Read it.

research projects that are spurring Chinese advancement in cutting-edge military technologies, including “hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence, fourth generation nuclear weapons technology, and semiconductor technology,” a new congressional report has found.

“Due to a lack of legal guardrails around federally funded research, hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. federal research funding over the last decade have contributed to the PRC’s strategic goals by helping the PRC achieve advancements in dual use, critical, and emerging technologies,” the House Select Committee on China wrote in a report published late last month.

The findings, compiled as part of a year-and-half-long investigation, show how major American universities are using federal funds to partner with Chinese institutions on a range of research projects that feed the communist nation’s military. The bulk of this work is fueled by taxpayer grants from the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence community, providing “back-door access to the very foreign adversary nation whose aggression these capabilities are necessary to protect against,” according to the committee.

And YOU are paying for it. Aren’t you proud?

Read it.

The Pentagon has provided more details on its latest strike against Houthi targets in Yemen on Friday, but as the rebel group’s attacks continue, the goal of making the Red Sea safe for merchant ships still seems out of reach.

Read it.

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said that poor welds were found on the aircraft carrier USS George Washington as well as the attack submarines USS Hyman G. Rickover and USS New Jersey.

Read it.

The pilots of what appears to be an unmarked Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter generated a massive downwash, also known as rotor wash, that sent tents and aid flying in all directions at a volunteer supply zone operated by private citizens in western North Carolina.

This action by the helicopter pilots is up for debate, with many on X believing this was an intentional act of sabotage by the federal government.

Read it.

A lament about the demise of AM radio has been rising in the halls of Congress.

Several automakers, most notably Tesla and Ford, have decided to stop putting AM radios in their electric vehicles. They claim their electric motors interfere with the audio quality of the signal and insist that FM and satellite radio are enough.

Given that people who listen to radio tend to primarily do so while driving, a trend like this could threaten the commercial viability of the over 4,000 AM stations currently broadcasting in the U.S.

Which is why they’re doing it. Every AM station in my area is doubled by an FM sub-station that is typically a few seconds behind it, timing-wise. We don’t need AM radio; anybody who wants to listen to the “AM station” can tune into its FM replica and get the same programming with higher quality sound.

The radio industry has been fighting back, lobbying for legislation that would force carmakers to install AM radios as a matter of public interest.

I.e. fat donations to politicians to mandate an obsolete technology for commercial purposes. Your democracy at work … and play. To paraphrase Samual Johnson, legislation is the last refuge of the uncompetitive.

U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who sponsored the bill in the Senate, described free AM radio as “an essential tool in emergencies, a crucial part of our diverse media ecosystem, and an irreplaceable source for news, weather, sports, and entertainment for tens of millions of listeners.”

Democrats: Best legislators money can buy. If he wants to support “an essential tool in emergencies”, he ought to support ham radio, which I notice that he doesn’t mention. “Diverse media ecosystem” is Woke-speak for “let’s continue what we’re doing so long as it brings in lobbying money”; there is no such thing as a “media ecosystem”. Nor is it an “irreplaceable source” for anything — people have been listening to FM radio for new, weather, sports, and entertainment since I was a kid in the 1960s. This is just bought-politician boilerplate that fools nobody.

As a media historian, I welcome hearing AM radio described as a public utility, particularly after decades of free-market orthodoxy dominating discussions of its fate.’

In other words, the author is a progressive media shill who is quite happy to see “free-market orthodoxy” displaced by government-regulated behavior under the Clever Plastic Disguise of “public utility”.

Read it.

We have seen this illustrated daily over the last week in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Recovery involving the rescue of thousands of people in remote mountain areas is a complex problem. Yet government – on most levels, from federal to county – all offer the same clear and simple answer to the problem: let us run everything. Do not assist without prior permission and clearance from us. Most of all, respect my authoratah!

That this delays response matters not. Process uber alles. It may cost lives, but better a few people be rescued properly than many get rescued in an unseemly manner, without procedures being followed.

This bureaucratic ineptitude is not universal. In Texas and Florida, the government knows enough to get out of the way of helpful volunteers. They even facilitate them. Apparently not so much elsewhere, especially on the federal level. I would say FEMA is turning in a Keystone Kops performance, only that is unfair to the Keystone Kops.

Read it.

A new study co-authored by Tracy Beth Høeg delves into the side effects of masking, a subject completely ignored by experts and politicians desperate to exert control over individual behavior.

And in their discussion, it’s immediately obvious why their research and conclusions will be completely ignored by the mainstream media.

“There is a lack of robust evidence of benefit from masking children to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 or other respiratory viruses,” they explain.

Read it.

The Biden-Harris administration is facing several disasters this week.

From FEMA’s botched response in the hurricane-ravaged US Southeast to elevated WW3 risks in the Middle East, one major and ongoing crisis that went underreported this week was multiple attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels on commercial ships in the critical maritime chokepoint of the southern Red Sea.

On Wednseday we penned a note, citing intelligence firm SynMax, which specializes in maritime and energy intelligence, about two commercial vessels targeted by Houthis:

“Two ships targeted by Houthis in the RedSea yesterday—Panama-flagged CORDELIA MOON and Liberian-flagged MINOAN COURAGE—the first such attacks since September,” SynMax wrote on X.

Muslim terrorists are doing their best to get Trump elected, although I’m sure that’s not their intent.

New York Post.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas set off outrage Wednesday when he told reporters that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “does not have the funds” to see Americans through the rest of this Atlantic hurricane season — after the agency spent more than $1.4 billion since the fall of 2022 to address the migrant crisis.

“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” Mayorkas said during a press gaggle on Air Force One en route to tour damage from Hurricane Helene in South and North Carolina.
“We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” he added. “We do not have the funds. FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season and what — what is imminent.”

This Is Why You Should Never Trust The Government (Brett Cooper)

Read it.

“If that’s what you want us to do, we’ll leave, no issue,” he told WJZY. “And I explained to him that I left my son on the side of the mountain, and I left another victim. I was going to go back and bring them. It was already set up for the landing spot and then I would get out of his area. He told me I wasn’t going to go back up the mountain to get them; I was going to leave them there.”

When he asked the official for a specific reason why he was ordering him to stop his rescue efforts, Seidhom said the man said, “You’re interfering with my operation.”

Seidhom said he told the official he was going back to get his copilot.

“He said, ‘If you turn around and go back up the mountain, you’re going to be arrested,'” Seidhom said. “I said, ‘Well, sir, I’m going back to get my copilot, I don’t know what to tell you.'”

No good deed goes unpunished.

Read it.

When Joe Biden became president, the Middle East was calm. Now it is in the midst of a multifront war.

So quiet was the inheritance from the prior Trump administration that nearly three years later, on September 29, 2023 – and just eight days before the October 7 Hamas massacre of Israelis – Biden’s national security advisor Jack Sullivan could still brag that “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”

So, what exactly happened to the inherited calm that led to the current nonstop chaos of the present?

In a word, theocratic Iran—the nexus of almost all current Middle East terrorism and conflict—was unleashed by Team Biden after having been neutered by the Trump administration.

The Biden-Harris administration adopted a 5-step revisionist protocol that appeased and encouraged Iran and its terrorist surrogates Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

Read it.

Nothing useful will result, but they’ll spend the money anyway, rake in donations from the favored firms, and forget it sooner rather than later.

For fun, ask Kemala what happened to all of those electric car charging stations they were going to build.

Note that David Turk, the bureaucrat involved, is a lawyer who has worked for politicians all his life. Who better to accomplish this major feat of engineering and project management?

Read it.

And who could blame them?

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Large staffing companies that thrived during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars under the Bush-Obama years retooled their business models as the US involvement and war funding in the Middle East wound down. Now, these staffing firms seem to be profiting off the Biden-Harris administration’s open-border migrant invasion by providing essential services, such as private security, transportation, and many other services, to ensure the fed’s migrant network nationwide operates smoothly.

These companies are likely awarded handsome federal contracts, paid for by the US taxpayer.

Bussing and housing millions of illegal and legal aliens is big business for staffing companies and non-profits. Americans have to realize their tax dollars are paying for all of this while the migrants displace and replace blue-collar workers in small-town factories nationwide. The folks in Springfield, Ohio, and Charleroi, Pennsylvania, know firsthand just how devastating globalist open border policies can be for them.

Check it out.

Every Dime. Online. In Real Time.

At OpenTheBooks.com, we work hard to capture and post all disclosed spending at every level of government – federal, state, and local. In 2022, we filed 50,000 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and captured 25 million public employee pension and salary records. We also broke open the California state checkbook for the first time in American history. We are rapidly growing our data in all 50 states down to the municipal level. We won’t stop until we capture every dime taxed and spent by our government.

As a government watchdog organization, we accept no government funding.

Read it.

Part of what makes the Regime Media the Regime Media is their propensity to hide stories that cast the Regime in an unfavorable light. One such story is the announcement, made by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that, with a month remaining, FEMA lacks the funds to make through hurricane season.

Read it.

A new law forcing the British owners of one or more chickens (and pigeons and birds of prey) to register each bird individually has met with resistance.

Not everyone thinks the government should be counting their chickens (even after they’ve hatched). It was reported on X, formerly Twitter, that enough scamps have successfully registered their store-bought roast chickens to crash the government website.

While the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) enjoys some support for its anti-bird flu measures, poultry owners are concerned about the excessive bureaucracy the new system now involves (and no doubt also concerned about the threat of fines and even imprisonment for non-compliance).

Read it.

The ravages of Hurricane Helene had left parts of Asheville, North Carolina underwater, but it wasn’t just the homes and roads that were underwater, but FEMA’s botched response..

Criswell, who had been appointed to head FEMA by the Biden-Harris administration as a reward for coordinating New York City’s horrendously botched response to the pandemic, posed in a starched FEMA blouse and gold necklace on a morning show even as private volunteers were once again having to step in because the Federal Emergency Management Agency had failed.

FEMA was unprepared for the flooding because under Criswell, a DEI hire whose resume included being “the first woman commissioner of New York City Emergency Management”, the agency had shifted from disaster management to DEI disasters.

Navy Matters.

The supposed savings is estimated at $1B. In the aggregate, that sounds impressive. A billion dollars! Wow! However, across four ships that’s just $250M savings per ship. That’s not nothing but it’s not a miraculous savings, by any means. More importantly, you know those savings will never materialize. With 100% certainty, the ships will come in over budget and behind schedule with a litany of excuses like supply chain disruptions, parts shortages, design modifications, and all the other usual suspects. There won’t be any savings. The absolute best case is that the ‘savings’ (let’s be optimistic and assume there will be actual savings) will slightly reduce the magnitude of the inevitable cost overruns. Again, better than nothing but let’s not kid ourselves into thinking we’re actually going to save money.

Read it.

When 19-year-old Aleysha Ortiz told Hartford City Council members in May that the public school system stole her education, she had to memorize her speech.

Ortiz, who was a senior at Hartford Public High School at the time, wrote the speech using the talk-to-text function on her phone. She listened to it repeatedly to memorize it.

That’s because she was never taught to read or write — despite attending schools in Hartford since she was 6.

Ortiz, who came to Hartford from Puerto Rico with her family when she was young, struggled with language and other challenges along the way. But a confluence of circumstances, apparent apathy and institutional inertia pushed her haphazardly through the school system, according to Ortiz, her attorney and district officials.

Those officials, in statements that her attorney says display “shocking” educational neglect, have acknowledged that Ortiz never received instruction in reading.

Government schools. Union teachers. Results as you see them.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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Yeah, they all voted straight Democrat. Mission accomplished.

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Charles Piller and the team here at Science dropped a big story yesterday morning, and if you haven’t read it yet, you should. It’s about Eliezer Masliah, who since 2016 has been the head of the Division of Neuroscience in the National Institute on Aging (NIA), and whose scientific publication record over at least the past 25 years shows multiple, widespread, blatant instances of fraud. There it is in about as few words as possible.

Read it.

Labour’s early release scheme, launched to reduce overcrowding in British prisons, has now in error freed more than 30 prisoners who were never eligible for inclusion in the programme. Further denting the reputation of an already catastrophic government initiative, the latest revelation came on Thursday, September 26th.

Tucked away among the 1,750 prisoners who became eligible for release after serving just 40% of their sentences (down from the original 50% minimum) were approximately three dozen offenders who are not eligible for the new programme at all.

The problem with large nation-states is that they engender even larger bureaucracies, and the stupidity of a bureaucracy expands to meet the available budget, and the politicians are so preoccupied with buying votes that they have no money left for essential government services, like keeping criminals out of circulation.

Read it.

England’s Chief Medical Officer testified before the (token and pointless) Covid Inquiry earlier today, claiming he feared the government “overdid it” when talking up the dangers of Covid.

No kidding, Chris.

Read it.

Right before Election Day, Biden finally released the names of his ‘bundlers’: the big money fundraisers who backed his 2020 campaign. One of them was ‘Muhammad’ Tahir Javed: a Biden surrogate, Democratic National Committee deputy finance chair, and future Pakistani cabinet member.

Javed bragged that he had “raised over $2M for the Biden Harris transition team” and “recruited 30+ donors to the transition team and general campaign, four of whom were recognized along with myself… to have raised over $100,000 personally.” These donors would have likely come through Javed’s roles in various Islamic and Pakistani groups operating inside America..

The Congressional Pakistan Caucus Foundation, founded by Javed, was announced at an event with Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Rep. Eric Swalwell (who was later caught having relations with a Chinese Communist spy) and Rep. Henry Cuellar (currently indicted for bribery) with the expectation that another 37 members of Congress would also join.a Pakistani ‘caucus’. Javed had donated around $15,000 to Rep. Jackson Lee, and around $9,000 to Swalwell and Cuellar.

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The recent approval by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) of billionaire activist George Soros’ acquisition of more than 200 Audacy radio stations has ignited controversy.

According to the NY Post, the FCC adopted an order to approve Soros’ purchase of more than 200 radio stations in 40 markets just weeks before the US election in November.

This development has prompted allegations from Republican FCC commissioners and lawmakers of straight up malarkey. According to the Post, this deal was pushed through with a partisan 3-2 vote just before the presidential election, potentially enhancing Soros’ reach to over 165 million Americans during a critical time.

The Crust takes care of its own.

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According to Examining Widespread Fraud in Pandemic Unemployment Relief Programs, a recent report from the House Oversight Committee, taxpayers were ripped off for some $191 billion. A key player in the widespread fraud is Biden-Harris labor secretary Julie Su, former secretary of California’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency in charge of the state’s Employment Development Department (EDD).

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Ute Krüger is originally from Germany, but has lived in Sweden for almost 20 years; she worked for years there as a senior physician and speaks Swedish well. She specializes in pathology and is also a cancer researcher.

Krüger has decades of experience in analyzing how changes in cells and tissues in patients can be linked to specific diseases. She has recently co-published a book in German with documentation of patients who have probably been killed by the Corona vaccines. In this connection, she gave a video interview in Swedish.

Together with Professor Walter Lang, in Berlin in 2024 Ute Krüger published the textbook Geimpft — gestorben. Histopathologischer Atlas der Corona-Impfschäden. Gedenkschrift für Prof. Arne Burkhardt. This can be translated as “Vaccinated — died. Histopathological atlas of Corona vaccine damage. Commemorative publication for Prof. Arne Burkhardt.” The book contains 138 pages with 112 illustrations and 57 case descriptions. Work is underway to translate it into English.

Read it.

Seven hundred past and present intelligence and other government officials and retired military officers have endorsed Kamala Harris. This includes at least some of the “dirty fifty-one” who assured us that Hunter’s laptop was fake, and the same crowd who pretended that the Steele dossier was real. People who have gutted our national defense with DEI hiring and the insane Obama policy deference to Islamist nutballs, while also calling for government censorship of critics, have declared that Xi, et al, would prefer Trump, an allegation even more absurd than their previous consensus on Hunter and Steele.

On the downside, it is depressing that within government and academia, mere titles and tenure are presented as viable substitutes for competence and character. It is deeply pathetic that these people believe they are remotely trustworthy.

On the upside, it’s nice to have a working list to start draining the swamp if the opportunity arises in 2025.

Read it.

The population of Haiti is just under 12 million, and in the past few years around 300,000 of them have come to the United States. The population of Springfield, Ohio is around 58,000, and in the past few years, they have experienced a remarkably sudden and massive influx of new residents: 20,000 Haitians. So 7% of those who left Haiti for a better life in America moved to Springfield, Ohio.

Much has been written about this.  Republicans are complaining that this could have a negative impact on the social structure and financial viability of Springfield.  Democrats are rolling their eyes and saying that Haitians don’t eat cats.  But I’m stuck on a question further upstream:  How did Springfield, Ohio suddenly become such a popular destination for Haitians?  Is it really possible that just spontaneously, for no reason, 20,000 Haitians woke up one morning and all said in unison, “You know, I’d love to move to Springfield, Ohio.  Wherever that is.”  Ok, so if we presume that all those individual Haitians didn’t decide on Springfield, then who did?

Because YOUR GOVERNMENT wants to make rural America as much of a Turd World shithole as the Democrat-ruled major metropolitan areas have become. Thank you, Joe Biden.

Who, exactly, did this?

Who paid for it?

And why? Why Springfield, Ohio?

I would love to know the answers to those three questions.

As would we all.

Read it.

California has passed two new bills protecting actors and performers against AI, in a potentially precedent-setting moment for tech legislation across the country.

While these largely overlap with the AI safeguards that SAG-AFTRA passed last year, the new laws not only bolster those existing protections but extend them to everyone in California — not just to people working in front of a camera in Hollywood, as IndieWire notes.

Together, the bills, which were passed by Governor Gavin Newsom on Tuesday, make it illegal to use an AI-generated digital replica of an actor’s likeness or voice — or technically, any Californian’s — without their explicit consent.

No, they weren’t passed by Newsom, they were passed by the state legislature and signed by Newsom. But I can understand how ‘journalists’ can confuse the two.

Will the movie/TV business leave California as a result? Let’s stay tuned.

Read it.

Many of us are probably aware of the outrageous actions of our federal law enforcement agencies against our citizens. There was the raid on the home of Roger Stone in 2021 in the early hours of the morning—it’s worth noting that Stone was an associate of Donald Trump. No one could reasonably explain why the raid of 30 armed men needed to arrive so early. Then there’s the 6:30 am raid of the home of pro-life activist Mark Houck when he was swarmed and arrested by two dozen armed agents; he was accused of pushing a pro-abortion activist at an abortion clinic who was harassing his 12-year-old son. His attorney had suggested that he voluntarily surrender, but the FBI refused. Four months later he was found not guilty.

But it seems that the government is prepared to murder people when events don’t go their way:

The Hill.

Harris, the Deep State candidate, appreciates their support.

When I first read the headline, I thought it said ‘highly rank’, and I thought to myself, ‘Yeah, that’s about right’.

CNN.

What do they know that you don’t?

Time to leave.

Read it.

The Biden White House held its first cabinet meeting in a year, and for some bizarre reason that no one can fathom, Joe Biden’s wife was chairing it.

Gothamist.

Federal law enforcement officials served a subpoena to the director of the New York City’s Office of Asylum Seeker Operations on Friday, adding yet another twist to the ongoing investigations into Mayor Eric Adams’ administration.

The building where the director’s parents live also got a visit from law enforcement, according to surveillance footage provided to Gothamist.

The office Molly Schaeffer leads was launched in March 2023 as part of Adams’ response to the influx of migrants to the city. When the office was established, Adams said it would focus on the city’s ongoing efforts to provide “resettlement and legal services,” along with a new “24/7 arrival center for asylum-seekers.”

One of these days a government employee is going to be seized by an Attack of Honesty and call their workplace the Office of Handing Out Your Money to People Who Don’t Deserve it.

Read it.

ICE Detains Illegal Migrant Accused Of Raping Pre-Teen In Nantucket…More Than A Month After He Walked On Bail
Each day it becomes increasingly clearer that the migrant crime the left side of the aisle wants us to believe is a figment of our imagination…isn’t.

The latest example came from, of all places, Nantucket, where 28 year old illegal migrant Bryan Daniel Aldana-Arevalo was accused of raping a pre-teen child this past July after entering the U.S. from El Salvador.

There once was a girl in Nantucket….
It did not end well.

Read it.

The Air Force finally handed over a trove of documents pertaining to its sweeping “goal” of reducing the number of white male applicants in a popular officer program after spending months stonewalling requests for their release.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman C.Q. Brown—at the time the highest-ranking member of the Air Force—issued a memorandum in 2022 that the branch was updating its racial and gender demographic goals for applicants seeking to become officers, in a bid to prioritize “diversity and inclusion.”

Internal documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation include a slideshow from 2022 where the Air Force outlines racial and gender quotas and details how it hopes to “achieve” a reduced number of white males in its Reserve Officers’ Training Corps officer’s applicant program.

Read it.

Earlier this month, we took a deep dive into Minnesota’s state checkbook. Unlike the state budget, a broad plan to allocate funds, the checkbook contains every line-by-line expenditure the state makes in a given year. By comparing the paid vendors with those who donated to Governor Tim Walz’s reelection campaign, we found interesting examples of overlap but not enough information to identify confirmed conflicts of interest.

By suing the state, a constellation of interests was able to negotiate a deal behind closed doors on the controversial topic of treating and housing transgender inmates. While taxpayers foot the bill, as always, their representatives in St. Paul were sidestepped in the policymaking process.

The bill came to $495,000, but updated policies mean Minnesotans can expect more costs in perpetuity.

Read it.

Democrats lie. It’s what they do.

Newsbusters.

U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman went to bat for a Soros-funded, Hungarian media outlet against Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government. Pressman just happened to also have dubiously shoveled American taxpayer dollars into that outlet.

Pressman condemned Hungary, a NATO ally, for investigating the so-called independent media outlet Átlátszó which received $197,478 from Soros from 2017 through 2020. Notably, Pressman made these remarks at a Sept. 18 forum sponsored by the Soros-created Central European University’s (CEU) Democracy Institute and the Soros-funded organization Political Capital. Soros has given $1,084,390,977 (yes, over a billion) to CEU between 2016 and 2023 alone. The leftist billionaire also gave $685,123 to Political Capital from 2016 to 2023.

“In Hungary, we find an unironically named ‘Sovereignty Protection Office’ that has publicly announced three investigations,” Pressman said. He went on to mock the Orban government for looking into “the threat to Hungary’s sovereignty posed by … Átlátszó, an independent media outlet, whose name means ‘transparency,’ focused on exposing corruption.”

Read it.

An FBI informant who shared his home with two of the 9/11 hijackers has been accused in civil court of being “co-opted” by Saudi Arabian intelligence to help carry out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Read it.

These days, most people have a pretty good idea of what tariffs are. They’re an additional tax on goods made in another country, traditionally put into place to protect a homegrown industry. Application of tariffs has been one of the tactics used by the president of the United States in ongoing trade negotiations with China and the European Union.

This story is not about those tariffs. It’s the story of how one company has dealt with tariffs for decades, and the implications that has for stuff you end up buying at the store.

Tariffs are an excellent example of how micromanaging economic activity is the thin edge of the wedge toward a nation in which the government sticks its nose into every orifice of your body.

Tooze and Peter Bragdon, executive vice president and chief administrative officer, are basically the tariff guys at Columbia Sportswear. They told Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal that Columbia has been doing something they call “tariff engineering” for decades — they design apparel and products in accordance with American tariff policy.

For example, certain women’s garments with “pockets below the waist” get lower duty rates than those without. Because of that, a number of the women’s shirts Columbia Sportswear makes are intentionally designed with tiny pockets near the waistline, which lowers the cost of importing them. One of the company’s shorthands for “pockets below the waist” is “nurse’s pocket.”

An example of one of Columbia’s most popular women’s garments with pockets below the waist is a short sleeve shirt called the PFG Tamiami, which retails on the company’s site for $40 for a standard size, $45 if it’s a plus size.

According to Peter Bragdon, this pocket “is a prime example of how the real designers of apparel and footwear in this country live on Capitol Hill.”

Indeed it is.

Read it.

A key House committee has begun an investigation into Census Bureau overcounts and undercounts that favor Democrats in awarding congressional apportionment and Electoral College votes.

House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., wrote Census Bureau Director Robert Santos on Wednesday to inquire about its communications about the overcounts and undercounts of state populations with the Biden-Harris administration and its Commerce Department, which includes the bureau.

After the 2020 census, the Census Bureau’s 2020 Post-Enumeration Survey, or PES, released the following year identified significant errors in the counts.

Such miscounts did not occur in the 2010 census, Comer noted in his letter to Santos.

Read it.

This week U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released its latest statistics showing at least 530,000 migrants flew into the U.S. and were paroled into the country as part of the Biden administration’s controversial mass parole program for those migrating from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela (the CHNV program). The program essentially expedites the transfer of migrants from these countries with minimal vetting under refugee laws and allows them to stay in the US for at least two years with a work visa.

The CBP also notes that at least 800,000 more migrants have applied for the program at US ports of entry, meaning they are likely already in the country. The numbers are not counted as illegal border crossings. The CBP has warned that once the two-year work period ends they do not have the manpower to track down those migrants that refuse to leave voluntarily.

Read it.

DOE and its minions are running out of stuff to regulate under existing energy efficiency statutes within EPCA. A move to carbon efficiency regulation vastly expands their regulatory empire. The IRA is providing obscene amounts of taxpayer funding to force-feed this anti-consumer agenda.

Read it.

About two-thirds of Americans believe they pay too much in taxes, and only about 25% believe they get good value in return for their money. Add in the maddening complexity of our tax code and the plethora of (often insane) advice flying around, and it’s easy to see why people put so much effort into avoiding as much tax as they can.

Of course it can be beneficial to reduce the amount of tax that you have to pay every year. If you have the flexibility and a portable income stream that you can take with you, moving to a tax-advantaged area can be an effective way to accomplish that—but it’s not as simple as googling states with no income tax and hopping on Zillow. You need to consider the overall tax burden, and then get creative.

If ten percent is good enough for Jesus, it ought to be enough for Uncle Sam.

Of course, the actual answer to this question is ‘Nowhere in the United States’.

Go Where You’re Treated Best.

Read it.

In April, police inspectors at the Indianapolis FedEx distribution center seized a box containing nearly $43,000 in cash. Even though no criminal charges have been filed in connection with the package, it’s been in the government’s possession for about four months.

Now, the box’s intended recipient, Henry Minh Inc., is pursuing a class action lawsuit against the state of Indiana. The jewelry wholesale business consists of the husband-and-wife duo Henry and Minh Cheng.

Working with the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit focused on civil liberties, Henry Minh alleges a widespread pattern of unlawful package seizures at Indy’s FedEx processing facility.

Civil forfeiture started out as a way to get at drug dealers and other ‘organized criminals’ that normal law enforcement methods were unable to reach. It has since become a method for governments to confiscate people’s property without the bother of having to prove the commission of a crime.

Read it.

Two days ago, tech streamer and host of Code Therapy René Rebe was streaming one of many T2 Linux (his own custom distribution) development sessions from his office in Germany when he abruptly had to remove his microphone and walk off camera due to the arrival of police officers. The officers subsequently cuffed him and took him to the station for an hour of questioning, a span of time during which the stream continued to run until he made it back.

René Rebe and fans of his work can only guess what motivated this incident. Unfortunately, the police seemingly have no idea who did it and acted based on a tip sent with an email. Finding the perpetrators could take a while, and options will be fairly limited if they don’t also live in Germany.

Our world–and welcome to it.