Tag: poverty

Media shows no scrutiny of study claiming oil companies made the world $28 trillion poorer

A new study published in the journal Nature concludes that the world would be $28 trillion richer if we hadn’t used fossil fuels. Were it not for the “extreme heat” fossil fuel companies are causing, the researchers from Dartmouth College explain, we’d have a much wealthier planet. 

With such dramatic conclusions, multiple outlets in the legacy media breathlessly reported the findings. A report in CBS News quotes celebrity climate scientist Michael Mann supporting this type of research. A D.C. court recently sanctioned Mann in his libel suit against two bloggers, saying he “acted in bad faith when they presented erroneous evidence and made false representations to the jury and the Court.” CBS News’ report makes no mention of this. 

“Extreme weather events continue disrupt [sic] communities and strain finances,” a report on the study in The New York Times states. The lead paragraph in a report in the Associated Press compares using fossil fuels, which are the basis for over 80% of the globe’s energy and thousands of consumer products, to using tobacco. The study, Associated Press climate reporter Seth Borenstein claims, will “make it easier for people and governments to hold companies financially accountable.” 

These articles fail to mention that the methodology used in the study wasn’t developed by impartial researchers dedicated to following science. The methodology, it turns out, was developed by anti-fossil fuel activists whose aim is to support climate lawsuits against oil companies. The study’s authors also consulted with a lawyer who works at a law firm that stands to profit from climate litigation. 

Keep reading

REALITY CHECK: Adam Schiff Says Party Has a “Major Problem” After San Francisco Cashier Tells Him “Democrats are As*holes”

Democrat Senator Adam Schiff (CA) is apparently just now realizing that Democrats need to “change how we do business” in liberal areas that are overrun with crime, drugs, and homelessness, citing an encounter with a Target cashier who told him the hard truth about the Democratic party. 

During an appearance on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Schiff recalled an incident at a Target in San Francisco after his car was robbed in his home state of California. And it wasn’t getting robbed in the notoriously liberal city.

The Gateway Pundit readers will likely recall that Schiff got robbed in San Francisco last year while campaigning for Senate in the city. The robbers took his luggage, and he was forced to attend a dinner party in a t-shirt and hiking vest instead of the appropriate formal attire.

Following this, he went to buy toiletries at a Target store, he says, and the cashier hit him with a blunt reality check.

The party that locked everyone in their homes during COVID, bullies people into silence, and allows criminals and the dregs of society to terrorize everyday Americans are “assholes,” the woman apparently told him.

” I thought, you know, if the cashier in South San Francisco at 10 o’clock at night believes that Democrats are assholes because the shampoo is locked up, and my stuff got stolen out of the trunk, we’ve got a major problem that we have to address,” he said.

Still, it wasn’t until now, after the Democrats’ massive defeat in the 2024 election, that Schiff seemingly had an epiphany and sounded the alarm to his party.

Keep reading

California’s Broke Medicaid Program Has Been Spending on … Homeless Housing

Medi-Cal, the State of California’s version of Medicaid, has been spending on extraneous programs such as housing while running up a deficit so extreme that the state has had to borrow over $6 billion to save it.

As Breitbart News reported last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration had to seek $6 billion in loans to keep the program from collapsing, partly due to the cost of covering illegal aliens, which he did last year.

Now, CalMatters.org reveals that the federal government is cracking down on Medi-Cal and other Medicaid providers that have been using money to support “rent assistance” and “medically tailored meals”:

In 2022, California made sweeping changes to its Medi-Cal program that reimagined what health care could look like for some of the state’s poorest and sickest residents by covering services from housing to healthy food. But the future of that program, known as CalAIM, could be at risk under the Trump administration.

…

The moves align with a narrower vision of Medicaid espoused by newly confirmed Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services head Dr. Mehmet Oz, who said during his swearing-in ceremony that Medicaid spending was crowding out spending on education and other services in states with the federal government “paying most of the bill.”

“This one really bothers me. There are states who are using Medicaid — Medicaid dollars for people who are vulnerable — for services that are not medical,” Oz said.

President Joe Biden allowed California and other states to “experiment” with Medicaid funding — and California spent itself into near-insolvency. The Trump administration is cracking down, insisting that Medicaid spending be restricted to medical expenses — not items like housing for indigent patients.

Keep reading

The Rich Control Their Kids’ Education — The Middle Class And Poor Deserve That Choice, Too

As the school choice movement notches major wins and the Department of Education begins winding down, there is no doubt that the government’s future role in education will be very different than the role it has played in the past.

With this sea change comes new questions about what the education system ought to look like when the federal top-down model finally ends. An emerging group of advocates believes the government should not be involved in schools at all.

The ultra-libertarian position contends that no tax dollars should be used for schooling and all schools should be private schools. Every child’s academic pathway would be up to his parents to design and fund.

While this might sound great to some, the fact remains that many families lack the ability to pay for their children’s education. They would still lack that ability even if tax rates were cut to account for privatizing education, since those at the bottom of the income scale pay no federal income tax. Millions of children would be unable to access a quality education because their parents cannot afford it.

If that outcome sounds familiar, it may be because it’s so close to our current government schooling system: Children whose families have the means can receive a great education, but those from low-income families are stuck with a school experience so terrible it can hardly be called an education at all. Only 17 percent of public school eighth graders from low-income families are proficient readers, according to the latest Nation’s Report Card.  

These devastating results are not the result of a lack of funding. To the contrary, the U.S. public schools spend $17,227 to educate one student for one year. That’s more than nearly any other country. Still, our test scores continue to fall in the international rankings. Our Nation’s Report Card scores, revealing rampant illiteracy and innumeracy, are a national embarrassment.

In an ideal educational system, parents would have control over the tax dollars allocated for each child’s schooling. The money would follow the child to wherever he or she learns best, whether that is a public school, a private school, or even the family’s kitchen table.

Right now, homeschool families pay for education twice: First, with their tax dollars, which are sent to schools their children never set foot in. Second, with the sacrifice of one parent’s income, plus the cost of materials, including curricula, textbooks, and other supplies.  

Private school families pay twice, too: First, again, with their tax dollars, and secondly with tuition. Access to a good public school costs a great deal, too: A family that buys a house near a top-rated public elementary school will pay 78.6 percent more than if they bought a typical house in the surrounding area, according to Realtor.com.

Keep reading

Southern California mayor’s twisted plan to wipe out homeless people sparks widespread condemnation

A Southern California mayor has sparked mass condemnation after revealing he’d give homeless residents ‘all the fentanyl they want’ in an effort to wipe them out.

R. Rex Parris, the mayor of Lancaster, made the remarks in front of stunned residents and councilmembers at a city council meeting earlier in the year but footage of his speech has just emerged.

Huge swathes of California have been gripped by a fentanyl crisis as the highly addictive and deadly drug becomes more accessible and affordable on the streets.

Just a tiny, two milligrams dose of the drug is enough to kill a human.  

Most of California is also in the grips of a housing crisis, as home costs soar and new developments stagnate – made exponentially worse by the devastating bushfires which tore through Los Angeles in January.

The Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count registered as many as 6,672 people experiencing homelessness in Lancaster and its surrounding areas in 2024.

Asked about his vision to tackle the crisis, the 73-year-old Republican mayor did not mince his words.

‘What I want to do is give them free fentanyl,’ Parris told the February 25 meeting, to the bewilderment of everybody else in the room.

‘I mean, that’s what I want to do. I want to give them all the fentanyl they want.’ 

Keep reading

A Visual Breakdown Of Who Owns America’s Wealth

There are two types of households in the U.S.: the rich half and the poorer half.

And the data is quite striking in this regard.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, breaks down America’s wealth (the total net worth of all U.S. households) by wealth percentile, and lists the number of households in each percentile.

Data for this chart is sourced from the Federal Reserve as of Q3, 2024.

For reference, the total net worth of all U.S. households is close to $160 trillion.

Keep reading

Affluent New Jersey city considers controversial ordinance that would fine or jail homeless people for sleeping outside

A tony New Jersey city is considering approving a controversial new ordinance that would fine or jail homeless people found sleeping in public spaces.

Summit Councilman Jamel Boyer, a Republican, introduced the ordinance last Tuesday, claiming it serves to “preserve the safe and accessible use of public property for all residents, pedestrians and businesses.”

The ordinance in Summit would prohibit the homeless from camping in public areas, including parks, sidewalks, alleyways, and benches.

If approved, anyone found violating the ordinance would face a fine of up to $2,000 “and/or imprisonment or community service for a term not to exceed ninety days,” the order says.

A similar ordinance was presented in Morristown, NJ, in February but was struck down following massive backlash from the community and advocacy groups, NJ.com reported.

Keep reading

Javier Milei’s Free Market Reforms Are Starting To Pay Off

Argentina’s poverty rate fell sharply in the second half of 2024, according to official data released this week, marking a major milestone for President Javier Milei’s sweeping economic reforms.

According to the country’s official statistics agency, the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INDEC), the poverty rate fell to 38.1 percent between July 2024 and December 2024—down nearly 15 percentage points from the first half of the year. Household poverty also declined by 13.9 percentage points, hitting 28.6 percent. And extreme poverty was cut by more than half, falling from 18.1 percent to 8.2 percent.

It’s a major turnaround from the beginning of Milei’s presidency. When he took office in December 2023, he inherited a poverty rate of 41.7 percent, which quickly surged to 53 percent as his administration launched a “shock therapy” program to end Argentina’s economic misery.

One of the biggest drivers behind the poverty decline is the sharp drop in inflation. Annual inflation, which reached 276.2 percent a year ago—one of the highest in the world—dropped to 66.9 percent last month. Monthly inflation has also dropped, from 25.5 percent in December to just 2.4 percent in March.

“These figures reflect the failure of past policies, which plunged millions of Argentines into precarious conditions while promoting the idea of helping the poor, even as poverty continued to increase,” Milei’s office said in a statement following the release of the INDEC report. “The current administration has shown that the path of economic freedom and fiscal responsibility is the way to reduce poverty in the long term.”

In other words, Milei’s bet on free market reforms is starting to pay off. 

It’s worth remembering the situation he walked into. “Milei inherited a country suffering from more than 200% inflation in 2023, 40% poverty, a fiscal and quasi-fiscal deficit of 15% of GDP, a huge and growing public debt, a bankrupt central bank, and a shrinking economy,” writes Ian Vásquez of the Cato Institute.

In response, Milei promised a radical shift in Argentina’s economic model. His government slashed government spending, eliminated price controls, devalued the peso, cut subsidies, suspended public works, and laid off thousands of government workers. The changes weren’t popular, but they were necessary. And now, the numbers are catching up.

The economy is growing again. Gross domestic product grew in the last two quarters. The gap between the black-market dollar and the official rate has narrowed. Rents have fallen and the housing supply has increased since rent control laws were scrapped. Meanwhile, investor interest in Argentina is beginning to return, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is in talks with Milei’s government over a new program. The IMF projects a 5 percent growth for Argentina in 2025. 

Still, challenges remain. Despite the improvement, over 11 million Argentines are still living in poverty, with 2.5 million facing extreme poverty. And more than half of all children ages 14 and under in Argentina are poor. 

Keep reading

Modern OPSEC And Thirdworldization

Last year, International Man published an intriguing article by Jeff Thomas about American society during the Great Depression period. Duly named Duesenberg In A Barn, it opens with a story about shifts in culture and the lifestyle of wealthy individuals and families during the 1930s and beyond (Duesenberg produced luxury sport cars between 1913 and 1937).

He recounts how the riches that didn’t get snuffed out by, or even profited from, the 1929 Stock Market Crash, kept flaunting their wealth trying to outcompete each other, in an attempt to extend the 1920s Jazz Era hedonism and largesse into Depression times.

However, as the crisis aggravated, these individuals and families started to realize that such behavior amidst the rampant misery was quickly becoming a liability. 

“Whatever the psychology involved, in 1930, those who had fared well soon learned that it was unwise to be conspicuous in their continued wealth. At that point, an interesting but little-remembered development occurred. Such people put their mink coats in the closet, their jewelry in a safe place, and found barns in the countryside into which they could park their Duesenbergs, Cords, and Auburns.”

The rich toned down not from sympathy or compassion but as adaptation. Contrary to what many think, the wealthy have a sharp survival instinct.

That’s a crucial distinction, with the keywords being “adaptation” and “survival”, and the main takeaway an important social dynamic typical of all crises: the nail that stands out gets hammered. 

Those born and living in unstable and hostile contexts are constantly reminded of all the unwritten rules that keep us, our kin, and our stuff, safer. From criminals, sure, but also from tyrannical, greedy governments and corrupt authorities. 

I call that Thirdworldization OPSEC. It applies to criminality and government overreach mainly, but as Thirdworldization expands, it’s now applicable to other areas of social existence. Illegal immigrants, as well as political, religious, and ideological extremists from our own society, must now be added to the list of official (i.e., state) and criminal threats.

Keep reading