So let’s say you want to buy a concert ticket. You search in Google and you see a multitude of offers. All from the secondary market, i.e. scalpers, i.e. brokers. And if it’s a superstar, you may have the ability to purchase a ticket to what is supposedly a sold out show. However, many times the secondary market is offering tickets when primary tickets are still available on Ticketmaster, AXS, whatever ticketing company the promoter is using.

Watch this video:

@thefinanceinfo Rory Sutherland on the We Have a Meeting podcast explains why Google search is getting worse — and why being “#1” on Google isn’t even a win anymore. Search results are now stuffed with ads, so the first thing you click is rarely the best… just the highest bidder. He even paid more for a CTA because it appeared higher on the list, while the Canadian government offered the same thing for far cheaper. And if you search for a hotel? Google shows you five competing hotels before the one you actually wanted. The platform that once simplified the internet is now overwhelming it with options and charging businesses for the privilege. #business #google #marketing ♬ original sound – The Finance Info

1. This is Rory Sutherland, an English advertising executive who proffers wisdom on TikTok. He didn’t sit down and try to become a famous influencer, it all happened by accident. During Covid one video of him was posted and the public was hungry for his insights and his following burgeoned. This is what we call “pull” instead of “push.” Pre-internet marketing was all about pushing things on people, making them aware of them and getting the public to buy/partake. However, to succeed in the internet world, people must desire you. Push doesn’t work. There are too many marketing messages which are transparent hucksterism and people are turned off. But when they find something they like, they want more and tell everybody about it. This is the essence of success. Something that has been lost in the music business. We’ve got all these acts complaining they’re not getting paid, but if they were great, the public would desire them, they would pull their songs and more, make them a success. But nobody wants to own the truth.

2. Earlier this week I sent a TikTok video of Big Jim’s review of Yang Chow, a restaurant in Chinatown that a group of us go to on a regular basis. One of the recipients said she was not on TikTok. To quote:

“I’m barely engaged in social media. I don’t want to spend more time watching people I don’t know and will never meet. I can barely keep up with my friends and family!”

This is an old school, Facebook/Instagram view of social media. That it’s all about connecting with old friends, people bragging, trying to create FOMO. But no, on TikTok, a lot of the videos are informational. You learn. The algorithm divines what you are interested in and serves it up. You know I’ve got a bug up my ass about this, but I will say it once again, to counter the tide of oldsters…I’ve never heard a youngster complain about TikTok. It’s the oldsters who think it’s the devil. Social media is like AI, it’s here to stay. Furthermore, it has distinct advantages. Why are all the Boomers and Gen-X’ers so self-satisfied? They were addicted to television, but when there’s a new platform they pooh-pooh it. It would be laughable if traditional news and the so-called elite didn’t rail against technology constantly. The internet is the best thing that ever happened to me, I’m connecting with you right now! I can find information in niches that was previously unavailable to me, I can connect with people all over the world. Please change your perspective and get a TikTok account, to watch the videos in this piece, if nothing else.

2.a. Big Jim is a restaurant reviewer who popped up in my feed. He tends to review holes in the wall, unknown places in the San Fernando Valley, the ones no one talks about. I haven’t heard of most of the locations, but he’s piqued my interest. However, he gives a positive review to everything. This is the video on Yang Chow:

@bigjimsbabybites Yang Chow Chinese Restaurant in Los Angeles, CA. Since 1977 Food Review Yang Chow 819 N Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90012 #Yangchow #chinesefood #losangeles #foodreview #fyp @Jisela Ordaz ♬ original sound – Big Jim

So Google is a B2B enterprise where the consumer gets screwed. Here’s another Rory Sutherland clip that talks about this:

@wehaveameetingpod Google is scamming you – Rory Sutherland I searched for a hotel. I wanted that hotel, not six others. There’s a fine line between being helpful and being annoying, okay Google? Full Podcast out soon. Don’t miss it. #RorySutherland #MarketingInsights #EthicalMarketing #AttentionEconomy #SmartAdvertising #HumanMarketing #Google ♬ original sound – We Have A Meeting Podcast

 

Bottom line… Google is in cahoots with advertisers who are oftentimes using subterfuge to make their money. Google doesn’t police this whatsoever. As a matter of fact, Google is proud of the fact that it’s all done automatically, online. But, the truth is Google has a responsibility to the consumer to deliver accurate information. However, the secondary market spends a fortune on ads with Google and the tech company looks the other way. The primary market is buried and can’t compete.

All this talk about the secondary market vs. the primary market… How can the primary market succeed if Google is helping the secondary, looking the other way?

The music industry must change its focus. It’s myopic, i.e. the secondary market is bad. It is, but it’s being enabled by Google, which should be shamed into changing its policy.

It’s not only concert tickets. Advertisers purvey all kinds of things for sale at exorbitant rates, far beyond the price the original seller is offering them at. But the original seller can’t compete, because these secondary market enterprises without the underlying costs of the original sellers spend a fortune on Google ads and dominate mindshare.

This can be changed.

Google said “Don’t be evil.”? It’s actively harming the concert industry, and many more verticals to boot!

~~~

Visit the archive:   http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/

@Lefsetz  http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
–
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter

~~~

Originally published by Bob Lefsetz at the Leftsetz Letter

The post It’s A Google Problem appeared first on The Big Picture.

The post How Many Manufacturing Jobs Has Trump Actually Lost? appeared first on CEPR.

Here is a review of the Ten Economic Questions for 2025.

Below are my ten questions for 2026 (I've been doing this online every year for 21 years!).  These are just questions; I'll follow up with some thoughts on each of these questions.

The purpose of these questions is to provide a framework of how the U.S. economy will likely perform in 2026, and if there are surprises - like in 2020 with the pandemic - to adjust my thinking.  1) Economic growth: Economic growth was probably close to 2% Q4-over-Q4 in 2025.  The FOMC is expecting growth of 2.1% to 2.5% Q4-over-Q4 in 2026. How much will the economy grow in 2026?  Will there be a recession in 2026?
2) Employment: Through November 2025, the economy added 610 thousand jobs in 2025.   How many jobs will be added in 2026?  Or will the economy lose jobs? 
3) Unemployment Rate: The unemployment rate was at 4.6% in November, up from 4.2% in November 2024.   Currently the FOMC is projecting the unemployment rate will decrease to the 4.3% to 4.4% range in Q4 2026.  What will the unemployment rate be in December 2026?

4) Participation Rate: In November 2025, the overall participation rate was at 62.5%, unchanged year-over-year from 62.5% in November 2024, and below the pre-pandemic level of 63.3% in February 2020.   Long term, the BLS is projecting the overall participation rate will decline to 61.1% by 2034 due to demographics.  What will the participation rate be in December 2026?

5) Inflation: Core PCE was up 2.8% YoY through September. This was down from a peak of 5.6% in early 2022.  The FOMC is forecasting the YoY change in core PCE will be in the 2.4% to 2.6% range in Q4 2025. Will the core inflation rate decrease further in 2026, and what will the YoY core inflation rate be in December 2026? 

6) Monetary Policy:  The FOMC cut the federal funds rate three times in 2025 from "4-1/4 to 4-1/2 percent" at the beginning of 2025, to "3-1/2 to 3-3/4" at the end of the year. The mid-point on the "dot plot" suggests many FOMC participants expect around two 25 bp rate cuts in 2026.  What will the Fed Funds rate be in December 2026?

7) Wage Growth: Wage growth was decemt in 2025, up 3.5% year-over-year as of November.  How much will wages increase in 2026?

8) Residential Investment: How much will Residential investment (RI)  change in 2026?  How about housing starts and new home sales in 2025?

9) House Prices: It appears house prices - as measured by the national repeat sales index (Case-Shiller, FHFA, and Freddie Mac) - will be mostly flat in 2025.  What will happen with house prices in 2026?

10) Housing Inventory: Housing inventory decreased sharply during the pandemic to record lows in early 2022.  Since then, inventory has increased but is still below pre-pandemic levels.  Will inventory increase further in 2026?

Aswath Damodaran is on sabbatical this academic year, and while he is away, the full versions of nearly all of his classes, with lectures, class material and tests/exams are accessible online.

This is an incredible resource; when people discuss the impact of the internet, this is a perfect example.

If you are a student who is serious about learning about stock valuations or simply a curious person, I urge you to check this out.

 

 

Hard to imagine this sort of asset was unavailable a decade or so ago…

The post Valuation with Aswath Damodaran appeared first on The Big Picture.

New Patent Signals Tesla Could Integrate Starlink Dish Into Vehicle Moonroof

A newly filed patent suggests Tesla may be preparing to embed Starlink dishes directly into vehicle roofs, bringing connectivity costs in-house under Starlink rather than continuing to pay third-party carriers like AT&T. Such a move would unlock space-based, high-speed internet for vehicles. Notably, some Tesla owners are already mounting Starlink Mini dishes onto their vehicles, offering an early glimpse of next-generation connectivity.

Tesla filed a patent covering a vehicle roof assembly that is transparent to radio frequencies, specifically noting that it allows for satellite communications to pass through.

"In some examples, this assembly enables the integration of overhead electrical modules and components, including antennae, directly into the roof structure, facilitating clear communication with external devices and satellites," the patent explained in the abstract section.

Here is a drawing from the patent...

Starlink was not mentioned, but it is important to note that Tesla pays for cellular network access to provide basic connectivity supporting essential functions such as navigation and software updates. Users then pay a monthly fee for "Premium Connectivity" to unlock features like live traffic visualization, satellite maps, and streaming media over cellular networks.

We have already seen some Tesla drivers purchase suction cup mounts for Starlink Mini dishes and attach them to the glass moonroof. The purpose is to provide a high-speed connection to the vehicle and its occupants, especially in areas with low coverage or dead zones.

Here's EV blog Electrek's first take on the new patent:

I think it’ll be about cost. Right now if you have premium connectivity, Tesla pays whatever cellular network for that. If they can bring it totally in "house" then that means Musk pays himself for internet and not AT&T or some other carrier. It might not be much cost savings but every penny counts for those reoccurring fees on the bottom line.

Furthermore, Starlink registered "Starlink Mobile" earlier this month...

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 19:15

Michael Saylor's Bitcoin Thesis: Money Or Commodity?

Authored by Gareth Jenkinson via CoinTelegraph.com,

Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin white paper envisioned a “peer-to-peer electronic cash system,” but Bitcoin’s biggest proponent seems to have an entirely different view of its purpose.

Strategy executive chairman Michael Saylor, whose company has been buying Bitcoin aggressively for nearly five years since adopting a Bitcoin (BTC) treasury strategy, presented what many described as plans for a “Bitcoin central bank” during his keynote speech at Bitcoin MENA.

Economist Saifedean Ammous, well-known in Bitcoin circles for penning The Bitcoin Standard, was also a notable figure attending the conference in Abu Dhabi.

Ammous and Saylor are understood to converse regularly, with Saylor having written the foreword of Ammous’ most famous book.

Speaking on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction show, Ammous acknowledged that Saylor does not view Bitcoin as money through the same lens as other Bitcoin proponents. 

Source: Gareth Jenkinson

“I don’t think he sees Bitcoin as money. He’s been very clear about that. He sees Bitcoin more as an asset. One of the great metaphors he uses is that Bitcoin is like crude oil in that it is a hard asset,” Ammous said.

“Just like Standard Oil refined crude oil into standard forms of consumer oil like kerosene or gasoline, he sees Strategy’s role as refining crude Bitcoin into different forms of financial assets that allow people access to them."

Saylor has used various existing corporate finance mechanisms to allow investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin.

The company’s Class A Common Stock (MSTR) allows investors to buy shares in Strategy, which acts as a leveraged play on the price of Bitcoin, as the company’s primary strategy is to accumulate BTC. 

Strategy has also raised billions of dollars through offerings of convertible senior notes, a type of debt that can be converted into equity at a future date, to buy more Bitcoin.

His most recent innovations saw the issuance of several classes of perpetual preferred stock (STRK, STRF, STRD, STRC) to institutional investors.

As of Dec. 15, Strategy had accumulated 671,268 Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is still money

While Saylor has gone on record to unpack his thesis on why Bitcoin is a hard asset that can serve as the basis for various financial products, Saifedean says Strategy's Bitcoin playbook doesn’t alter Bitcoin's monetary properties. 

“I can see the logic behind it. Ultimately, it’s an academic issue. It doesn’t have much of real-world relevance,” Saifedean said.

“In theory, I think of Bitcoin itself as the money. I think of it as being the asset itself. And I think people just need to hold Bitcoin. And I think in the long run, people are going to hold Bitcoin. Now, as long as the fiat money printer exists, there will be all kinds of fiat games that can and will be played.”

Saifedean said that global monetary supply increases by 7%-15% annually and that the system incentivizes the use of debt. 

“There’s an enormous world that is used to getting into financial debt for all kinds of purposes. You’re going to see that increase. As Bitcoin grows, you’re going to be seeing these kinds of financial fiat tools and products being deployed on Bitcoin.”

What does that actually mean? Well, in short, businesses and individuals will need to acquire Bitcoin as pristine capital to access affordable debt.

“Ultimately, all of that has to be built on a foundation of buying Bitcoin. One way or the other, that just means more and more people buy Bitcoin and the size of cash balances in Bitcoin increases. And in my mind, that inevitably means that Bitcoin becomes the money itself.”

Ammous featured on Chain Reaction after Africa Bitcoin Corporation (ABC) announced that the economist would be advising the company.

ABC’s president, Stafford Masie, said Ammous’ primary motivation for advising ABC was the widespread adoption of Bitcoin across retail stores and the unique circular economies in South Africa.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 18:40

Gunboat Diplomacy Accelerated: US Seizes Another Oil Tanker Off Venezuela's Coast

Update: 

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem confirmed that the U.S. Coast Guard, with support from the Department of War, has seized another oil tanker that was last docked in Venezuela.

"The United States will continue to pursue the illicit movement of sanctioned oil used to fund narco-terrorism in the region. We will find you, and we will stop you," Noem wrote in a post on X.

In a pre-dawn action early this morning on Dec. 20, the US Coast Guard with the support of the Department of War apprehended an oil tanker that was last docked in Venezuela.

The United States will continue to pursue the illicit movement of sanctioned oil that is used to fund… pic.twitter.com/nSZ4mi6axc

— Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) December 20, 2025

Reuters reported earlier about the operation. 

*  *  * 

President Trump's gunboat diplomacy is aimed at disrupting crude oil flows moving from Venezuela to Cuba and onward to China. The foreign-policy campaign began earlier this year with U.S. warships stationed off Venezuela's coast in international waters, but it accelerated sharply weeks ago with the U.S. seizure of a sanctioned tanker in the Caribbean and has now escalated further with reports that another tanker was intercepted and seized.

Reuters cites three U.S. officials on Saturday morning who said U.S. forces are interdicting and seizing another tanker off the coast of Venezuela in international waters. This could mark the second such seizure in weeks and comes days after Trump announced a "blockade" of all sanctioned oil tankers in the Venezuela region.

Apparently, U.S. Coast Guard teams are leading this operation amid a broader U.S. military buildup in the region, though officials have not disclosed the exact location of the latest tanker seizure.

Trump's gunboat diplomacy is aimed at the country's autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro. This ploy could accelerate regime instability in Caracas and materially weaken Cuba.

"Their theory of change involves cutting off all support to Cuba," Juan S. Gonzalez, who was President Joe Biden's top White House aide for Western Hemisphere affairs, recently said. "Under this approach, once Venezuela goes, Cuba will follow."

On Tuesday, Trump ordered a "total and complete blockade" of all sanctioned oil tankers going into and out of Venezuela. He further boasted of the country having been "completely surrounded" with the "largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America."

He then warned, "It [the blockade] will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us."

Brent crude markets slipped underneath $60/bbl last week, ending the week at $60.57, as traders appear numb to Trump's gunboat diplomacy in the Caribbean.

We're surprised Beijing hasn't lashed out at the U.S. for such actions in the Caribbean, given that this disrupts oil trade flows from West to East. Perhaps a deal was made at the Trump-Xi meeting in the fall.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 18:05

Nebraska To Become First State To Launch Medicaid Work Requirements

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

Nebraska plans to become the first state in the nation to implement work requirements for certain Medicaid recipients, with Gov. Jim Pillen and federal health officials announcing an accelerated rollout under provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB).

At a news conference earlier this week, Pillen said the state has formally notified the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) of its intent to require Medicaid expansion enrollees to meet work or community engagement standards beginning May 1, 2026—well ahead of the federal compliance deadline.

The event was also attended by Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services CEO Steve Corsi, and remotely by CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Under the new rules, able-bodied adults aged 19 to 64 enrolled through Medicaid expansion will be required to complete at least 80 hours per month of employment, education, job training, community service, or other qualifying activities to maintain coverage, unless they qualify for an exemption.

“These requirements will help Nebraskans achieve greater self-sufficiency through employment and other meaningful activities,” Pillen said.

“Working not only provides purpose but helps people become active, productive members of their communities.”

Pillen added that Nebraska will be ready to move forward with the work requirements well before the federally mandated start date of Jan. 1, 2027.

His office said that work requirements are associated with greater success in finding better-paid work and more stable incomes over time, and that higher employment rates are linked to lower crime rates. Children in working households also tend to have improved educational outcomes and stronger routines.

Federal Law Mandates Medicaid Work Rules

The work requirements stem from the OBBB Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4. The bill mandates work or community engagement conditions for most adults covered through Medicaid expansion nationwide. While it directs states to implement the requirements by the end of 2026, states may move sooner, as Nebraska now plans to do.

Oz, who joined the conference by video, praised Nebraska for acting quickly.

“Nebraska is leading the way as the first state to launch its community engagement requirements, and we congratulate Governor Pillen and his team for their commitment to helping more Nebraskans move toward greater independence and opportunity,” he said.

“CMS will be working together with Nebraska and its 50 counterparts to ensure every program is implemented smoothly, responsibly, and in compliance with federal law.”

According to state officials, the policy will apply only to the Medicaid expansion population—low-income adults earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level—while leaving traditional Medicaid groups unaffected. Children, pregnant women, seniors, and people who are blind or disabled are excluded from the requirement.

The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services estimates that around 350,000 residents are enrolled in Medicaid, with Pillen saying that some 30,000 Nebraskans will be subject to the new work requirement once it is implemented.

Critics contend that the accelerated timeline could strain Nebraska’s eligibility system and lead to coverage losses among people who qualify for exemptions but struggle with paperwork or verification.

“We have seen in other states that when Medicaid work requirements are implemented too quickly, like what Nebraska is proposing here, thousands of people who are eligible for the program unnecessarily lose coverage and millions of state dollars are wasted on ineffective administrative costs,” Nebraska Appleseed Health Care Access program director Sarah Maresh said in a statement.

“We know a vast majority of Nebraskans subject to these requirements work or meet an exemption to work requirements, but rushing to implement work requirements will cause them to lose coverage anyway.”

The Congressional Budget Office projected in June that 4.8 million able-bodied adults would lose Medicaid coverage by 2034 for failing to meet new work requirements under the OBBB.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 17:30

"Maduro Can Get The F**k Out"; Venezuela 'Regime Change' Debate Gets Fiery

Potentially on the cusp of another regime change war, last night ZeroHedge collaborated with The Matt Gaetz show to host a pointed debate on how Trump should handle the evil and corrupt Maduro regime—a familiar Washington storyline now resurfacing amid renewed sanctions pressure, significant U.S. military maneuvers, and Beltway think tank consensus.

The debate featured Curt Mills, Executive Director of The American Conservative, and Venezuelan opposition figure Emmanuel Rincon, moderated by former Congressman Matt Gaetz.

We strongly recommend the full hour-long debate, but here the highlights for those short of time:

The Venezuelan Chalabi

Mills warned that Washington is once again falling for a familiar con, comparing the case for regime change in Venezuela to the pre-Iraq War fantasy sold by exiles promising instant democracy if only the U.S. removes the “bad man” at the top.

“I suppose I’m debating the Venezuelan Ahmed Chalabi,” Mills said, noting that diaspora groups routinely make sweeping claims about what “the people on the street” believe and what the country will supposedly look like “the day after,” all while assuming they and their allies would be handed power.

The truth, he argued, is simpler and more damning: “We don’t know. And this is not the U.S.’s business.”

Context: Ahmed Chalabi—a wealthy Iraqi exile—was a pivotal figure in selling the Iraq War to U.S. neoconservatives, largely by feeding them what they most wanted to believe: that toppling Saddam would quickly yield a secular, pro-Western Iraqi democracy that would also normalize ties with Israel. Chalabi’s circle also supplied “crucial intelligence” about Iraqi weaponry that “almost all… turned out to be false,” helping justify the invasion and underpin the “liberators” fantasy.

Mills also took aim at the security rationale behind intervention, arguing that regime change is a wildly inefficient response to crime or drugs.

“The U.S. does not need to stop all crime everywhere,” he said, adding that protecting Americans can be achieved far more effectively through border enforcement and cooperation with law enforcement than through a war.

The real danger, he cautioned, is strategic self-harm: Venezuela risks becoming “the American Ukraine,” a war of choice that bogs the U.S. down and consumes an entire presidency.

pic.twitter.com/vLsmz47BK8

— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) December 20, 2025

Drug-Busting, Not Regime Change

The exchange turned on whether regime change could be sold as something short of war.

Emmanuel Rincon insisted that it could, arguing, “You’re not going to war against Venezuela. You are going to war against a drug cartel. It’s not the same.”

In Rincon’s telling, the scenario would not involve Venezuela’s military at all:

“You’re not going to have all the military of Venezuela going into a war with the United States. That is not going to happen.”

Mills dismissed that framing as semantic evasion.

“Like in World War II, they could argue that we weren’t going to war with Germany—we were going to war with the Nazi regime, with the SS,” he said. “But of course we’re going to war with Germany.”

Stripping away the euphemisms, Mills argued the same logic applies in Caracas:

“We would be going to war with Venezuela—the people that run Venezuela today.” 

pic.twitter.com/XQb07DjUPX

— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) December 20, 2025

Watch the full debate below because - while Tucker v Ben Shapiro drama may be stealing the show right now - how this Venezuela debate pans out within the Trump admin could put lives on the line… and very soon.

https://t.co/Uc14RFJEhY

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 20, 2025

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 16:55

Project Sunrise: Inside The $112BN Plan To Rebuild Gaza As 'High Tech Metropolis'

Via The Cradle

US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have presented a $112 billion reconstruction plan to Gulf officials to build a “high-tech metropolis” atop the remains of Gaza, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The 32-page PowerPoint presentation labeled "sensitive" and titled "Project Sunrise" was developed over 45 days and reportedly presented to officials from Qatar, UAE, Egypt, and Turkiye. 

The plan envisions turning the Gaza Strip into a "high-tech metropolis" over the next two decades with four phases of reconstruction beginning in southern Gaza. It also calls for turning Rafah into Gaza's new "administrative center," housing over 500,000 residents.

However, the plan does not specify where two million Palestinians would be sheltered during the reconstruction period. Israel's blockade of shelter materials has left Palestinians sheltering in bombed-out buildings and tattered tents.

In early December, a severe winter storm caused over a dozen fatalities, including three infants who succumbed to exposure, and led to the collapse of several buildings. About 95 percent of Gaza's tent camps have flooded due to the heavy rain.

Witkoff and Kushner's reconstruction plan also proposes monetizing 70 percent of Gaza's coastline beginning in year ten of the project, a move officials hope would generate over "$55 billion in long-run investment returns for prospective investors."

Both Witkoff and Kushner come from prominent Jewish real estate families rooted in New York’s property sector, with careers built around large-scale, high-value developments and deep financial ties to Gulf sovereign wealth funds.

According to the proposal, the US would provide $60 billion in grants and loan guarantees to back new debt, with expectations that the project would become self-financing as local industry and the broader economy recover. The World Bank would also have a role in the project.

The proposal is contingent on Hamas demilitarizing and decommissioning all weapons and tunnels. This precondition is highlighted in bold red type on the second page of the slide deck.

Hamas officials recently offered to "bury" the group's weapons and hand over power to a Palestinian governing body.

President Donald Trump shared an AI-generated demo for ‘Trump Gaza’ on Truth Social. The video depicts his “Riviera Plan” come to life. It involves the forced removal of the indigenous Palestinian population, U.S. ownership, and development of the land for “world people.” pic.twitter.com/j9mWl8muHD

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) February 26, 2025

However, Israel has blocked those efforts and refused the participation of nearly all Palestinian technocrats and bureaucrats who would be suited to govern Gaza.

Earlier this year, Trump proposed permanently relocating Gaza's Palestinian residents to transform the strip into a "Riviera of the Middle East," a plan rejected by several countries but welcomed by Israel's government.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 16:20

Bill Clinton Responds After Half-Naked Photos Appear In Latest Epstein Drop

For months, Democrats have tried to weaponize the delayed release of the Epstein files against President Donald Trump, after Trump got all weird about releasing the files in February. In recent weeks, House Dems selectively leaked materials to suggest the delay meant Trump had something to hide, even though none of the photos or emails implicated him in Epstein's sex-trafficking (something the NY Times even admitted). And after enormous bipartisan pressure spearheaded by Rep. Thomas Massie and MTG, Trump finally signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law - requiring the release of 'all' the Epstein files no later than Friday. And while the DOJ only released 'about half' of what they were supposed to, they did offer a deeper peek into what was going on behind the scenes.

The first tranche of DOJ files released Friday include thousands of pages of material on Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, along with photos featuring high-profile figures such as Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Mick Jagger, Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker, Sarah Ferguson, Prince Andrew, and Bill Gates.

While no major bombshells have surfaced yet, former President Bill Clinton is facing renewed scrutiny because of some of the photos in the latest release: him posing with Epstein in matching shirts, chatting up a dancer, and lounging on what appears to be a plane with a redacted woman on his lap. Clinton also appears at a dinner table with Mick Jagger, Epstein, and Maxwell.

One standout image captures Clinton in a pool or hot tub with an unidentified woman whose face the DOJ blacked out, indicating that the individual is a victim and/or underage, which was allowed by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Mr. Clinton is one of the few people whose faces were not redacted, along with Mr. Epstein himself and Ms. Maxwell. In posts on X after the release, a White House spokeswoman repeatedly pointed out photos of Mr. Clinton and argued that the news media did not want to focus on the images.

“Here is Bill Clinton in a hot tub next to someone whose identity has been redacted. Per the Epstein Files Transparency Act, DOJ was specifically instructed only to redact the faces of victims and/or minors. Time for the media to start asking real questions,” White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson wrote on her personal X account.

Meanwhile, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are also seeking to force Bill and Hillary to give in-person depositions in their own investigation. On social media, Trump has claimed without evidence that Clinton and other Democrats spent “spent large portions of their life with Epstein, and on his ‘Island.’”

Unsurprisingly, the Clinton camp wasn’t happy about the latest drop. Angel Ureña, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, posted an angry statement attacking the release on X. “The White House hasn't been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton. This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they'll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn't about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be. Even Susie Wiles said Donald Trump was wrong about Bill Clinton,” Ureña wrote. ”There are two types of people here. The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light. The second group continued relationships with him after. We're in the first. No amount of stalling by people in the second group will change that.”

Ureña concluded, “Everyone, especially MAGA, expects answers, not scapegoats.”

Clinton’s ties to Epstein have been well documented - having moved in the same elite circles as far back as the early 1990s, leaving behind a trail of photos over the years. Epstein and Maxwell visited the Clinton White House multiple times, and Maxwell later appeared at Chelsea Clinton’s 2010 wedding.

Clinton also flew on Epstein’s jet in the early 2000s for trips his team says were connected to Clinton Foundation work in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Clinton faces no criminal charges related to Epstein, and his representatives insist he did not know about Epstein’s crimes.

And of course, the MSM is pissed!

“The images and documents have been released without context or background information,” the New York Times writes. “It is unclear which photographs might have been taken by Mr. Epstein and which might have been sent to or acquired by him, or where many of them were taken. Justice Department officials have not said how they selected the particular tranche of documents that were released on Friday.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 15:45

Fulton County Admits Certification Of 315K Potentially Unlawful Ballots In 2020

Authored by Luis Cornelio via Headline USA,

An attorney for Fulton County, Georgia admitted earlier this month that the county accepted roughly 315,000 early votes that were not lawfully certified in the 2020 presidential election. 

Attorney Ann Brumbaugh made the admission while representing the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections at a Dec. 9 hearing before the Georgia State Election Board, according to Wednesday’s reporting by The Federalist. 

The SEB hearing pertained to a complaint filed by election integrity activist David Cross, who accuses Fulton County of having violated Georgia law by counting early votes that were not properly signed off by election workers. 

As quoted by The Federalist, Brumbaugh told the board that Fulton County does “not dispute that the tapes were not signed.” 

She added, “It was a violation of the rule. We, since 2020, again, we have new leadership and a new building and a new board and a new standard operating procedures. And since then the training has been enhanced. … But … we don’t dispute the allegation from the 2020 election.” 

According to The Federalist: 

“Georgia’s Secretary of State Office investigated the alleged failure to sign tabluation [sic] tapes and ‘substantiated’ the findings that Fulton County ‘violated Official Election Record Document Processes when it was discovered that thirty-six (36) out of thirty-seven (37) Advanced Voting Precincts in Fulton County, Georgia failed to sign the Tabulation Tapes as required [by statute],’ according to a 2024 investigation summary. In addition to probing the unsigned tabulation tapes, the investigation also found that officials at 32 polling sites failed to verify their zero tapes.” 

The issue, as detailed by the outlet, is that Georgia statute orders election officials to print three “closing tapes” toward the end of each voting day.  

Doing so allows officials to officially end counting for the day and avoid votes from the previous day being overcounted. 

“These signed tapes are the sole legal certification that the reported totals are authentic,” Cross said during the SEB hearing.

“Fulton County produced zero signed tabulator tapes in early voting.” 

Cross reportedly uncovered the discrepancy through open records requests that cost him $15,800.  

“These are not clerical errors. They are catastrophic breaks in chain of custody and certification,” Cross said.

“Because no tape was ever legally certified, Fulton County had no lawful authority to certify its advanced voting results to the secretary of state. Yet it did. And Secretary Raffensperger accepted and folded those uncertified numbers into Georgia’s official total without questioning them. This is not partisan. This is statutory. This is the law. When the law demands three signatures on tabulator tapes and the county fails to follow the rules, those 315,000 votes are, by definition, uncertified.” 

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 15:10

At the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter this week:

Click on graph for larger image.

• NAR: Existing-Home Sales Increased to 4.13 million SAAR in November

• Lawler: Another Strange NAR Reading on Northeast Median Sales Prices

• Lawler: Early Read on Existing Home Sales in November and Update on Mortgage/MBS Yields and Spreads

• Part 1: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-December 2025

• Part 2: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-December 2025

• 3rd Look at Local Housing Markets in November

This is usually published 4 to 6 times a week and provides more in-depth analysis of the housing market.

ICE Announces 'Most Successful' Recruitment Campaign In US History

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) received more than 220,000 applications for more than 10,000 open positions at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), ICE said in a statement on Dec. 18.

DHS has officially hired 11,751 law enforcement officers, attorneys, criminal investigators, and mission support staff, the agency said. This is the “most successful federal law enforcement agency recruitment campaign in American history,” the agency said.

DHS launched the ICE “Defend the Homeland” recruitment drive on July 29. The recruitment effort is backed by funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB), signed into law by President Donald Trump in July, which allocates $170 billion to border security and immigration enforcement initiatives.

OBBB had granted ICE $76.5 billion, of which $30 billion was to be used to hire 10,000 additional staff members.

In a Dec. 18 post on X, ICE said it hit its goal of hiring more than 10,000 personnel in less than a year.

ICE Deputy Director Madison D. Sheahan praised the OBBB for providing the agency with necessary resources to enforce immigration law “as it’s been written and codified by Congress.”

“The president and Secretary Noem set a goal, and we exceeded it, but that doesn’t mean we’re done. We continue to call on American patriots to serve the homeland because we know that there’s still more work to do—and we will not stop until every community in this nation is safe,” Sheahan said, referring to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

ICE said it was offering “unparalleled” incentives to recruits, including a signing bonus of up to $50,000, up to $60,000 in student loan repayment, and an attractive benefits package that includes health insurance, paid federal holidays, and a retirement plan.

Meanwhile, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced new recruitment and retention incentives on Dec. 18 to attract skilled individuals to key law enforcement positions in the agency.

CBP is offering new border patrol agents up to $60,000 in incentives, with current agents eligible for up to $50,000 in retention incentives, the agency said.

New Air and Marine agents can become eligible for up to $10,000 in signing bonuses once they complete academy training. Both new and current agents are also eligible for retention incentives of up to 25 percent of their salary.

For new CBP officers in the Office of Field Operations who sign up for hard-to-fill and most difficult-to-fill locations, incentives of up to $60,000 are being offered. Experienced supervisors and officers eligible to retire in certain locations also may qualify for up to $60,000 in retention incentives.

“CBP is committed to recruiting and retaining top talent for our critical mission,” CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott said.

“By offering competitive incentives, we are investing in skilled professionals who will help secure America’s borders and advance national security.”

The strong recruitment numbers come despite immigration enforcement officers facing unprecedented violence against them. On Dec. 12, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said that officers were facing an 8,000 percent increase in death threats along with a 1,150 percent increase in assaults.

Federal Immigration Enforcement

Democrats have criticized ICE and CBP for their part in federal immigration enforcement.

This month, a group of Democratic senators introduced the “Accountability for Federal Law Enforcement Act,” which seeks to grant individuals the right to sue law enforcement agencies and officers in civil court for any constitutional or civil violations, according to a Dec. 15 statement from the office of Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.)

This right to sue will be made available to all individuals in the United States “regardless of citizenship,” it said.

“For months, ICE and CBP officers have terrorized communities across the country, deploying violent and excessive tactics against immigrants, U.S. citizens, journalists, and bystanders alike with no accountability,” Padilla said.

“These abuses of individuals’ constitutional rights without consequence shatter public trust and stoke fear among hardworking members of our communities.”

DHS says ICE arrests target illegal immigrants with a history of criminal activities and has recently launched a website to boost transparency regarding the arrests.

DHS operates the website, “Worst of the Worst,” which allows users to search, based on location, for criminal illegal immigrants who have been arrested and removed from communities. On Dec. 18, the agency said it had added another 5,000 criminal illegal immigrants to the growing list of 15,000 profiles on the website.

“This new update represents just a small sample of the total number of arrests we’ve made—70 percent of ICE arrests are of criminal illegal aliens that have been charged or convicted of a crime in the United States,” McLaughlin said.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 14:00

Dumber, Sicker, & Poorer

The chart below is a fascinating snapshot of the last 75 years in the demise of the American empire.

As The Burning Platform's Jim Quinn explains in his no-nonsense manner, there are currently 164 million people employed in America. About 34 million of those are employed part-time.

When you understand the working age population is 275 million and your friendly number fudgers at the BLS declare 103 million of them NOT IN THE LABOR FORCE, and hysterically declaring only 7.8 million Americans are unemployed, you understand what a fraudulent economy we have.

The reported 4.6% unemployment rate is complete and utter bullshit. In reality, it is north of 20%.

Welcome to the golden age...

• The percentage of total jobs in the Education and Health Services sector has grown from 4.8% in 1950 to 17.8% today. Wow!! We must be the smartest, healthiest nation on earth. Not quite. With 28 million teachers, doctors, nurses, and mostly administrators (aka overhead), our education system matriculates millions of barely functional idiots into society every year. Meanwhile, as a country, we are sickly, fat, lazy, dependent upon Big Pharma drugs, and spend more on healthcare than any country on earth. To quote the immortal Dean Wormer,  “Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”

• Proof we have become a non-productive, debt dependent, government dependent, shadow of our former industrial powerhouse is the decline in the percentage of manufacturing jobs from 30.2% in 1950 to 8.0% today. We borrow and consume, when we used to invest and build. Trump can threaten, tariff the world, and make bullshit announcements about manufacturing jobs coming back, but they are not coming back. Any new manufacturing plants will be operated by robotics.

• Even though the percentage of government employees (aka parasites) has remained relatively steady since 1950, we are stuck with 24 million blood suckers who contribute nothing to the country’s productivity. The average working schmuck has to pay outrageously high taxes to pay the bloated salaries and pensions of these government freeloaders.

• And now some bad news for the formerly well paid workers in the Professional & Business Services sector, which had grown from 6.6% of total jobs in 1950 to 14.1% today. ChatGPT and the avalanche of AI tools are eliminating jobs in these sectors at hyperbolic speed. These are the same assholes who used to tell blue collar workers to “learn to code”. Well, now the plumbers, electricians, and construction workers can recommend they learn to be fry cooks at McDonalds, but too late, robots are taking those jobs.

The relatively stable employment situation over the last few years has been the only thing keeping this ship of fools from sinking.

But, the increase in the fraudulent unemployment rate from 4.0% when Trump took office to 4.6% today shows the ship is taking on water and it won’t be long before millions are drowning under the waves of debt, delusion, and dumb decisions.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 13:45

Netanyahu Wants To Attack Iran Again, Will Lobby Trump In Mar-a-Lago Visit

Many analysts agree that the last round of fighting between Israel and Iran last June was not the final conflict the two regional powers will face.

Despite President Trump having declared that the Islamic Republic's nuclear program had been completely obliterated in the US knock-out strikes against three nuclear facilities which came at the end of the 12-day war, Israel suspects the Iranians are still conducting nuclear development activity in secret, and are busy reconstituting and expanding their ballistic missile arsenal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to visit the United States yet again, from December 28 to January 4, and will meet with President Trump at the Mar-a-Lago estate. Netanyahu will reportedly lobby the president to take more military action against Tehran.

via Associated Press

NBC reports Saturday, "Israeli officials have grown increasingly concerned that Iran is expanding production of its ballistic missile program, which was damaged by Israeli military strikes earlier this year, and are preparing to brief President Donald Trump about options for attacking it again, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plans and four former U.S. officials briefed on the plans."

"Israeli officials also are concerned that Iran is reconstituting nuclear enrichment sites the U.S. bombed in June, the sources said," the report continues. "But, they added, the officials view Iran’s efforts to rebuild facilities where they produce the ballistic missiles and to repair its crippled air defense systems as more immediate concerns."

But the timing of potential new Pentagon action against Iran couldn't be worse, given the concentration of American military assets currently in the southern Caribbean at a moment the US is threating regime change actions against Venezuela's President Maduro and cartels in Latin America.

The USS Gerald R. Ford carrier group was even recently moved from the Mediterranean, where it was closer to the Middle East and CENTCOM region, to join operations threatening Venezuela in the Caribbean.

However, the Pentagon has just this week engaged in new 'counter ISIS' strikes in Syria, and so presumably would have enough or limited support assets in the region if it chose to assist with some new Israeli anti-Iran operation.

Still, all of these unprovoked attacks on foreign powers and adventurism abroad could grow increasingly unpopular with the American people, and certainly there's a large chunk of the MAGA base which is dead set against the US entering new wars and conflicts, also at a time the Ukraine proxy war shows no signs of slowing.

The Trump administration is still standing by its assessment that Iran's nuclear capabilities have been destroyed. "The International Atomic Energy Agency and Iranian government corroborated the United States government’s assessment that Operation Midnight Hammer totally obliterated Iran’s nuclear capabilities," White House spokesperson Anna Kelly has said in a statement.

There's widespread acknowledgement that Iran's ballistic missile capability is among the most advanced in the broader region, and that it did real damage against Israel in the June war:

Iran has not just developed one of the most advanced ICBMs in the world
(New video on the Qaem ICBM has just been released on the DDD YT-Channel)

➡️ Israeli sources now claim that Iran was close to mastering what no other country has ever masted:
Purse-Fusion nuclear weapons… https://t.co/qvq1nnLW46 pic.twitter.com/bUrnOIvB0X

— Patarames (@Pataramesh) December 20, 2025

She further warned: "As President Trump has said, if Iran pursued a nuclear weapon, that site would be attacked and would be wiped out before they even got close." So while Trump might be open to mulling new action, the official US stance is that there's no need to at this point.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 13:25

After Trump Withholds Endorsement, Stefanik Suddenly Bails On NY Gov Bid And Congress Too

In a surprise move, Republican New York Rep. Elise Stefanik has not only pulled the plug on her recently-launched gubernatorial campaign, but will also refrain from seeking reelection to the US House. The decisions cap a year in which the ardent backer of Donald Trump has been through a hot-and-cold relationship with the mercurial president that's seen him first cancel her nomination to serve as UN ambassador and then fail to endorse her in the governor's race. 

Stefanik's national profile surged when she grilled university presidents over alleged antisemitism on their campuses in December 2023

Stefanik dropped the big news in a lengthy afternoon post on X. Key excerpts:  

"While spending precious time with my family this Christmas season, I have made the decision to suspend my campaign for Governor and will not seek re-election to Congress... While we would have overwhelmingly won this primary, it is not an effective use of our time or your generous resources to spend the first half of next year in an unnecessary and protracted Republican primary, especially in a challenging state like New York... 

While many know me as Congresswoman, my most important title is Mom. I believe that being a parent is life's greatest gift and greatest responsibility... I will feel profound regret if I don't further focus on my young son's safety, growth, and happiness -- particularly at his tender age."  

The 41-year-old Stefanik was first elected to Congress in 2014, after her campaign as a moderate helped her flip her upstate New York seat back into the GOP column -- taking it from a Democrat who'd ruined a Republican winning streak in the district that spanned a century. As Trump's first term unfolded, Stefanik strayed from the moderation of her campaign and increasingly aligned herself with Trump, calling herself "ultra MAGA." 

Though there's no indication of malice on Trump's part, Stefanik suffered a series of embarrassments and setbacks inflicted by the president (Hans Pennink/ AP via Politico)

Stefanik's national profile surged in December 2023 with her heated grilling of the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT, who she accused of tolerating antisemitism on their campuses amid protests over Israel's devastation of Gaza following the Oct 7 Hamas invasion of Israel. Critics contended that Stefanik wielded a false definition of "antisemitism," equating common pro-Palestinian slogans -- such as "Palestine will be free from the river to the sea" -- with "calling for the genocide of Jews." Regardless, Stefanik's questioning of the university presidents was enormously impactful: Video of her histrionic performance went viral, and Penn president Liz Magill and Harvard president Claudine Gay both announced their resignations within weeks. 

She was poised to rise to even greater visibility when Trump nominated her to serve as ambassador to the UN in his second term. Stefanik's Zionist credentials made her a perfect fit for that role, which, even more so in a Trump administration, disproportionately centers on advancing the Israeli agenda. However, in March, Trump yanked her nomination over concerns that pulling her from Congress would endanger the GOP's thin House majority. Compounding the gut-punch, by that time, Stefanik had already resigned as chair of the House GOP caucus -- the fourth-ranked Republican slot in the House.  

More indignities awaited. When socialist New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani visited the Oval Office in November, a reporter referenced Stefanik's condemnation of Mamdani as a "jihadist" and asked Trump if he agreed. Trump disagreed, praising Mamdani as a "very rational person...a man who really wants to see New York be great again." 

Q: Stefanik has called Mamdani a 'jihadist.' Do you think you're standing next to a jihadist right now?

TRUMP: No, I don't. I met with a man who's a very rational person pic.twitter.com/DrdUFhwNHX

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 21, 2025

Next came an in-person White House embarrassment. Last month, Stefanik announced her candidacy for governor, in a bid to oust Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul. Long Island Republican Bruce Blakeman, also a Trump ally, then announced his own candidacy. Last week, with Stefanik standing next to Trump, reporters asked him about the contest. Trump merely said Stefanik has "got a hell of a shot at it...she's got a little competition with a very good Republican, but she's a great Republican, so we'll see what happens." Earlier in the month, when asked if he had a preference, he merely said, "They're both great people." 

A December Siena College poll had Stefanik trailing Hochul by 19 points. Stefanik's favorability rating was a lousy 22% against 33% unfavorable. Her departure from the governor's race comes after she raised more than $12 million for the bid. It's not clear what she'll do with that cash horde. She could refund it to her donors, but under federal law, she has other options, like reallocating money to other candidates or PACs, or keeping it for a possible future run at another office.  

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 12:15

66 Things Higher-Ed Found Racist In 2025

Authored by Matt Lamb via The College Fix,

Every year, The College Fix likes to remind readers of what higher education declared racist in the past 12 months.

From Taylor Swift, to liking Mozart, our scholars and so-called “experts” never cease to find racism hiding under every rock and in every tree.

The list is grouped as reasonably as possible.

Some things are presumed “racist” if they require an “equity lens.”

For example, Minnesota State Mankato requires that assistant football coaches view their jobs through an “equity lens.”

This implies coaching football suffers from racism and needs a DEIntervention.

The full list of articles can be found here.

Activities:

Coaching football

Concepts:

Capitalism

Colonialism

Merit

Events:

Kamala Harris losing 2024 presidential election

Groups:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement

National Football League

Police

Pro-life Christians

Turning Point USA

University of Oklahoma Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity members

“White churches”

Medicine:

Dark green acne masks

Healthcare in general

Pediatric cancer care

Pregnancy care (sometimes)

White doctors

People:

American pioneers

Charlie Kirk

Conservatives

Elon Musk

Indiana Governor Mike Braun

Israeli actress Noa Tisby

John Winthrop

President Donald Trump

Rush Limbaugh

Stonewall Jackson

Voters who didn’t support Kamala Harris (majority of the country)

White men

White people in general

White students

White women

Places

The British countryside

Schools

University of Chicago

University of South Carolina dance school

Hofstra University 

Policies:

Arresting illegal immigrants

Asking black students to write positively about themselves

Asking students for update on work

Bonuses for having babies

Depicting Jesus as white

Keeping men out of women’s prisons

Localization

Not funding a tiny black college with a subpar graduation rate

Opposing DEI

Portraying a black mom using marijuana

Prohibitions on abortion

Trump creating a lot of news stories

Subjects:

Art

Chemistry

Culinary arts

English/grammar

Marine Science

Math

Social Work

Literature

Things:

James Bond novel “Dr. No.”

Mars rover

Michelin restaurant guide

Monuments to American pioneers

Tesla Cybertruck

Words and phrases:

‘Carrot top’ (when directed at a Latino)

‘Carrot cake’ (when directed at a Latino)

‘Field’

‘Mob rule’

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 11:40

The post Obamacare Lowered Healthcare Cost Growth #34,706 appeared first on CEPR.

Leading Scottish Teaching Union Defines Gender Critical Views As "Far Right"

Authored by Annemarie Ward via DailySceptic.org,

There are moments in public life when you read something and genuinely wonder if someone is having you on. 

The briefing on the supposed rise of far Right activity by the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), the leading teachers’ union in Scotland, is one of those moments. 

Scotland’s far Right is so tiny it could hold its AGM in the disabled toilet at Wetherspoons and still have room left for a flipchart. Yet here is the country’s largest and most influential union producing a 16-page political field manual that treats this microscopic fringe as if it is marching on Holyrood with flaming torches and matching armbands.

None of this resembles safeguarding. It is not professionalism. It is certainly not education. It is politics in fancy dress, and it insults the intelligence of teachers, parents and pupils alike.

The briefing begins with what looks like a perfectly sensible academic definition of the far Right. That lasts for all of two minutes.

Then the definition begins to stretch and swell until it covers almost anything that does not suit the worldview of whomever wrote the document. Real extremists do exist, and nobody sensible denies that. Every society has a small fringe of people who are vulnerable to rigid identities and destructive beliefs, usually because they are looking for certainty in a chaotic world.

But the EIS manages to take this small and unpleasant fringe and stretch it to breaking point.

Suddenly people who are pro-business, parents who worry about asylum hotels, anyone concerned about collapsing public services, women raising safeguarding issues, and every adult in the country who thinks biological sex corresponds to reality are all apparently drifting towards radicalisation.

And just to round things off, every Reform UK voter is thrown into the same pot.

By this logic, if you have ever eaten a Sunday roast or nodded politely to a small business owner, you may soon end up on a watch list.

The serious point here is that when everything is described as far Right, nothing is. Real extremism – the sort that harms communities – becomes blurred and unrecognisable when the definition has been inflated like a bouncy castle in a gale. And while all this stretching and redefining is going on, certain issues are conspicuously absent. There is no mention of the Iranian bot activity that the security services have warned about, which has been actively stoking constitutional division in Scotland. Apparently that does not merit 16 pages of alarm. No, the real danger, as framed by the EIS, is not organised extremism but the parent who simply asked whether a Gender Unicorn worksheet belonged in the classroom. This is not safeguarding. It is political hygiene dressed up as moral duty.

Meanwhile, teachers across Scotland are dealing with some of the most challenging conditions we have seen in decades. Violence in classrooms has become routine. Literacy is collapsing in large parts of the country. Additional support provision is drowning under impossible caseloads. Staffing is stretched to its limits. Burnout is everywhere. Yet the leadership of the EIS has decided the top priority is to turn a handful of Facebook loudmouths into an existential Reichstag fire.

It mirrors what David Chalmers highlighted in England only last month. University of Leicester students were shown lecture slides comparing Margaret Thatcher to Putin and Hitler. When higher education starts behaving like that, you know something has gone badly wrong. Several English schools have reportedly taught pupils that Reform UK sits on the same political spectrum as the BNP, despite having as much in common as a wet teabag and a nuclear reactor. Clarity and proportion always seem to be the first casualties of a good moral panic.

The real danger in all this is not the far Right. It is the collapse of democratic norms. Real extremists exist, but they are not the looming threat the EIS pretends they are. What should concern anyone serious about civic life is the way our democratic foundations are being eroded from above while everyone is busy scanning playgrounds for imaginary fascists. In recent years, trial by jury has been quietly pared back. Elections have been cancelled for millions of voters. 

Ordinary citizens have been arrested for social media posts that would not have raised an eyebrow a decade ago. Executive power has expanded to the point where abnormality now passes for routine. None of this is the work of shadowy extremists lurking on encrypted messaging channels. These decisions are being taken in broad daylight by governments who congratulate themselves on defending democracy while chipping away at its pillars.

Yet the EIS can spot authoritarianism in a parent’s Facebook comment but somehow miss the steady centralisation of state power. It is the political equivalent of opening the broom cupboard to check for ghosts while the roof quietly collapses from above. If we are genuinely serious about resisting authoritarian drift, we need to look at where authority is actually expanding, not where it is easiest to manufacture a scare.

If the EIS wants to teach pupils something useful about authoritarianism, it might start by explaining how such systems work in real life. They come from above, not below. They justify themselves through the language of safety rather than through overt threats. They arrive quietly through admin, layers of bureaucracy, policy and guidance rather than boots marching. Authoritarian drift does not look like online caricatures of flag-waving oddballs. It looks like officials wearing a badge promising one more policy for your own good. Danger seldom arrives banging on the door. It appears quietly, disguised as reassurance.

Scotland has made itself particularly vulnerable to this sort of drift because we have no statutory safeguards on political impartiality in education. In England, teachers operate under clear legal duties and detailed professional guidance. There is oversight. There is accountability. Parents have recourse. Scotland has none of that. Scots rely on vague non-binding guidance interpreted wildly differently from one local authority to the next. Into that vacuum walks the EIS, presenting an ideological blueprint as though it were a professional handbook.

Imagine the reaction if the biggest teaching union in England published a manual branding Reform UK voters as extremists, casting gender critical women as reactionaries and placing small business owners somewhere on the spectrum of political radicalism. 

The Department for Education would have called a press conference before breakfast. Yet in Scotland, the EIS has gone further still. In its own words, this briefing “could be a collective CPD offer for members”, as though a partisan political narrative were simply another piece of professional learning. When professional development is treated this casually, the line between education and indoctrination is not blurred, it is being erased.

The combination of moral panic and a complete absence of structural safeguards is not a small administrative quirk. It is precisely how politicisation slides into classrooms unnoticed while the public is preoccupied with other things.

At its heart, this is a story of mission drift. Trade unions exist to defend their members’ material interests. Bread and butter solidarity. Pay. Safety. Conditions. Professional dignity. The EIS seems to have wandered so far from that mission it can no longer see it. It now treats safeguarding questions as misogyny, political disagreement as radicalisation, parental concern as the first step towards fascism, and mainstream views as contamination. 

This is not professional support. When an organisation forgets why it exists, it stops helping and starts preaching. There is a simple moral truth at the centre of this. Political neutrality in education does not exist to spare the feelings of politicians. Most of them struggle to protect their own feelings on the best of days. Neutrality exists to protect the public. It protects the right to disagree. It protects children from having their moral world narrowed by ideology masquerading as virtue. 

Once a union decides that whole sections of the electorate are too dangerous to debate, it stops being a guardian of education and becomes something much darker. In addiction recovery I teach that no one is beyond redemption and that a person should not be defined by his or her worst day or worst idea. The EIS is running the opposite programme, treating ordinary people as pathologies rather than neighbours.

Teachers deserve better than this. Pupils deserve better. A school system rooted in the common good cannot survive when its leading union treats ordinary people as if they are beyond dialogue. The EIS claims to be fighting extremism, yet extremism always begins with the belief that some voices are unworthy of being heard. That is the seed of every authoritarian impulse.

Anyone who has watched a life unravel knows how that impulse grows. Harm does not begin with dramatic gestures. It begins with denial, the quiet conviction that the problem is always someone else. That is exactly where the EIS has positioned itself. If it truly wants to protect Scotland’s young people, it will need to rediscover humility, remember its purpose and step out of denial. Because authority without humility does not safeguard a community; it wounds it.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 10:30