• ‘SAVING OUR DEMOCRACY’ MEANS REPLACING GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS with ones that actually teach instead of indoctrinate. Today’s structure evolved after WWII, “when competence tests were declared discriminatory, forcing companies to rely on formal education to discover talent and, like most programs, opportunist Teacher’s Unions took over – dutifully peddling politics but neglecting the actual purpose of education, leaving American kids illiterate and innumerate. Some 60% of kids don’t graduate from high school, and last year 23 Baltimore schools had zero kids proficient in math while Detroit had 4%. Take people who can’t name a state or don’t know what the Supreme Court is, wash them with decades of left-wing propaganda, stick them in a voting booth, and here we are.” [profstonge@substack.com]
  • OVER 500,000 MIGRANTS HAVE NOW FLOWN INTO THE COUNTRY without any asylum screening. “If you wanted to design a program that simultaneously exploited vulnerable migrants, enriched human traffickers, and flooded our nation with illegals, you could not come up with a better policy than the Biden-Harris CHNV Parole Program, where ‘sponsors’ (people or companies) now shakedown migrants for profit” by charging $10,000 to ‘support’ one from Cuba/ Haiti/ Nicaragua/ Venezuela. The migrant simply files an app with Homeland Security, gets permission to fly in, and is granted Humanitarian Parole for two years (immediately eligible for food stamps, Medicaid & welfare), without any subsequent tracing. An internal DHS investigation found fake SSNs, phone numbers and addresses (a hundred of which were used on more than 19,000 applications); “the program is a factory for fraud.”  [WASHINGTON EXAMINER – 4/14/24]
  • DECEPTIVE ADVERTISING THROUGH FAKE REVIEWS & TESTIMONIALS are finally subject to a new FTC Rule which prohibits and can now subject advertisers to potential lawsuit and penalties for: (1) fake or false consumer & celebrity testimonials; (2) compensating or incentivizing writing or expressing any particular sentiment – positive or negative; (3) not disclosing any relationship with an insider, employee, agent or relative;  (4) buying or selling any fake indicator of social media influence – like from a bot or hijacked account; (5) using unfounded legal or physical threats, intimidation or false public accusations to prevent or remove a negative consumer review. It’s about time!  [MANATT CLIENT ALERT – 8/21/24]
  • “AMERICA IS ENTERING A VERY DANGEROUS 5-MONTH PERIOD. Biden has been judged by the American people in the polls as too enfeebled to be reelected and declared by his own party to be too cognitively challenged to remain its nominee. That may suggest to foreign risk-takers that the U.S. president is deemed unfit by Americans themselves and thus conclude there might be a vacuum of rapid-response leadership at the White House… That conclusion is likely shared by enemies abroad, who may surmise that if there ever was a time to alter the current geostrategic map or the relative balance of power, that rare occasion is now on the horizon.”  https://victorhanson.com/the-quiet-before-the-storms-in-ukraine-gaza-and-taiwan/

THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK:

  • Diversity/ Equity/ Inclusion initiatives (DEI) are starting to be displaced by many employers for Merit/ Excellence/ Intelligence (MEI) policies, where the approach is that “instead of picking winner and losers based on someone being the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ race, gender, etc., rather Meritocracy is a core part of the American Dream, and that anyone, regardless of background or upbringing can succeed through hard work.”   [FORTUNE]
  • California’s ‘Zero Down, No-payment, $150K home loan’ program was awarded this year to eighteen thousand lucky lottery winners at a cost to the state above $250 million. Newest Bill, already passed by the Assembly and pending Senate approval, expands eligibility to Undocumented Individuals (i.e. illegal aliens) who are unfairly “missing out on the California Dream of securing financial security and personal stability.”
  • Tattoos in America:  latest Pew Research says: 38% of women, 27% of men;  37% of those with some college or less education; 24% of those with a Bachelors degree; 51% of LGBT community, 2/3 female; 39% of blacks, 35% Hispanic; a third say their reason was to “improve personal appearance,” 42% say “to make a statement about what they believe”; 24% say they “regret ever getting.”