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Greed is good up to the point that it delivers ruin.

The primary characteristic of this era is the purposeful confusion of profit and greed, as if they are the same thing. Greed is good because profit is good, and profit is good because the profit motive is the engine of Capitalism which is the engine of global prosperity.

The problem with this logic is greed is not the same as profit. In the sanitized version of the story, the profit motive of each individual magically generates the best possible socio-economic outcome for all via the secret powers of The Invisible Hand of market forces.

This is a fairy tale, of course, for the most profitable arrangement isn’t a competitive free-for-all, it’s a monopoly that controls the market to its own advantage. Monopolies are by their nature centralized; monopolies snap up or steamroll competitors until they exert centralized power–if not in a single entity then in a cartel that centralizes control of the market.

In the fairy tale about the magic of The Invisible Hand, individuals seek to maximize their private gains by increasing productivity and producing goods and services with more utility-value: higher quality, increased durability, etc. This narrative is core to The Mythology of Progress, which is the belief that Progress is 1) unstoppable and 2) a permanent force that advances as the natural order of things.

In the real world, entities maximize their gains by increasing the price while diminishing the utility-value of the goods and services: profits are maximized by reducing durability (planned obsolescence), reducing quality / quantity and manipulating a monopoly on information to modify the price to extract the maximum profit from each transaction–dynamic pricing is the seemingly harmless cover-term for this exploitation of information asymmetry: the buyer knows little or nothing, the seller knows everything.

This use of cover-stories and terminology is the foundational dynamic of Anti-Progress and Ultra-Processed Life: the authentic term (profit motive) is now the cover story for exploitation-driven greed, and Progress is now the cover story for Anti-Progress–the degradation of quality, durability, transparency and agency.

Greed is not the same as profit. Greed maximizes gains by exploitation, not increasing value. Greed is the operative driver of the current era. The socio-political-economic system is dominated by greed-driven concentrations of power: monopolies, cartels and states.

There are three mechanisms that greatly expand the potential for assembling monopoly / cartel centralization of power: 1) technology, 2) credit and 3) the state.

1) Technology by its very nature leads to centralized ubiquity due to the network effect–the technology that recruits the most users becomes the default access to participate in the economy–participation that is essential to function in a technology-dominated economy. This ubiquity generates monopoly (or quasi-monopoly) which then generates high stock valuations which then provide the money needed to maintain and extend the monopoly.

Technology companies’ access to the stock market via initial public offerings (IPOs) offers unique access to a nearly limitless source of “free money” to buy up competitors via issuing more shares of the company’s stock.

This immense pool of wealth enables technology companies to buy control of narratives and political power.

2) Credit. If an entity cannot create “free money” by issuing more shares of its stock, if it has access to nearly limitless credit, it can use this credit top buy up competitiors and buy political protection of its monopoly. This is why John D. Rockefeller was obsessed with gaining access to more credit: that was his pathway to establishing a monopoly in the oil industry.

3. The state. Those who buy (or gain by other means) political influence can then create monopolies or cartels via state regulations. To the degree that the state has a monopoly on centralized power, all monopolies and cartels are private-sector / state entities, as centralized privately controlled power can only exist if the centralized state allows it.

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I’m glad I don’t have to seek employment these days. Fortunately, my Social Security is augmented well enough by my very modest book royalties, and what I make writing here on Substack and for the American Free Press. I’m not going to be starving. But if I did have to find a job, well…let’s just say that many out there are not that lucky.

I’m going to share some information from people I know well personally, along with what I hear from so many who follow my writing. If you’ve read my book Survival of the Richest, you know my thoughts on our rigged economy. Our bogus job market. And things have only gotten worse since that book was published. We no longer have viable unions, which served for decades to keep salaries and benefits decent, even at nonunion workplaces. Big Labor used to be a powerful force in this country. Democrats competed to earn its support. When’s the last time you heard any Democrat talk about workers’ rights? About vanishing benefits? About ridiculously subpar wages? Republicans will talk about the subject. They think that the minimum wage should be abolished. Because they trust the corrupt marketplace, they laughably think that employers will pay a fair wage, if only the government wouldn’t force them to. There are calls to bring back child labor, as I detailed in my book.

In 2018, I was fired summarily, without any warning or incremental discipline, by Inova Health, the largest healthcare system on the east coast. I had worked there for 44 years, virtually my entire adult life. But Virginia is a Right to Work state. An “At Will” state. Which means essentially that an employer has the right to fire you for any reason, or no reason. Now, this doesn’t apply if you’re Black, or part of what has been determined to be a “marginalized” group. But I’m White. And a male. And old. I’m about as non-”marginalized” as it gets. There was nothing I could do. Local media wouldn’t listen to me. Only one lawyer was mildly interested. I paid him for about six months, and he couldn’t even get Inova to take the termination off my record and give me the settlement package all the other laid off non-”marginalized” employees got. It still irks me that I was escorted off the premises like a common criminal, for the great crime of helping out a handicapped co-worker.

I tried to apply for other jobs for a few months, but only received one interview. This was to drive a van for a retirement center, call bingo numbers, etc. I usually do well with the elderly, and I was probably already considered elderly myself. Naturally, I didn’t get the job. And that was that. I couldn’t even get unemployment, because Inova fought it. More “Right to Work” perks. So it wasn’t enough that they fired me after 44 years for doing a good deed. They even blocked me from getting a paltry unemployment check. So excuse me if I roll my eyes when some Republican firebrand starts extolling the virtues of “Right to Work.” What, do you want to be forced to join a union? They’ll charge you! Well, if I’d belonged to a strong, old fashioned union, they would never have attempted to fire me after serving there for longer than almost any other employee in company history. I’m happy being a full-time writer. At this point, it’s the principle here. They were wrong, and they’ll never be held accountable.

Enough about me. What others are going through is inexcusably unfair. We’ve all heard about how ICE is hiring, right? About how they desperately need people. They’ll take anyone! They’re offering a huge bonus and great salary. But, as we keep hearing so often, no one wants to work. That’s kind of the Right’s version of diversity is our strength. Just as stupid, and just as untrue. People I know have tried to apply to ICE. They don’t even get calls back. They literally can’t even get to the application process. I wonder what these people think when they hear public figures talk about this tremendous opportunity. I’m reminded of the hotline set up, after the 9/11 inside job, where the public was advised to “say something if you see something.” Alex Jones called that line on air, and no one ever answered. No annoying automated menu. No leave a message after the beep. Just more lies. The system runs on lies.

I live in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. I’ve had lots of family members who worked those cushy government jobs. And yes, they are very, very cushy. But they’re older. I guess they were still hiring Whites back then. Try being a White male now, applying for any government job. Tell me how that works out. I believe that White taxpayers should no longer have to support the generous salaries and benefit packages of government workers, active and retired, because they themselves have no chance of ever getting a government job. And because private pensions have all but been eliminated for the common riffraff, why should working class Whites have to support the lucrative pensions of government workers? And again, let’s juxtapose that against the fact that many conservatives want to end Social Security. It’s an “entitlement.” It’s “welfare.” Just shut up, Grandma, and git a job! You know, the ones that don’t exist.

Of course, “Woke” liberals are awful. Often satanic. Their loathing of people that look like me is something I can never condone. Obviously. Doesn’t seem to bother most of the non-”marginalized,” though. But the hard-assed conservatives are really bad, too. No concept that the job market is far different than it was when they were looking for work, in 1975. No concept that the average college degree has become increasingly worthless while it became increasingly expensive. And now we’re getting 600,000 Chinese students. So how does a straight White male, unable to afford college and with no “experience” yet, build a career? Learn to code? That’s another pat Boomer bit of advice. That won’t work, in an IT industry that has largely been taken over by Indian H-1B Visa workers. And our America First President Trump recently declared that Americans “don’t have talent,” so we need more visa workers. This would be the foreign visa worker program that he said was disastrous and vowed to abolish.

I’ve heard from young men who swallowed the advertising about becoming interns and learning to be a plumber, an electrician, air conditioning worker, etc. This is another piece of advice we get from the Right- learn a trade! Learn skills! The problem is that once you apply for these intern jobs, they don’t hire you. And they let you know that the pay, while you are training, is pathetically low. Far lower than advertised. Not enough to move out of your parents’ basement yet. Even when I was young, they were parroting that “looking for experience” nonsense. This has gotten so out of hand now that I’ve known young men who couldn’t get a job as a server in a restaurant because they didn’t have “experience.” You need “experience” for that kind of job now? As I was asking even in the 1970s, just how is anyone supposed to start down this road of “experience?” We all enter the job market for the first time with no experience at anything. And again, judging by what I see everywhere, this only applies to Whites.

I had to call my county tax department yesterday, because I got a notification that I hadn’t paid the personal property tax on our two vehicles. I have the email receipt for paying them in early October. After a frustrating conversation with a female Asian, during which I felt like I’d been enrolled in an English as a Second Language seminar, I was eventually cut off. The mistake was on their end, but I have to accept the blame. And pay the unfair late penalty. That’s the way “democracy” works. But my main point here is, how did this Asian with such limited English skills get a good government job? Did she take her entrance exam in her native language? I wonder if she had any “experience?” Even with low paid jobs at Target, you have to take a 200 question test online. For which there are no right answers. These tests are now universal in dead end retail jobs. I encounter a lot of retail workers who struggle with English. Just how do they pass this test? I know a White male U.S. citizen who Target recently rejected.

That’s the real slap in the face to desperate young White males, trying to find some way of earning money. Retail jobs will not pay you enough to live independently anywhere in America 2.0. Yet you’ll still be shamed for living at home with your parents. I know someone who recently applied at McDonalds and wasn’t hired. I think McDonalds is pretty much cited as the crappiest job you can have. But apparently most White males now can’t even get that. I tried Headhunters myself when I was younger. It was pointless then. I’m sure it’s less than pointless now. So how are you supposed to “learn a trade?” Pay a lot of money to attend a trade school? “Learn to code?” And be forced to get all the certificates I never had to have? When I was drummed out of the business, they were costing about $3000 each. Remember, over 70 percent of Americans have less than $1000 in savings. You do the math. Become an entrepreneur! That’s America- small businesses!

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The new U.S. National Security Strategy says with regards to Ukraine:

It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish strategic stability with Russia, as well as to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state.

The U.S. is pressing forward with that mission. With the help of the Ukrainian anti-corruption vertical (the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), the Specialized Anti-corruption Prosecutor Office (SAPO) and the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) – all created by the U.S. after the 2014 Maidan coup) it has removed Andreij Yermak from his position as the head of the president’s office.

The next step is to press the acting President Vladimir Zelensky to agree to a peace agreement with Moscow. This will require him to give up land that the Ukrainian army is still holding.

If Zelenski proves to be unwilling to do so the anti-corruption vertical will open a case against him and remove him from his office.

A piece on Ukrainian corruption in today’s NY Times can be seen as an urgent warning:

Zelensky’s Government Sabotaged Oversight, Allowing Corruption to Fester (archived)
Ukrainian leaders blame independent advisers for failing to prevent graft. A Times investigation found that President Volodymyr Zelensky’s own administration removed guardrails.

To protect their money, the United States and European nations insisted on oversight. They required Ukraine to allow groups of outside experts, known as supervisory boards, to monitor spending, appoint executives and prevent corruption.

Over the past four years, a New York Times investigation found, the Ukrainian government systematically sabotaged that oversight, allowing graft to flourish.

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration has stacked boards with loyalists, left seats empty or stalled them from being set up at all. Leaders in Kyiv even rewrote company charters to limit oversight, keeping the government in control and allowing hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent without outsiders poking around.

Supervisory boards serve an essential oversight function, allowing independent experts, typically from other countries, to scrutinize major decisions inside Ukrainian state-owned companies.

Isn’t it funny that the NY Times has known this ‘for the past four years’ and was only now ready to reveal it? It is quite obvious that something has switched.

As Zelenski is on his way out the former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko may become a viable replacement. She is likely willing (for a price) to do whatever the U.S. demands from her. She also has the necessary seniority to be able to push an agreement through the Ukrainian Rada.

But another roadblock towards a peace agreement is the current leadership of the Ukrainian military. The current commander-in chief, General Alexander Syrski, is not ready to fulfill the Russian demand which will be the core of any agreement.

In an interview with SkyNews he is rejecting to give up on land in the Donbas that his troops are still holding:

Speaking frankly, General Syrskyi, commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Ukraine, signalled that his country’s soldiers would fight on if diplomacy fails – and he warned that the fate of the whole of Europe is at stake.

“Our main mission is to defend our land, our country, and our population,” he said in an exclusive interview in the basement of a building in eastern Ukraine. Sky News has been asked not to disclose the location for security reasons.

“Naturally, for us it is unacceptable to simply give up territory. What does it even mean – to hand over our land? This is precisely why we are fighting; so we do not give up our territory.”

Syrski may have to speak out against giving up land to keep up the moral of his troops. But the intensity with which he does so lets me conclude that he is feeling in this are genuine:

Asked whether the sacrifice of those people who gave their lives defending their country would be in vain if Ukraine is forced to hand over the land it still controls in the Donbas to Moscow, General Syrskyi, speaking in Ukrainian through a translator, said: “You know, I do not even allow myself to consider such a scenario.

“All wars eventually end, and of course we hope ours will end as well. And when it does, a just peace must be established.

“In my understanding, a just peace is peace without preconditions, without giving up territory. It means stopping along the current line of contact.”

The commander then broke into English to say that this means: “Stop. A ceasefire. And after that negotiations, without any conditions.”

Switching back into Ukrainian, he said: “Any other format would be an unjust peace, and for us it is unacceptable.”

Russia has already rejected to stop the fighting at the current frontline. It wants a full peace agreement to end the conflict for good. A ‘just peace’ in Syrski’s sense is simply not on offer.

There are sign that Syrski has become delusional. Since December 1 the Russian side has claimed to have completely ‘liberated’ Pokrovsk and surrounded the neighbor city of Myrnograd. Most observers and war mappers have agreed with that assessment. But the Ukrainian general staff under Syrski is still rejecting the facts:

Ukraine’s military leaders insisted: “Search and assault operations and the elimination of the enemy in urban areas continue in Pokrovsk.

“Taking advantage of unfavourable weather conditions, the invaders made another attempt to flag plant in one of the city’s districts so that propagandists could use it as proof that they had taken control of the entire city.

“After that, they fled in a hurry, and the mopping up of the enemy group continues.”

In his SkyNews interview Syrski is doing likewise:

General Syrskyi offered his assessment of the fight on the ground, saying:

• Ukrainian troops still control the northern part of the fortress city of Pokrovsk in the Donbas and will keep battling to retake the rest of it, contrary to Russian claims to have captured what has been a key target for Moscow for the past 16 months.

Such boneheadedness has cost the lives of many Ukrainian soldiers.

– Excursus –
PBS just released a documentary about a Ukrainian attack during its 2023 counter-offensive: 2000 Meters to Andriivka (vid). (The video is geo-fenced. People not in the U.S. will need a U.S. proxy server to watch it.)

The 1:45 hours long  documentary is authentic. It is using lots of original helmet-cam footing. It follows a group of soldiers during a three months long fight along a 2,000 meter long treeline towards a tactically unimportant hamlet near Bakhmut. When the soldiers, after may losses, finally reach the completely destroyed hamlet they hang up their flag – upside down. The Russian forces retrieved the place soon after that happened.

Alex Robert of History Legends has published a review of it. – End-Excursus –

When the U.S. has found a Ukrainian government which is willing to agree to a peace deal with Russia it will have to look for a military leadership in Ukraine that will support and implement the decision.

General Syrski is unlikely to be willing to do that. He also lacks the standing to be able press on individual units to follow related orders.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Ukraine – Roadblocks to a Peace Agreement appeared first on LewRockwell.

European civilization is dying.  The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy makes this clear.  It has squandered its post-WWII economic and military assistance from the United States by investing in centralized, socialist bureaucracies and expansive welfare States.  By chasing the “climate change” con as a means for European governments to justify total control over the drivers of economic growth, European nations have forsaken cheap energy exploration, private entrepreneurship, and technological innovation.  By depending upon the United States to defend its territorial interests, European nations have destroyed their military capabilities.

In an effort to “juice” their economies with cheap labor and artificial demographic growth, European nations have opened their borders to tens of millions of foreign immigrants.  The natural result is that foreign cultures have steadily eroded and replaced millennia-old European cultures without much resistance.  The Trump administration believes Europe could be effectively “erased” within twenty years.

When living things die, they tend to lash out.  Europe is no exception.  Its political elites have decided to pretend that everything is okay and that the continent remains the life-force of the entire world.  In order to buttress this delusion, European governments have embraced censorship and State-approved propaganda on a scale as obscene as anything that might occur in communist China.  Controlling the “narrative” and silencing dissent are the last gasps of every civilization on its deathbed.

Every day some new horror story emerges from the United Kingdom in which an ordinary citizen is treated as a terrorist for merely expressing an opinion or defending a personal belief.  A recent example involves thirty-four-year-old mother of four Elizabeth Kinney.  It appears Kinney and a former friend were texting about a male acquaintance who had allegedly caused Kinney harm, and she called that man a “faggot.”  The former friend reported Kinney to the authorities because the “abusive and homophobic text messages” caused her “alarm and distress.”

While Kinney was naked and in a bathtub, eleven police officers forced their way into her home and arrested her.  Kinney burst into tears as male officers denied her any privacy, and a female officer informed her that she was being arrested for “malicious communications and hate crime.”  “The Crown place this offense in the highest category of its type due to the effect related to sexual orientation and the greater harm because it had moderate impact,” prosecutors insisted.  Kinney faced ten years in prison, but her attorney begged for leniency.  She has been ordered to perform seventy-two hours of community service, attend ten days of rehabilitation, and pay a fine of several hundred pounds.

All rights are property rights.  The “lesson” that British authorities are trying to “teach” Kinney and other citizens is this: You do not own the thoughts in your head.  You do not own the words you express.  You do not own the private messages that you text to other private citizens.  When your thoughts, words, and texts violate officially approved government “narratives” and ideologies, you will be punished.  Freedom of speech and freedom of conscience do not exist under any government willing to use force to control how citizens think, speak, and text.

In Kinney’s case, British authorities have no problem re-traumatizing a woman who had already been physically abused by sending a dozen cops into her home and forcing her to be naked, vulnerable, and afraid in front of male officers.  Instead, the Crown is upset that Kinney used a gay slur to describe someone not even directly participating in her text conversation with another woman.  When the State is more concerned about insults to men who have allegedly harmed women than the privacy and dignity of women who have allegedly been harmed, the government is complicit in the abuse of its citizens.

There are only a handful of reasons this kind of European totalitarianism hasn’t similarly consumed the United States: (1) America’s First Amendment, (2) Americans’ more resilient love for personal liberty and hostility toward overreaching government, and (3) the Democrats’ inability to flood the 2024 election with enough fraudulent mail-in ballots to pull off back-to-back steals.  Democrats have been criminalizing “hate speech” for decades.  The Biden administration actively censored Americans’ online speech and attempted to erect a permanent “Disinformation Governance Board” within the Department of Homeland Security.

Europe’s totalitarian assaults on free speech are therefore an ongoing national security threat to the United States.  “Protecting” people from “hate speech” has always been a government-contrived Trojan horse for censoring dissent and controlling the flow of information.

Right now Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is whining about random Americans calling him a “retard” after President Trump labeled the governor “seriously retarded” in a Thanksgiving post on Truth Social.  If Americans don’t vigilantly defend the First Amendment’s protections for free speech, then a future Democrat president will no doubt follow Europe’s example by sending well-armed law enforcement officers to Mar-a-Lago to arrest President Trump for hurting Tim Walz’s feelings.  It’s not as if the FBI hasn’t raided Trump’s home with lethal force before.

Europe’s descent into tyranny must be resisted, but a firewall preventing Europe’s tyranny from spreading beyond the ruin of its own continent is essential.

French President Emmanuel Macron wants the authority to block all online content that the government deems “false information.”  Additionally, he wants to establish a news media certification system that would give the State the power to create a veritable “ministry of truth.”

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his political operatives have apparently been using an elaborate web of taxpayer-funded initiatives, billionaire-funded NGOs, and covert propaganda campaigns to target and cripple conservative news outlets in the United States.  The prime minister’s chief of staff has been accused of running a “shadowy astroturf organization” meant to censor conservatives, punish freedom of expression, and eliminate dissent.  Among the U.K. operation’s various objectives, its key mission has allegedly been to “Kill Musk’s Twitter.”

The European Union is so committed to destroying free speech on Elon Musk’s “X” that it has fined the social media platform hundreds of millions of dollars for violating the European Union’s new Digital Services Act.  The DSA empowers European bureaucrats and aristocrats to control most online information and allows the EU to elevate its preferred “narratives” over the opinions of common citizens.

European governments are so afraid of Americans’ free speech that they are doing everything in their power to censor, fine, and criminally punish American citizens.  As Secretary of State Marco Rubio states plainly in a recent post on “X,” “The European Commission’s $140 million fine isn’t just an attack on @X, it’s an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments.  The days of censoring Americans online are over.”

Censoring dissent is a sign of political weakness.  It is a telltale sign of Europe’s looming demise.  Any civilization so vulnerable that it cannot withstand opposing points of view certainly cannot withstand anything more pointed or explosive than uncomfortable words.  Governments that fear the private thoughts of the people know that their days are numbered.

Americans should support those in Europe who still believe in freedom and personal liberty.  We should ally ourselves with the millions who wish to live their lives free from government’s choking grip.  We should not continue supporting the governments doing the choking.  We share no common cause with tyrants.  To liberate the oppressed, Americans must allow European totalitarianism to destroy itself.

This article was originally published on American Thinker.

The post Europe Is Dying appeared first on LewRockwell.

I did not think it would be possible for New York Attorney General, Leticia James, and former FBI Director, James Comey, to be prosecuted. And I was correct that Democrats would protect  their agents who tried to destroy President Trump. Republicans are too weak to fight their enemies. Indeed Republicans think their enemies are over there in foreign lands–Russians, Iranians, Chinese, Venezuelans.

A Democrat judge dismissed the grand jury charges against James and Comey on the grounds that the US attorney prosecuting the case was illegally appointed. The case was not dismissed on the grounds that there was no evidence, or on the grounds that the evidence against them presented to the grand jury was false, or that the grand jury was politically biased against the defendants. In other words, even if we assume the judge’s assertion of illegal appointment is correct, the appointment has nothing to do with the case against James and Comey.

The US Justice department last Thursday failed in its attempt to secure a new indictment against New York attorney general Leticia James when the grand jury refused the indictment. It is taken for granted that the prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. Yet the case against Leticia James, a case strong enough to have already secured a grand jury indictment, was refused by a second grand jury. What is going on here?  Did the prosecutor  intentionally present a bad case?  I remember AG Bondi saying that the Justice Department was staffed with Democrats. Are jurors in New York too fearful to indict Democrats?  Do they fear threats and harassment by thugs?

Remember, the charge against Leticia James is that she committed mortgage fraud– the same charge on which she attempted to frame President Trump. In Trump’s case, there was no evidence of fraud. It was only Leticia James’ assertion. Moreover, there were no complaints of fraud against Trump from the people he allegedly defrauded. All of the lenders said they were pleased with the loans. No one suffered any loss. Leticia James knew that in the corrupt New York so-called “justice system” she could convict a person like Trump, who has been demonized by the media. She knew that there would be some black jurors influenced by the demonization of white people as racists and exploiters who would see in the case against President Trump a way of dealing a blow against their oppressors. Vengeful jurors were the basis for Leticia James prosecution of President Trump.

In the case of the indictment of Letitia James, the evidence is completely clear. She lied on her mortgage application that her rental property in Virginia was her place of residence. It was completely clear that she lied about her residence in order to save thousands of dollars in mortgage costs.

Now ask yourself what is the importance to the facts in the case of a prosecutor being dismissed by a federal Democrat judge as improperly appointed? Does it invalidate the evidence? If not, why is the indictment invalidated?

More importantly, why does a Democrat judge want a New York Attorney General who has committed a criminal act to remain NY attorney general?

Remember also that in the case of James Comey, the Democrat US attorney appointed to prosecute Comey leaked to the media that she could not find a case against Comey. The purpose of the leak was to prejudice the jury pool against finding Comey guilty if prosecuted by a different US attorney.

As you can see, Democrats view law as a political weapon, and not as a means of obtaining justice.

Democrats do not have a concept of justice that applies to everyone equally. Democrats have a multi-tiered concept of justice. For example, a black American cannot be held to the same accountability as a white American. A black criminal is a victim of white racist society, and his crime is the fault of white society. The result of this approach to criminal justice is that Democrat judges release heartened black criminals because they are more concerned to be fair to the criminal then to be fair to the society in which the criminal performs his criminal deeds. This leniency toward black criminals ranges over a wide variety of criminal acts. For example, the Democrats in San Francisco passed a law that it was not a criminal act for a black to steal up to $950 in merchandise per day per store. Theft was no longer a criminal act. It was reduced to a misdemeanor. The same reduction in punishment, if there is punishment, is seen all the way up the scale of crimes even to the act of murder. This report illustrates the legal privileges that white liberals have extended to blacks.

Immigrant invaders are another group that Democrats favor for legal privileges. Democrats endeavor to provide immigrant invaders with the rights of citizenship, even though they entered the country illegally. Indeed, Democrat mayors, city councils, and governors attempt to prevent deportation of illegal aliens. Democrats also endow the sexually perverse with special legal privileges. For example, Democrats have imposed on females the right of biological men to have access to women’s private places such as toilets and showers if the male claims that he is a woman. A false claim takes precedence over biological fact and female privacy. Democrats also impose biological males on female sports teams. It is obvious that in America there is no longer a uniform standard of justice. Punishment varies according to the diverse legal privileges based on race, claimed gender, sexual preference, and citizenship or lack thereof. Instead of the legal profession objecting to the destruction of equality under the law, diverse punishments based on diverse categories of people are becoming institutionalized in criminal justice.

The trial of Daniel Penny in New York’s corrupt criminal justice system suggests that Democrat prosecutors associate guilt with whiteness and male toxicity. Penny a white former US marine restrained Jordan Neely, a black man who was threatening passengers on a New York subway. Neely died while struggling against restraint. The New York prosecutors, Dafna Yoran and Jillian Shartrand, accused Penny of killing Jordan Neely by strangulation.

There was no evidence of strangulation. The prosecutors’ medical witness produced the strangulation verdict prior to drug testing being conducted. She became flustered on cross examination and said that, even if Jordan Neely had sufficient fentanyl in his system to kill an elephant, she would have found that he was strangled. The strangulation charge was later refuted by competent medical autopsy.

Let’s ask ourselves a question: Why was this case brought? Clearly Penny was acting as a good Samaritan, putting his own life in danger by confronting a deranged person of his own size and weight. Penny did not know Jordan Neely and had no reason to kill him. When prosecutors gratuitously charge a good Samaritan acting to protect the public, they discourage intervention when the public is endangered. Although the jury cleared Penny of the prosecutors’ false charges, the message sent to potential good Samaritans is to avoid involvement, particularly if you are white and the source of the trouble or danger is a black. This message has been taught all over Europe and is the reason why European men do not intervene when white European women are raped by black immigrant-invaders.

The two Democrat prosecutors thought that they had another George Floyd-Derek Chauvin case. Another black man choked by another toxic white male. Conviction would bring them kudos from the radicals growing in power in the Democrat Party. Perhaps one day they would be sitting on the US Supreme Court and transforming society.

In a series of articles, I have shown that George Floyd died from an overdose of fentanyl and not from strangulation. This was known at the time of the trial, but the evidence was withheld  from the jury and the media suppressed it. The Democrats needed a white cop villain to justify their inaction while blacks and left-wing Democrats looted and burned business sectors in Democrats cities. For Democrats justice now serves ideology and political causes. This is being institutionalized in the American justice system, and it signifies the death of Justice in America.

The post Democrats Have Destroyed Equality Under Law appeared first on LewRockwell.

After years of lauding the Ukrainian actor, Volodymyr Zelensky as the “Savior of the West,” the U.S. media, including the New York Times, is starting to concede what sensible adults have understood since 2021—namely, that he was installed by the gangster oligarchs who have long run the country for their benefit.

Two days ago, the Times published a report Zelensky’s Government Sabotaged Oversight, Allowing Corruption to Fester, which focuses on allegations Zelensky et al. siphoned off and laundered $100 million from the state-owned nuclear power company, Energoatom.

Mr. Zelensky’s administration has blamed Energoatom’s supervisory board for failing to stop the corruption. But it was Mr. Zelensky’s government itself that neutered Energoatom’s supervisory board, The Times found.

It’s not clear why the Times has now decided to shift its reporting from “Zelensky the Messiah” to “Zelensky the Crook.”

To me, one of the most interesting details to emerge from this scandal is the following recently reported in the Kviv Independent:

Kyiv Appeals Court ordered on Dec. 3 the release of Ruslan Mahamedrasulov, a detective with Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), who had been investigating the country’s largest corruption case involving the state-run nuclear power monopoly Energoatom.

Critics argued that the arrest of Mahamedrasulov was a part of a crackdown on Ukraine’s anti-corruption institutions, describing it as a political move.

Mahamedrasulov, the head of a NABU detective unit, and his 65-year-old father, Sentyabr, were arrested by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) in July, a day before President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law that that took away the independence of NABU and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO).

After protests in Kyiv and pressure from Western partners, the president signed a new bill on July 31, restoring the independence of these anti-corruption institutions.

Mahamedrasulov and his father were charged with collaborating with Russia for allegedly maintaining contacts with Moscow and serving as an intermediary in cannabis sales to the Russian republic of Dagestan.

The charge of “collaborating with Russia” is an extremely useful accusation to make against anyone in the West who questions the U.S. Military-Industrial-Complex, NATO, and the vast legion of lobbyists, propagandists, thieves, and assorted parasites who make a handsome living by maintaining the fiction that Russia is the great enemy of the West.

The Mahamedrasulov case reminds me of the incident in December 2016 when then Vice President Joe Biden told Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk that the $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee was contingent on the removal of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was investigating allegations of corruption in the Burisma Holdings, of which Hunter Biden was a handsomely paid board member.

Readers who are interested in learning more about this story are invited to read my post of last year, Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian Adventure

Burisma was generally understood to be owned by the Ukrainian oligarch, Mykola Zlochevsky, but a 2012 study by the Anti-Corruption Action Center presented evidence that Ihor Kolomoisky held a controlling interest. Kolomoisky, with his media holdings, played a decisive role in getting Zelensky elected (see my post, Ukrainian Corruption Scandal Likely Tip of Iceberg).

Lindsey Graham and other U.S. politicians who have made junkets to Kiev understand how this game works. Both political parties have benefitted enormously from maintaining enmity with Russia, even after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. This momentous event provided a unique opportunity for the United States and Europe to bury the hatchet with Russia, but our corrupt ruling class preferred to maintain suspicion and hostility for their own selfish designs.

This is why—against the stern advice and warnings of George Kennan (see A Fateful Error) and other Cold War strategists—the U.S. insisted on expanding NATO all the way to Russia’s borders.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post The West Needs Bogeymen (Especially Russia) appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Guardian has a report out which says that at least 60,000 people were murdered by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) when they captured El Fasher in October, which would be the largest single massacre since Rwanda in 1994. Just in the last few days the RSF have reportedly killed 46 children and scores of adults in suicide drone attacks.

These massacres are made possible by the United Arab Emirates, who have been funneling weapons to the RSF through a complex international supply chain. Much like the Saudi-led genocide in Yemen from 2015 to 2022 (which the UAE also participated in), this is yet another instance of a tyrannical Gulf state monarchy committing unfathomable atrocities while its friends in Washington look the other way.

In 2017 a leaked State Department memo explained that it is internal US policy to tolerate human rights abuses of US-aligned nations like Saudi Arabia and Egypt while making a big deal about alleged humanitarian abuses in places like Iran. The UAE is a regional partner of the United States, so its genocidal crimes are overlooked.

President Trump has made a few noises about making peace in Sudan and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has obliquely wagged his finger at the UAE for its role in the genocide, but meanwhile these mass atrocities are taking place completely unimpeded.

It’s cute how the western empire artificially props up these genocidal Gulf state dictatorships and then bangs on about the importance of supporting Israel and its genocidal atrocities because it’s “the only democracy in the middle east”. It’s like, YOU killed the democracy in the middle east, bitch.

❖

As the US war machine escalates in Venezuela I’m seeing more and more online accounts claiming to be Venezuelans urging Trump to attack Caracas and remove Maduro by military force.

As a general rule you should always be skeptical of anyone saying “Please invade/bomb/sanction my country,” because it means they either (A) aren’t living in that country, or (B) have some socioeconomic reason to believe they’ll be safe from the repercussions of what they’re asking for which everyone else will suffer from.

But honestly it doesn’t even matter if they are 100 percent legit. I don’t care if you really are an impoverished Venezuelan civilian living in Venezuela, it’s still an indisputable fact that US regime change interventionism is reliably disastrous. Your position isn’t made any less stupid and crazy by where you happen to live; anyone who supports US regime change interventionism is still always wrong.

❖

If Maduro really was a monstrous tyrannical dictator the US would be selling him F-35s.

❖

What’s funny about Trump supporters who justify war with Venezuela because it’s “in our hemisphere” is that they don’t mean it’s in the same hemisphere as the United States. They mean it’s theirs. They see half the planet as a direct US territory.

❖

The Washington Post has published two separate articles in the last few days admonishing Americans for complaining about being unable to afford groceries, one titled “Actually, today’s food prices are a bargain” and the other titled “Why you may not want lower prices as much as you think you do”.

Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post to yell at the poors to quit whining and work harder.

❖

After genocidal war criminal Joe Biden was elected in 2020 I wrote an article titled “Biden Will Have The Most Diverse, Intersectional Cabinet Of Mass Murderers Ever Assembled”.

On Friday the Hague fugitive former president was presented with an award at the International LGBTQ+ Leaders Conference for running “the most inclusive administration in US history.”

The US empire is impossible to satirize.

❖

I’m good with so-called “extreme” pro-Palestine positions like saying every Israeli family who wasn’t there pre-Balfour Declaration needs to leave, because you never come to the negotiating table with your compromise. If you come to the Israelis saying “Perhaps we might one day have two small pieces of land with no military?” if you’re lucky you might wind up getting a pat on the ass and a slice of land the size of a Walmart parking lot. If you begin from the position of “This entire state is illegitimate, all of you get the fuck out” you’re starting from somewhere that might actually end in a positive outcome for Palestinians.

❖

I saw an account I follow on social media talking about their “relationship” with a chatbot the other day. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen someone doing this. For some reason people feel compelled to not only engage in this behavior but also to ask for support and validation about it from their online community, like they’re coming out of the closet about a sexual orientation or something.

It’s weird because obviously I’m not going to go pick on someone who’s plainly suffering from crushing loneliness and probably some mental health struggles, but also it’s so painfully dystopian. This is a really dark thing that’s happening.

I mean, what does it say about people that they can feel like they’re having a loving relationship with something that has no subjective experience? An essential component of any real loving relationship is an acute curiosity about what your partner’s experience is like, what they’re feeling and thinking and what it’s like to be them from moment to moment. If you’re not having that, then obviously you can’t really say you care about them. But some people obviously don’t experience interpersonal relationships with others in this way, because if they did they wouldn’t think that what they were having with these chatbots was a relationship.

But then again I’ve definitely interacted with people who relate to others in that way. If you’ve ever been trapped in a corner at some social event by someone who monologues at you about their own thoughts and interests without taking any interest in yours, that’s pretty much the vibe you get. They’re not relating to you as a real person with your own thoughts and interests and subjective experience; to them you’re just a sounding board for their own thoughts they want to hear themselves saying out loud. In such situations I’ve literally found myself thinking “I don’t need to be here for this conversation. I could replace myself with a nodding animatronic replica and they’d never know.”

So maybe it’s better that some of these people aren’t in real relationships, I dunno. If you’re emotionally incapable of seeing your partner as a real person like yourself, maybe it is better if you’re not roping a real human being into an emotional relationship with you and just spending your time verbally masturbating into a mechanical ear instead. At least that way you’re not hurting anyone else.

So I’m not quite sure how I feel about this just yet. Hell of a time to be alive.

________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

The post Sudan, Venezuela, and … appeared first on LewRockwell.

It’s About Time!

The vaccine industrial complex is likely fuming this morning after a federal advisory panel voted to end the long-standing recommendation that all newborns receive a hepatitis B shot at birth.

The vote marks a major victory for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” effort to overhaul the childhood vaccine schedule amid questions over the exponential rise in childhood autism.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 8 to 3 to advise that mothers who test negative for hepatitis B should decide with their doctor “when or if” their newborns receive the vaccine.

Please read the rest of this important article HERE.

And please share it with your friends and family.

The post CDC Advisory Panel Votes To End Hepatitis B Shot Recommendation For Newborns appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Bill Madden:

This gentleman says it all in 4 minutes.  Our military is a battering ram for the major owners of Corporate America.  We change regimes for economic reasons, not political reasons.  Without an abundance of natural resources, our leaders don’t care if a country is socialist, communist or whatever.  I sent the message below previously but am sending again with the referenced video for the many who might have missed it.

Like most printed and video communication, discussion of our international oppression contains about five minutes of important information spread over a much longer time period.  My desire for more efficient utilization of the audience’s time is strictly from a marketing perspective.  The longer and/or more complex the communication, the fewer the number of people who will absorb it.  If you communicate to impress the other communicators, the less effective it will be with the people who need the information.

In essence, we ruled the world after WW II and Corporate America prospered.  But, prospering soon leads to exploitation and, like Iran in 1953, we were invited to leave Venezuela when Hugo Chavez became president.  We launched at least one coup against Chavez and, it is alleged, we provided the cancer that killed him.  We have attempted to starve the Venezuelans into revolution and regime change but that is not working so we are planning to invade Venezuela because of “drug trafficking” and/or “socialism”.  We tolerate drug trafficking from other countries like Mexico and socialism from countries without an abundance of natural resources but not from Venezuela.

We are a ship without a rudder.

The post Power Corrupts and Then Disintegrates appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Ginny Garner:

Lew,

Oliver Stone explained on X how he agreed to appear on the ABC News Special on the JFK assassination and then how the network set him up and deceived him.

The recent @ABC News Special “Truth and Lies: Who Killed JFK?” went to great pains to convince me to appear (along with #JimDiEugenio, who I insisted would join me on the air for “protection purposes,” as I made the mistake of giving an interview to Peter Jennings in 2003 that… pic.twitter.com/Us0pYBVJl6

— Oliver Stone (@TheOliverStone) December 4, 2025

The post Oliver Stone Denounces ABC News Special on JFK Assassination appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Ginny Garner:

Lew,

Jimmy Dore says Trump wants to turn Venezuela into Libya and compares Trump’s endorsement of the US overthrow of Libya’s government with his planned overthrow of Venezuela’s government.

See here.

The post Planned Venezuela Regime Change Replay of Libya appeared first on LewRockwell.

Pearl Harbor Historiography: A Lesson in Academic Housecleaning, By Gary North

The Establishment Cover-Up Continues

The Truth About World War II, by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

More Truth About World War II, by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

More Falsehoods of World War II, by Ron Unz

The True History of World War II — Ron Unz video

Pearl Harbor Facts and Proof, by Carl Herman

Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy –– Book by Percy L. Greaves, Jr.

Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War — Book by George Morgenstern
George Morgenstern’s Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War has to be one of the bravest books ever written. It’s a wonder it came out at all, but it did, in 1947, just as the war ended and FDR had died. It argues that the bombing was not unexpected, but provoked—and even wanted—by the administration as a “backdoor to the war” that FDR really desired as a means to rescue his presidency.

The McCollum Memorandum: A Story of Washington, D.C. in 1940-41: Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Journey from Deterrence to Provocation on the Road to Pearl Harbor,  by Douglas P. Horne

The McCollum Memorandum: A Story of Washington, D.C. in 1940-41, is the most accurate and complete account yet published about how the United States truly entered the Second World War. It is the story of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s gradual journey from deterrence to provocation—from October 7, 1940 through December 11, 1941—on America’s road to Pearl Harbor. The author utilizes official memoranda, state documents, the diary entries and sworn testimony of the principal actors in the story, and the documented results of the remarkable American and British codebreaking efforts in 1940 and 1941, to tell the dramatic story. In numerous scenes reminiscent of the best historical novels, the inner thoughts and private conversations of many of the key historical figures of the day are presented as dramatic reenactments, based faithfully on the hard kernels of truth in the documentary record.

Deception, Intrigue, and the Road to War (Vol. 1 of 2): A Chronology of Significant Events Detailing President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Successful … Against Germany During the Second World War, by Douglas P. Horne

Deception, Intrigue, and the Road to War (Vol. 2 of 2): A Chronology of Significant Events Detailing President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Successful … Against Germany During the Second World War, by Douglas P. Horne

Over 75 years after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that launched America’s entry into the Second World War, one persistent question remains unanswered: “Did President Franklin D. Roosevelt have foreknowledge of the attack—and did he (and his senior military leadership) then withhold that knowledge from his overseas commanders in Hawaii?” Douglas P. Horne, a former Naval Officer who recently completed 40 years of combined military-and-civilian service to the Federal Government, deals directly with this most difficult of all questions about World War II, in the first major “Revisionist” work about Pearl Harbor written in the last decade. Contrary to recent assertions by mainstream historians that the Revisionist hypothesis is now dead, Horne finds it to be more robust than ever. In the first known work that studies FDR’s foreign policy “on the road to Pearl Harbor” as a timeline, or chronology (which assesses numerous factors—including codebreaking, diplomacy, military strategy, the unfolding events in Europe, and the personality and words of FDR himself), the author compellingly presents his own unique findings regarding the longstanding allegation by Revisionists that FDR used the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as a “back door to war.” Horne concludes there is, indeed, persuasive evidence that once FDR’s undeclared naval war against Hitler in the north Atlantic failed to provide the desired casus belli (which would have allowed him to request a declaration of war against Nazi Germany), then consequently, permitting the Imperial Japanese Navy to attack Pearl Harbor—without providing any specific advance warning to the Hawaiian field commanders (i.e., allowing the Japanese to “fire the first shot” and commit “an overt act of war”)—became the last, best chance for FDR to get a united America into the Second World War. FDR’s overriding goal throughout 1940-41 was the imperative to get America involved, as a belligerent, in the war against Hitler’s Germany, and the Japanese attack accomplished that goal, as Roosevelt knew it would. Both the timing of when FDR apparently received his foreknowledge of the impending attack, and the mechanism by which it was likely delivered, are thoroughly considered in this work. Author Douglas Horne also provides a critical assessment of the most recent Revisionist works, and using a new approach to the “big question” about Pearl Harbor, provides a bold new interpretation of events that will surprise most readers.

Horror in the East — Documentary

Part I

Part II

Horror in the East: Japan and the Atrocities of World War II (2000) is a two-part BBC documentary film that examines certain actions, including atrocities, and attitudes, of the Imperial Japanese Army in the lead up to and during World War II. The film also examines attitudes held by the British and Americans, toward the Japan

Japanese War Crimes and Trials

A shocking in-depth look at the extreme inhumanity and atrocities committed by the fascist Japanese military during World War II. The horrific conduct of the Japanese rival if not exceed the brutality of Hitler’s SS

The Looting of Asia — Chalmers Johnson review article

The post Pearl Harbor — December 7, 1941 — “A Date Which Will Live In Infamy” appeared first on LewRockwell.

The conclusion that soaring asset prices mean the economy is strong is a hallucination that goes unrecognized because the entire financial system is hallucinating.

Consider the data that the financial sector bases conclusions / decisions on (i.e. the data that the financial sector “trains” on) in a Bubble Economy like the present. The Bubble Economy’s core goal is to inflate the valuation of assets not by increasing utility-value or productivity but by artificially expanding credit and leverage.

This benefits those who already own assets, as their collateral (i.e. “wealth”) expands without any effort, and this swelling collateral enables them to borrow money to buy more assets.

This also benefits those with high incomes and modest debt, as these boost their credit rating, enabling them to borrow at lower rates than the bottom 90% of the workforce–credit they can use to outbid the bottom 90% to snap up assets which are soaring in value.

This Bubble Economy dynamic is a self-reinforcing series of iterations: the central bank expands credit and leverage, goosing asset prices higher, which boosts the collateral foundation for further credit expansion. This flood-tide of credit flows to those whose assets are generating more collateral, enabling them to buy more assets and outbid the less creditworthy while also increasing their consumer spending.

Since the top 10% own most of the assets bubbling higher, this “wealth effect” is concentrated in the top 10%, who account for roughly 50% of all consumer spending.

The Bubble Economy financial system uses this self-referential data to “train” its responses and conclusions. This is analogous to the way that AI systems “train” on data they generated in previous iterations.

This leads to the topic of Model Collapse, the degradation of AI’s output (answers) when it starts training on its own curated output rather than raw data. This then leads to a provocative Unified Theory of Model Collapse (via Tom D.), which posits that model collapse is not limited to AI, it applies equally well to humans, mice and pretty much every other system.

The basic idea is that raw, unadulterated data–“in the wild” data that hasn’t been “cooked,” curated or massaged–is the foundation of model stability and utility. We can call this authentic data, as it includes outliers, conflicting data points, ambiguous readings and all the messiness of the real world.

Once the “raw” data has been “cooked” (channeling French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss), its authenticity is lost and the “cooked” / curated / processed data is increasingly artificial.

Each iteration of curating / processing data further distances the new output from “raw” / authentic data. Over time, the coherence and meaning of the output is degraded to the point at AI generates hallucinations that are presented as “accurate answers.”

This is the dynamic I describe in my book Ultra-Processed Life: the substitution of authenticity with artifice leads to system collapse, not just in the digital realm but in the realm of human experience.

As artifice–data and models drawn from “cooked,” curated, massaged, processed sources–replaces “raw” authenticity, entire populations and systems start hallucinating while believing the artificial model is “real.” In this state of delusion, they believe their hallucinations are reflecting “the real world”: they’re blind to the distance between the Ultra-Processed Life they accept as “real” (i.e. “raw”) and the actual raw real world.

In this state, the conclusions / answers provided by both AI and humans are hallucinations that are presented as “fact.” Those who have lost touch with “raw” real world data then accept these hallucinations as “fact” until the inevitable collision with reality.

The conclusion that soaring asset prices mean the economy is strong and so all is well is a hallucination that goes unrecognized because the entire financial system is hallucinating because it’s “training” on artificial data that it generated in a self-referential feedback loop of artificial stimulus and the resulting rise in asset valuations and spending. That none of this stimulus boosted utility value or productivity is left out of the “training,” which focuses solely on curated data that supports the hallucination.

Here is how the author of the Unified Theory of Model Collapse describes this process:

“Training on AI-generated data causes models to hallucinate, become delusional, and deviate from reality to the point where they’re no longer useful: i.e., Model Collapse.

The more ‘poisoned’ the data is with artificial content, the more quickly an AI model collapses as minority data is forgotten or lost. The majority of data becomes corrupted, and long-tail statistical data distributions are either ignored or replaced with nonsense.

Those models lose the capacity to understand long-tail information (improbable, but important data) that is no longer represented. Information on topics like serious injuries, getting punched in the nose, how dangerous wild animals can be, and what it’s like to truly be hungry because you can’t find food. Their models default to synthetic human artifice instead of understanding real implications.

The proposed thesis is that AI models, human minds, larger human cultures, and our furry little friends, all train on available data.

Brains (or brain regions) undergo model collapse just like AI systems. They become unable to reference reality, they become delusional, and hallucinate things that make no sense. Hence, the ‘Why do we need farmers when food just comes from the store’ level of disconnection observed in urban populations.

In a heavily urban setting, humans train on ‘data sets’ that are nearly wholly artificial. The less time spent outside, the less time spent interacting with the real physical world around them, the less accurate their model of reality becomes. A rocky slope up a hill may be 100% real, a grass playing field may be 70% real, and a concrete sidewalk may be around 40% real. At some point, however, the ‘salted’ artificial data is sufficient to corrupt the real-world knowledge of individuals and cause model collapse.

I am reminded of an anecdote from when I was a child. A cousin came to play with my siblings and I. My family had been raised going camping and hiking and wandering the wilds since before I can remember. Somewhere around age 3 or 4, our cousin came to visit and we went cruising up a hill hiking with our fathers in tow.

This cousin, however, had grown up in a suburban hellhole where everything was artificial. As such, he found it nearly impossible to navigate a sloped hill. His experience with walking and running had only ever consisted of flat, soft, curated environments produced by other people. He had no experience, or ability, in navigating a dirt trail at a 20 degree incline. His neurological model of the world was trained on human-produced data, and could not function when confronted with reality.

The universal thesis for model collapse is that advanced modeling systems, when trained on information produced by entities of their own class, lose information fidelity inter-generationally. After multiple generations of training on poisoned datasets, the models themselves become delusional, hallucinate false information, and cease to function.

In the same way that AI models become delusional and hallucinate when too much AI-generated data is in the training dataset, humans also become delusional when too much human-generated data is in their training dataset.”

The author then applies this to the famous Mouse Utopia experiment of John Calhoun, in which a handful of breeding-pair mice were put in a large artificial “world” with unlimited food and water and space for 6,000 mice. The researchers anticipated the mice would proliferate to the maximum limit of 6,000 and then experience some version of population overshoot.

Read the Whole Article

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A heist has a scoreboard. After the robbery, you don’t argue about theories. You count what’s missing.

For fifty years, we’ve been told a story: that your struggle is a personal failure. That the economy is just “evolving.” That the system is broken.

The system is not broken. It was picked clean.

The following numbers are the evidence. This is the financial autopsy of the American Dream.

CRIME #1: THE GREAT WAGE THEFT

• The Promise (1947-1973): Historically, there existed a fundamental agreement between labor and capital, often referred to as the social contract, which dictated that for every 1% increase in the economic value generated by a worker (their productivity), their compensation would also rise by a corresponding 1%. This reciprocal relationship was widely perceived as equitable, ensuring that the benefits of increased efficiency and output were shared fairly between those who contributed their labor and those who provided the means of production. This arrangement fostered a sense of shared prosperity, where workers could reasonably expect their efforts to translate directly into an improved standard of living.
• The Heist (1973-Today): This pivotal agreement, which once promised a fair exchange between labor and reward, was systematically dismantled. The consequences have been stark and undeniable. Since 1973, the productivity of the American worker has soared, demonstrating an increase of over 65%. This remarkable surge in output, a testament to dedication and innovation, has not been met with a commensurate rise in compensation. In sharp contrast, the inflation-adjusted pay for these same workers has stagnated, growing by less than 10% over the same period. This widening chasm between productivity and pay reveals a fundamental shift in the economic landscape, where the gains of increased efficiency are no longer equitably shared, leading to a significant erosion of the American worker’s economic standing.
• The Takedown: They convinced you to work harder, smarter, faster. You did. You delivered 65% more value. And they paid you almost nothing for it. All that extra wealth you created—the trillions of dollars—was stolen directly from your paycheck.

This wasn’t a natural progression of the economy; it was a deliberate strategy, a silent war declared on the American worker. For decades, a systematic dismantling of labor protections, a weakening of unions, and a fervent push for “efficiency” paved the way for this grand heist. Companies reaped record profits, executives received astronomical bonuses, and shareholders saw their portfolios swell, all while the average worker’s wages stagnated or barely kept pace with inflation.

The promise was always the same: if you just pushed a little harder, if you adopted the latest productivity tools, if you embraced the “gig economy,” you would share in the prosperity. But that promise was a mirage. The “trickle-down” never reached the bottom. Instead, the wealth flowed upwards, concentrating in the hands of a select few, leaving the vast majority struggling to keep up with rising living costs, dwindling benefits, and an ever-increasing sense of precarity. The American Dream, once built on the bedrock of fair labor and a path to upward mobility, began to erode, replaced by a new reality where hard work no longer guaranteed a fair share of the bounty. This was the first offensive, and the American worker, unknowingly, bore the brunt of the assault.

CRIME #2: THE CEO PAY EXPLOSION

• The Old Rule (1965): The average CEO of a major company made 20 times what their typical worker made. This was seen as a responsible balance.
• The New Rule (Today): The chasm between the compensation of top executives and their average employees has widened to an astonishing degree, reaching a point where the typical CEO now earns a staggering 350 times what their typical worker brings home. This isn’t a static figure; in certain years, this disparity has even surged past the 400-to-1 mark, highlighting a troubling trend in corporate compensation structures. This immense gap isn’t just a matter of numbers; it reflects a fundamental shift in how value is perceived and distributed within companies, raising questions about fairness, economic equality, and the very definition of a “living wage” for the vast majority of the workforce. The increasing concentration of wealth at the very top, while wages for the rank and file stagnate or grow minimally, has profound implications for social mobility, consumer spending, and the overall health of the economy.
• The Takedown: This isn’t a reflection of 20-fold genius. It’s the insidious outcome of a system deliberately designed to favor the powerful. The boardroom, once a place of strategic leadership, devolved into an exclusive, self-serving club. Within its insulated walls, executives awarded themselves exorbitant paychecks, diverting vast sums of money that rightfully belonged to the very individuals who powered their success: the American worker. This capital, generated by their labor and dedication, should have translated into substantial raises, comprehensive benefits, and secure pensions. Instead, it became a private fund for the elite, enriching a select few at the expense of the many, systematically undermining the economic well-being and future security of the workforce. This systematic siphoning of wealth is not an accident; it is the calculated result of a deeply flawed and deliberately rigged system that prioritizes corporate greed over the prosperity of its people.

CRIME #3: THE DISAPPEARING PENSION

• The Old Rule (1980): At the peak of American industrial strength, a remarkable figure – over 60% of the nation’s workforce – enjoyed the security of a defined-benefit pension. This wasn’t merely a savings plan; it was a promise, a guarantee of a stable and predictable income throughout their retirement years. This robust system provided a bedrock of financial certainty for millions of families, allowing them to plan for the future with confidence, knowing that their golden years would be cushioned by a reliable stream of income, independent of market fluctuations or individual investment decisions. It represented a fundamental component of the social contract between employers and employees, a testament to an era where corporate responsibility extended beyond immediate profits to encompass the long-term well-being of its workforce. This widespread access to defined-benefit pensions played a crucial role in fostering economic stability, empowering workers, and shaping the American middle class.
• The New Rule (Today): This alarming statistic marks a dramatic decline in an area once considered a cornerstone of American economic strength and worker protection. The percentage of the workforce represented by unions has plummeted to less than 15%, a stark contrast to historical highs. This collapse signifies a significant shift in the power dynamics between labor and management, leading to widespread implications for wages, benefits, working conditions, and the overall economic security of American workers. The erosion of union membership is not merely a number; it represents a fundamental change in the landscape of the American labor movement, weakening its ability to advocate for fair treatment and a living wage for a vast segment of the population.
• The Takedown: The American dream, once built on the bedrock of secure employment and a comfortable retirement, has been systematically dismantled. They, the architects of this economic shift, didn’t just tinker with the system; they fundamentally overhauled it, exchanging the promise of a secure retirement for the perilous gamble of a 401(k). This move, far from an improvement, effectively hitched the financial security of millions of workers to the volatile whims of Wall Street – the very same institution whose reckless behavior triggered the devastating market crash of 2008.

This wasn’t an accidental outcome but a deliberate transfer of risk. Corporations, once responsible for managing pension funds and ensuring their employees’ golden years, deftly sidestepped that obligation. They shed the burden from their own balance sheets, effectively pushing the financial precarity from their boardrooms directly onto the kitchen tables of working-class families. The individual, once shielded by collective responsibility, was now singularly exposed to the market’s unpredictable surges and devastating downturns, forced to become an amateur investment manager in a complex and often unforgiving financial landscape. This shift represents a profound betrayal of the social contract, leaving the American worker more vulnerable than ever before.

CRIME #4: THE UNION BUST

• The Peak (1954): In the mid-20th century, a significant portion of the American private-sector workforce—approximately 35%—was represented by labor unions. This robust union membership served as a crucial counter-balance to the inherent power of corporations. Unions played a vital role in advocating for workers’ rights, negotiating for fair wages, safe working conditions, and reasonable benefits, thereby contributing to a more equitable distribution of wealth and influence in the economy. This period is often seen as a golden age for the American worker, where collective bargaining provided a powerful voice that ensured employees were not merely cogs in the industrial machine but valued contributors with a share in the nation’s prosperity. The presence of strong unions compelled businesses to consider the welfare of their employees, fostering an environment where a significant portion of the workforce enjoyed a degree of economic security and upward mobility that is less prevalent in later decades. This era truly represented a time when the power dynamics between labor and capital were more evenly matched, due in no small part to the widespread embrace of unionization.
• The Collapse (Today): That number, which once represented a significant portion of the workforce, has been systematically crushed, plummeting to a mere 6%. This drastic decline reflects a concerted and sustained effort to dismantle the power and influence of the American worker, stripping away their collective bargaining rights and eroding their economic security. The consequences of this systematic crushing are far-reaching, impacting not only individual livelihoods but also the broader economic landscape and the very fabric of American society.
• The Takedown: The most crucial metric on this scoreboard is undeniably the strength and prevalence of labor unions. These organizations stood as the singular, well-structured, and adequately financed entities whose fundamental purpose was to champion the cause of the average worker, ensuring they received a fair share of the profits generated by their labor. The deliberate and systematic dismantling of these unions was not merely an incidental outcome, but rather a calculated and indispensable prerequisite for the entire audacious economic heist that followed. Without the formidable opposition posed by organized labor, the path was cleared for a redistribution of wealth that overwhelmingly favored corporate interests and the ownership class, at the direct expense of the working population. Their destruction effectively neutralized the primary force dedicated to economic justice and equity for the American worker, setting the stage for an era of unprecedented wage stagnation, benefit erosion, and increasing income inequality.

These numbers are not abstract. They are the reason you feel it every day:

The Erosion of the American Dream: A Generational Crisis

The American Dream, once a beacon of opportunity where a single income could comfortably support a family, has become an increasingly elusive ideal for many. The stark realities of modern economic life paint a sobering picture, revealing a systemic shift that has fundamentally altered the financial landscape for the average worker.

The Two-Income Trap: Fifty years ago, the notion of a single income sustaining a household, including homeownership, education, and a comfortable retirement, was not just a pipe dream but a common reality. Today, the necessity of two incomes to achieve a comparable standard of living highlights a dramatic and alarming decline in purchasing power. This isn’t merely an anecdotal observation; it’s a testament to the stagnation of wages relative to the skyrocketing costs of essential goods and services, from housing and healthcare to education and everyday necessities. The economic pressure on families is immense, often leading to increased stress and a diminished quality of life, as both parents are compelled to work simply to keep pace.

The Disappearance of Secure Retirement: For previous generations, the promise of a dignified retirement often came in the form of a pension – a guaranteed income stream that provided security and peace of mind in one’s golden years. Today, pensions are largely a relic of the past, replaced by the precariousness of the 401(k). This shift has transferred the burden and risk of retirement planning squarely onto the shoulders of individual workers. The anxiety associated with a 401(k) statement is palpable, as market fluctuations, insufficient contributions, and a lack of financial literacy can easily jeopardize one’s future. The dream of a comfortable retirement has been replaced by a pervasive fear of outliving one’s savings, forcing many to work longer or postpone retirement indefinitely.

The Widening Chasm of Inequality: The chasm between the compensation of corporate executives and the average worker has grown to an unprecedented and morally questionable scale. The fact that a CEO’s annual bonus can eclipse the entire payroll of a small town underscores a profound imbalance in our economic system. This disparity is not merely a matter of unfairness; it reflects a fundamental breakdown in the distribution of wealth and value. While executive compensation continues to soar, often regardless of company performance or worker productivity, the wages of the frontline employees who generate that wealth remain stagnant. This ever-widening gap fuels resentment, erodes trust in corporate leadership, and contributes to a sense of economic injustice that undermines the very fabric of society. It raises critical questions about corporate accountability, ethical compensation practices, and the long-term sustainability of an economic model that disproportionately rewards the few at the expense of the many.

This was not an accident. It was a transfer. The money that should have been in your pocket was moved. The security that should have been yours was dismantled.

The Powell Memo declared the war. The Volcker Shock was the first battle. And these numbers—your stagnant paycheck, their exploding bonuses, your vanished pension—are the territory they conquered.

This article was originally published on Preppgroup.

The post The 50-Year Crime Report appeared first on LewRockwell.

Do you have a silver card? I do. I live in New London, Connecticut, and while I don’t get EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfers) anymore, I still carry the card as a talisman. It’s nestled in my wallet right behind my driver’s license. It reminds me that there was a time when I needed help and was able to get it. It’s the kind of reminder we all need — and one that’s in ever shorter supply these days.

When I was poorer, that card filled every month with money I could spend on food — fruits and vegetables, oil, spices, and cheese at the grocery store. I marshalled my resources carefully then, never taking them for granted.

When Congress and the Trump White House shut the government down recently, they hit 42 million Americans right in their wallets. They took that stability away. They hit mine too, after a fashion, because suddenly my neighbors and friends had empty cards and wallets. People rushed in to help. The little libraries in our neighborhood were suddenly filled with canned goods and jars of peanut butter and jelly. All the downtown businesses started offering discounts or free things if you showed your silver card. A teenager gave out free hot dogs in a local park, and our food co-op started a drive to pay for $20 gift cards to offer struggling shoppers.

After about a week and in response to calls, emails, and letters — a clamor from so many in the Nutmeg State — Connecticut did the right thing. Hartford used its “rainy day fund” to fully fund cards for residents. Our millionaire governor, who recently announced that he’s running for a third term, insisted that he’d bill the federal government for the cost of the stolen benefits.

And the goodwill is still going strong. This is shaping up to be a bountiful Thanksgiving for food pantries and soup kitchens in our area, and I’m already planning my outfit for directing traffic at our local food pantry next Friday. I’ll be head-to-toe in high viz.

This is all beautiful. It’s heartening — and we need more of it. It’s an all-too-human response to the Trump administration’s assault on what was left of good government. His graft machine came into power promising to make the government small enough to drown in a toilet. He unleashed Elon Musk and his army of young bros to smash and trash the bureaucracy. In the first weeks of his new administration, a century — whoops, I mean months — ago, more than 200,000 federal employees were pink-slipped, shown the door, or simply locked out. Foreign aid to the globally needy was left to moulder. Contraception bound for the Global South was incinerated. Effective, long-standing programs were shuttered without warning.

Small Ways to Be Useful

I struggled through all of that, feeling small and far from the power centers where good people were being shown the door. I tried to keep my eyes focused on what my own community needed most and did indeed find a modest way to be useful.

On Mondays and Wednesday mornings, I bundle up, don a high-viz vest, and head out to a nearby corner. For an hour, I walk that intersection, accompanying middle schoolers across the street and standing with little kids waiting for buses. I chat with parents and wave at cars, the trucks of contractors, and city buses. People toot their horns or shout my name from open car windows, waving good morning as they head to work.

I give speeders the stink eye and, when there are lulls, I pick up garbage and think about the day ahead. And then I see more kids coming and plan to casually help without letting them break stride. I greet them with warm respect. It hasn’t taken me long to recognize them all.

You may wonder: How did I get here? Let me back up and tell you the story because it connects to how our community is bulking up its care response network in the age of Trump.

During the last budget session, our town was in a fiscal crisis. Inflation, health insurance increases, and rising costs made for major belt tightening. The People’s Budget Coalition, a network of organizations and individuals I work with, turned out scores of people to fill City Council chambers through the budget season. We signed up dozens of people to speak to the City Council and wrote emails to or button-holed councilors at public events. We had marches and rallies. We met one-on-one with school board members and city councilors. We went to Hartford and demanded more money from the state. We worked so hard!

Sometimes, my two kids, 11 and 13, came with me to those City Council meetings, drawing, reading, and shifting around constantly in those uncomfortable seats as their teachers spoke passionately about the work they did. Again and again, people made the point that it isn’t just a school budget, it’s a community budget. After all, the schools provide breakfasts and lunches, before and after care, health and special-ed services, as well as support for more than a dozen languages. And if that isn’t enough to deal with, there are 300 to 400 kids in our school system who are homeless on any given night, and our schools have to contend with the disruptions such instability wreaks on families and so the ability of their kids to learn.

We went back and forth on this for months, but sadly the upshot was that the City Council flat-funded the schools, while the Board of Education had to cut positions and shave costs. One cut was to eliminate all but one crossing guard position, pushing five guards out of their jobs. Amid the massive disruptions at the federal level, this may seem like small potatoes. But it was an obvious and impactful cut, visible evidence of the whole system under attack.

We live between two schools and I’ve always admired crossing guards for being steady and stalwart in the heat and the cold. I was ready to help out and the People’s Budget Coalition stepped in to organize us into a volunteer crossing-guard cadre.

But It Isn’t Enough! Tax the Weapons Contractors!

Of course, I want to do more than just volunteer. I want the whole system to change. While the school board shaved positions, the city offered early retirement to people in key jobs, and everyone was called on to economize, there is a gold-plated example of a tax scofflaw right in our neighborhood. General Dynamics is the fourth-largest weapons manufacturer in the United States, with a huge complex in New London. In 2024, it reported profits of $3.8 billion, up 14.1% from 2023. Its CEO, Phebe Novakovic, made more than $23 million in 2024 (with all her stocks and options). However, the company shortchanges its workers, even as it rakes in record profits.

In 2021, General Dynamics/Electric Boat took the city of New London to court to contest its tax bill, according to documents uncovered by the War Resisters League. The city had assessed its New London office park at $78 million, but the company wanted it lower. They eventually settled in court on an assessment of $57 million. That big break saved the company $563,000 a year in local taxes! Add that up for the five years since that decision was made and you get $2.8 million!

It could have been even more. As local Patch news site reported, General Dynamics bought the complex for $55 million in July 2010 — a fire sale price, given that the previous owner, pharmaceutical behemoth Pfizer, had spent $300 million to build it less than 10 years earlier. When General Dynamics moved in, the fair market value for the property was $309 million, putting the tax assessment on the property at something like $216 million. So, the company’s fair tax burden to the City of New London should be nearly $6 million a year! How different life would be for New Londoners if General Dynamics were paying that annually.

After laying that out before the City Council, I concluded (all in less than three minutes) by saying, “I offer for your consideration that you stop cutting positions, stop threatening to flat-fund the schools and our kids, and that you tax General Dynamics with the same resolve that you tax the citizens. They can afford it, a lot more than we can.” There was some applause for that last line, even though many people are afraid to criticize General Dynamics, fearing that (no matter the real finances) the goose could stop laying what still passes for a golden egg.

Sandwiches, Not Submarines

The People’s Budget Coalition has begun looking into how we can take this issue on, especially because so much of our housing boom and the gentrification that goes with it (and pushes poorer people out of our area) is related to the U.S. Navy’s massive contract (a whopping $132 billion) with General Dynamics/Electric Boat for a new class of nuclear-powered, nuclear-capable submarines. I mention all of this because it’s the kind of thing I think about while waiting for the next cluster of middle schoolers to arrive at my intersection.

At the end of the school year, as they cut school positions, proud parents put up lawn signs advertising where their kids were headed to college. One common sign was for Electric Boat, not a college. But most of the positions they’re filling with new grads aren’t actually high-paying, fast-advancing ones that will provide future stability for those young people. A recent report by the War Resisters League found that entry-level wages at Electric Boat, even after signing bonuses, were low enough that workers also often qualified for state health care and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits!

Imagine that, if our tax system were fair, New London would get six million dollars more in taxes. Of course, then there’s the question of what it would be like if we Americans weren’t investing $132 billion for those 12 new nuclear-armed submarines capable all alone of destroying the world. Why is there money for those submarines but not for sandwiches (and other food), housing, and medicine for people who truly need it?

How can companies like General Dynamics/Electric Boat make insane profits with plenty of money left over for stock buybacks and CEO bonuses, while people in my world are digging through their pantries to find cans of food to share with their neighbors?

Planting Figs on the Strangest Planet Around

Only recently, when SNAP ran out of its federal funding during the government shutdown and the Trump crew decided to force millions of low-income people to reapply for their food stamps (supposedly in an effort to stop “fraud”), my social media filled up with images of World War II victory gardens and videos of how to replace such federal support with your own labor and ingenuity. And yes, it made a certain sense to me on one level, though it also couldn’t have been more tone deaf or unrealistic on another.

Here’s what I mean: I grow food in my yard. I devote three or four hours a week to watering, weeding, reseeding, and harvesting. Right there I’m way ahead of the curve, since I’ve got the space and time, two significant privileges. I had a great garlic harvest this year. My blueberry bushes and strawberry patch were both prolific. I lost all my hazelnuts to the squirrels during an ill-timed road trip. Our mushroom patch never came up. My care for the fig tree paid off — finally — and I got a tidy little fig harvest for a week or two in September. An asparagus patch I’ve been developing for a few years took off and, for a few weeks, we ate so much asparagus that we all got a little sick of it.

Parsley, basil, collards, kale, and lettuces all did great, and we ate pesto and salads and slaws from May to October, almost turning green in the process. Last year’s jack-o’-lanterns took off in spiky abundance and I let them take over a whole part of the yard. Eventually, I found five beautiful feral pumpkins that we carved up again, roasting the seeds with tamari and garlic powder for a messy and delicious treat. I grew corn but didn’t water it enough for it to be anything but chicken food. And yes, we have enough chickens to meet our egg needs, but we’re far from being self-sufficient.

You see what I’m getting at, I hope. Gardening is a lot of time and work, while the outcomes are anything but guaranteed. A handful of missed days, a few missteps, and all your work is for nothing. Still, this summer, there were weeks when my family could skip buying vegetables and fruit. That felt good and was nice for our bottom line, but even that depended on my having some free daytime, a luxury all too many of us don’t have.

Our true food system is all about commandeered water and stolen land, subsidized fertilizer and exploited labor, shipping and storage. Every little way I opt out from all of that is undoubtedly a good thing, but I can barely share a handful of figs with my neighbors and can’t solve anyone’s food crisis by my occasional neighborly drop-offs of a dozen backyard eggs.

Maybe it’s different in places where more people grow more food and aren’t dabblers or amateurs like me. But as I think about how to contend with the acute crisis and widening fissures in our whole international food system, with its Trumpian tariffs, excise taxes, and systemic abuses, I wonder how long this can go on.

How long can we live in the strange world of President Donald Trump and his version of what might be thought of as Defeat Gardens before we figure out a better way — how to truly feed and care for ourselves and one another? What are the systems that we need to build to replace the distinctly broken and shattered ones in this world of ours?

Those are some of the questions I ask myself daily as I wait for those schoolkids to get to my corner.  But I can’t ask them alone or answer them by myself. Still, it feels meaningful to at least pose the questions and explore how, in this Trumpian universe of ours, not just I but we can try to answer them together.

The post Giving a Fig appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Trumpian attack on immigrants is about as anti-supply side, pro-statist and inimical to free market prosperity as it gets. As we have seen in Parts 1 & 2, immigrant labor accounted for 42% of the thundering 3.62% annual real GDP growth during the golden age of American industrial expansion between 1870 and 1920, but that wasn’t the end of the story.

During the most recent 50-year interval between 1970 and 2020, fully 35% of the far more tepid real GDP growth rate of 2.52% per annum was due to the increase in immigrant labor. Stated differently, without the added work force derived from the 83 million gain in new immigrant arrivals and their off-spring during 1970 to 2020 (middle column, line d of the table below), real GDP growth would have slowed even further to just 1.94% per annum (see below).

Needless to say, the downward arcing march of demographic history shows no sign of reversing when we look at current fertility rates of the native-born population. In the third column of the table below, therefore, we display the standard Census Bureau/CBO baseline case for the 50-year interval from 2025 to 2075. It shows that the current 350 million US population is expected to grow by only 55 million during the next half-century, resulting in a continued sharp trend-line decline in the overall population growth rate.

Per Annum Population Growth Rate:

• 1870-1920 actual: 2.04%.
• 1970-2020 actual: 0.99%.
• 2025-2075 CBO projected: 0.29%.

Alas, the above isn’t the half of it. As it turns out, the current US population as of 2025 will actually shrink by about 15 million during the next 50 years because the sub-replacement fertility rate of just 1.61 (and still falling) will mean that by the mid-2030s deaths among the current population will exceed births. Accordingly, the entire 55 million population gain projected in the CBO base case for 2025 to 2075 is entirely due to immigration and then some.

That’s right. Embedded in the mainstream Census Bureau population projections and CBO’s longer term economic outlook is an assumption that immigration will add an average of 1.4 million persons per year to population growth. In whole numbers that would amount to the following over the next 50 years:

• 45 million new immigrant arrivals or 900,000 per year.
• 25 million children of these new immigrant arrivals or 500,000 per year.

Of course, these figures are not remotely consistent with the Stephen Miller/Trump/MAGA anti-immigrant howling that continuously emanates from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Their policies include deporting millions of illegals that are already here; sharply curtailing the H1-B program for tech workers and PhDs; eliminating the 50,000 per year Diversity Visa program; cutting refugee admission from 125,000 per year to 7,500; and shutting-off virtually all of the unskilled labor that enters through the backdoor of asylum-seeking at the southern border.

In short, the Trumpified GOP’s policy amounts to a zero net immigration strategy for the long haul. To place the potential long-term impact of this radical departure from past policy in historical perspective, we have summed in line (d) of the table below the figures for new arrivals plus their offspring during each of these half-century periods, as follows:

Total New Immigrants Arrivals and Their Offspring—History and Base Case

• 1870-1920 actual: 35.3 million.
• 1970-2020 actual: 83.1 million.
• 2025-2075 base case: 70.0 million.

Based on these immigration totals, a counterfactual is shown in the Memo line, which represents the end year population excluding the line(d) new immigrant population for each of the 50-year intervals. The effect is to isolate the underlying growth rate of the starting year population. Needless to say, the US population, absent new immigration has been and will continue to be on a slippery slope toward contraction.

Counterfactual: Per Annum Population Growth Rate Absent New Immigration

• 1870-1920: +1.22%.
• 1970-2020: +0.40%.
• 2025-2075: -0.09%

The three figures above are dispositive. They show that America’s robust population growth over the last 150 years has been heavily dependent upon new waves of immigrants decade after decade. The graph below shows that this heavy immigrant inflow—driven by the magnet of economic opportunity—has been continuous, and broke below the zero line only during the economic collapse of the Great Depression.

Going forward, however, organic population change and its impact on economic growth will be negative as far as the eye can see for the first time in American history. That’s because the 2.1 fertility barrier was broken to the downside decades ago, meaning that the only possible source of stabilization for the future US population—to say nothing of a return to robust historic growth—is a continuation of large-scale immigration.

Needless to say, negative total US population growth under the Trumpian ZIPG (Zero Immigrant Population Growth) has dramatic implications for both overall economic growth and most especially for the fiscal burden of America’s unfunded social insurance and retirement programs. We address the economic growth barriers in the section below, but here is it worth looking at the last five lines of the table which show the working age population with and without new immigration during the period, the projected retirement population at the end of each period and the ratio of working age population to the retired population in 1920, 2020 and 2075.

These figures reduce to a nightmare in a single ratio. To wit, as of 1920 (before Social Security was enacted) the actual ratio of working age population to the retired population was 13.3:1 and even without new immigration during the previous 50 years the ratio would have been a robust 10.6:1.

In other words, even prior to the modern liberal invention of social insurance there were more than enough workers to help support the old folks, albeit under the historic norms of extended family obligation.

Of course, in 1920 there were only 4.9 million persons 65 and older in America—-so the burden of support was moderate. Fast forward a century to 2020, however, and the retired population had soared to 52.5 million, bringing the worker/retiree ratio down dramatically just as Social Security reached full swing.

Still, immigration during the 1970-2020 period made a considerable difference. The working age population of 207.3 million was +29.3 million higher due to immigration during the prior 50 years than it would have been based on growth of the 1970 population alone. Accordingly, the working age-to-retirement population ratio in 2020 was down sharply, but still computed to 4.0:1, and was also well above the 3.4:1 ratio that would have prevailed based on the 1970 population growth alone.

Alas, the slide towards virtually impossible retirement support burdens will continue unabated during the next 50 years. The retired population will double again to 120 million by 2075, while the working age population under Trumpian ZIPG will total only 182 million or 48 million less than would be the case with status quo policy, which results in baseline immigrant growth of the aforementioned 1.4 million per year.

Either way, the burden of 120 million retirement age persons will be excruciating. The ratio would be 1.9:1 under baseline (i.e. status quo policy) immigration levels, but barely 1.5:1 under Trumpian ZIPG.

Needless to say, the latter is not merely a scary sounding number. The projected average wage replacement rate under current benefit law is 41% by 2075. Accordingly, under Trumpian ZIPG one way or another 27% of every worker’s paycheck would need to be taxed just to pay OASI benefits!

Back in the day during the late 1970s when Jimmy Carter was attempting to raise the payroll tax to keep Social Security solvent for the long haul, we used to joke that annexing Mexico, with an average population age of just 32 years, would be an easier alternative. But the figures below suggest that this was not actually a joke at all.

Decomposition of U.S. Population Change: 1870→1920 vs. 1970→2020 vs. 2025→2075 (50-year periods in millions)

Back in the day, the supply-side model was all about optimizing policy in order to foster higher economic growth. The irony, of course, was that the most potent tool available to actually move the needle big time was the enhancement of labor force growth via immigrant workers. Yet now the once and former supply-side GOP has abandoned this growth tool entirely.

Thus, in the heyday of America’s industrial expansion during 1870 to 1920, the robust average real GDP growth of 3.62% per annum reflected a 28% gain over the2.83% annual growth that was attributable to the labor force increase from the 1870 population and its offspring alone. That is, the actual contribution to real GDP growth from labor hour increases of 2.01% per annum would have been only 1.22% per year without the immigrant arrivals and their off-spring during the 50 years after 1870.

Likewise, during the most recent 50-year period, the more modest 2.52% per annum growth during 1970 to 2020 was fully 30% higher than would have been the case without new immigrant workers. In that case, the already weakened labor force growth of0.98% per annum would have been reduced by more than half to just 0.40% per year without new immigration.

And that gets us to the folly of Trumpian ZIPG. As it is, the CBO base case over the next 50 years is already punk with real GDP growth of just 1.62% per annum. But of the 90 basis points reduction in the growth rate of the CBO baseline relative to the 1970-2020 CAGR, nearly two-thirds of the drop is due to sharply reduced labor force growth of just 0.40% per year. Yet even that is due to the aforementioned 1.4 million per year growth of the immigrant population per the CBO base case.

In fact, however, if you overlay Trumpian ZIPG on the CBO baseline, the labor force growth rate drops to -0.09% per year, as previously explained. This means that even with CBO’s assumption of 1.22% per annum productivity growth, real GDP would rise by only 1.13% per year.

In other words, the real GDP growth rates during the much maligned “open borders” period of 1870 to 1920 (3.62%) would stand at 3.2X the 1.13% per annum rate we have projected under the closed borders of ZIPG. And there is no mistaking that conclusion because a shrinking homegrown labor force is already baked into the cake by the crash of fertility rates.

Of course, the GOP politicians noisily repeat the Laffer Chorus—-namely, cut taxes, close your eyes and wait for 4% growth to shrink the nation’s massive deficits and soaring public debt. But the cold truth is that with a closed border and radically capped labor supply the only way you could get 4.0% real GDP growth is with 4% per annum productivity growth.

And that’s barking madness. During the next decades rising real interest rates from the crowding out effect of soaring Treasury borrowing and the diversion of available capital into speculation-fueled malinvestment in bubble-ridden sectors like AI will make even the 1.22% per annum productivity growth assumption in the CBO baseline case exceedingly difficult to reach.

At the end of the day, that’s the real downside of ZIPG. A disastrous baseline fiscal outlook that is already taking the public debt to $185 trillion and 168% of GDP by mid-century under the current CBO baseline could be turned into a veritable financial nightmare.

That is to say, ZIPG is likely to foster a scenario where real economic growth easily drops below 1% per annum under the weight of debt, soaring interest rates, chronic labor shortages, stubbornly high inflation, rising payroll taxes (to fund Social Security after trust fund insolvency in the early 2030s) and rampant Wall Street speculation owing to easy money.

U.S. Real Economic Growth And Its Components By 50-Year Intervals (trillion $)

Part 4

Needless to say, all of the above is likely to come as a shock to MAGA Hat followers who have been fed the false line that immigration amounts to an “invasion” and that its all just plain bad. Undoubtedly, the crime horror story anecdotes that are attached to this canard makes tribal politics and the Trumpian weaponization of the immigration control machinery of the state seem plausible.

In fact, the GOP’s wholehearted embrace of Trumpian immigrant bashing is not surprising. In recent decades while foraging for defining issues to mobilize the electorate, Washington Republicans have pretty much given up on the GOP’s true calling in American governance, which is to be the Opposition Party in the contest for power with the Government Party controlled by the Dems.

In turn, that boils down to functioning as the Watch Dog of the Treasury in the unending battle against spending, borrowing, money printing and socialist redistribution of societal resources and wealth, whether through fiscal, regulatory or tax policy channels. This is logically the GOP’s job because America surely doesn’t need another pro-state Big Government party to compete with the endless follies of the Dems.

Yet for whatever reason, the careerists who manage the Washington GOP’s campaign and fund-raising machinery concluded long ago that the old time Republican fiscal religion symbolized by balanced budgets had become passe at best and an outright electoral looser, at worst.

So for decades they have been persistently hunting for non-fiscal issues capable of materially moving the electoral needle. And frequently they have found such opportunities in the “culture wars” arena. They learned, for instance, that the “right to life” cause—which should not be a Federal government matter at all— was far more potent with some segments of the electorate than, say, the traditional GOP causes of welfare reform or stanching the growth of the public debt.

To be sure, there are some culture wars issues that involve the machinery of the state encroaching upon economic freedoms and personal liberties that very much needed to be resisted. The battle against state-enforced and encouraged DEI was self-evidently one of these, as was resisting the secular religion of Climate Change and its lethal threat to free market prosperity anchored in the efficiency and superiority of fossil fuels.

But mainly, separation of Culture & State is simply a modern day extension of the Founders’ insistence on the separation of Church & State: Religion and culture alike are not the appropriate business of government. Full stop.

Yet violation of that axiom is essentially the entrepot by which the GOP stumbled into its destructive embrace of the anti-immigration cause. That is to say, a polity predicated upon maximum personal liberty, free markets, constitutionally-shackled government and autonomous social life unencumbered by the state can’t be in the business of regulating the ethnic, racial and cultural composition of civil society—to say nothing of actively promoting or legislating bigotry.

This is especially the case because America is, was and likely always should be a Melting Pot of the world’s pre-existing nationalities, races, ethnicities and cultural heritages. And, as we have seen in the economic brilliance of the 1870-1920 growth explosion, it is that Melting Pot and the associated “open borders” that fostered that great outpouring of capitalist prosperity, a resilient civil order and constitutional liberty that eventually spread across the North American continent from sea-to-shining sea.

The historical evolution of the American Melting Pot, of course, had its episodic spasms of nativist reaction, frequently originating within the second to most recent wave of immigrants. Thus, the English settlers resisted the Irish, even as the latter assumed less than a welcoming posture toward the newer arrivals from Italy—who, in due course, afforded the Poles the same courtesy.

In the process, there was more than a little racial and religious bigotry that welled up as the 19th century immigration waves flowed into the 20th century peak before WWI. Thereafter, of course, the open gates for free immigration were officially closed in 1924 and replaced by a state-regulated immigration management enterprise via the national quota-based act of 1924. Trumpian ZIPG is only its extreme logical extension.

Needless to say, this new regulatory enterprise was grounded in a kind of rolling nativist bigotry that had emerged during the prior century or so. The tip off is that the quotas in the 1924 Act were set at 2% of the foreign-born population of each nationality living in the U.S. based on the 1890 Census. In effect, the older arrivals used the border control powers of the state to restrict the newer arrivals from Southern and Eastern European (e.g., Italians, Poles, Jews), which were seen as less desirable by nativists compared to Northern and Western Europeans.

By the next big Immigration reform act of 1965, however, the country-based quota system had become at once too rigid, but also too permissive by the lights of some nativists—-since the 1920s legislation had generally not restricted Western Hemisphere based immigrants at all. So the new post-1965 quota system covered the entire world including the brownish peoples of Latin America, Africa and Asia. This bias, in turn, was compounded by the heavy role for family reunification in the 1965 act’s quotas—which favored immigrant groups already here, as well as a cold war era focus on slots for scientists and highly educated workers.

The 1965 act was allegedly “progressive” because it didn’t arbitrarily favor German or Irish green card applicants, but it inadvertently suffered a worse disability. Namely, it put an aggregate cap on total immigration at at time when the US birth rate was plummeting, meaning that growth of the native born labor force 20-40 years hence would follow the same plunging curve downward.

So while on the surface the 1965 act stabilized the immigration rate in the 2-4 per 1,000 population range, this was far below the 5-10 immigrants per 1,000 annual rate which had prevailed during the open borders era prior to the 1920s; and, more importantly, it was also far below what would be needed to even stabilize the growth rate of the US labor force, given the collapse of native born births after the Baby Boom ended in 1962.

As is evident in the chart below, during the post-war Baby Boom, the fertility rate—as measured by births per 1,000 women—soared from the depressed levels of the Great Depression years back toward its historic peak of 120 per 1,000 in the late 1950s.

But then it plunged during the 1960s and never looked back. Today’s rate of just 54.5 per 1,000 is literally in the sub-basement of history, as shown in the graph below.

What this means, of course, is that the US labor force tracks the pink line in the chart with a lag of 20 to 40 years. As we have seen, therefore, by mid-century the native born work force will be shrinking and will continue to do so as far as the eye can see, meaning that the nation’s capacity for historical levels of economic growth will be deeply impaired without large scale immigration, as we have also seen.

Consequently, this baked-into-the cake shriveling of the homegrown labor force has already unleashed forces that powerfully debunk the “immigrant invasion” story peddled by the Trumpified GOP.

To wit, the baby crash and the subsequently unfolding collapse of native-born labor force growth is actually what has brought tens of millions of immigrants to the US borders in recent decades. They were mainly economic migrants, sucked into the US economy by a labor market that is literally parched for supply. That is, they weren’t invaders and raiders sent by enemies abroad; they were job-seekers lured across the southern borders by what amounted to a giant and continuous Help Wanted Ad wafting up from the US labor market.

So for crying out loud. The 28 million “encounters” at the US border over the last decade as ballyhooed by the Trumpites did not constitute a foreign-sourced “invasion”. Foreign governments in this hemisphere or elsewhere were not plotting to empty their jails, mental institutions or military battalions of undesirables intent upon harming American citizens and undermining American society.

To the contrary, the border has been flooded by work-seeking immigrants earnestly searching for a better life for themselves and their families—just as has been the case with wave after wave of immigrants to the US since the very beginning of the Republic. And the current intensity of these immigrant flows is driven by plain old market economics: that is, a severe shortage of entry level labor owing to native babies that have never been born—plus a mushrooming Welfare State that has removed potential native born labor hours from active commerce by the tens of billions each year.

The latter includes the removal of billions of potential labor hours from the US economy via early retirements, ballooning disability rolls, an ever expanding potpourri of food, housing, medical and cash welfare programs and the giant scam of student loans and grants that removes millions of potential workers from the labor force on an extended basis.

At the same time, anecdotes about horrific crimes which happen to have been committed by immigrants is not the same thing as factual analysis. Thus, among the illegal alien population of 20 million, as recently claimed by Homeland Secy Noem, dangerous criminals account for less than0.3% of the total, and most of those are already incarcerated in state and Federal prisons.

That’s right. Contrary to ICE Barbie’s exaggerated statistic there are by all reliable estimates currently between 12 million and 16 million undocumented aliens in the US. And the overwhelming share of these immigrants came here looking for jobs in the guise of seeking “asylum” from alleged political and criminal threats in their home countries. So call the number of illegals around 15 million at the outside.

But according to the widely cited letter from ICE to Congressman Gonzales in mid-2024, there are about 425,000 names of undocumented immigrants with criminal convictions on ICE’s so-called “non-detained docket”. That is, persons not currently under ICE detention.

While this is just 2.8% of the 15 million illegal aliens and in itself debunks the Trumpian refrain about the borders being overrun by criminals released from Latin American jails, that’s not even the half of it. Actually, the list sent to Rep. Gonzales spans 40 years and also includes upwards of 300,000 persons mostly convicted of traffic violations, drug possession, minor misdemeanors and also breaking immigration laws, which they have to do in order to apply for asylum—thereby making for a catch 22 of no mean aspect.

So what might be called actual “dangerous” criminals on the ICE list amount to 130,000 or about 0.9% of the undocumented population. However, even on this list the total of convicted violent criminals is small indeed.

According to ICE, 13,099 of these persons have been convicted of homicide or just 0.1% of the undocumented population. But, alas, virtually all of these individuals are already in Federal, state or local prisons. The don’t have to be deported to protect the safety of the American public because they have already been apprehended, convicted and incarcerated!

Likewise, there are another 15,800 on the list who have been convicted of sexual assault. Again, however, according to GROK 4 upwards of half of these are also serving their justly deserved time behind bars.

In short, the streets of America are not crawling with illegal aliens who are convicted violent criminals. There have obviously been some horrific murders by illegal aliens, just as there unfortunately are year-in-and-year- out by native-born criminals, too. But when it comes to eliminating the undesirable elements of the immigrant population, deporting a few thousands real criminals is all that’s actually required.

So we return to the real dynamic at work—the giant magnet for economic migrants formed by America’s still growing labor-short economy. For want of doubt as to the latter truth, here is the change in employment as between native-born (red line) and foreign-born (blue line) workers since early 2020.

The former is up by a mere 2% while foreign-born employment has risen by 14%. Needless to say, the current sweeping Trumpian deportation campaign will actually cause millions of “no shows” in the blue line segment of the labor market owing to midnight ICE raids or fear-driven self-deportations. Either way, the downward pressure on the blue line and the resulting labor market turmoil and disruption is sure to become a supply-side barrier to US economic growth.

Foreign-Born Versus Native-Born Employment Since January 2020

Indeed, when looked at on a longer term basis, the foreign-born source of America’s current labor force growth is even more dramatic. Since the pre-crisis peak in Q4 2007 the number of foreign-born workers ( blue line) employed in the US has increased by 7.6 million thru September 2025, while the far larger population of native born workers has grown by only 9.2 million (red line).

In relative terms, however, the data leave nothing to the imagination. Foreign-born employment is up by +33% since Q4 2007, while native-born job holders have grown by only +10%. And due to demographics that are already baked into the cake, the red line will be falling for the next several decades or, actually, for as far as the eye can see.

Index of Change In Foreign Born Versus Native Born Workers Since Q4 2007

Needless to say, these facts as to scant few criminals among the undocumented population and vast labor market shortages in the US economy point to a modern-day supply-side solution. That is, a constructive policy remedy that goes in the very opposite direction of the restrictive Trumpian anti-immigrant and deportation campaign.

We are speaking, of course, of the need for a large expansion of the current tiny 10,000 per year EB-3 quota for entry level workers. Uncapping that quota entirely for fully-vetted low skill workers would essentially eliminate the so-called flood at the border, and do so without adding a single Border Patrol or ICE agent, and likely enabling an actual shrinkage of Washington’s costly border regulation operations.

This virtual clearance of the so-called “invasion” would happen because with no quota on new immigrant worker visas, willing, law-abiding job-seekers would go to the US embassies and consulates in their home countries to fill out their visa applications and be vetted by State Department professionals. There would simply be no need to cross the US border seeking “asylum”, and to then be arrested, herded and man-handled by the Border Patrol and eventually wait-listed for years in the hideous immigration court system while out on “parole”— free to wonder around in the wild anywhere in the US.

The proof for this proposition is in the pudding. Again, here are GROK 4’s best estimates of the number of undocumented workers employed in the US by industry. Essentially, 8.85 million of the 15 million illegal alien population is employed in basic US industries, and the rest are mostly their kids and stay-at-home spouses. In the case of the first three low-skill BLS categories listed in the table below, undocumented workers account for a double-digit share of the employed workforce.

That is to say, they got here not thru the current tiny 10,000 per year EB-3 pinhole for unskilled visas, but through the rough and tumble, unvetted expedient of backdoor entry as asylees and refugees.

So here’s the thing. There are probably 10,000 or fewer violent undocumented criminals actually at large in the US versus a proven 9 million undocumented law-abiding, tax-paying, family-supporting workers accounting for 5% of the entire US labor force. That’s a 900:1 ratio of people we need versus those we don’t.

Yet the supply shock from the disappearance of millions of workers that the Trump Administration is deporting each and every day and the millions more who are likely self-deporting for fear of being sent to the Donald’s Gulag in El Salvador is going to rip through the labor market like the proverbial neutron bomb. Businesses will be left standing, but they will be stripped clean of the workers they need to function, to say nothing of thrive and march toward the Donald’s ballyhooed Golden Age.

So Trump-O-Nomics has the policy framework upside down. The only thing that is needed is to excise a few pages of statute and regulations and thereby uncap the low skill quota for vetted migrant workers.

That is to say, a pro-supply side, anti-statist initiative to relieve the regulatory straight jacket foisted upon the US economy by an idiotic immigration quota system that rooted in the bigotry of the 1920s and the progressive delusions of the 1960s would solve the border problem and boost the American economy and tax base in one fell swoop.

Estimated Undocumented Workers in U.S. Industries (2025)

Ordered by Highest to Lowest % Undocumented

Accordingly, almost anyone abroad who has a legitimate reason to come to the US under a supply-side immigration policy would not need to wade through the Rio Grande or cross the Arizona deserts in the dead of night. Instead, they would go—possibly in suit and tie—to one of the 38 embassies and consulates that the US operates in Mexico and Latin America and hundreds more elsewhere around the world.

As it happens, the infrastructure is already there to handle a resumed inflow of work-seeking migrants. Currently, the State Department processes and effectively vets about 11 million visas per year at its worldwide diplomatic outposts depicted below. The overwhelming share or 10.5 millionof these are nonimmigrant visas for tourists/business (7.8 million), temporary work (900,000), students/exchange (800,000) and others (300,000).

Moreover, in the immigrant visa category of 550,000 per year, the overwhelming share of visas issued is according to the updated provisions of the 1965 act. That is, for immediate family and relatives reunification (340,000), skilled and technical employees (120,000), the diversity lottery by country (55,000) and last and, unfortunately, least is a mere 10,000 for entry level and unskilled workers.

Our point here is two-fold. First, all of these applications are processed through an orderly, computerized and professionally conducted process at hundreds of State Department locations—backed-up by Washington based infrastructure and systems. That is to say, the well-oiled machinery to re-channel and decentralize what had been the massive flow of migrants to the Mexican/US border is already in place, and would need only modest incremental personnel and budget resources.

Map of US Embassies and Consulates Around the World

But secondly, and crucially, this logical solution doesn’t happen now because the overwhelming share of the 28 million border-crashers were young workers and their families who entered the US illegally in order to get arrested and thereby placed in the queue for asylum. They didn’t go to the embassies and consulates like the 11 million other worldwide visa seekers because in their case it would have been futile: Again, there is only 10,000 slots in the quota system per year for unskilled workers who can do a job with less than two-years of training.

In short, the US immigration quota structure is consciously and stupidly designed to force these tens of millions of entry level job-seekers, which the US economy desperately needs, through a tiny pin-hole of 10,000 slots per year under the Employment-Based Third Preference (EB-3) “Other Workers”category.

To be sure, there are currently about 140,000 employment-based immigrant visas allocated yearly, but politically powerful lobbies for Silicon Valley and and the Fortune 500 typically scarf up 130,000 of these, including—

• 40,000 for EB-1 professors, researchers, multinational executives and STEM workers.
• 40,000 for EB-2 advanced degree holders with exceptional abilities in science and tech.
• 30,000 for EB-3 skilled workers requiring more than 2 years of training.
• 9,900 for EB-5 immigrant investors.
• Subtotal, high skill employment based visas: 130,000

Needless to say, Goggle doesn’t send its EB-1 recruits from Taiwan to wade across the Rio Grande in order to enter the USA. Some smart immigration lawyer in Taipei handles all the paperwork and arranges the office based interviews at the US consulate.

No muss, no fuss. NO INVASION.

To the contrary, the whole “invasion” is owing to the fact that unions and Silicon Valley lobbies make sure that the hideously tiny 10,000 cap for entry level workers stays in place, and that therefore there is no other route for unskilled workers to get a permanent visa except to invade the border, break the law and get in the queue for asylum.

Once this fundamental dynamic is understood, then it is evident that the Donald’s whole INVASION motif is upside down. The hordes at the border were not due to foreign evil doers and criminal cartels sending them north, but were owing to the economic magnet effect of today’s native-born baby dearth.

At the end of the day, the ZIPG essence of Trump-O-Nomics surely has Ronald Reagan rolling in his grave. He properly championed the notion that economic growth and rising prosperity are everywhere and always a function of supply-side energy and enterprise. So the Donald’s anti-supply side immigrant bashing is truly a recipe for economic disaster, not a Golden Era of Prosperity.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post The Nightmare of Trumpian ZIPG appeared first on LewRockwell.

Whitney Webb is right. America is One Nation Under Blackmail. From the White House to Congress to state governors and legislators to the mainstream media to mega churches and televangelists, they are on the take. And the godfather with the money—our money (and the enforcers to make sure they take the bribes)—is Israel.

From Bill Clinton to Donald Trump and every U.S. president in between (with slight hesitation from Bush Sr.), each of these men has been but a mere pawn and puppet of the Israel lobby. For all intents and purposes, the U.S. president is not Donald Trump (or Joe Biden or Barack Obama or G.W. Bush or Bill Clinton); he is Benjamin Netanyahu—or whoever else might be Israel’s Prime Minister.

It has been common knowledge for decades that many of our major cities’ police officers have been and are being trained in Israel or by Israelis here in the U.S.

Back in 2020, I wrote a column entitled Prelude To Martial Law. I quote:

Minnesota cops receive training from the Israelis.

Officers from the US police force responsible for the killing of George Floyd received training in restraint techniques and anti-terror tactics from Israeli law-enforcement officers.

Mr. Floyd’s death in custody last Monday, the latest in a succession of police killings of African Americans, has sparked continuing protests and rioting in US cities.

At least 100 Minnesota police officers attended a 2012 conference hosted by the Israeli consulate in Chicago, the second time such an event had been held.

There they learned the violent techniques used by Israeli forces as they terrorize the occupied Palestinian territories under the guise of security operations.

The so-called counterterrorism training conference in Minneapolis was jointly hosted by the FBI.

I have documented several times in this column how U.S. law enforcement personnel are increasingly receiving training from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Our police officers are being trained by the terrorists of Tel Aviv in the terrible art of torture and death.

This knee-on-neck technique is straight out of the Israeli handbook. This technique is often known to slowly break the necks of the victims. And this training is widespread throughout the United States. Hundreds—maybe thousands—of American law enforcement officers from Minnesota, New Jersey, Florida, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington State and Washington, D.C. (and doubtless many other states), have been flown to Israel for training.

On a recent podcast, retired Green Beret Lt. Col. Anthony Aguilar and Army Captain Josephine Guilbeau again noted that American police personnel and federal police agencies such as ICE and US Department of Homeland Security train with the Israelis.

They provided this quote:

So, these National Guard soldiers that will soon be in or are in Chicago have trained with  Israel habitually for years. So, when you look at all of these pieces of “who do we have operating on the streets of Portland and the streets of New York and in DC, and who’s going into Chicago?” All of these components and elements have trained hand-in-hand with the IDF or the Israeli Ministry of the Interior, gendarmerie, paramilitary police.

Last month, The Jerusalem Post ran a major story on how the U.S. has secured a contract with an Israeli drone manufacturer for AI one-way attack drones.

Israeli drone start-up XTEND has secured a multi-million-dollar contract from the US Department of Defense (DoD) to develop and deliver AI-enabled, modular, one-way attack drones designed for close-quarter combat.

The award was announced by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War (OASW) for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict (SO/LIC), and highlights Israel’s growing leadership in the drone market as the US military boosts its drone procurement.

The Affordable Close Quarter Modular Effects FPV Drone Kits (ACQME-DK) program will provide the US military with small, lethal automated aerial systems (UAS) optimized for irregular warfare in dense urban terrain and confined rural environments. They will feature XTEND’s ESAD high-voltage fuse, the only US-approved high-voltage fuse in the category.

The drones form a Modular VTOL + munitions kit. This reloadable, reusable distraction device allows for rapid reconfiguration in the field, day or night reconnaissance and surveillance operations, lethal inert training payloads, and lethal payloads.

XTEND will deliver training, spares, maintenance, and production from its Tampa headquarters, ensuring a domestic supply chain for the US Department of War. [Emphasis added]

The use of the U.S. military for domestic policing, Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth’s murder on the high seas under the pretext of fighting a “war on drugs” (where have we heard that before?), calling the victims “narco-terrorists” (where is the evidence?), President Trump’s (and state governors such as Ron DeSantis’) fanatical attempt to curtail the freedom of speech to criticize Israel (the First Amendment be damned) and now an American partnership with Israelis to bring millions of drones into the government’s arsenal (to be used against whom?) form a reliable track record of a maniacal and perpetual political and military collaboration that exists between Washington, D.C., and Tel Aviv.

As I said in my message last Sunday entitled The Biblical Remedy For Warmongers:

Our parents cautioned us that we tend to behave like the people we befriend, so choose your friends wisely.

Well, the American government has befriended the murderous State of Israel for so long that it is now behaving like Israel.

So, exactly whom will uber-Zionist, uber-war Pete Hegseth use these Israeli drones against? The answer is: It could be anybody—including you and me.

Again, Whitney Webb is right: We ARE one nation under blackmail.

But it is actually worse than that. Not only are our politicians under Israeli blackmail but more and more frequently, our military and police are under Israeli training and direction.

It is no hyperbole to suggest that virtually every U.S. military operation (including the ones in Venezuela and Ukraine—and obviously the ones all over the Middle East) is conducted in cooperation with and under the guidance of the Israeli government.

Come on, folks! If the Israelis are embedded in our federal police agencies inside the U.S., you know they are embedded inside our U.S. military establishments.

The United States of America has not been an independent nation since the Zionist State of Israel came into existence. And it will not be an independent nation as long as the Zionist State of Israel stays in existence—or perhaps until the Boomers die out and the Millennials and Generation Z permanently cut the umbilical cord between us and the genocidal Zionist state.

All I know is: It cannot happen soon enough.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

The post IDF Soldiers Working With ICE Agents in the U.S. appeared first on LewRockwell.

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The people of Honduras had not yet made up their minds. So, Donald Trump intervened to help them.

The major candidates in Sunday’s election were Rixi Moncada, the former defense minister of the ruling left-wing LIBRE party, who had promised to continue President Xiomara Castro’s agenda; Nasry “Tito” Asfura, a construction magnate who is running for the right-wing National Party on a free market platform; and Salvador Nasralla, formerly of the LIBRE party, who broke with them and moved to a centrist anticorruption platform.

In the lead-up to the election, the polls suggested a three-way race with no clear favorite. But Trump had a favorite.

Firing off two Truth Social posts within 18 minutes of each other, Trump dramatically intervened in the election.

With Venezuela under threat of U.S. military intervention, Trump’s posts widened the focus of the threat to encompass Honduras. “Will Maduro and his Narcoterrorists take over another country like they have taken over Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela?” Trump asked. The only way to remove themselves from America’s gun sights was, apparently, to vote for Asfura, the right-wing candidate. “The man who is standing up for Democracy, and fighting against Maduro,” Trump said, “is Tito Asfura, the Presidential Candidate of the National Party.” The threat was clear: a vote for Moncada is a vote for Venezuela that puts Honduras at risk of war; a vote for Asfura is a vote for America to fight against Maduro. “Tito and I can work together to fight the Narcocommunists…. I cannot work with Moncada and the Communists,” Trump told the voters of Honduras.

And the threat was not only military but also economic. Right after hitting “post” on his first message, another thought struck Trump that Hondurans needed to hear: “If Tito Asfura wins for President of Honduras, because the United States has so much confidence in him, his Policies, and what he will do for the Great People of Honduras, we will be very supportive. If he doesn’t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad.”

With the threat of military and economic intervention now clear, Trump declared, “Democracy is on trial in the coming Elections,” and he left it to the people of “the beautiful country of Honduras” to decide.

Moncada was not guilty of hyperbole or sensationalism when she complained that Trump’s posts, “three days before the election,” were “totally interventionist.”

This is not the first time the U.S. has lacked the patience to wait for an election before undertaking an intervention or a coup. The preemptive soft coup, whether by endorsement, diplomatic support, removal from the ballot, threat of sanctions, or smearing the vote as illegitimate ahead of its taking place, has recently been a popular page in the American interventionist handbook. Such interventions have been undertaken in several recent elections, including Venezuela, Haiti, Ecuador, and Argentina.

One of the key congresspeople keeping tabs on the Honduran election is Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL). She is hardly averse to non-democratic transfers of power in Honduras. When Honduras’s President Manuel Zelaya, the founder of the LIBRE party, was ousted in a 2009 coup, Salazar said “thank God… Mr. Zelaya was out of office.”

The U.S. role in the 2009 coup has not given America a good résumé in Honduras. On June 28, 2009, Manuel Zelaya was seized at gunpoint and whisked away in a plane that, unsubtly, refueled at a U.S. military base. The U.S. knew it was a coup. A July 24, 2009 cable sent from the U.S. embassy in Honduras says, “There is no doubt that the military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28 in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup….” As an exclamation point, it adds, “none of the . . . arguments [of the coup defenders] has any substantive validity under the Honduran constitution.”

Nonetheless, when the UN and the Organization of American States (OAS) called for the return of the elected president, the U.S. did not. And when the UN and the OAS refused to recognize the coup president, the U.S. did. Then-Secretary of State Clinton has admitted that she aided the coup government by shoring it up and blocking the return of the elected government: “In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary [Patricia] Espinosa in Mexico. We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.”

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The Trump administration’s killings of scores of Venezuelans are justifiably provoking outrage. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recently proclaimed, “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.” Donald Trump and Hegseth are cashing a blank check for carnage that was written years earlier by President Barack Obama.

In his 2017 farewell address, Obama boasted, “We have taken out tens of thousands of terrorists.” Drone strikes increased tenfold under Obama, helping fuel anti–U.S. backlashes in several nations.

As he campaigned for the presidency in 2007, then-Senator Barack Obama declared, “We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers.” Many Americans who voted for Obama in 2008 expected a seachange in Washington. However, from his first weeks in office, Obama authorized widespread secret attacks against foreign suspects, some of which spurred headlines when drones slaughtered wedding parties or other innocents.

On February 3, 2010, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair stunned Washington by announcing that the administration was also targeting Americans for killing. Blair revealed to a congressional committee the new standard for extrajudicial killings:

“Whether that American is involved in a group that is trying to attack us, whether that American has—is a threat to other Americans. We don’t target people for free speech. We target them for taking action that threatens Americans.”

But “involved” is a vague standard—as is “action that threatens Americans.” Blair stated that “if we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.” Permission from who?

Obama’s first high-profile American target was Anwar Awlaki, a cleric born in New Mexico. After the 9/11 attacks, Awlaki was showcased as a model moderate Muslim. The New York Times noted that Awlaki “gave interviews to the national news media, preached at the Capitol in Washington and attended a breakfast with Pentagon officials.” He became more radical after he concluded that the Geoge W. Bush administration’s Global War on Terror was actually a war on Islam. After the FBI sought to squeeze him into becoming an informant against other Muslims, Awlaki fled the country. He arrived in Yemen and was arrested and reportedly tortured at the behest of the U.S. government. After he was released from prison eighteen months later, his attitude had worsened and his sermons became more bloodthirsty.

After the Obama administration announced plans to kill Awlaki, his father hired a lawyer to file a challenge in federal court. The ACLU joined the lawsuit, seeking to compel the government “to disclose the legal standard it uses to place U.S. citizens on government kill lists.” The Obama administration labeled the entire case a “State Secret.” This meant that the administration did not even have to explain why federal law no longer constrained its killings. The administration could have indicted Awlaki on numerous charges but it did not want to provide him any traction in federal court.

In September 2010, The New York Times reported that “there is widespread agreement among the administration’s legal team that it is lawful for President Obama to authorize the killing of someone like Mr. Awlaki.” It was comforting to know that top political appointees concurred that Obama could justifiably kill Americans. But that was the same “legal standard” the Bush team used to justify torture.   

The Obama administration asserted a right to kill U.S. citizens without trial, without notice, and without any chance for the marked men to legally object. In November 2010, Justice Department attorney Douglas Letter announced in federal court that no judge had legal authority to be “looking over the shoulder” of Obama’s targeted killing. Letter declared that the program involves “the very core powers of the president as commander in chief.”

The following month, federal judge John Bates dismissed the ACLU’s lawsuit because “there are circumstances in which the Executive’s unilateral decision to kill a U.S. citizen overseas” is “judicially unreviewable.” Bates declared that targeted killing was a “political question” outside the court’s jurisdiction. His deference was stunning: no judge had ever presumed that killing Americans was simply another “political question.” The Obama administration’s position “would allow the executive unreviewable authority to target and kill any U.S. citizen it deems a suspect of terrorism anywhere,” according to Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Pardiss Kebriae.

On September 30, 2011, a U.S. drone attack killed Awlaki along with another American citizen, Samir Khan, who was editing an online Al Qaeda magazine. Obama bragged about the lethal operation at a military base later that day. A few days later, administration officials gave a New York Times reporter extracts a peek at the fifty-page secret Justice Department memo. The Times noted, “The secret document provided the justification for [killing Awlaki] despite an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections in the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war, according to people familiar with the analysis.” The legal case for killing Awlaki was so airtight that it did not even need to be disclosed to the American public.

Two weeks after killing Awlaki, Obama authorized a drone attack that killed his son and six other people as they sat at an outdoor café in Yemen. Anonymous administration officials quickly assured the media that Abdulrahman Awlaki was a 21-year-old Al Qaeda fighter and thus fair game. Four days later, The Washington Post published a birth certificate proving that Awlaki’s son was only 16-years old and had been born in Denver. Nor did the boy have any connection with Al Qaeda or any other terrorist group. Robert Gibbs, Obama’s former White House press secretary and a top advisor for Obama’s reelection campaign, later shrugged that the 16-year-old should have had “a far more responsible father.”

Regardless of that boy’s killing, the media often portrayed Obama and his drones as infallible. A Washington Post poll a few months later revealed that 83% of Americans approved of Obama’s drone killing policy. It made almost no difference whether the suspected terrorists were American citizens; 79% of respondents approved of preemptively killing their fellow countrymen, no judicial niceties required. The Post noted that “77 percent of liberal Democrats endorse the use of drones, meaning that Obama is unlikely to suffer any political consequences as a result of his policy in this election year.” The poll results were largely an echo of official propaganda. Most folks “knew” only what the government wanted them to hear regarding drones. Thanks to pervasive secrecy, top government officials could kill who they chose and say what they pleased. The fact that the federal government had failed to substantiate more than 90% of its terrorist accusations since 9/11 was irrelevant since the president was omniscient.

On March 6, 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder, in a speech on targeted killings to a college audience, declared, “Due process and judicial process are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, it does not guarantee judicial process.” TV comedian Stephen Colbert mocked Holder, quipping “Trial by jury, trial by fire, rock, paper scissors, who cares? Due process just means that there is a process that you do.” One purpose of due process is to allow evidence to be critically examined. But there was no opportunity to debunk statements from anonymous White House officials. For the Obama administration, “due process” meant little more than reciting certain phrases in secret memos prior to executions.

Holder declared that the drone attacks “are not [assassinations], and the use of that loaded term is misplaced; assassinations are unlawful killings. Here, for the reasons I have given, the U.S. government’s use of lethal force in self-defense.” Any termination secretly approved by the president or his top advisers was automatically a “lawful killing.” Holder reassured Americans that Congress was overseeing the targeted killing program. But no one on Capitol Hill demanded a hearing or investigation after U.S. drones killed American citizens in Yemen. The prevailing attitude was exemplified by House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King (R-NY): 

“Drones aren’t evil, people are evil. We are a force of good and we are using those drones to carry out the policy of righteousness and goodness.”

Obama told White House aides that it “turns out I’m really good at killing people. Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.” In April 2012, The New York Times was granted access for a laudatory inside look at “Terror Tuesday” meetings in the White House:

“Every week or so, more than 100 members of the government’s sprawling national security apparatus gather, by secure video teleconference, to pore over terrorist suspects’ biographies and recommend to the president who should be the next to die.”

It was a PowerPoint death parade. The Times stressed that Obama personally selected who to kill next:

“The control he exercises also appears to reflect Mr. Obama’s striking self-confidence: he believes, according to several people who have worked closely with him, that his own judgment should be brought to bear on strikes.”

Commenting on the Times’ revelations, author Tom Engelhardt observed, “We are surely at a new stage in the history of the imperial presidency when a president (or his election team) assembles his aides, advisors and associates to foster a story that’s meant to broadcast the group’s collective pride in the new position of assassin-in-chief.”

On May 23, 2013, Obama, in a speech on his targeted killing program at the National Defense University in Washington, told his fellow Americans that “we know a price must be paid for freedom”—such as permitting the president untrammeled authority to kill threats to freedom. The president declared that “before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured—the highest standard we can set.”

Since almost all the data on victims was confidential, it was tricky to prove otherwise. But NBC News acquired classified documents revealing that the CIA was often clueless about who it was killing. NBC noted, “Even while admitting that the identities of many killed by drones were not known, the CIA documents asserted that all those dead were enemy combatants. The logic is twisted: If we kill you, then you were an enemy combatant.” Killings are also exonerated by counting “all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants…unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” And U.S. bureaucrats have no incentive to track down evidence exposing their fatal errors. The New York Times revealed that U.S. “counterterrorism officials insist…people in an area of known terrorist activity…are probably up to no good.” The “probably up to no good” standard absolved almost any drone killing within thousands of square miles in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Daniel Hale, a former Air Force intelligence analyst, leaked information revealing that nearly 90% of people who were killed in drone strikes were not the intended targets. Joe Biden’s Justice Department responded by coercing Hale into pleading guilty to “retention and transmission of national security information,” and he was sent to prison in 2021.

Sovereign immunity entitles presidents to kill with impunity. Or at least that is what presidents have presumed for most of the past century. If the Trump administration can establish a prerogative to preemptively kill anyone suspected of transporting illicit narcotics, millions of Americans could be in the federal cross-hairs. But the Trump administration is already having trouble preserving total secrecy thanks to controversies over who ordered alleged war crimes. Will Trump’s anti-drug carnage end up torpedoing his beloved Secretary of War Hegseth and his own credibility with Congress, the judiciary, and hundreds of millions of Americans who do not view White House statements as divine revelations handed down from Mt. Sinai?

This article was originally published on The Libertarian Institute and was reprinted with the author’s permission.

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