Author: Judge John Wilson (ret.)

In what is being viewed as a blatant effort to court voters ahead of the midterm elections, President Joe Biden has finally announced his long-anticipated plan to cancel student debt. 

Described in a tweet as “a plan to give working and middle class families breathing room as they prepare to resume federal student loan payments in January 2023…Pell Grant recipients can (now) qualify for up to $20,000 in debt forgiveness as part of Wednesday’s broader announcement on student loan forgiveness. Other student loan borrowers who don’t have Pell Grants will still have loans forgiven up to $10,000, as has been previously reported. Both forgiveness options are for people who earn less than $125,000 per year, or $250,000 as a household.” 

Naturally, many people (including this writer) paid off the loans we used to pay for our education by devoting a portion of our salary and other financial resources to the repayment of those loans.  For us, the words of Michael MacDowell in the News-Press resonate strongly; “Those who sacrificed to pay off their student loans are not happy with President Biden’s plan to forgive remaining student loans…all  American taxpayers will cover the cost of loan forgiveness through higher taxes. Americans will pay for this misguided policy in another way as well because loan forgiveness dollars will stimulate the economy causing further inflation…(f)orgiving student loans will only exacerbate income inequality because those college graduates are having their debts paid with the tax dollars from those who did not attend college. Senator Tom Cotton summed it up best when he asked, ‘Why should a trucker who didn’t go to college have to pay off a lawyer’s student loan debt?’” 

Beyond these practical objections is another, more basic legal question – Is Biden empowered to do this?  Does he have the authority to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars in private debt to the public with the use of his pen?

According to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), “People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not.  He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress.”  But according to law professor John Brooks of Fordham University, “The president has some pretty broad authority under the Higher Education Act…the president through the secretary of education does have the power to adjust the amount of loan principle that any borrower has.”

This would not be the first time the Biden Administration exceeded its Constitutional authority and acted unlawfully.  We have detailed several instances where the US Supreme Court reversed various Presidential initiatives on the grounds that Congress did not delegate power to the President’s Secretaries to act.  For instance, in National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, “the Court found that the Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) did not have the authority to mandate that private employers with more than 100 employees must require their employees to receive the Covid-19 vaccine.” 

Then, in May of this year, a Federal District Court Judge in Florida found that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) did not have the authority to mandate masks for travelers on public transportation, including airplanes. 

Here however, the question of the authority of the Secretary of Education may be more open to interpretation.

Under Title IV of the Higher Education Act (HEA), first signed into law in 1965 as part of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” “nine parts (of Title IV) authorize a broad array of programs and provisions to assist students and their families in gaining access to and financing a postsecondary education. The programs authorized under this title are the primary sources of federal aid to support postsecondary education.”  These programs include “the Federal Pell Grant program, which is the single largest source of grant aid for postsecondary education attendance funded by the federal government,” and the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFEL), which consists of “several types of federal student loans to assist individuals in financing the costs of a postsecondary education; those loans included Subsidized Stafford Loans and Unsubsidized Stafford Loans for undergraduate and graduate and professional students, PLUS Loans for graduate and professional students and the parents of dependent undergraduate students, and Consolidation Loans.”

“Under the FFEL program, loans were originated by private sector and state-based lenders and were funded with nonfederal capital. The federal government guaranteed lenders against loss due to borrower default, permanent disability, or, in limited circumstances, bankruptcy,” however, the FFEL loans program was terminated in 2010.  Instead, “Title IV (now) authorizes the Direct Loan program, which is the primary source of federal student loans…(u)nder the program, the federal government lends directly to students using federal capital. While the government owns the loans, loan origination and servicing is performed by federal contractors.” 

What happened in 2010?

“President Obama…signed into law the final piece of the health care puzzle, which mandates sweeping changes in the way the nation provides health care and makes the federal government the primary distributor of student loans… the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010…ends the current program that subsidizes banks and other financial institutions for issuing loans, instead allowing students to borrow directly from the federal government.”

The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 was an attempt to make changes to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (more popularly known as “Obamacare“) through the use of a “reconciliation” bill – that is,  “a special legislative process…to quickly advance high-priority fiscal legislation. Created by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, reconciliation allows for expedited consideration of certain tax, spending, and debt limit legislation. In the Senate, reconciliation bills aren’t subject to filibuster and the scope of amendments is limited, giving this process real advantages for enacting controversial budget and tax measures.” 

It is important to note that the 2010 bill had some provisions for forgiveness of loans; “As part of the expanded income-based repayment plan, new borrowers who assume loans after July 1, 2014, will be able to cap their student loan repayments at 10 percent of their discretionary income and, if they keep up with their payments over time, will have the balance forgiven after 20 years. Public service workers such as teachers, nurses, and those in military service will see any remaining debt forgiven after just 10 years.”

The law also gives the Secretary of Education very broad authority to “cover” a student borrower’s default at taxpayer expense – for instance, at 20 USC 1078, “The Secretary may enter into a guaranty agreement with any guaranty agency, whereby the Secretary shall undertake to reimburse it, under such terms and conditions as the Secretary may establish, with respect to losses (resulting from the default of the student borrower) on the unpaid balance of the principal and accrued interest of any insured loan. The guaranty agency shall be deemed to have a contractual right against the United States, during the life of such loan, to receive reimbursement according to the provisions of this subsection.” 

With this history, one would think the Biden Administration would argue that that over the course of 50 years, Congress has granted the Secretary of Education increased power over student loans, including control over loan extensions and forgiveness, and that this latest initiative is nothing new in the increasing burden the Department of Education has placed on the American taxpayer.

Instead, what argument does the Biden Administration use to justify their actions?

“The Justice Department issued a…legal opinion contending the Education Secretary had power under the 2003 HEROES Act ‘to reduce or eliminate the obligation to repay the principal balance of federal student loan debt, including on a class-wide basis in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, provided all other requirements of the statute are satisfied.’” 

The 2003 Heroes Act?

According to the memorandum, “The Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003…vests the Secretary of Education…with expansive authority to alleviate the hardship that federal student loan recipients may suffer as a result of national emergencies…(i)n 2020, the Secretary invoked this authority in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to suspend the repayment obligation and to waive interest payments on student loans for every borrower in the United States with a loan held by the federal government…(y)ou have asked whether the HEROES Act authorizes the Secretary to address the financial hardship arising out of the COVID -19 pandemic by reducing or canceling the principal balances of student loans for a broad class of borrowers. We conclude that the Act grants that authority.” 

To be fair, the memorandum does discuss the Secretary’s powers under Title IV of the Higher Education Act.  But is pretty clear that the Biden Administration intends to invoke its authority to act in an emergency as the basis for its sweeping student loan forgiveness plan.

Will this broad exercise of power be upheld by the Courts?  Let us give the final word on the issue to Jonathan Turley, Law Professor at George Washington University; “While the Biden Administration might have some early success with a lower court judge, it will face a chilly reception on the Supreme Court…President Biden has been a constitutional recidivist in executive overreach in a series of major court losses.  The authority cited is highly challengeable. To assume such a massive power to excuse as much as $500 billion, that authority should be both express and clear. It is not.”

Judge John Wilson (ret.) served on the bench in NYC.

While kinetic warfare is raging in Ukraine, China is conducting a different type of warfare from inside corridors of nondescript government office buildings in cities around the country. Beijing uses sophisticated messaging tactics to “drown out critical narratives by both flooding the international information environment to limit access to content that contradicts Beijing’s official line, and by creating an artificial appearance of support for PRC policies,” according to a State Department report released on Thursday. China is actively manipulating and attempting to dominate global discourse on sensitive issues that include the Uyghur population in Xinjiang, Taiwan independence, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the United States, in general. One of its most egregious campaigns involves discrediting independent sources reporting on the Uyghur genocide and China’s other crimes against humanity. Beijing seeks to amplify its preferred narrative on Xinjiang by employing sophisticated AI-generated images to create the appearance of authenticity of fake user profiles. The reports notes that Beijing works to silence dissent by “engaging in digital transnational repression, trolling, and cyberbullying.” 

It floods conversations to drown out messages it perceives as unfavorable to its interests on search engines and in social media feeds. By flooding information ecosystems with counternarratives, conspiracy theories, and unrelated news items Beijing can effectively  suppress narratives detailing its atrocities in Xinjiang. It is so successful that many people don’t question Beijing’s “astroturfing,” or “inauthentic posts,” to create the false illusion of widespread grassroots support.  The State Department points to positive stories manufactured by the government about Xinjiang and the Uyghur population, claiming the people there live “simple happy lives” and have experienced economic gains due to CCP policies. It says that in mid-2021, more than 300 pro-PRC inauthentic accounts posted thousands of videos of Uyghurs appearing to deny abuse in the region and claiming they were “very free.” The NY Times says that officials in Xinjiang created pro-Beijing videos, which first appeared on PRC-based platforms and then spread to YouTube and Twitter, in order to manipulate public opinion.

Increasingly sophisticated tools create composite images that cannot be traced using a reverse image search, making it harder to determine whether the account is inauthentic, according to the report.  It adds that some of the accounts consistently denied China’s atrocities in Xinjiang and falsely asserted that the body of overwhelming and objective independent evidence of the atrocities is simply a fabrication of the United States and its allies.

Trolling campaigns aimed at the Chinese diaspora communities harass them into silence and self-censorship. Beijing poisons the information highway with bad-faith arguments. “Trolling campaigns frequently evolve into threats of death, rape, or assault; malicious cyber-attacks,” according to the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. The most aggressive PRC “messengers,” according to the report, often go on the offensive, creating “false equivalencies” with the actions of other countries to distract from international criticism of PRC behavior. China denies claims made by independent media outlets and internationally renowned think tanks. When accused of subjecting the Uyghurs to forced labor, it inundates its diplomatic accounts and CCP-affiliated media with suspected bot networks about the mechanized cotton harvesting process in Xinjiang, suggesting that the Xinjiang cotton industry has no need for forced labor.  This type of messaging allows Beijing to avoid responding to reports regarding the authorities’ transfer of an estimated 100,000 Uyghurs out of Xinjiang in what the State Department calls “coercive labor placements,” or factories, elsewhere in the PRC. Stories coming out of the government falsely refer to a multicultural society living in harmony. They  stand in contrast to the reality of Beijing’s extensive surveillance of the Uyghurs, which includes Chinese CCP officials living in Uyghur homes for at least six weeks a year despite Uyghur objections.

“Despite these efforts to distract from the situation in Xinjiang, independent media outlets, academics, and human rights activists have published multiple eyewitness accounts and verifiable data that the PRC has imprisoned  an estimated one million people and that credible evidence exists of torture, forced   sterilization, and other abuses,” the report says. China’s is waging a major AI information war. Analytics firm Miburo Solutions identified more than “200 third-country influencers  affiliated with PRC state media creating social media content in at least 38 languages, including English, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Russian with an average reach of 309,000 followers.”  It found that the Chinese government uses influencers to advance its narratives regarding Xinjiang by obscuring state media employees’ affiliations and by orchestrating pro-PRC Western influencers’ tours of Xinjiang. It also uses false fact sheets to claim that the Uyghur internment camps are vocational education and training centers that “fully guaranteed the trainees’ personal freedom and dignity.” Amnesty International has published first-hand accounts calling China’s allegation false, saying that the minority population is subject to regular interrogation, torture, and other mistreatment. 

In 2022 China is reaching out to influencers around the western world to get help in reaching young international audiences who can be more easily inculcated into China’s insidious misinformation and propaganda campaigns. The State Department report is a long-overdue step in outing the CCP’s methods of operation.

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.

Illustration: Pixabay

Independence Day in Ukraine falls on August 24^th each year. Today marks the 31^st anniversary of when Ukraine voted to break with the former Soviet Union. It also falls exactly six months into a lethal war with Russia. The day was marred by explosions, death, and more destruction inside Ukraine as Russian forces bombed a train station killing at least 22 individuals and the day is not yet over in Ukraine. In an emotional speech deliver by President Volodymyr Zelensky, he called for Ukrainians to fight for their freedom rather than simply voting for it at the ballot box. “A new nation emerged on February 24 at 4 am. Not born, but reborn. A nation that didn’t cry, didn’t scream, didn’t get scared. Didn’t run away. Didn’t give up. Didn’t forget,” he said.

Although Putin is fighting a protracted war on the Russia’s western border area in Ukraine, all is not quiet on Russia’s eastern front. Just one day prior to Ukraine’s Independence Day Russia sailed 14 of its Navy ships through the La Perouse Strait from the Western Pacific Ocean into the Sea of Japan, according to Dzirhan Mahadzir of USNI News. The move was designed to unnerve Japan. The La Perouse Strait is an international waterway dividing Russia’s Sakhalin island from Japan’s Hokkaido island. The ships included a destroyer, fast attack craft, missile range instrumentation and  hospital ships, among others. According to Japan’s Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi, Japan asked Russia late last month not to traverse the waterway in anticipation of the Vostok-2022 strategic military exercise that runs from August 30 to September 5. Russia didn’t listen.

Back home in Moscow, Putin’s disinformation forces are hard at work creating a monkeypox narrative, in a reprise of the previous campaign to link the Covid virus to alleged US biolab operations. Foreign Policy magazine’s Ivana Stradner reports that “Russian Duma Deputy Chair Irina Yarovaya echoed the Kremlin’s latest conspiracy theory earlier this month when she called on the World Health Organization to lead an investigation into “the secrets of the US military biolaboratories.” Stradner calls it a “textbook Kremlin information operation.”

East, west, or inside the Russian Federation, Putin is not letting up or bypassing any opportunity to destabilize the global environment. What concerns several military analysts in Washington more than Russia’s flotilla off Japan or its recent disinformation campaigns is the possibility that Putin could decide to damage the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant located only four miles from the city of Nikopol in southern Ukraine. On March 4 Russian military forces captured the plant and have held it since that time. UN Secretary-General António Guterres earlier this month said: “Any attack to nuclear plants is … suicidal,” and called for the plant to be demilitarized. Of the 11,000 regularly employed at the facility, 1,100 have been taken hostage by Russian forces. Ukrainian engineers are being tortured and forced to work at gunpoint to keep the operation running according to Petro Kotin, president of Energoatom, Ukraine’s nuclear power utility. It appears that Putin intends to remove the power plant from Ukraine’s electric grid in an attempt to further destroy the country. It delivers 50% of Ukraine’s power requirements and is the largest plant in Europe. 

Secretary of State Tony Blinken says that Putin is using the plant strategically as a form of protection — shielding troops, weapons and ammunition. And, in doing this, Russia has stopped Ukraine from damaging its stock and soldiers on the assumption that an attack would cause a meltdown or nuclear disaster. “Of course the Ukrainians cannot fire back lest there be a terrible accident involving the nuclear plant,”, adding that Russia isn’t creating a “human shield,” but rather a “nuclear shield.” Earlier this week, Rafael Grossi, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is under the UN, urged Ukraine and Russia to allow experts to visit the site in an effort to prevent a nuclear accident. The IAEA reports it was told it could visit the plant “within the next few days” if the talks succeed. If the political-military situation is not stabilized and an errant shell hits the plant, it could result in a major leak of radioactive material. Once released into the atmosphere it could contaminate a wide swath of Europe, including Poland, with a population of over 38 million. In May the BBC posed the question, what does Vladimir Putin want? Today the question has morphed into what is he going to do next?

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.

Unlike the legitimate complaints about some European nations, notably Germany, not contributing a fair share to defending against mutual enemies, America’s Pacific partners Australia and Japan have been risen to the occasion.

Tokyo has announced that it will continue to increase its defense spending. It has what some consider the world’s fifth most powerful military.

Canberra’s 2020 Defense Strategic Update supports a robust U.S. presence in the Indo-Pacific, the provision of U.S. extended deterrence, as well as plans to make the Australian Defence Force more capable of independent operations.  Australia is on track to meet its commitment to growing its defense budget to two percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product in 2020-21, providing $42.2 billion of funding to defense in 2020-21.  This defense budget will grow over the next ten years to $73.7 billion in 2029-30 with total funding of $575 billion over the decade. This total includes around $270 billion in defense capability investment, compared to $195 billion for the decade 2016-2026 when the 2016 Defense White Paper was released.

Canberra’s defense partnership with Washington was emphasized in a recent meeting in the U.S. capital between Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, who is also defense minister, and American counterparts Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. According to the Pentagon, participants came away from meetings “with a sense that the two countries shared a mission.”

“What has really struck me in the meetings that we’ve had over the course of the last few days … is a real sense of shared mission in this moment, between Australia and the United States,” Marles said. “There is a sense of the moment that the global rules-based order that has been built by the United States, by Australia, by many other countries is under pressure now in a significant way.” 

 Marles said that system is under the greatest pressure it has seen since the end of World War II. That order is the reason there has not been a great power war since 1945. “Obviously, what’s going on in Eastern Europe with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an example of that pressure,” he said. “And, in this moment, the need to have a sense of shared mission, to be projecting forward with a sense of team is really important.” 

The U.S. State Department notes that  Australia is one of America’s largest defense customers, supporting thousands of jobs in the United States. America is Australia’s defense goods and services partner of choice and with Australia’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update increasing its 10-year defense budget by 40% to $186 billion. The U.S. has over $27 billion in active government-to-government sales cases with it.

Canberra-U.S. cooperation became even stronger as a result of the recent nuclear-powered submarine pact.

A similar encouraging role is occurring with Japan.

The Council on Foreign Relations notes that the 21st century has been a period of increased defense cooperation between Tokyo and Washington. In November 2001, the government of Junichiro Koizumi dispatched the Maritime Self-Defense Force to the Indian Ocean to provide logistical support for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, marking Japan’s first overseas military action during a combat operation. In 2003, it sent forces to aid in Iraq’s postwar reconstruction efforts.

In 2015, under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan reinterpreted its constitution in a historic move that allowed its military to defend allies for the first time, under limited circumstances. The change helped pave the way for the United States and Japan to revise their defense guidelines once again, expanding the scope of their military cooperation and focusing the alliance on current threats—including from China and North Korea—and new technologies.

Since then, the countries have continued to deepen their defense cooperation.

Illustration: Pixabay

All Presidents fail in one area or another. The complexities of the challenges facing the nation render it almost inevitable that mistakes will be made. However, the total failure of the Biden Administration is unprecedented. It is an extraordinary reality the mainstream media, which was largely responsible for the President’s electoral victory in 2020, desperately seeks to downplay. 

An economy that dropped into recession last quarter, a loss of border control, the surrender of billions of dollars in military equipment to the world’s foremost terrorist organization, the loss of energy independence, rampant inflation, a failure to take steps to discourage and deter Moscow’s Ukrainian invasion, are all crises which an even moderately competent White House could have lessened or avoided altogether. Add to the list the unnecessary and inappropriate dilemma of parents seeking to cease the leftist indoctrination of their children in public schools being labelled as “domestic terrorists” and the growing attack on free speech, recently made worse by Biden’s appointment of a “Disinformation Governance Board” led by Nina Jankowicz, a figure who was part of the effort to coverup the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.  

These existential problems facing the nation are to a significant extent the direct creation of Joe Biden and the progressives who clearly dominate him. They could have been avoided had there been competent leadership not wedded to an extremist philosophy.

The Pew Center found that migrant apprehensions at U.S.-Mexico border fell sharply in fiscal 2020.  They have skyrocketed since Biden took office, and deportations are at a 20 year low. The extent of the danger is manifest.  In testimony before Congress, Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas couldn’t even provide information on key terrorists entering into the U.S. through the southern border.

 The open border policy has been a gift to Mexico’s infamous crime cartels, who have reaped record profits and have expanded their activities within the U.S., a significant aspect in soaring crime statistics throughout the nation.

Up until Biden’s inauguration, America was energy independent and inflation was under control.  The U.S. Energy Information Administration notes that average price of gasoline was $2.17 a gallon.  Biden chose to close the Keystone Pipeline, end exploitation of the ANWAR, impede or stop drilling on federal lands, and more.  The result? As of this writing, the average price of gas is $4.15.  Despite all the ravings of environmental extremists, there is currently no alternative energy that can replace more than 20% of what fossil fuels provide. Once the cost of energy rises, it is inevitable that all other prices skyrocket, because everything requires energy to make or transport.

As the COVID pandemic reduced in severity, thanks in large part due to the vaccine successfully developed during the Trump Administration, it was to be expected that the economy would roar back uninterrupted for numerous fiscal quarters. It is shocking that Americas’ Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fell at a 1.4% rate last quarter.  That stunning drop is a clear result of Biden’s reckless tax and spending actions and proposals, his mishandling of COVID’s remnants, and more.  

Vladimir Putin carefully observed Biden’s bungling of the Afghanistan withdrawal.  He noted that the American president submitted a defense budget that, accounting for inflation, actually cut the Pentagon’s spending power.  He observed Biden’s ignoring America’s deteriorating nuclear arsenal. And, as the Kremlin deployed its invasion forces near Ukraine, he was cognizant that Biden did nothing in response. Indeed, the befuddled President even mentioned that he wouldn’t respond to a “limited” invasion.  With all that, the attack was on.

The challenges facing Biden are of his own making, the result of his own policies. His errors are unprecedented in the harm they cause, and the ease with which they could have been avoided.

Illustration: Pixabay

It can no longer be denied that America’s educational system is largely dominated by those that do not have the interests of the nation’s children at heart. The evidence is abundant and clear: substantial portions of the vast dollars that have been committed to our schools have been, essentially, misappropriated by those who have replaced learning with propaganda.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, In 2018, the United States spent $14,400 per full-time student on elementary and secondary education, an astounding 34 percent higher than the average of similar nations countries at $10,800 (in constant 2020 U.S. dollars). At the postsecondary level, America spent $35,100 per full time student, double the average $17,600 of other nations.

What did all those dollars achieve?

According to a Scientific American study, “On vital measures that predict later success in school and life, small children in the U.S. do worse than kids in comparable countries.”

Older groups fared poorly, as well. An analysis in The Balance revealed that “The Program for International Student Assessment tests 15-year-old students around the world and is administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In 2018, when the test was last administered, the U.S. placed 11th out of 79 countries in science. It did much worse in math, ranking 30th.The U.S. scored 478 in math, below the OECD average of 489. That’s well below the scores of the top five, all of which were in Asia: Singapore at 569, Macao at 555, Hong Kong at 551, Taiwan at 531, and Japan at 527. “

Since academic achievement is lacking, what are those abundant funds being spent on?

Just a very few examples:

A Manhattan Institute  study reports that “Something peculiar is spreading throughout America’s schools. A public school system just outside the nation’s capital spent $20,000 to be lectured about making their schools less racist. At a tony New York City prep school, a teacher was publicly denounced by the administration for questioning the idea that students should identify themselves in terms of their racial identity. Educators in California are locked in pitched combat over a statewide model curriculum overflowing with terms like “hxrstories” and “cisheteropatriarchy.”

The Daily Mail found that a School board director in Washington state is planning to hold workshop to teach children as young as nine about “sexual anatomy for pleasure” The publication also noted that a Woke California school board member called for people to “boycott the Fourth of July because there is no reason to celebrate.”

The New York Post found that elite NYC private schools “are teaching kids that American society must be destroyed.”

A Heritage examination disclosed that “New Jersey’s Department of Education will be teaching young children in 2nd grade to ponder their ‘gender identity.’”

The Federalist notes that “public schools routinely use left-leaning or ‘woke’ materials while quietly doing away with older materials that encourage American patriotism, Western civilization, and Judeo-Christian values. In English class, this means replacing “Hamlet” and “The Scarlet Letter” with ‘The Hate U Give,’ a novel based on themes from the Black Lives Matter movement, and ‘Symptoms of Being Human,’ a novel about a gender-fluid punk rocker who blogs about his insecurities.”

The Hill reveals that “A radical progressive political agenda has replaced the pursuit of truth and objectivity in our nation’s classrooms…At New Trier High School, a public school in Winnetka, Illinois, students were subjected in 2017 to an ‘All-School Seminar Day’… chock-full of race-baiting discussion topics, left-wing speakers, and one-sided, indoctrinating ideologies.”

It would be an error to view this issue as political, the anger of moderates and conservatives at the extremist Progressive dogma being foisted on students, or as a reflection of parental anger at the usurpation of their rights to address highly personal issues such as sexuality to their children.

It is, in fact, something far simpler.  It is the outright theft of taxpayer and parental tuition funds for partisan purposes. Legally, it can be described as the embezzlement of education dollars to push partisan leftist ideas.

Illustration: Pixabay

Violence and censorship are two sides of the same coin, a political currency that has become all too common.  Both illicit approaches have become frequent tactics utilized mostly by the left, and their key leaders in the Democrat Party.

Throughout the summer of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, cities burned, stores were looted, federal court houses and police stations were attacked, people were assaulted. Democrat leaders were notoriously reluctant to criticize the perpetrators, and indeed some raised funds for them. That tactic is in danger of being repeated following the unethical release of a Supreme Court draft on an abortion related case. Demonstrators have inexcusably formed at the homes of Supreme Court justices.

It follows four years of verbal violence resulting from false charges levied against the Trump Administration, used as an excuse for individuals such as Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Ca.) to openly and loudly urge attacks on Trump personnel.

The alteration in the national mood and the acceptance of inappropriate tactics may have its antecedents in a statement made by Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Democrat primary.  In response to a softball question asking who the former Secretary of State considers “the enemy,” Clinton replied “Republicans.” Not Russia, not China, not disease, not poverty, but Republicans. Violence against “enemies,” as opposed to mere political rivals, became acceptable.

Contrast the lack of response to Democrat condoned violence with the massive condemnation and federal investigations into the January 6 riot at the Capitol.  The message is clear: political violence is only a problem when it comes from non-leftist portions of the spectrum.

While physical violence grabs headlines, verbal violence, and the threat of harassing action by government entities, can be equally harmful. This concept precedes Clinton’s enemy statement. While it has occurred in various forms over the years, the Obama Administration’s use of the IRS to harass the Tea Party, and the Department of Justice to attack conservative think tanks who merely disagreed with the White House’s views on climate change was far beyond any previous example.

The unwarranted investigatory and administrative violence launched against Donald Trump by federal agencies and Democrat members of Congress was without precedent. Now thoroughly disproven, knowingly false assertions by the Clinton campaign were used as a basis by partisan officials in the Department of Justice and Democratic Congressional leadership in an attempt to destroy Trump’s candidacy and his presidency.

Organizations closely allied with leftist politics have sought to suppress contrary views through threats of administrative violence.  The National School Board Association, closely allied with leftist politics sent a letter  to the White House, first reported by the New York Post, requesting “the Biden administration to deploy the Army National Guard and military police to school districts beset by parent protests over policies including mandatory masking and the teaching of critical race theory.”

These tactics of physical and verbal violence have largely failed, leading to a growing move by their progressive practitioners to rely on the related practice of censorship. Again, the most salient example arose during the Obama presidency. The former president attempted to install federal “monitors” in media newsrooms. Following in those footsteps, the Biden Administration sought to deploy censorship through its now-withdrawn establishment of a “Disinformation” agency, led by an extreme party partisan.

While Democrat attempts to use the power of the federal government to censor contrary views have largely failed, media attempts have proven more successful. Social media sites, network and cable television newsrooms have managed to keep major stories out of the public eye.

The most blatant example is the Hunter Biden laptop story.  The explosive scandal would clearly have had a major impact on the 2020 election, and the progressive media barons knew it. They didn’t merely fail to report the scandal in their own outlets; they moved heavily to eliminate any reference to it by their readers. Social media sites blocked users who merely mentioned the topic.

Violence and censorship have become standard  leftwing tactics, much to the detriment of our nation.

Illustration: Pixabay

The white water lily is Kazakhstan’s fragrant state flower. In another era President Vladimir Putin might appreciate its lemony aquatic scent, but this summer he is livid at Kazakhstan’s nationalists. They are refusing to support Russia’s war in Ukraine. In the Kazakh language nationalism can be translated in two ways. The first, ultshyldyq, is ambiguous in meaning. Ultzhandylyq, however, is positive and suggests a sense of indigenous nationalism that is growing rapidly in Kazakhstan over the last year. Today the country’s national-patriots, or ult-patriottary, are infuriating Moscow with their ultshyldyq.

The Russian government expected Kazakhstan to express gratitude for the assistance Putin provided in quelling the January popular uprising there. Instead, what the Kremlin is encountering is an increasing number of ethnic Russians who are abandoning the Russian Federation to live in Kazakhstan. Amid charges by Moscow that the government in Nur-Sultan is encouraging the exodus by offering foreign firms incentives to relocate, the Kremlin also is upset by its plans to “bypass Russia in exporting oil and gas,” according to a report from the Jamestown Foundation. Earlier this week, Tsargrad TV reported that a hacked document identified Kazakhstani firms as a source of weapons shipments to Ukraine via third-party countries, including the UK, added to the devolving relationship.

In a report from a Ukrainian hacker, Tsargrad TV said: “The document specifies 122 mm shells for D-20 howitzers; 152 mm shells for D-30 howitzers; missiles for BM-21 "Grad". The total number of shells is 20 thousand, missiles 33 thousand. The deal is concluded in the amount of $ 69 520 000. At the same time, the deal itself is supervised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan in cooperation with the British military attaché in Kazakhstan. Also at the moment, negotiations are underway on the supply of 200 units of BTR-4 and ammunition for mortars.”

Paul Goble of the Jamestown Foundation notes that: “Relations between the two countries indeed appeared to have reached a new low on August 2, when a post attributed to Dmitry Medvedev, former president and current deputy head of the Russian Security Council, declared that “historically” what is today northern Kazakhstan was part of Russia—suggesting to some that Moscow would soon launch an invasion into its southern neighbor.” Although the post was only up for 10 minutes on the VKontakte page of the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation and ex-President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev, commentators in Russia acknowledge that the sentiment is widespread in Moscow. To date, Medvedev has not disavowed the comments. Goble reports that some military analysts inside the Kremlin are suggesting that it is likely Kazakhstan may be Putin’s next target after Kyiev. Writers in Moscow already are referring to the country as a “second Ukraine” and suggest that Russia is going through a “bad divorce” with Kazakhstan, despite its previously solid partnership.

The two countries share a lengthy border and there is a large ethnic Russian community in Kazakhstan. Goble points out that this summer, Moscow has “shown its displeasure by stopping the flow of oil westward from Kazakhstan through its territory, and Nur-Sultan has countered by upgrading its military.” He suggests that there are three aspects of this situation that suggest the Kremlin may decide to move against Kazakhstan while three others point to Moscow’s not moving against the Central Asian state.

“Regardless of the tensions that currently exist between the two enormous Eurasia countries,” he says, “the possibility of a major military clash between them is quite low.” However, that could change if Kazakhstan continues to move toward Ukraine, away from Russia’s sphere of influence, and becomes a bulwark for Islamist expansion northward into Russia itself.

Given that Russia is tied down in Ukraine, Goble thinks it unlikely that Putin will use his limited military resources against Kazakhstan right now. The second factor he points to is the decreasing percentage of ethnic Russians in the country over the last three decades, despite the recent surge in Russian immigration. In 1989, 38 percent of Kazakhstan’s residents were ethnic Russians; now it stands at 18 percent, and the total is projected to fall to 10 percent or less by mid-century. Absorbing Kazakhstan would make Russia less Russian and defeat one of Putin’s major goals. Third, Putin is known historically for making rash threats and even taking actions, such as stopping the flow of oil, only to have Kazakhstan’s leaders call, reassure Putin of their unquestioned support and then have the Kremlin pull back on its rhetoric and actions, according to Goble. The unknown factor this August is how long each country can sidestep the spark that could ignite an unintended war.

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.

To have a child or not, that is the question plaguing China this year. On Tuesday the Chinese government announced new “fertility friendly” guidelines with the goal of increasing the population rate to sustainable levels. It is an impossible task, according to many demographers who study China. The communist state has long passed the demographic deadline that marks the last calendar date when there were enough females of child-bearing age to reproduce its current population. The dramatic decline in the Chinese birth rate from 1960’s through the early 2000’s serves as one the most significant events in global demographic history. 

For five decades a full 18% of the world’s population were limited to one child per family by the Chinese communist government. According to the United Nations Population Division, the country’s total fertility rate dropped from average of 5.94 in the 1965–1970 period to 1.77 children per family in the 2000–2005 period. It has continued to decline by over 2% per year  recently and today stands at a record low of just over 1 child per family (1.09 in 2022). 

The drop in the fertility rate can be attributed to several factors. Socio-cultural factors, including the  spread of education, reproductive ideologies, and gender relations impacted family size. The politico-economic conditions (e.g., economic development, birth planning campaigns, and collective systems of labor organization) in the early stages of China’s family planning program had an even greater impact. Many villages across China today have no women of child-bearing age. In urban centers, despite government incentives, women are not choosing to have more than one child, and in many cases no children at all due to the cost of child-rearing and impact on their cosmopolitan lifestyles. 

China is in trouble. Even if women had as many children as physical possible during their child-bearing years it is highly unlikely the country has any chance to make up the losses suffered during the five decades of the child planning program. Over the 36-year period alone, ending in 2016, over 400 million people were not born in China due to its family planning policy; a number that is much greater than the entire US population.

Tuesday’s joint announcement by 17 Chinese government departments included new policies supporting families in finance, tax, housing, employment, education, and other fields to promote a fertility-friendly society. It included promoting prenatal and postnatal care, developing better nursing systems, improving maternity leave and insurance, offering preferential house-purchase policies to families with more than one child, adding high-quality education resources, creating a fertility-friendly employment environment, and setting up a complete service system on population. 

Despite the government’s efforts, there is no evidence to indicate the new guidelines will be effective at changing the minds of females in China. The government is now publicly admitting there is a problem. Yang Wenzhuang, director of population and family affairs at China’s National Health Commission, announced on July 21 that China’s population curve has flattened and is expected to begin a steepening decline by 2025. The Global Times reports he announced the grim forecast during the 2022 Annual Conference of the China Population Association.

Although fines, forced sterilizations, abortions, and other punishments are gone, the legacy of their coercive effects will haunt the Chinese economy for the rest of the century. A report from one of Spain’s most prestigious schools, the University of Navarra, says that the “demographic shifts caused in part due to the one-child policy will have important social and economic repercussions, not only in China but also at a global level. Reduced fertility in combination with an increasingly aging population will lead to a rising dependency ratio between working people and retirees as well as a shrinking labor supply.” It points out that children born without permission during these decades don’t possess the correct registration papers to gain employment or other government services. This further increases the economic burden on the state as they age and there is a corresponding decrease in the labor supply. 

The report concludes that “to continue projecting itself as a major economic and political power, China may have to restructure its ongoing strategies… However, considering that having few children has become ingrained in Chinese society and that the fertility rate continues to decrease even after a transition to a two-child system, this seems highly unlikely to work.” Some political analysts in the West are quietly questioning whether this means China will need to go to war in the future to acquire the needed population to is rise as an economic powerhouse.

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.

Photo: Pixabay

Russia’s Black Sea Fleet was once the pride of the country, its origins dating back to Catherine the Great. After nine days of explosions around naval bases on the Crimean Peninsula this month, and the likely sacking of Igor Osipov, the Russian commander of the Black Sea fleet, humiliations continue to plague Russian forces. Before Victor Sokolov was cited by Russia’s RIA News Service as the new chief, Ukraine already had struck the ship “Moskva” in April using Neptune cruise missiles. It caused the warship to catch fire and the lead vessel sunk. Satellite imagery from last week indicates that eight Russian warplanes were destroyed by explosions. This week on Tuesday, Russian lost an ammunition depot in Crimea to explosions.  Putin is faced with a number of challenges. One, in particular, is important and becoming more urgent this summer. Russia must find a way to build new, blue water–capable ships.

Since Putin’s “Special Military Operation” started in February, the Russian fleet has blockaded Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, denying passage to Kyiv’s grain carry ships. Ukraine’s fleet in comparison, however, is small and considered less capable of challenging Moscow’s ships. Commander Sokolov, who is 60 years old, is a seasoned officer having commanded minesweepers in the 1980’s- 1990’s and served as deputy commander of the Northern Fleets. Two years ago, he took over a head of an important military commander. Questions remain whether he can salvage the damage to the Russian position.

“When President Vladimir Putin signed Russia’s new naval doctrine on July 31, most commentators, both in Moscow and abroad, focused on his ambitious plans for Russia’s blue water navy and especially its expansion into the Arctic. One aspect of the new doctrine, however—its elevation of the Russian naval presence in the Caspian—has received far less attention; but it may ultimately be more important,” according to Paul Goble of the Jamestown Foundation. He argues that this conclusion reflects the difficulties Moscow faces in building the ships it needs for an expanded ocean-going presence. Those difficulties may make it hard for Russia to meet its naval ship-building plans. 

Add to this challenge one issue that few media have covered. Putin’s perspective is that Russia is facing serious challenges in its littoral states. The Russian leader considers the environment so serious that he authorized the Caspian Flotilla  to take over a central role in responding to them. According to a July 31, 3,000-word statement from Kremlin.ru that updates naval doctrine, the Kremlin document serves more as an aspirational document than a military plan of action. If Russia can upgrade its navy, it is most likely to be transformed with the Caspian Flotilla. This is a change in policy direction from three earlier versions of the doctrine put out by Putin. “This represents a significant upgrade of its status from Soviet times when the Caspian was effectively a Russian lake as Moscow controlled almost all the territory around it, and Iran, the only other littoral country, did not have a significant naval presence,” notes Goble.

Unlike earlier documents the new version makes no delineation between the level of quality of the Caspian units and others in the Russian fleet. It comes at a time all five littoral states, including Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran have expanded their Caspian naval presence. Russia is determined to retain its sphere of influence in the region, despite advances by the other navies. Iran and Azerbaijan are of particular concern to Putin due to their rapid development.

The new doctrine specifies that this force is responsible for one of “the vitally important regions (zones)” of the world’s water surface as far as Russian national interests are concerned. To that end, Goble says, the doctrine calls for the expansion of cooperation with other littoral states on a wide variety of issues, including the protection of the environment, as well as the modernization and development of the Caspian Flotilla and its basing. 

The doctrine points out that Moscow can lead “the development of international military cooperation with the naval forces of the states of the Caspian region.” By including this line, the Kremlin is effectively committing itself to an expansion of the Caspian Flotilla relative to the other naval forces there.  Analysts suggest that Moscow is seriously alarmed by developments in the Caspian due to an increasingly hostile Kazakhstan and progressively independent-minded governments in Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. 

Control of the region also is important because of it contains key oil-rich portions of the seabed. Iran had not agreed to the delimitation of the seabed, where the oil and gas fields are located and its increased naval presence on the sea gives Moscow a certain amount of  leverage over the other regional states.   Moscow’s worries about instability in the contested territory have increased in recent months as Russia’s “peacekeeping” presence in Nagorno-Karabakh is being challenged by Baku, Yerevan and even the Armenians of Karabakh itself, according to Goble. Some Russian military analysts have suggested that Moscow should use the Caspian Flotilla to defend its forces in the disputed region to retain their dominant position. Goble concludes that “Any one of these factors could explain why Moscow has assigned a larger role to the Caspian Flotilla in its new naval doctrine. Taken together, they mean that this oft-neglected force now deserves to be tracked much more closely.” Add to this scenario, increasing Chinese involvement in the Central Asian states and the world could end up seeing another kinetic conflict in the coming years.

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.