Dec 21

Socialism’s Grip Tightens Around the World

Governments across the globe are raising taxes, expanding government control.

Wall Street Journal. Dec. 18, 2023.

Tom Fairless of the Wall Street Journal writes that “The Era of Big Taxes Is Upon Us.”

“Tax revenues have risen to record levels as a share of economic output” in France, Japan and South Korea.

“In the U.S., tax receipts at all levels of government climbed to nearly 28% of GDP last year, up from 25% in 2019 and the highest level since at least 1965, aside from a brief period of budget consolidation during the Clinton administration.”

“In France and Germany, tax receipts have increased by around 1 percentage point of GDP since 2019 from already high levels, to about 46% and 39% of GDP respectively. In both countries, tax-to-GDP ratios are at the highest levels since records began in 1965.”

Ratios of taxation in Japan and South Korea are similarly approaching all-time (i.e., “European”) levels.

“Governments across advanced economies are spending about 2 percentage points more as a share of gross domestic product than they did in 2019, or around 41% of GDP compared with 39% before the pandemic, according to International Monetary Fund data.”

“Government revenue is expected to rise to around 32% of GDP in the U.S. in 2027 from 30% in 2019, according to IMF data.

“In the 20-nation eurozone, government spending will reach half of the region’s economic output this year, according to the IMF. In the U.S., state spending stands at 38% of GDP, above its prepandemic level.”

Dec 20

Shellenberger: Nearly every major media platform is seeing double-digit-percentage declines in audience.

Twitter. 12/20/2023. Journalist Michael Shellenberger writes that “Nearly every major media organization saw its digital audience decline 13% to 35% (!) over the last year.” “It’s because people lost trust in the media, which got every big story of the last few years wrong.”

For example, readership of the Washington Post is down 27%. Readership of the LA Times is down almost 30%. Readership of the New York Times is down over 28%.

The Washington Post is on track to lose $100 million in 2023, despite rapid growth in its coverage population.

Dec 20

Never has a college degree been more worthless than today.

New Study finds employers are now LESS LIKELY to hire an employee with a college degree than they are to hire one without.

Newsweek. Dec. 19, 2023.

According to the Freedom Economy Index, an overwhelming 91 percent of the 70,000 small businesses they surveyed said colleges are not “graduating students with relevant skills that today’s business community needs.”

“Indeed, many employers now see a college degree as a negative rather than a positive.”

When the survey asked employers if they were “more or less likely to consider a job-seeker with a 4-year degree from a major university or college,” employers were four times more likely to answer in the negative (41 percent) than in the affirmative (10 percent), while an additional 42 percent said it made no difference. Amazingly, almost 20 times as many employers were said they were “strongly” less likely to hire the applicant with a college degree than “strongly” more likely.

MODERN GOVERNMENT-SUPPORTED COLLEGES ARE GOVERNMENT WORSHIP CENTERS

When asked whether colleges are “fostering free speech and debate, thereby graduating students capable of debating ideas and using critical thinking,” a whopping 97 percent disagreed.

Companies such as Accenture, Bank of America, Google, IBM, and Walmart no longer require college degrees for hundreds of different positions. A report by the Burning Glass Institute last year predicted that “an additional 1.4 million jobs could open to workers without college degrees over the next five years.”

Meanwhile, 12 states no longer require a bachelor’s degree for most government jobs.

The rigid, extreme progovernment ideology pushed by government-supported universities is actually creating graduates with less value in the marketplace. See here.

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Dec 16

Obamacare and “public health” have sent life expectancy plummeting.

Los Angeles. December 16, 2023. Dr. Robert M. Califf recently wrote about the “catastrophic” drop in life expectancy since government took over control of most healthcare.

“We are facing extraordinary headwinds in our public health with a major decline in life expectancy. The major decline in the U.S. is not just a trend. I’d describe it as catastrophic.”

JAMA Internal Medicine published earlier this month that our overall life expectancy has dropped to 76 years, and remarkably, that male life expectancy in the U.S. has dropped to 73 years.

A study last year by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles shows heart attack deaths were up for all age groups in 2020 and 2021. But the largest increase was in the 25-44 age group, a 29% jump during those years.

See here.

Dec 16

“National Security” Insider: Presidents keep a “Doomsday Book” with plans to take over everything and kill all who resist.

“national security” “expert” Miles Taylor

Washington. December 16, 2023. Recently a “national security” “expert” named Miles Taylor has been making rounds promoting an intelligence-community narrative that if Donald Trump is reelected president in 2024 there will be disaster, genocide and worldwide pestilence. Taylor is a former official in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security who has written two books attacking Trump (to the rave reviews and applause of “mainstream” “reporters”).

Taylor incessantly promotes deep state tyrants such as Liz Cheney (while insisting he is a “conservative”). Taylor once stated that “the number one national security threat I’ve ever seen in my life to this country’s democracy is the party that I’m in — the Republican Party. “

Recently Taylor was on an MSNBC broadcast where he told interviewer Jen Psaki that “there’s something in the White House called the Doomsday Book,” and that there will be certain disaster if Trump gets his hands on ‘the Book.’ See here.

The “Doomsday Book” reportedly contains plans for a president to “protect” the homeland during emergencies (meaning to take over everything). Of course, every government that ever existed seeks the same things: to control everything; to take all wealth and property; and to kill all who resist.

And, of course, no one should ever have his hands on such authority; including Trump. Anyone who studies history knows that it is inevitable that ‘the book’ will soon be used.

Dec 14

12 % of retirees are planning to return to work. 34% say they did not prepare adequately for retirement.

A study by The Senior Citizens League (TSCL) finds that older Americans who retired before 2000 would have to earn an extra $516.7 more per month or $6,200 more this year than what they are currently getting to maintain the same level of buying power as in 2000.

Many retirees have accrued debts which cannot be paid by their current incomes.

Consequently, some 12 percent of retirees are literally planning to come out of retirement to pay the bills.

More than a third of retirees admit they did not prepare adequately for retirement. 

 See here.

Dec 12

Some of America’s largest pharmacies have been giving people’s medical info to the government without warrant

CVS Health, Kroger and Rite Aid, with a combined 60,000 locations nationwide — said they allow pharmacy staff members to hand over customers’ medical records to law enforcement without warrant.

Pharmacies’ records hold some of the most intimate details of their customers’ personal lives, including years-old medical conditions and the prescriptions they take for mental health and birth control.

See here.

Dec 11

Sometime between 1997 and 1998, global “science” leaders changed the earth’s ‘average’ historic temperature from 15 degrees C to 14 degrees C

To Promote the Government’s Climate Change Narrative

An astounding change in a basic scientific standard was quietly made in the late 1990s. Government propagandists succeeded in changing the supposed “average base temperature” of the planet. “It is hard to pinpoint the exact date when the change from 15 degrees to 14 degrees was introduced.  It most likely happened sometime in 1997, and definitely no later than January of 1998.”

In March 1988, a few months before NASA’s James Hansen asserted before the Congress that global warming was in progress, the New York Times quoted him as saying that he used 59 degrees Fahrenheit as the average global temperature to calculate the temperature variations. But NASA, James Hansen, and every other government institution and “leader” subsequently changed their baseline average temperature for the planet earth.

Today, all government institutions say that the average, proper, traditional global temperature for the planet is 14 degrees Centigrade rather than 15.

This change makes the present seem warmer than the supposed past average.

See here.

Dec 11

It begins. Nebraska government will require all health data to be uploaded to government computer systems

The Hippocratic Oath is at the heart of the medical profession. And one major component of the Oath is privacy and confidentiality. But governments everywhere have been waging war on medical privacy.

Now the State of Nebraska has begun the mass collection of digital health data on all its citizens, Reclaim The Net reported.

This initiative, part of a state Health Information Technology (HIT) Board’s mandate, consolidates health records in a way that has never been done before, raising alarm over the state’s direction toward a possible national digital ID system and the specter of surveillance that could follow.

The Nebraska Legislature made a law (LB 411) that says all healthcare facilities must share their health records in this system to help patients and improve how healthcare works together.

Dec 02

Washington Post to lay off hundreds more.

Readers won’t pay to read endless government propaganda.

“mainstream” “news” sources (meaning those that supply government-supporting, government-supported, “news”) have lost millions of viewers and readers. Now one of the government’s biggest cheerleaders, the Washington Post, is needing to cut ANOTHER 240 jobs. This represents ten percent of the Post’s overall staff. The Post, which is owned by “one of the richest people in the world,” has been losing readers for years.

See here.