ask ourselves who is behind these efforts, the left or the right?
Our country fought too hard to let the liberals and socialists (same thing) ruin it in a generation. It’s once again time to stand up for our freedom or give it up.
Yet they waste billions on “renewable energy” that hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of supplying us with what we need.
Among the great mythologies of recent years, one stands out above the rest, is that the world is in a “great energy transition.” Actually, the world IS in a dramatic energy transition. But it isn’t the one the Left wants it to be.
Despite hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars thrown at wind and solar power, we still get less than 10% of our energy from green sources. The needle really hasn’t moved at all over the past two decades. The more the government spends, the less we get per taxpayer dollar thrown at it. That’s the very definition of a falling stock.
The REAL energy transition is toward natural gas. A few weeks ago, the price of natural gas fell below $2 per MMBTU, the lowest price level for energy, after adjusting for inflation, in 20 years and probably ever in the history of mankind. Just a few years ago, the price in real dollars was four times higher.
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It’s a shell game to move money into the pockets of the insiders. It will never work and economically it isn’t feasible. Natural gas makes us energy independent, but we can’t have that now can we (with liberals in charge)
No one is as much of an insider to Obama and the deep state as her. I can’t believe she’d say this as Biden’s agenda is such a sinking ship.
Anyway, here goes.
On MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” Tuesday, the host asked about Harris’ reported plans to highlight “unfinished pieces of Biden’s policies” as part of her campaign.
“How important is it for her to find a way to differentiate herself from aspects of the Biden agenda? Maybe move the ball, put an emphasis on other things? How does she do that and still be loyal to the fact that she worked with Joe Biden?” Mitchell asked.
“I think it’s very important to remember that this has been the Biden-Harris agenda. Kamala Harris has been an integral architect and executor of the policies of the Biden-Harris administration,” Rice said.
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“So, there will be important, as there should be, aspects of continuity in many policy areas. But of course, the vice president will outline her vision and where she sees opportunities to advance their collective agenda, the Biden-Harris collective agenda, and take it further forward. I think we all look forward to hearing that.
More at the link above, but advancing his agenda would kill the nation. If I were Kamala, I’d run from his record as far as possible, but no, Susan Rice pins the tail on the donkey
“If you’re an advertiser and you don’t wanna advertise on Rumble or X, that’s totally fine. You have the option to do that. But the problem happens when you have a consortium, or a group like the World Federation of Advertisers, or the group that they created called GARM, which then assemble all these advertisers and agencies, which creates a huge amount of power for GARM to basically instruct these companies on whether or not and how they want to employ brand safety standards,” Pavlovski told Fox Business.
“They then can now discriminate against certain voices on other platforms,” he continued. “If they don’t like what some speech might happen on Rumble or X, they can say, we’re not going to touch that, which then causes advertising rates to go higher because now they’re only accessing a certain portion of the market and then drives higher prices for their shareholders and their brands. This harms the advertisers, the shareholders, it creates a higher fee for the agencies and also harms Rumble creators and Rumble viewers and the Rumble platform.”
Pavlovski went on to describe ad agencies as operating as a “harmful monopoly.”
The first email was from Diageo North America, a leading alcoholic beverage company that is part of the “GARM Steer Team,” Pavlovski noted. In an email to Rumble, Diageo wrote that “there is no scenario where we approve a platform that has Steven Crowder, Alex Jones or the like. The content on your platform is non-compliant pretty much across every category we try to avoid.”
Similar sentiments were expressed by Inspire Brands, whose chains include Dunkin’ Donuts, Baskin Robbins, Jimmy Johns and a number of additional high-profile brands. “To be honest [redacted], I would be opposed to showing up on the current version of the platform — the right-wing culture of the site is too polarizing from a brand standpoint today,” a representative for Inspire Brands wrote in an email to Rumble.
How nice of the Trump camp to help publicize Gov. Tim Walz's compassionate and common-sense policy of providing free menstrual products to students in Minnesota public schools! Let's do this everywhere. pic.twitter.com/hk6v8cs8p4
Kamala Harris bragged about casting the tie-breaking vote for the bill that allowed the IRS to crack down on service workers tips. Now she's adopting Trump's 'no tax on tips' proposal. Will she admit that her vote was a mistake and the IRA was bad for America? pic.twitter.com/5vjUKan7m6
So think about it. Who is pushing us to war? Here is a hint- Its not Israel who has no choice but to try to cut off ther heads of the multiple snakes that continue to threaten the lives of every Israeli (by the way, many of the terror victims have been Christians and Muslims- including those 12 innocent soccer players.)
It is the Biden/Harris Progressive administration who have been “distancing” themselves (withholding critically needed munitions, not acting strongly in the UN and being mealy mouthed about how far Israel can defend her people) from Israel just as Obama did.
In case you missed it, This is very reminiscent of how Biden baited Russia into the humanitarian calamity in Ukraine. He encouraged the tallk about allowing Ukraine to into NATO while at the same time specifically stating that a “minor incursion” by Russia would not be a problem.
Think about it. The Bidens got millions of dollars out of Ukraine before the war and now the arms factories in the US and Europe can not keep up with the demand for shells, bullets and equipment. This is not to mention the more than $7 Billion worth of equipment squandered in our desertion of Afghanistan. The military industrial complex (and its investors in government) is fat and happy while the borders of our country are undefended, taxes are going up and there are questions about whether we even have enough military equipment to help defend against a Chinese move against Taiwan.
German manufacturing firms are considering scaling back production or relocating operations as the high cost of energy in the renewable-committed nation cuts into their profits, according to a new survey.
The German “2024 Energy Transition Barometer,” which was published by the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce, surveyed firms employing 500 people or more.
“The trust of the German economy in energy policy has been severely damaged. Policy makers have failed to show companies that they can have reliable and affordable energy supply,” said Achim Dercks, the association’s deputy managing director, according to OilPrice.com.
A report in May from the Federation of German Industries concluded that Germany had lost a decade’s worth of growth in production since before the outbreak of the pandemic in 2019.
The dataset covers employed persons aged 20–64 in a “main occupation” and includes full and part time work.
The Balkans Work the Longest in Europe
Less wealthy countries of Europe (by per capita GDP) tend to have longer work weeks. For example, people in the Balkans—including Türkiye, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Greece, and Romania—all put in an average of 40+ hours a week at their main jobs.
BlackRock began renaming environmental, social and governance (ESG) earlier this year. It’s now calling it “transition investing.”
The company recently updated its climate and decarbonization stewardship guidelines. The document makes no mention of ESG, but it shows in many ways, the world’s largest investment manager with $10 trillion in assets under management is still pursuing many of the same goals.
As always, woke ruins everything it touches. Blackrock owned the building that the Trump shooter was on and gave Thomas Crooks support. Get woke and go broke.
It’s pretty bad when the Chinese are trashing our reputation around the world, and our leadership is doing nothing about it. Look at the major cities like Washington, New York, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, SF, Oakland, and LA (and what do they have in common?).
Worse, they are exporting fentanyl to Mexico to deliver to America to ruin the lives of all who take it.
Here’s the story:
The Chinese are now producing documentaries on the collapse of American cities. What this showcases is the grim aftermath of decades of deindustrialization, disastrous progressive policies, and an opioid crisis—ironically fueled by China.
“Chinese are making documentaries about ultra-extreme poverty and decaying cities since they don’t exist in China anymore,” X user S.L. Kanthan wrote in a recent post, accompanied by a short clip from the documentary highlighting the implosion of Oakland, California.
Since the video was narrated in Chinese, X user TranslateMom translated some of the captions, which said, “Everywhere is garbage … People don’t live in places. There are wanderers everywhere.”
Look who is bought and paid for by the Chinese
Newsom admits he only cleaned up San Francisco because Xi came to visit. “That’s true. Because it’s true.” pic.twitter.com/vKgz1BQl4A
They went way left and kicked out any balance that might save them from going even more socialist.
Labour won in a rout and any balance the conservatives might offer to counter the UK from going over the edge is now gone. Any constraints to their policies is gone and it’s always the people that suffer, never the government.
A country that once ruled 1/6th of the world keeps making moves towards self destruction. When one side has too much power (either side), corruption usually follows. Since politics starts out being corrupt, it can only get worse.
Get ready for higher prices, more Government oversight and a reduction in freedom. Only the ruling class ever gets ahead. There is no historical evidence of either socialism or communism ever working. I doubt this group will advance the lives of the British. Immigrants should do well. Just look what happened when the US voted in corruption in 2020.
The people get screwed 100% of the time in socialism.
They voted for it, enjoy the fruits of your decision.
Since the communist Biden Regime stole control of the country in 2020, their open-borders policy has opened the floodgates of illegal immigration to a whopping 6.6 million new illegal aliens from Latin America in just the past 3 years. Though mass-media fake news will never admit it, the immigration regulation officials are witnessing the mass-illegal-influx firsthand, and describing to America what they are seeing happen to the “demographics” of the USA Republic.
Daniel Fitzgerald, a State Department Official who allocates U.S. foreign aid across the entire Western Hemisphere says his agency is failing miserably at slowing down the mass-migration of illegals from Latin America (Central and South America). Like no other time in history, the U.S. government is actively replacing American citizens with illegal, Leftist immigrants, to try to secure (steal) the next POTUS and Congressional elections. It’s called the “Great Replacement” plan, and it’s working at full throttle right now. The state department officials are completely “puzzled” at why the U.S. government is keeping the borders wide open like this, but that is because they all read and watch FAKE NEWS, swallowing the Biden Regime’s narratives whole, and now they’re choking on the “fat.”
The left seems to want to destroy everything it touches, in this case our country. Between replacement voters and Cloward-Piven, they have done a lot of damage to the US and for what, because they hate God, morals and what is right.
They love communism without realizing that they are the ones who will be shot first. Chaos and anarchy aren’t a good strategy other than for destruction.
I became enamored with this contest by phenom eater Kobayashi, a skinny kid from Japan who revolutionized competitive eating. It also grosses out my wife. That means I’ve been watching for decades.
Kobayashi was defeated by Joey Chestnut who will not defend his championship this year because of a conflict with the sponsor, Nathan’s hot dogs and others (see below). I’ll still watch, but we will be in the 30 or 40 dog range to win, versus the 60 to76 that we’ve been treated to by Chestnut.
his Fourth of July, Joey Chestnut will be doing what Joey Chestnut does better than any human being alive:
Eating hot dog after hot dog after hot dog after hot dog after hot dog after hot dog after hot dog after hot dog after hot dog after hot dog after hot dog after hot dog after hot dog after hot dog after hot dog after hot dog after hot dog after hot dog after hot dog after hot dog after hot dog after hot dog…
And on and on, down the hatch, with stunning pace and a strange sort of grace.
Chestnut—aka “Jaws,” the Michael Jordan of competitive eating, the Picasso of Pork, the Federer of Frankfurters, the GOAT of bloat, a man who once ate a world record 76 hot dogs in 10 minutes—will spend the holiday competing casually alongside members of the U.S. military at Fort Bliss in Texas in a quickly-assembled event airing on his YouTube channel.
Though Chestnut is honored for the opportunity, the stunning news is where the 40-year-old won’t be–parked at a table outside Nathan’s Famous in Coney Island, N.Y., dominating a legendary hot dog eating contest he has won a staggering 16 times.
“Bittersweet,” Chestnut told me in an interview this week.
Behind Chestnut’s absence is a dispute involving his nascent relationship with Impossible Foods, the plant-based food maker. The partnership chafed the powers behind Major League Eating and the Nathan’s Famous competition, who felt Chestnut was getting cozy with a rival.
So Chestnut is out, casting a footlong shadow over the annual beachside showdown—and riling a fan base that can’t believe the iconic competition will happen without its signature stomach.
No Joey Chestnut in Coney Island on the Fourth of July? It’s like asking a bald eagle to stay home in the nest.
“Stop being such weenies!” New York City mayor Eric Adams wrote in a pun-tastic tweet.
“The entire country’s [expletive] bummed,” said ESPN’s biceps curl Cronkite Pat McAfee. “I don’t even know if people are going to light off fireworks now.”
“Let the guy suck down dogs!” McAfee pleaded.
Chestnut, who won his first Nathan’s event in 2007 and parlayed his talent into global fame and a full-time occupation, sounded plenty bummed by the conflict. He doesn’t see his relationship with Impossible Foods as a deal-breaker–he’s still a devoted carnivore who sees plant-based food as a supplement to his meat diet, not a replacement.
He compared it to Tom Brady endorsing Under Armour cleats and also Ugg boots–an interesting choice, given that Tom Brady would sooner eat an Adirondack chair than a meaty hot dog.
“You can eat meat and you can also eat plant-based meat,” Chestnut said. “I feel like that should be OK with people.”
Impossible Foods had no issues with Chestnut consuming meat products at the Nathan’s event–or anywhere else, said the company’s CEO, Peter McGuinness.
“He’s a flexitarian,” McGuinness said. “He is our target audience. We’re not a vegan company and we need to be appealing to meat eaters.”
Major League Eating’s president, Richard Shea, echoed Chestnut’s term to describe the situation: bittersweet. The issue was a brand conflict, he said. He went on to rave about Chestnut’s talent and indelible mark on the annual competition, which is televised by ESPN.
“We love Joey, we wish he was there, we support his choice and think it’s a cool tribute, what he’s doing with the troops in Texas,” Shea said. “He’s a great champion.”
After the initial dust-up, MLE and Nathan’s Famous offered to put aside their issues and allow Chestnut to participate in 2024 – but the offering couldn’t bring the hot dog Hoover vac back to the table.
The relationship may need further repair. Chestnut believed his team was still negotiating when the controversy spilled into view with a Major League Eating statement that they were “devastated” at Chestnut’s decision to partner with “a rival brand that sells plant-based hot dogs.”
Having the impasse go public felt like a gut-punch to Chestnut, the contest’s most identifiable winner, long ago surpassing the competitive eating godfather Takeru Kobayashi of Japan.
“It’s hard to rebuild trust once bridges have been burned a little bit,” Chestnut said.
Chestnut trains like an endurance athlete, with vigorous eating sessions to prepare him to push his physical limits. He practices breathing techniques to stay calm and loose and even asks people to come yell at him in practice to try and simulate a noisy contest environment.
The champion felt on pace for a potentially record-setting Fourth of July.
“It was definitely my best training in years,” he said.
While consuming even a half dozen hot dogs would curl me into a fetal ball for a month, Chestnut said he’s in good health. He said he gets his blood regularly checked, and that his doctor remains comfortable with his career choice.
“He told me whatever I’m doing, I can keep doing it,” Chestnut said.
After the event at Fort Bliss, Chestnut will turn his attention to a brand-new event–a showdown with storied rival Kobayashi to be shown on Netflix. Billed as “Chestnut vs. Kobayashi: Unfinished Beef” the mano-a-mano gulletpalooza will go down on Labor Day, Sept. 2.
“I want to make him uncomfortable and he wants to make me uncomfortable,” Chestnut pledged.
As for a future return to Coney Island, the champ is trying to stay optimistic.
Can it really be the Fourth of July without Joey Chestnut dogging dogs near the Brooklyn boardwalk?
“I love that contest,” said the hot dog gawd. “I would do anything reasonable to make it back there.”
They claim it is for maintenance, but the timing is clearly suspicious. They tax enough to pay for it now don’t they
In my extensive travel through Europe, the French are the most disparaged by the other countries. Just ask a UK Taxi driver about the French if you don’t believe me.
Ticket prices for visiting the Eiffel Tower have been raised 20 percent in a bid to offset its sky-high maintenance costs. The increase comes just weeks before the opening of the 2024 Olympics and after months of tensions between the “Iron Lady”‘s management company and Paris City Hall over the revenues generated by this symbol of the City of Light.
Funny that this is a make up for Covid revenue…
With the proceeds from the price hike – which applies to all tickets – the Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel (SETE), the public company operating the landmark, hopes to rebalance its books, which took a hit from the extended closures of the Covid-19 pandemic, and turn the page on a labour dispute that led to the tower’s temporary closure in February.
I’m glad corporations are starting to wake up. Here you have a store for people in the country who farm, have wild stock and for the most part are rural. Why they would have gone down the path of woke is beyond me, unless they hired a Harvard grad.
It was my go to source for Ivermectin during Covid. I loved the place. I can go in dressed in a camo hat, work boots, a dirty shirt and no one even notices me as I put my supplies on the checkout counter.
Now this good news. I can only hope the rest of the country wakes up and takes this fork in the road instead of being a Bud Light or Target dupe.
Tractor Supply Company, the national retailer of farm supplies, has issued a sweeping apology to its rural customer base after facing a storm of criticism over its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Earlier this week, people lambasted Tractor Supply for a betrayal of its core demographic through its support of LGBT training, funding for pride events, advocacy for transgender rights, and pushing of climate activism.
Many have drawn parallels to the recent Bud Light controversy, in which the brand faced significant financial and reputational losses after its partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Responding to the uproar, Hal Lawton, CEO of Tractor Supply, led a public reevaluation of the company’s policy directions. Today, the company released a detailed statement outlining significant changes to its internal policies and community engagement strategies.
To gain insight into the U.S. economy, we’ve visualized the median income by state, as of May 2024. These figures come from WalletHub, which sourced income data from the U.S. Census Bureau and adjusted it for cost of living according to the Cost of Living Index (COLI).
The Cost of Living Index, published by the Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER), was established in 1968, and allows for consistent place-to-place cost comparisons.
The index considers six categories of spending: groceries, housing, utilities, transportation, health care, and miscellaneous.
After adjusting for COLI, the top three states by median income are the District of Columbia (DC) (technically a district), Hawaii, and Massachusetts.
In DC, federal government agencies are the biggest employers. Many of them offer high-paying jobs that require higher education and specialized skills. DC, like Hawaii, also has a relatively higher cost of living, which may push up the average salary.
In the case of Massachusetts, the state is home to many of the world’s most prestigious universities and research institutions, as well as high-earning sectors like healthcare and tech.
When working at IBM, I told a Puerto Rican colleague that illegal immigration would hurt the country. He was young and a legal immigrant and didn’t agree. He also didn’t understand Cloward-Piven. I have a relative that held a green card for over 10 years waiting to get citizenship while people invading the border got money, food and a nice place to stay in exchange for votes. I also lived in Miami and got to see the Marielito’s decimate the city.
The guys name at IBM was Mauricio G. and would go on to backstab me as I was protecting him politically. I let it go but it was interesting to see this viewpoint, a non-native citizen trying to make America into another country.
Well Mauricio, just because you don’t understand what made America great, like laws and borders doesn’t mean that facts aren’t true.
3 in 10 campus ‘pro-Palestine’ protesters had job offer rescinded in past six months: Survey
A recent survey found that 3 in 10 college students or recent graduates had job offers rescinded as a result of their “pro-Palestine” activism.
Intelligent surveyed 672 students or recent college graduates who have engaged in anti-Israel activism and found that 29% of them had a job offer rescinded in the past six months and 55% believe there was bias against them in the hiring process because of their activism.
7 in 10 pro-Palestine activists said they were asked about their protest history during the interview process, according to the survey results.
Intelligent Chief Education and Career Development Advisor Huy Nguyen said that the results are consistent with other studies.
“It’s consistent with another study that we performed where employers expressed concerns that hiring protestors and strongly vocal activists might cause distractions and disruptions in the workplace and negatively impact their workplace,” Nguyen said.
21% of those surveyed also reported negative feedback from potential employers about their activism and 14% either had job offers withdrawn or not extended.
Photographs show that a central window pane is shattered with cracks in several areas, but investigators have been unable to determine what caused the damage.
🚨✈️ VIRGIN ATLANTIC BOEING WINDSCREEN CRACKS AT 40,000 FEET, FORCING RETURN TO UK
A packed Virgin Atlantic Boeing jet's windscreen cracked at 40,000 feet on a flight from Heathrow to San Francisco, forcing a return to the UK.
🚨BREAKING: Biden's State Dept Official Admits Great Replacement is Real; ‘They Want to Change the Demographics of the United States’
“Traditional, standard Americans are not leftists. Latin Americans are all leftists. This is just to try and change the demographics [of the… pic.twitter.com/Q7NDsJmkHE
In a statement published on the OPEC website Thursday, Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais said the concept of “peak oil demand” is nowhere to be seen in the cartel’s projections for future global crude oil demand.
“[A]s we look to the future it is the very versatility of oil that ensures that we do not see peak oil demand on the horizon,” Al Ghais said.
“Just as peak oil supply has never transpired, predictions of peak oil demand are following a similar trend.”
In my own research, I have been able to trace predictions for the world reaching so-called “peak oil” all the way back to the 1880s.
From that distant beginning through around 2010, peak oil theory was always about the world having somehow reached a peak in crude oil supply as all the big reserves had supposedly already been discovered.
For about 125 years, constant advances in technology and a creative and innovative industry invariably proved such pronouncements wrong, often laughably so.
With the ramping-up of the climate alarmist movement in the first decade of this century, narratives surrounding this always-wrong theory began to shift over to the demand side of the equation. Some anti-oil-and-gas activist groups even adopted the theory as a means of promoting the equally silly notion that the world’s remaining oil resources could simply be left in the ground as demand for them would soon be overwhelmed by rising demand for alternatives.
A decade later, that theory has also been proven laughably wrong, despite the “investment” of many trillions of dollars in debt-funded subsidies.
OPEC’s statement stands in stark contrast to the projection by the International Energy Agency that the world will somehow achieve peak oil demand by 2030. Al Ghais alludes to this preposterous notion, calling it a “dangerous commentary, especially for consumers,” that “will only lead to energy volatility on a potentially unprecedented scale.”
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Al Ghais’ statement comes in the wake of revised oil-demand growth projections from the IEA and OPEC, along with Goldman Sachs and the US Energy Information Administration for the remainder of 2024 and into 2025. Where the IEA revised its 2024 projection downward to 1 million barrels per day for 2024, even it projects a more robust 1.5 million bpd in growth for 2025.
The EIA raised its own growth estimate for 2024 from a very conservative 900,000 bpd to 1.1 million bpd.
Goldman Sachs comes in at a stronger 2024 estimate of 1.25 million bpd, based on strong global economic growth. The bank cites robust growth in jet fuel, petrochemical-driven LPG and naphtha, and gasoline and diesel demand as key drivers of this growth.
What is the reason for the discrepancy between the ambitious goal and the disastrous reality? The Washington Free Beacon obtained internal memos from the Department of Transportation and interviewed those responsible for overseeing the project’s implementation to find out.
It turns out that the administration’s own “Diversity—Equity—Inclusion” initiatives are stalling EV Charging Station construction.
Shortly after taking office, the president signed an executive order mandating that the beneficiaries of 40 percent of all federal climate and environmental programs should come from “underserved communities.” The order also established the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, which monitors agencies such as the Department of Transportation to ensure the “voices, perspectives, and lived realities of communities with environmental justice concerns are heard in the White House and reflected in federal policies, investments, and decisions.”
In order to qualify for a grant, applicants must “demonstrate how meaningful public involvement, inclusive of disadvantaged communities, will occur throughout a project’s life cycle.” What “public involvement” means is unclear. But the Department of Transportation notes it should involve “intentional outreach to underserved communities.”
That outreach, the Department of Transportation states, can take the form of “games and contests,” “visual preference surveys,” or “neighborhood block parties” so long as the grant recipient provides “multilingual staff or interpreters to interact with community members who use languages other than English.”
“This all just slows down construction,” says Jim Meigs, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who focuses on federal regulation.
The DEI mandates are also hindering the implementation of the CHIPS and Science Act, a bipartisan measure designed to enhance U.S. semiconductor supply chains and support private-sector investment in domestic research and manufacturing.
Native-born American workers are taking a beating in the job market from gains by foreign-born workers, according to the data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Friday.
The number of foreign-born workers employed in the U.S. rose by 637,000 in the last year to nearly 30.9 million, while the number of employed native-born Americans has declined by 299,000, according to the BLS. As a consequence of foreign-born workers taking up job gains, the number of American-born workers with jobs is still below the number counted in July 2019.
Illegal immigration has surged under President Joe Biden following the administration’s relaxation of enforcement at the southern border, which has recently prompted the president to scramble to stem the flow by signing an executive order that he claims will limit the number of asylum seekers allowed in the country.
Because us, John Q Public are tired of them trying to cram this shit down our throats. We stopped buying their product and/or service as we vote with our dollars.
June 1 will mark the start of “Pride” month, in which advocates of LGBTQIA+ causes celebrate that movement. In recent years, June has seen major corporate chains feature an array of “Pride”-themed merchandise and decorations, though some offerings have prompted considerable backlash from a non-receptive — even hostile public — in recent years.
2023 saw major retailers such as Target become the subject of boycotts over more controversial products marketed for children. Other companies, such as Anheuser-Busch came under scrutiny over marketing campaigns that failed to resonate with their traditional clientele.
The adverse experiences of last June appear to have corporate boardrooms reevaluating some of their practices with respect to “Pride” month and the merchandise related to it. Here’s a look at some of the major disasters of 2023 and how brands plan to handle things in 2024.
Company outlooks
Industry analysts and executives in May suggested that the boycotts of last year and targeted campaigns from conservatives intended to push back against the pervasiveness of “Pride”-themed merchandise had evidently pushed companies to pursue a toned-down approach to “Pride” this year.
“Nobody in the media, marketing and advertising world wants to admit how heavy and hard this has been,” Pink Media President Matt Skallerud told USA Today. “Ever since Target and Bud Light had their fiascos last year, a tremendous number of brands have decided it would be much better to sit on the sidelines and let this sort itself out.”
Our president and his press secretaries seem to lie with every word they say and deny facts that anyone with a pair of eyes can see for himself.
Scientists and doctors, formerly among the most trusted members of our society, lie to foster popular environmental theories and get government grants, or to promote Big Pharma and deter people from effective treatments.
Our news media no longer report the news; they shape the news as instructed.
Here is just a sample of commonly promoted lies starting in 2020.
The German automaker’s limousine customers care as much about comfort and status as saving the planet
Bloomberg reports on how Volkswagen’s EV fantasy has just collided with reality. Volkswagen walks back EV or bus strategy that rankled rivals. CEO Oliver Blumer is turning to hybrids and striking partnerships as EV sales slow. Volkswagen AG’s all-in on electric vehicle plan is no more. The namesake VW brand, which pitched its ID family of electric cars as central to its future, admitted last week it will need more plug-in hybrids as EV sales decelerate. This marks just the latest adjustment VW has made to its electrification strategy after the company botched several model releases and fell behind in China, where local brands now dominate. The manufacturer has also shelved efforts to seek outside investors for its battery unit and scrapped plans for a 2 billion Euro ($2.2 billion) EV factory in Germany. In fact, the automaker is selling so many cars still running on combustion engines that it’s on track to overshoot its emissions allowance next year, leading Chief Executive Officer Oliver Blumer to ask European regulators for leniency.
And Mercedes has dumped an entire EV platform after a woeful sale of its larger EV models. As Top Gear reports, Mercedes has reportedly cancelled an entire EV platform, and apparently, slow EV sales are to blame. Farewell, MBEA; we hardly knew you. Mercedes is putting the kibosh on the development of its MBEA large electric vehicle platform, having apparently been put off by the EQE and EQS’s slower than expected sales. OD Deia first reported by Handelsblut, the move will supposedly save billions in development costs as Mercedes rethinks its future luxury car strategy.
The COVID police state revealed Western governments’ zeal for totalitarianism. Forced masking, forced experimental injections, forced school and business closures, forced isolation, and forced compliance provided Western citizens an opportunity to see the tyrannical inclinations hiding just beneath the surface of their supposedly beneficent “democracies.”
None of it was pretty. Mass propaganda disguised as medical expertise (remember when Joe Biden and his CDC army of Goebbels clones demanded that we wear three or more masks outside?) and mass censorship of social media conversations (because, we were frequently told, disinformation kills!) proved that — when push comes to shove — Western governments will quickly dispense with protections for free speech. Wannabe dictators (intent on protecting “democracy” by being authoritarian) embraced their true “Do as we say!” dispositions and branded the public’s rights and liberties as “enemies of the State.”
It should also be noted that while many of governments’ most egregious abuses against citizens are now treated as if they never happened (e.g., it is all the rage these days for politicians and medical professionals to claim that nobody was ever forced to take the experimental clot shots), there are still ample reminders of the West’s foray into COVID totalitarianism. The world’s largest social media companies (which have all been exposed as surveillance systems and propaganda platforms that variously do the bidding of China, the European Union, or the United States) continue to censor scientific debate regarding the origin of the virus (shocker: it leaked — intentionally or not — from a Chinese lab conducting biological weapons research bankrolled, in part, by the U.S. government), the efficacy of the so-called “vaccines,” and growing evidence that these experimental injections cause a large number of harmful (if not outright deadly) side effects.
It specifically says Ivy League schools. It also says that they are more likely to hire from public Universities.
So all of that money gone to waste. An Ivy League degree was a virtual hall pass to a job. They managed to screw that up by being assholes and Jew Haters. Compound that with DEI and you get a toxic graduate.
Those of us in the working world knew that the Ivy Leaguers were losers and not that smart. We had to work around them, but now they will have a hard time getting a foot in the door.
Results follow reports of grade inflation, plagiarism, antisemitism, and more
An Ivy League diploma is losing its worth in many employers’ eyes.
A recent Forbessurvey found employers have grown more skeptical of applicants from the most prestigious schools in the U.S. in the past five years – a period marked by race-based admissions, grade inflation, antisemitism, plagiarism, and leadership “double standards.”
According to the survey, one in three employers said they are less likely to hire an Ivy League graduate than they were five years ago. Meanwhile, only 7 percent said they were more likely to hire them.
Employers’ hesitation was specific to the Ivy Leagues, too.
The survey found 42 percent of hiring managers are more likely to hire public university graduates and 37 percent private university graduates, compared to five years ago.
What’s more, hiring managers were three times as likely to say public universities have improved in preparing students for jobs than Ivy League universities.
A Boeing 737-300 aircraft suffered a significant accident during an attempted takeoff at Senegal’s Blaise Diagne International Airport early Thursday, causing serious injuries.
Air Senegal flight HC301, operated by Transair, failed to ascend and “overran the runway” around 1:14 a.m., according to a statement released by Senegal’s Ministry of Infrastructure, Land and Air Transport. The flight had been bound for Bamako, Mali, per BBC.
Of the 78 people on board, which included two pilots and four cabin crew members, eleven suffered injuries, the Senegalese military reported. Four of these passengers are in serious condition.
Videos circulating online show the aircraft with serial number 6V-AJE lying on a grassy bank, with visible damage to its left engine.
🚨✈️Another Day another Boeing Disaster – this time in Senegal as the plane skids off the runway injuring multiple persons.
Boeing are effective at killing off whistle blowers but not operating safe planes, it would appear. pic.twitter.com/ijCISJ57Ok
— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) May 9, 2024
Home prices across the nation are back up near a record high. That makes this a particularly bad time for the Biden administration to have rolled out its new “green” energy mandates, which will add $31,000 to the cost of a new home.
The mandates are being pushed through the Department of Housing and Urban Development and while they technically won’t apply to all homes, all homebuilders will effectively be forced to comply with them.
The Biden administration doesn’t deny this higher upfront cost. It simply claims it’ll pay for itself via lower energy bills. Unfortunately, the break-even point is 90 years.
So if a young couple buys one of these new green energy homes and has a child one year later, the regulatory costs still won’t have paid for themselves in that child’s lifetime, let alone the life of the couple who bought the home.
HUD argues that homebuilders will be able to get tax credits via the Inflation Reduction Act to offset some of these costs, with those savings hopefully passed along to homebuyers. However, this is not a real reduction in costs; it’s merely passing the buck to taxpayers. Instead of a homebuyer’s bearing the full freight of these green energy mandates, some of the cost will be passed on to taxpayers, including renters.
This is just the latest example of how failed public policies are creating a two-tiered society in America, where an entire generation of Americans will likely never be able to afford their own homes.
Some business owners are expressing opposition to hiring alumni from Columbia University amid ongoing pro-Palestinian protests at the Ivy League school in New York City.
In a post to X, formerly Twitter, Tom McClellan, the editor of The McClellan Market Report said that he will no longer be hiring “any recent graduate of Columbia, because that school is so tainted.
“And I furthermore will not hire any older graduates either, because it has become evident that the academic rot is so deeply ingrained as to taint others who have come through that institution in the past several years,” McClellan wrote.
A woman walks past Israeli and U.S. flags alongside portraits of Israelis taken hostage by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, in front of the pro-Palestinian encampment at the Columbia University on April 28 in…
CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images/Getty Images
“I cannot have faith that any former Columbia student could have achieved sufficient academic success, especially in light of the overwhelming recent evidence that the academic requirements there are so lax such that students have time to go set up protests on the quad instead of studying.”
Similarly, consultant Warren Kinsella said: “At the firm I founded 18 years ago, and in the war rooms I’ve run for the past 31 years, I’ve employed hundreds of young people. I’ll never again hire one from @Columbia.”
As the saying goes, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
That’s exactly what Hims and Hers CEO Andrew Dudum got after he took to social media to encourage anti-Israel protesters to apply to the company, claiming that companies will want to hire them for their “moral courage.”
“Moral courage > College degree,” he posted. “If you’re currently protesting against the genocide of the Palestinian people & for your university’s divestment from Israel, keep going. It’s working.”
The public, or at least those trading the company’s stock, do not appear to be siding with Dudum, as the company price dropped a whopping eight percent on Friday, just days after the tweet was put out, according to the New York Post.
The sexual health and pharmaceutical company lost an immense $210 million in stock value that day, with signs pointing to a continuation of the trend.
So in one fell swoop, Hims and Hers has lost hundreds of millions in market value, lost significant public opinion and is now looking to hire a bunch of DEI employees.
I’ve already posted today that EV’s are not a solution to anything. My wife’s relatives in a Scandinavian country have them, but they continue be on the side of wrong for just about anything. I’ve learned to go against what they choose and I’m usually on the right side of most things. They are proud of their decisions and have no idea that they are so far from the truth.
(ZeroHedge)—Ten years ago this week, we posted one of out most viral stories, highlighting the over-capacity in the auto industry: “Where the World’s Unsold Cars Go To Die,” which highlighted the ‘endgame’ of automakers’ ‘channel stuffing’ efforts to disguise the sudden lack of demand for all the exciting new models that they had forecast would boom to the moon…
Due to China’s overcapacity in production – as it aims to capture a quarter of the European electric vehicle market – the ports of Antwerp and Zeebrugge are inundated.
You probably need to see it to appreciate the challenges the automobile industry faces in transitioning to electricity. You also need to come here to understand how the Chinese industry’s overcapacity has flooded the European market. That morning, as the sun unexpectedly lit up the maze of highways leading to this remote arm of the port of Antwerp, Belgium, a huge cargo ship from the Norwegian company Höegh Autoliners unloaded thousands of cars at one of the terminals of International Car Operators (ICO), a subsidiary of the Japanese group Nippon Yusen Kaisha.
Imported vehicles are seriously piling up at European ports, turning them into “car parks.” Automakers are distributors are struggling with a slowdown in car sales as well as logistical bottlenecks that make it hard to alleviate the buildup of new, unsold vehicles.
Some Chinese brand EVs had been sitting in European ports for up to 18 months, while some ports had asked importers to provide proof of onward transport, according to industry executives. One car logistics expert said many of the unloaded vehicles were simply staying in the ports until they were sold to distributors or end users.
“It’s chaos,” said another person who had been briefed on the situation.
Sure, it’s easy to say get woke and go broke, but when you have Bud Light, Target, Disney as real world examples it can ring true. They are all just different flavors of ass tasting ice cream.
Now we have Boeing and Ford.
FORD
Ford loses $132,000 on every electric car it builds, or $5 Billion a year. Henry Ford is turning in his grave.
First published JoNova; Ford CEO Jim Farley still plans to push forward with his loss making electric vehicle strategy. (dumbass)
Ford just reported a massive loss on every electric vehicle it sold
By Chris Isidore, CNN Updated 2:10 PM EDT, Thu April 25, 2024
New YorkCNN —
Ford’s electric vehicle unit reported that losses soared in the first quarter to $1.3 billion, or $132,000 for each of the 10,000 vehicles it sold in the first three months of the year, helping to drag down earnings for the company overall.
Ford, like most automakers, has announced plans to shift from traditional gas-powered vehicles to EVs in coming years. But it is the only traditional automaker to break out results of its retail EV sales. And the results it reported Wednesday show another sign of the profit pressures on the EV business at Ford and other automakers.
The EV unit, which Ford calls Model e, sold 10,000 vehicles in the quarter, down 20% from the number it sold a year earlier. And its revenue plunged 84% to about $100 million, which Ford attributed mostly to price cuts for EVs across the industry. That resulted in the $1.3 billion loss before interest and taxes (EBIT), and the massive per-vehicle loss in the Model e unit.
The losses go far beyond the cost of building and selling those 10,000 cars, according to Ford. Instead the losses include hundreds of millions being spent on research and development of the next generation of EVs for Ford. Those investments are years away from paying off.
And that means this is not the end of the losses in the unit – Ford said it expects Model e will have EBIT losses of $5 billion for the full year.
After stating that DEI/DIE was the most important part of their business, they just burned through $3.3 billion in one quarter cleaning up the mess:
Top jet manufacturer Boeing reported on Wednesday a net loss of $355 million in the first quarter after months of scrutiny over recent safety issues.
Operating revenue declined 8% year over year in the first quarter, from approximately $17.9 billion to $16.6 billion, with the company burning more than $3.9 billion in free cash flow in the time frame compared to $786 million a year ago, according to Boeing’s first quarter earnings report. Recent scrutiny of safety with Boeing products began in January after an Alaska Airlines flight had a door plug fly off mid-air, resulting in an emergency landing and an investigation into the company’s quality assurance.=
“Our first quarter results reflect the immediate actions we’ve taken to slow down 737 production to drive improvements in quality,” Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said in the report. “We will take the time necessary to strengthen our quality and safety management systems and this work will position us for a stronger and more stable future.”
Boeing reported an over $3.3 billion operating cash flow loss in the first quarter, compared to a $318 billion loss at the start of 2023, according to the earnings report. The decline in profits led to a core loss per share of $1.13 for shareholders in the first quarter, lower than the $1.27 loss in the same time frame last year.
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