Biden’s Vaccine Mandate for Private Employers Takes Effect Amid Ongoing Supreme Court Battle
Epoch Times – The Biden administration’s vaccination mandate pertaining to private employers went into effect Monday, despite that the rule is facing legal challenges in the Supreme Court, leaving some businesses unsure as to how to proceed.
As of Jan. 10, businesses with 100 or more employees are now required to ensure that all employees have been fully vaccinated with either two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or one dose of Johnson & Johnson’s, and they must provide paid leave to workers getting the vaccine.
Businesses included in the mandate must also keep track of workers’ vaccination status via a database, provide employees with their company’s vaccine policy and procedures, and ensure unvaccinated employees wear a mask while indoors.
The rule, which is enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), applies to some 84 million U.S. workers. Businesses that are not compliant face fines of up to $14,000 per violation.
However, OSHA has said it won’t issue penalties for non-compliance until Feb. 9, which is the same deadline by which businesses must implement the weekly COVID-19 testing alternative for unvaccinated employees.
The Supreme Court has yet to make a final decision on the rule, which is currently subject to legal challenges from a number of business groups, along with the states of Ohio, Missouri, Louisiana, and more, who are challenging the lawfulness of President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates.
Supreme Court Likely to Rule Against Biden Administration Vaccine Mandates: Rob Henneke
Epoch TImes – The Supreme Court appears poised to rule against two Biden administration COVID-19 vaccine mandates but will likely do so in a limited way, a lawyer who brought a case against the mandates says.
“I believe that on the federal vaccine mandates, the Supreme Court is going to land on a very limited position that just looks at the text of the federal statute to say this statute does not give the Biden administration the authority to do this,” Robert Henneke, executive director and general counsel at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program. The full interview will premiere on Epoch TV on Thurs, Jan 13, at 7pm ET.
Justices heard arguments last week for and against the mandates, one of which applies to every private business with 100 or more workers and the other of which covers every health care institution that receives Medicare or Medicaid funding.
Most justices seemed skeptical that the federal government has the power to impose such broad mandates, but others appeared to support the vaccination requirements.
Henneke, whose group brought a suit against the business mandate, said he sees a court that is comfortable, at some level, with mandates.
The Supreme Court has not ruled against any mandates and declined to intervene in multiple cases dealing with ones at the state level, including a mandate for New York health care workers.
“As I look at the court, as I look at where five justices may be—they accepted this case, challenging the Biden vaccine mandates, but they rejected other cases that have come from state vaccine mandates—and what that tells me is that the court may be thinking ‘this is not proper for the federal government but we’re not going to disturb the states in their power to regulate and adopt laws for public health and safety,’” Henneke said.
“So it could leave a situation where it’ll be a state-by-state decision. I think that would go too far. I still think that intrudes upon the personal autonomy and liberty of the individual. But it does also restore kind of the states as the policymakers of the nation and at least allows citizens to live and work in a state that may have policies and laws that best reflect their views.”
If justices decide to go that route, that could very well trigger certain migration patterns, whether it’s people moving to a state that has stricter policies or looser ones, Henneke predicted.
“I think this could be another example of where, for individuals that don’t want to have government into their personal business and in terms of health care choices, will move to those kinds of states where those policies best reflect their personal beliefs. And if you want to live in a state that has passed vaccine passports and vaccine mandates and heavy health care regulatory requirements, good for you—choose one of those states to live in. And
Epoch Times – Top U.S. health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, scrambled in early 2020 to respond to public reporting of a potential connection between COVID-19 and the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
This response, which included a secret Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference, was loosely detailed in previously released and heavily redacted emails. Those emails strongly suggested that Fauci and a small group of top scientists sought to promote the natural origin theory, despite having evidence and internal expert opinions that pointed to the possibility of a leak from the Wuhan lab.
Unredacted versions of some of the emails made public by lawmakers on Jan. 11 further confirm this.
The newly unredacted emails, released by House Oversight Committee Republicans, confirm and illustrate a pattern of lies and coverup. From the emails, it appears the effort was spearheaded by Fauci himself but also involved his boss, recently retired National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Francis Collins, as well as Jeremy Farrar, the head of the British Wellcome Trust.
It was previously revealed that at least two scientists, both of whom had received funding from the NIH, had told Fauci during the teleconference that they were 60 to 80 percent sure that COVID had come out of a lab.
The most significant new revelations in the unredacted emails come from two of these scientists, Robert Garry and Mike Farzan, who both noted the difficulties presented by the presence of a furin cleavage site in the COVID-19 virus—a feature that would later be cited as the defining characteristic of the virus.
US Marshals Identify ‘Deficiencies’ in DC Jail Holding Jan. 6 Defendants
Epoch Times – U.S. Marshals conducting an examination of the Washington jail that holds Jan. 6 defendants found “deficiencies” there, a new court filing revealed.
Many people charged with crimes in connection with the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol are being held in the Central Treatment Facility (CTF), including Robert Gieswein.
The Marshals conducted a surprise inspection of the jail in the fall of 2021. Acting U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia Lamont Ruffin said at the time officers found “evidence of systemic failures,” including evidence water was shut off to inmates as punishment, in another part of the jail, the Central Detention Facility.
He also said conditions at the CTF “were observed to be largely appropriate and consistent with federal prisoner detention standards.”
However, U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves said in a new filing in Gieswein’s case that the Marshals have been monitoring conditions in both portions of the District of Columbia jail and have, in the intervening time, “observed additional deficiencies in its monitoring, including several deficiencies at CTF.”
The service was ordered by the court to produce a report on conditions at the lockup. The service will provide that report to federal judges in Washington later this week, according to Graves.
He asked for an additional week to respond on behalf of the service with respect to conditions at jail “because the information in that report is being verified.”
Public defenders representing Gieswein said in a separate filing they didn’t object to giving the government an extra week to respond but asked the court not to delay a hearing scheduled for Jan. 19.
One of the attorneys declined to comment while the D.C. Department of Corrections (DOC) and the U.S. Marshals did not respond to requests for comment.
Conditions at the jail have been judged lacking for months, prompting an order to transfer over 400 inmates from the facility to other jails.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan nominee, in October 2021 held jail officials in contempt for violating a Jan. 6 defendant’s civil rights by impeding access to medical care. The following month, he ordered the defendant released over the issue.
Around the same time, multiple defendants were removed from their cells on stretchers after guards reportedly began spraying a chemical substance and didn’t stop for 15 minutes.
Defendants have complained about substandard care, including alleged assaults by guards in addition to lack of medical care.
“They’re being treated like third world country political prisoners,” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) told The Epoch Times.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who toured the jail with Gohmert, said that the defendants are political prisoners who have been blocked from speaking with attorneys.
Greene told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that the new disclosure “is more evidence proving the conditions at the DC Gulag are atrocious and inhumane.
“This is more evidence proving J6 pre-trial detainees are being mistreated for being conservative Trump supporters. And this is more evidence proving left-wing political activist Deputy Warden Kathleen Landerkin must be terminated and investigated immediately! When will my Republican conference join me in the fight to stop the two-tiered justice system in America violating human rights?” she added.
DOC officials have said the agency works to ensure detainees’ Constitutional rights and that problems identified by Marshals would be fixed.
A DOC official told the court last week that, since entering into a memorandum of understanding with the Marshals, the agency “has worked tirelessly to correct all verified deficiencies at its correctional facilities, including CTF.”
Illinois Teacher Takes Risks to Expose CRT at Public Schools
Epoch Times – Frank McCormick, a high school history teacher in a Democratic-leaning Chicago suburb, has voiced his views about Critical Race Theory (CRT) at his school district for six months. The mental toll has worn him down.
He realized that the loneliness, the personal attacks from all directions, and the constant fear of losing his job are the very things keeping many others quiet about the issue, including, at one time, himself.
When the burden was such that he wanted to simply shut up and give up, a small group of like-minded teachers in other parts of the country carried him through.
“There is nothing of value that does not come at a cost—even if my career at the district ended, it would have ended with me trying to do something right,” McCormick told The Epoch Times.
McCormick’s grandfather immigrated to the United States during World War II and joined the U.S. Army to fight for his new home country. From his grandfather, McCormick learned to not be quiet, to challenge, to fight back, and to do what was right, he said.
So on Dec. 31, he wrote down his New Year’s resolution: to speak freely, to speak unapologetically, and to support those that do the same.
The catalyst for his speaking out came after the death of George Floyd in 2020, when ideological agenda accelerated in the Waukegan public school district at a rate he hadn’t seen in nearly a decade, he said.
Suddenly everybody was taking on white privilege or systematic racism as the biggest education ills, he said. Teachers were trained to identify racial oppression at professional development sessions, and students were taught to view their world through a lens of race and conflict.
McCormick wanted to know where these ideologies came from, so he bought books and settled down to read.
“I was like, ‘Oh, Critical Race Theory, this is where my school district is getting these ideas.’ They kind of infiltrated into academia at the college level, and then found their way down into the K-12 school system,” he said.
To McCormick’s knowledge, CRT rests on two foundations: racism is the norm in America, and that almost all American institutions, including public schools, are inherently racist.
As he looked around, he could find traces of the theory all about him in the school district. It did not explicitly display itself; rather, it was disguised under programs or curriculums involving concepts like culturally relevant teaching, restorative justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion, he said.
Inflation Fears Among Small Business Owners at Highest Level In 40 Years
Epoch Times – Inflation fears among small business owners have risen to their highest level in four decades as owners remain broadly pessimistic about future economic conditions, according to the latest monthly poll from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).
The NFIB’s small business economic survey (pdf), released Jan. 11, shows that 22 percent of small business owners reported that inflation was their single most important business problem, the highest reading since 1981. A year ago, a mere one percent of owners said inflation was their chief worry.
“Inflation is at the highest level since the 1980s and is having an overwhelming impact on owners’ ability to manage their businesses,” NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg said in a statement.
The percentage of owners raising average selling prices edged down two points to a net 57 percent in December, an improvement from November but a historically elevated reading, according to NFIB.
Price hikes were the most common in wholesale (net 85 percent), construction (net 69 percent), and retail (net 63 percent). At the same time, a net 49 percent of small business owners plan to hike prices in the future, down five points from November.
While the percentage of small business owners expecting better economic conditions over the next six months rose three points to a net negative 35 percent in December, owners remained broadly pessimistic about future conditions, as this gauge has dropped 23 points over the past half-year, NFIB data showed.
Supreme Court Corrects Transcript to Show Gorsuch Didn’t Make False Flu Claim
Epoch Times – The Supreme Court has updated its official transcript of court proceedings that took place last week, clarifying that Justice Neil Gorsuch did not make a false claim about the flu.
The nation’s top court heard oral arguments on Friday for and against two Biden administration COVID-19 vaccine mandates, including one promulgated against every business with 100 or more workers by the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
Gorsuch, a Trump nominee, during questioning of Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, said that polio “was a terrible scourge on this country for many years” but that the federal government has never mandated it for workers through OSHA.
“We have flu vaccines. The flu kills, I believe, hundreds of thousands of people every year. OSHA has never purported to regulate on that basis. What do we make of that when we’re thinking about what qualifies as a major question and what doesn’t?” Gorsuch was quoted as saying.
Critics noted that hundreds of thousands of people are not killed by the flu every year in the United States, but some people noted that Gorsuch had not appeared to say “hundreds of thousands.”
The Supreme Court on Monday quietly updated the transcript (pdf), with Gorsuch being quoted now as saying, “The flu kills, I believe, hundreds, thousands of people every year.”
The court did not alert the public to the change and spokespersons have not responded to emailed questions regarding the sessions on Friday.
Several news outlets that had reported Gorsuch as falsely saying hundreds of thousands of people die annually from the flu corrected their stories, including Newsweek, after the clarification.
During the arguments on Friday, multiple judges promoted misinformation about COVID-19, including Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer.
Sotomayor, an Obama nominee, falsely claimed that 100,000 children are seriously ill with COVID-19. The figure is actually around 3,500.
Breyer, a Clinton nominee, falsely said that 750 million new COVID-19 cases were recorded on Jan. 6. The United States has a population of 331 million people, and recorded just under 792,000 cases on Jan. 6.
Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama nominee, also drew criticism for claiming “we know that the best way to prevent spread is for people to get vaccinated and to prevent dangerous illness and death is for people to get vaccinated” and that “the second best is to wear masks.”
Vaccines do not prevent transmission of the virus that causes COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, though they do help prevent severe illness.
Many types of masks, meanwhile, have little effect on the virus, studies have found. A growing number of experts have recently acknowledged the research and are encouraging people to buy and use rated masks like KN95s.
During the sessions, justices appeared skeptical of the Biden administration having the authority to put forth the mandates, but the court has not yet intervened even as they have come into effect.
New Mayor in Columbia, South Carolina, Takes Office After Defeating an Obama-Backed Candidate
Epoch Times – Former Columbia, South Carolina, City Councilman Daniel Rickenmann was sworn in as the city’s new Republican-backed mayor on Jan. 4 after defeating Tameika Isaac Devine, a candidate endorsed by former President Barack Obama.
Though mayoral elections in the capital city are nonpartisan, Rickenmann is affiliated with the Republican Party.
In addition to receiving backing from Obama, Devine, a Democrat, was endorsed by House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.).
Rickenmann succeeds former Mayor Stephen Benjamin, a Democrat, who did not seek a fourth term after serving 11 years.
In the final but unofficial results, Rickenmann received 52 percent of the vote to Devine’s 48 percent, which is in total votes 10,554 to 9,762, a difference of 792 votes.
Following Rickenmann’s win over Devine in November, Republicans said it’s evidence of a growing “red wave” that will see Republicans recapture the House during the 2022 midterms.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), the head of the Senate GOP’s reelection arm, said that Columbia “has been led by Dem mayors for 30 years,” while Biden won by 30 points last year.
Earlier that month, Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe in Virginia, in what some analysts said was a major victory for Republicans in a reliably blue state that hasn’t had a Republican governor for more than a decade. Biden won by 10 percentage points in the state last year.
At his swearing-in ceremony, Rickenmann said he promised clean sidewalks, streets, and schools, as well as public safety.
He alluded to the national talk of shutdowns by stating that Columbia would stay open for business and that he would work to reduce “taxes and fees that close the gap between surviving and thriving.”
“It shouldn’t take millions of dollars to take advantage of an opportunity in this city, it should only take determination and effort,” Rickenmann said.
Media Fakes First Omicron Death Story
Mercola – Despite all signs indicating the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant causes only mild illness, the World Health Organization declared it a “variant of concern,” and countries responded with renewed mask mandates and lockdowns
December 20, 2021, the U.S. press went wild, reporting that the first Omicron death had been reported in Houston, Texas. Some claimed the man was killed by reinfection with Omicron even though he’d recovered from previous COVID-19 illness, suggesting natural immunity doesn’t work against this variant
As it turns out, this was fake news. The county health department could not confirm that the patient died “from” Omicron infection, only that he had tested positive for it at some point before death. He reportedly had underlying health conditions
While the unvaccinated have higher transmission rates, they’re less likely than the COVID-jabbed to develop problematic infections from Omicron, suggesting Omicron evades “vaccine”-induced immunity
Your News – The Washington State Board of Health may soon amend state law to authorize the involuntary detainment of residents as young as 5 years old in Covid-19 “internment camps” for failing to comply with the state’s experimental vaccine mandate.
WAC 246-100-040, a proposed revision to include Covid protocol under the state’s Communicable and Certain Other Diseases act, outlines “Procedures for isolation or quarantine.” The measure would allow local health officers at “his other sole discretion” to “issue an emergency detention order causing a person or group of persons to be immediately detained for purposes of isolation or quarantine.”
Health officers are required to provide documentation proving unvaccinated residents subject to detention have denied “requests for medical examination, testing, treatment, counseling, vaccination, decontamination of persons or animals, isolation, quarantine and inspection and closure of facilities” prior to involuntarily confinement in quarantine facilities, the resolution states.
The amended law would also allow health officers to deploy law enforcement officials to assist with the arrest of uncompliant Washington residents.
According to W 246-100-040, “a local health officer may invoke the powers of police officers, sheriffs, constables, and all other officers and employees of any political subdivisions within the jurisdiction of the health department to enforce immediately orders given to effectuate the purposes of this section in accordance with the provisions of RCW 43.20.050(4) and 70.05.120.”
The “emergency detention order” legalizes the isolation and detainment of American citizens who fail to voluntarily comply with Covid gene therapy shots “for a period not to exceed ten days.”
However, a judge may extend the forced quarantine “for a period not to exceed thirty days” if the segregated individual or family persists to refuse vaccination.
WAC 246-100-040 was certified on October 25, 2019, months prior to the coronavirus outbreak in the United States. The first confirmed case of Covid in the US was diagnosed in Seattle on January 20, 2020.
Who Is Ray Epps? DOJ Won’t Say
Epoch TImes – Top federal law enforcement officials have declined to answer numerous questions about Ray Epps, the Arizona resident captured on video encouraging Jan. 6 protestors to breach Capitol Hill.
Controversy has surrounded Epps in recent months due to questions about his possible connection to law enforcement. Despite video evidence of him making repeated calls for action, Epps has not been charged in relation to Jan. 6, and his photo has been removed from the government’s list of most wanted people from that event.
The Democratic-led House committee investigating Jan. 6 reportedly said Jan. 11 that it has interviewed Epps, and that Epps denied any connection to law enforcement.
But at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier that day, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) were unsuccessful in obtaining answers about Epps.
Cruz asked the FBI’s assistant director for national security, Jill Sanborn, 10 questions about Epps and other potential undercover feds, none of which received substantial answers.
Sanborn admitted that she is aware of Epps, but said she doesn’t have “specific background for him.”
When Cruz asked whether Epps worked with the FBI, Sanborn declined to answer—likewise for when Cruz asked about whether federal informants participated in the riots, encouraged the riots, or removed barriers.
“I cannot answer that,” Sanborn said to each query.
Cruz pressed further.
“Five seconds after Mr. Epps whispered to a person, that same person began forcibly tearing down the barricades. Did Mr. Epps urge them to tear down the barricades?” Cruz asked.
“Similar to the other answers, I cannot answer that,” Sanborn replied.
After Cruz, it was Cotton’s turn to take a crack at the issue. Cotton asked a similar line of questions, this time directed towards Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the head of DOJ’s national security branch.
Olsen said he wasn’t aware of any plain-clothes officers among the Jan. 6 crowd, and that he didn’t know whether any undercover agents entered the Capitol.
The lack of information irked Cotton.
“Your answers are all, ‘I don’t know,’” Cotton said. “Did you prepare for this hearing? Did you know it was happening before this morning?”
Olsen also said he didn’t have any information about Epps.
“This was a man on the most-wanted page for six months. Do you really expect us to believe that you don’t know anything about him?” Cotton asked.
“I simply don’t have any information at all,” Olsen responded.
When pressed further, Olsen said he couldn’t say how many rioters were arrested for crimes related to violence, or even name a single person from the government’s list of most wanted Capitol Hill rioters. This provoked further criticism from the Arkansas senator.
“This is a hearing to mark the one-year anniversary of Jan. 6, and you can’t even tell us how many people have been charged with crimes of violence. Would you go into a briefing with the attorney general and not be able to answer such basic questions?” Cotton said.
“I guess we’re going to have to seek our answers elsewhere. This was not a stellar performance.”
Towards the end of the hearing, committee chair Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) entered into the record a fact-checking article from PolitiFact, which says there’s no evidence that Epps was a federal asset.
Durbin said he never heard of Epps before Jan. 11.
Rickards: The Supply Chain Is The Global Economy
Technocracy News -Supply chain disruptions have not been resolved, and it’s not clear when they will be. You’re seeing the effects of these disruptions at the store in the forms of shortages and higher prices.
Yet the supply chain is a subject that very few are familiar with beyond a superficial acquaintance.
Most people think the supply chain is just part of the global economy. That’s not entirely true. The supply chain is the global economy.
There isn’t a single good or service of any kind that does not arrive through a supply chain. Not one.
If the global supply chain is broken, then the global economy is broken. That increasingly appears to be the case.
The supply chain difficulties will grow worse. Even more troubling is the fact that the remedies will take years and sometimes decades to implement.
The reasons for this have to do with long lead times in implementing onshoring. For example, the U.S. can cut its dependence on Asian semiconductor imports by building its own semiconductor fabrication plans (fabs).
The problem is that these plants take from three–five years to build, and the scale needed is enormous.
There are impediments to supply chain recovery that are not directly related to particular supply chains that nonetheless hurt the process of adaptation and substitution.
For example, there’s already a labor shortage in America. The causes are complicated.
There’s no literal shortage of potential workers, but many workers prefer to stay home because of some combination of government benefits, child-care responsibilities or inadequate pay offered by employers (who can’t afford to pay more themselves because they’ll go out of business).
A lot of this labor shortage centers on lower-wage jobs such as waiters, store clerks, fast-food staff and office assistants. But there will be a labor shortage coming soon in more high-skilled areas such as engineers, pilots, machinists and medical personnel.
This shortage will not be due to low pay, but to vaccine mandates.
President Biden has ordered that all federal contractors must be fully vaccinated by Jan. 18, 2022. (That’s in addition to federal workers and the military who are already subject to vaccine mandates and have no choice).
The vaccinated rate among federal contractors is actually lower than the country as a whole. The national vaccination rate is approaching 70%, while the federal contractor rate is closer to 60%.
It’s even lower in some specialties such as avionics.
These workers know the vaccine is available, understand the risks (both ways because of side effects) and have chosen not to be vaccinated. It’s almost impossible to change their minds at this point.
Though the courts have blocked the mandate, the Biden administration is not backing off. The federal contractor workforce is huge, in the millions. We expect a massive wave of resignations and terminations among highly skilled workers if the administration gets its way.
Professionals and high-value-added blue-collar workers from Boeing to Textron and hundreds of thousands of other firms will be fired or will quit.
The U.S. economy is already weak. The supply chain is already in disarray. This mass termination of skilled contractors could put the economy into a recession.
Some analysts have even suggested that the global supply chain is being sabotaged by major participants such as China to hurt Western economies for geopolitical reasons.
It’s difficult to tell if the supply chain is being intentionally sabotaged or whether it’s just collapsing under its own weight. Possibly both.
In a way, it doesn’t matter because anything as complex and as highly scaled as the global supply chain will always collapse; it’s just a question of when.
For 30 years, the goal of supply chain management has been efficiency, usually defined as the elimination of redundancy, inventory and latency (more on that below). That’s fine in the short run but it results in a system that is brittle and has no tolerance for even small disruptions.
The nature of complex systems is that small causes have tremendous impacts to the point of total collapse.
It is possible that one or more parties chose to disrupt the system intentionally without realizing how vulnerable the entire system really was. This combination of intentional acts and unintended consequences is a staple of history, including the outbreak of World War I.
Once the implosion begins, it’s very difficult to stop.
Charge: Google Hammering Competitors By Manipulating Browser Extensions
Technocracy News – Google is already facing mounting legal challenges from regulators globally who accuse the tech giant of maintaining an illegal monopoly over its search and digital advertising businesses.
But now one of its most prominent rivals is alleging that the titan is abusing browser extensions to favor its products and stifle competitors, adding a new wrinkle to the high-stakes antitrust debate and momentum to calls for new regulation.
DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg, whose company offers a competing search engine that touts its privacy protections, told myself and Gerrit De Vynck during an interview Tuesday that Google is deploying manipulative design features, known as “dark patterns,” to trick users into abandoning rival products.
According to DuckDuckGo, Google for years has used misleading notifications to lure users into disabling its rival’s browser extensions and to discourage them from switching their default search engines on its web browser, Chrome. But Weinberg said Google in August 2020 tweaked the prompts to more blatantly nudge users away from jumping ship.
The changes include requiring users to answer whether they would rather “Change back to Google search” after adding the DuckDuckGo extension and showing users a larger, highlighted button when giving them the option to “Change it back” or not.
Weinberg said the tweaks — although subtle — have had a major impact.
Since Google implemented the changes, DuckDuckGo said it has seen a significant drop — 10 percent — in how many new users it has been able to retain on its services on Chrome. DuckDuckGo said that has translated to hundreds of thousands of new users lost. (Chrome is the world’s most prevalent desktop browser by a wide margin.)
It’s the first time the company is publicly speaking out about how the practice has impacted its business, including what it says are millions in potential lost revenue since Google changed its prompts in 2020.
“For search engines like us that are trying to actively allow consumers to switch, [or] choose an alternative, they’re making it unreasonably complicated to do so and confusing consumers,” Weinberg said of Google.
Google spokeswoman Julie Tarallo McAlister said in a statement that Chrome users “can directly change their default search settings at any time,” but they often complain “when they download an extension that unexpectedly changes these settings without their knowledge.”
She added, “This issue has been well-documented for a long time and is why we have long had clear disclosure requirements for extensions and shown users a notification if any extension tries to change their search settings — as a way to confirm their intent.”
McAlister said the notification appears “regardless of the user’s chosen search provider,” and that some other browsers have “similar policies.”
Weinberg said he hopes by speaking out about the tactic it will strengthen calls for bipartisan antitrust legislation under consideration on Capitol Hill to ban major platforms from prioritizing their own products and disadvantaging rivals.
The proposals are just some of the numerous bills targeting what U.S. lawmakers say are anti-competitive abuses by companies like Google. But the bills, spearheaded by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn) and Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), boast broad backing from Democrats and Republicans, making them among the most threatening for Silicon Valley giants. They’re seen as bellwethers for the larger antitrust push.
Weinberg said the drop in user retention via their extension on Chrome, which was previously unreported, is one of the most “direct” pieces of evidence they have seen about how Google’s practices have harmed their business.
The American Mind – Seismic economic and demographic changes will feed division and conflict.
With the seeming deconstruction of the Biden Administration proceeding at a rapid clip, many on the right hope for an end to the conscious stoking of class resentments that has characterized progressive politics. Yet despite the political meltdown, America’s class divides have become so wide, and so bitter, that Biden’s presidency may prove more a prelude than a denouement for the future of class warfare.
Under both parties, American society, traditionally egalitarian, at least in theory, has become ever more divided by financial class. Today, the Federal Reserve demonstrates that the top one percent have more assets than the 60 percent who occupy the middle rungs. The remarkable rise of the tech oligarchy has paced this change, creating a gusher of wealth for the chosen few, including youthful, unproven start-up CEOs turned instant billionaires—as well as an unprecedented boom on Wall Street. The pandemic has accelerated this trend, vastly enriching the elites, and raising executive salaries to the highest ever. Meanwhile much of the working and middle classes may become increasingly dependent on what Marx called “the proletarian alms bag.”
In the process, the traditional ballast of American politics—a striving aspirational middle and working class—has been decimated. Our system rests on the notion of class mobility in both directions, without which everything devolves into a struggle over limited assets. Not surprising, notes Pew, most Americans are alienated from the political system. Roughly half of all Americans see capitalism as causing more harm than good, notes the recent Edelman trust survey, and a large majority fears being “left behind” economically. The prelude to autocracy and an expanded state, whether in twentieth century Europe or places like Chile today, rests upon alienation and a market that seems incapable of providing opportunities for the most families.
The new serfs
The biggest loser in early twenty first century America has been the working class. With the exception of wage gains made during the first three years of the Trump Administration, this class has seen its real income decline. Today, wages are rising again, but inflation is reducing real incomes, and leaving more Americans, particularly the poorest 50 percent, struggling to make ends meet. The pandemic lockdowns, whether justified or overwrought, have pummeled low-income workers and made more vulnerable those living in crowded housing.
Under lockdown the working class could not retreat, like the laptop class, to their computer screens. Barely 3 percent of low wage workers can telecommute versus 50 percent of those in the upper middle class. Workers at restaurants and shops have faced hard times, but professors and teachers continue to teach on-line, and senior bureaucrats remain on the job. And even when employed, observes the leftist journalist Glenn Greenwald, these workers, “the servant class,” remained masked while their charges, including at the recent Obama birthday celebration, cavort unmasked.
In our pandemic apartheid almost 40 percent of those Americans making under $40,000 a year lost their jobs in the first few months. Some 44 percent of Black households and 61 percent of Latino household, notes Pew, during the first year of the pandemic suffered a job loss or pay cut, compared to 38 percent of whites. “Lockdown fanatics,” thunders the widely circulated “labor populist” blog The Bellows, “have helped manufacture consent for a brutal reorganization of labor that will plunge millions of people into serfdom.“
NEWS Fact-Checking 6 Claims From Biden’s Voting Rights Speech
The Daily Signal – President Joe Biden made a plea Tuesday in Atlanta for Senate passage of two bills designed to expand the federal government’s role in state and local election laws, looking for another legislative success—after passage of an infrastructure bill—as he approaches one year in office.
Biden and fellow Democrats have sought to frame the bills as “voting rights” legislation.
However, speaking Tuesday afternoon at the Atlanta University Center Consortium on the grounds of Morehouse College and Clark Atlanta University, Biden made several claims that seemed at best to lack context, and in other cases seemed hyperbolic or untrue.
The following are fact checks of six claims from the Biden speech.
Inflation Jumps 7 Percent Annually in December, Fastest Pace Since 1982
Epoch Times – Consumer prices accelerated in the year through December at their fastest pace in 39 years, new government data shows, marking the seventh straight month of inflation running above 5 percent and a fresh sign that inflationary woes continue to weigh on American consumers.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported on Jan. 12 that the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which reflects inflation from the perspective of end consumers, rose 7.0 percent in the 12 months through December, a level not seen since June 1982, when it hit 7.2 percent.
“This is not a lucky number 7,” Bankrate Chief Financial Analyst Greg McBride told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement, in which he noted that the pace of inflation was “far outstripping the wage growth of most Americans and squeezing the buying power of households.”
A separate government report showed that real average hourly earnings, which are adjusted for inflation, fell 2.4 percent in the 12 months through December. Without adjustment for the pace of inflation, average hourly earnings rose 4.7 percent over the year.
“The headline rate of inflation accelerated on an annual basis, hitting 7 percent, but did decelerate on a monthly basis for the second month in a row, owing to a decline in energy and slower increases in food prices,” McBride said.
On a monthly basis, the CPI inflation gauge rose 0.5 percent in December after November’s 0.8 percent jump, suggesting a slight easing of inflationary pressures.
Still, so-called core consumer prices, which strip out the volatile categories of food and energy, continued to rise at an outsized pace. Core inflation rose 5.5 percent in the year through December, the fastest pace in nearly 31 years.
“Notable increases were seen in the food and shelter categories, with the usual suspects of used vehicles rising 3.5 percent, apparel up 1.7 percent, household furnishings increasing 1.1 percent, and new vehicles climbing another 1 percent—all just in the month of December,” McBride said.
Annual CPI inflation has now been running at over 5 percent for seven straight months, well above the Fed’s 2 percent target.
Charlie Bilello, CEO of Compound Capital Advisors, said on Twitter that he believes the true rate of inflation is being understated.
“Shelter is the single biggest component of CPI (33 percent of Index) and is being wildly understated (+4.1 percent) with rents up 17.8 percent over the last year (largest annual increase ever), and home prices up 19 percent (also largest annual increase ever). True inflation rate is much higher than 7 percent,” he wrote.
Minnesota School Boards Terminate NBSA Membership After ‘Domestic Terrorism’ Letter
Epoch Times – The Minnesota School Board Association (MSBA) has terminated its membership with the National School Boards Association (NBSA), joining a growing number of states to do so over a highly controversial Biden administration letter, which likened concerned parents to domestic terrorists.
“The MSBA Board of Directors acted last week to terminate our membership with NSBA,” a letter from the nonprofit organization to school board chairs and superintendents dated Jan. 4 states.
It comes after the NBSA sent a letter (pdf) to President Joe Biden on Sept. 29, 2021, characterizing disruptions at school board meetings as “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crime.” The organization also urged the federal government to invoke counterterrorism laws to quell “angry mobs” of parents seeking to hold school officials accountable for teaching Marxist critical race theory and for imposing COVID-19 restrictions such as mask mandates on their children.
Just five days later, on Oct. 5, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo directing federal law enforcement to help address an alleged “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against teachers and school leaders. The memo remains in effect, despite the NSBA having since apologized for and rescinded the letter.
“Prior to the letter to the Biden administration, we had ongoing concerns regarding the value of membership with the NSBA,” MSBA Executive Director Kirk Schneidawind wrote. “With 18 other state school board associations already terminating their membership, we felt it was important to reevaluate the value and consider what will be in the best short- and long-term interests for MSBA and its members.”
Schneidawind said the decision “was not taken lightly,” noting that MSBA plans to form a new Consortium of State School Boards Associations (COSSBA) alongside the other 18 state school board associations who have terminated their memberships with the NBSA.
“The executive directors and staff from the 18 state associations have already created a structure with enormous opportunity,” said Schneidawind. He added that COSSBA will allow the group “to design and build a multi-state association for today and the future.”
Meanwhile, newly surfaced emails suggest that the U.S. Department of Education might have played a more important role than previously thought in the creation of the letter.
According to email exchanges obtained by advocacy group Parents Defending Education (PDE), the NSBA letter appears to be a response to a request for information by U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.
It comes comes amid questions over the Biden administration’s involvement in the creation of the NSBA letter, which still serves as the basis of a series of actions taken by the Justice Department.
“We are confident that this new opportunity, through a multi-state association, will support and strengthen our efforts in building high performing school boards in each of our school districts,” MSBA’s statement concluded.
China ‘Weaponizing’ Americans’ Personal Data: Expert
Epoch Times – A cyber intelligence expert said China “is weaponizing [Americans’] personal information” through stolen data and artificial intelligence (AI) and called on the United States to take reciprocal action against the Chinese regime.
“We see a weakening China, which is not what they are telling the world they are [economically],” said Bob Gourley, a cyber intelligence pioneer and former chief technology officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency. “It’s going to put a lot of stress and pressure on them to find new sources of revenue.”
“These new sources of revenue are things that include exploitation of intellectual property, more ransomware, more direct theft electronically,” he told NTD earlier this month. “I see the near future as being one of a lot of dangers from Chinese surveillance,” he said.
That surveillance is used in AI that helps to coordinate and correlate user data, and can be utilized to analyze and attribute things down to an individual, according to Gourley.
“This is a real threat when a surveillance state like China puts [its] computing power behind it.”
Gourley said high-tech surveillance states can take advantage of the world’s social media data, calling it “new threats” to the world today. Through data people publicly share, AI can produce a profile of what anyone has been doing, where they are, and who they associate with.
Although the communist regime in China has cut off access to Facebook, Twitter, Google, and YouTube to its own citizens, its officials, state-run media, and hackers can openly use and have become more active on both Twitter and Facebook, a think tank report showed last year.
Facebook revealed in March 2021 that it had blocked Chinese hackers from using the social media platform to track Uyghur activists living abroad, including journalists and dissidents living across the United States, Australia, Canada, Syria, Turkey, and Kazakhstan.
Some compromised users’ devices and some created fake Facebook accounts to befriend a target and trick them into clicking on a malicious link that may compromise their device.
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