WIND FARMS CAUSE TERRIBLE DAMAGE TO WILDLIFE AND NECESSARY INSECTS

The Devastating Ecological Carnage Wrought by Wind Turbines

Onshore wind turbines are causing heavy ecological carnage, with increasing concern focused on the removal of a vast tonnage of insect life. For obvious political, Net Zero reasons, insect decimation is not a well-funded research area, but work in Germany in 2016 put the loss across the country at 1,200 tonnes a year. Recently, the Heartland Institute extrapolated the individual annual insect loss worldwide at 13,640,000,000,000 (13.64 quadrillion) insects, and of course it can be noted that the figures are nearly a decade out of date. Other scientific work has reported that flying insects destroyed include bees, flying beetles and butterflies. Curiously, the many institutions apparently concerned with wildlife stay silent on the slaughter. For its part, the UK Natural History Museum (NHM) offers a Build Your Own Wind Turbine kit. Fun for all the family and if the kiddies are lucky they might get to whack a passing fly or a couple of moths.

The German work estimated insect losses at 40 million per turbine during the plant-growing season. Commenting on the findings, the mathematician and evolutionary ecologist Professor Christian Voigt felt it was necessary to evaluate if these fatalities added to the decline of insect populations, “and potentially the extinction of species”. In a 2022 paper, Voigt reported that turbines can change the nearby microclimate, while vibrational noise may reduce earthworm abundance with likely cascading effects on soil quality and vegetation. In addition, he noted findings that wind turbine facilities led to displacement of nesting and wintering birds.

Recent work from researchers at the University of Wyoming suggests that moths, butterflies, beetles, flies and true bugs may be the most vulnerable to the giant revolving blades. Wind turbines create vortices, sucking in wildlife and causing problems for both bats and large birds such as eagles. “The vast amount of avian and insect deaths at the hands of wind turbines is disastrous in and of itself, from a conservation and ecological standpoint,” states Heartland.

Insect loss and extinctions are of course very popular in the Net Zero fear-mongering business. In 2022, the NHM ran with an improbable tale that flying insects in the UK had declined by 60% in just 20 years. Too good of course for national treasure Sir David Attenborough to pass up and he repeated the scare during his BBC Wild Isles series, a green agitprop co-production with the World Wildlife Fund and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. The evidence proved to be anecdotal and mostly arose from ‘citizen scientists’ counting bugs on car number plates. Missing from the research was a note that vehicle registrations have tripled in the UK since 1970, while cars have largely changed shape from angular boxes to aerodynamic wedges that sweep insects out of the way.

Despite these obvious flaws in the story, the NHM claimed the astonishing loss was caused by rising temperatures and fragmented habitats. The tiny temperature rises over the last 20 years are hardly likely to affect insects that much, while slightly longer growing seasons in the northern hemisphere and a recent 14% ‘greening’ of the Earth due to higher levels of carbon dioxide are almost certain to have been extremely beneficial.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the conservation of wildlife is little more than an after-thought when it comes to pushing the Net Zero fantasy world of unreliable, expensive renewable energy. Almost invariably those crying loudest about insect decline are those pushing hardest for green energy boondoggles such as wind turbines. Yet it is known that turbines attract insects with their colour, lights and ambient heat. More attracted insects lead to more bats and birds which lead to more avian casualties, which lead to more ground animals scavenging, which in turn attracts larger raptors that cannot escape the turbine-generated wind currents. And so the 150 mph revolving skyscraper-high blades set up their own circular killing fields.

The loss of insects is particularly disastrous since they are decomposers, crop pollinators and a crucial basis of the entire food chain. In April 2023, the Royal Entomological Society welcomed the opportunity to respond to a UK Government department on the issue of insect decline and food security. There was plenty to say on climate change of course and some interesting observations on the boom-and-bust nature of insect populations, but not a peep on the dead, wide areas of countryside created by wind turbines.

It might not worry the establishment insect brigade but the colliding critters can be a big problem for turbine operators. Professor Voigt noted that insect remains collected during low wind periods disrupt airflow and can halve power generation during high wind periods. These days cleaning this muck off turbine blades is big business. Based in Glasgow, Balmore Wind Services offers a specialist rope access service for the difficult biomatter cleaning required by insects and bird fouling. One thing is certain, concludes Heartland: “Wind turbines undoubtedly cause massive avian and insect deaths on a yearly basis.”

With all the learned societies and institutions continuing to turn a blind eye, it is hard to see who will step forward to draw attention to this developing ecological disaster. Who will be the first to suggest that the proper place for a windmill is in a museum?

OBAMA’S MARXIST LEGACY KILLED GM…

How Socialism Works in America: Remembering Obama’s GM Boondoggle

In 2009, the Obama administration bailed out General Motors (GM) with American taxpayer dollars, prompting Venezuela’s socialist dictator Hugo Chavez to quip, “Obama has just nationalized nothing more and nothing less than General Motors.  Comrade Obama! Fidel [Castro], careful or we are going to end up to his right.”

The mainstream media buried this unflattering story to the best of their ability.

What they did report breathlessly, however, was Obama’s assurance that he had “no interest” in nationalizing or “running GM.”

This was an example of media gaslighting the public before we began calling it that.  Many Americans knew what we were witnessing back then as well as Hugo Chavez, and that it was thinly-veiled socialism in action.

Obama was unquestionably lying about his government not having an interest in the production and sales directives of GM, and more on this in a moment.  But he was certainly uninterested in any of the company’s previous shareholders’ financial interest in GM.

Unfortunately for those shareholders who owned millions of outstanding shares of GM before this government takeovover, “restructuring,” all the nearly-worthless common and preferred stock was made immediately and totally worthless, and new GM stock was issued and largely purchased by the government with taxpayer dollars.

It was known as the “New GM,” or as critics called it, “Government Motors.”  Washington would own roughly 60-percent of this new government-funded automobile startup, Canada would own another 11 percent, and, adding insult to injury for stockholders, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union would own nearly 20 percent of the new company.

This would be the same UAW that was arguably the greatest driver of the conditions leading to GM’s bankruptcy, which, in conjunction with the corrupt Democrat party machine in Detroit and Washington, negotiated insanely impractical wage, benefit, and pension contracts that crushed GM’s ability to be competitive against its non-unionized competition.

According to Elon Musk, who knows a thing or two about the auto industry, the UAW “drove GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and lost 200,000 jobs for people they were supposed to protect … UAW destroyed the once-great US auto industry & everyone knows it.” [sic]

One of the most notorious of the UAW’s requirements for employers like GM was the necessity of a “jobs bank,” where the company is required to pay laid-off workers nearly full wages to do nothing at all.

One would be hard pressed to find a better analogy to portray the relationship between the professed ideas of socialist central planners and the real-world outcomes of those ideas.

The idea was that the government requiring a company to pay former workers nearly full pay for doing nothing at all would reduce the number of layoffs.  In reality, such price controls and government regulation reduced efficiency and created an unquestionable loss of integrity in a free-market-driven business model that necessitates – you guessed it – increased government intervention to “save” it.

That’s how then-Vice President Joe Biden often characterized what happened to GM in the 2012 presidential campaign, anyway.  Crediting his boss, he routinely said, “bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.”

But what did the government actually do with the GM bailout, besides make a multi-billion-dollar terrible investment on taxpayers’ behalf to get a political win and a campaign slogan for Democrats?

Obama may not have ever run Government Motors by crunching the numbers or helping to drive productivity.  But he did hire Brian Deese, an almost-grad from Yale Law who had “never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the auto industry,” says the New York Times.

Most would recognize that putting an almost-lawyer in charge of a car manufacturing company is an idea so stupid that it could only be the result of government involvement.  I’m reminded of the scene in the HBO series Chernobyl, where a nuclear physicist investigating the cause of the reactor explosion reminds a skeptical Soviet apparatchik that before he was the Deputy Secretary of Belarus, his real-world experience lay in working at a shoe factory.

“To the workers of the world,” he mirthfully says as he raises a small glass of vodka, after reminding her that everything’s fine, and that he’s the one in charge.

But Obama also assured the American people that the federal government wouldn’t be asserting its majority shareholder rights over the “New GM,” except in “the most fundamental of corporate decisions.”  He certainly seemed to have interests about the types of products that GM would make in the future, though.

Just prior to nationaliz… I mean, “restructuring” GM, he told the press at the signing of a Presidential Memorandum on Fuel Efficiency Standards, that “over the next five years, we expect fuel efficiency standards in cars and light trucks to reach an average of 35.5 miles per gallon.”  He would use the government to “have a single standard in place,” which would create a “clear incentive to develop more efficient vehicles.”

Only 11 cars manufactured at that time met that standard, and yet on that day, he signed a memorandum directing the EPA’s Lisa Jackson to invent new fuel efficiency standards for medium- and heavy-duty trucks along with the previously-prescribed government standards for cars and light trucks.

That certainly doesn’t sound like someone who was only interested in the “most fundamental of corporate decisions” to make GM a profitable company.  It sounds very much like someone with a political agenda to force production and distribution of a very specific product that the American public didn’t want, and who was interested in using the power of the federal government as a cudgel to force a desired political outcome, absent the consent of either producers or consumers.

In the end, shareholders of an estimated 556 million outstanding shares of GM stock lost all their investment in an iconic American company that, in 2007, had a share price of above $40 and a market capitalization of over $22 billion.  Bad for shareholders of GM.

Then, after Democratic politicians at both the federal and local levels, in conjunction with corrupt union leadership, had thoroughly gutted the company by making it as inefficient and uncompetitive as possible via price controls and various other protectionist schemes, the United States Treasury swooped in and cancelled all shares held by previous investors, and swiftly invested roughly $50 billion in taxpayer money (previously allocated TARP money, along with substantial debt) to fundamentally transform the industry into what the Obama and his apparatchiks imagined the automobile company of the future should be.

The end result?  Officially, the Treasury reports that the investment was a $11.2 billion loss for American taxpayers. Bad for all of us, I guess.

But it worked out well for GM workers, right?

Not exactly.  The number of GM factory workers was reduced from 90K to roughly 69K, and production facilities reduced from 47 to 31. In addition, the labor union signed new employment contracts, lowering management wages by nearly half, from $78 to $45 (those are hourly wages, 15 years ago, mind you), bringing these labor costs into alignment with other U.S. based, non-union auto manufacturing plants, like Toyota, Edwin Feulner at the Heritage Foundation writes.

This brings us to the most vital point of all.  Toyota exists as free-market competition to GM, and its priority is to be competitive in the marketplace.  Toyota manufactures and distributes much of its product in the United States, and it should be noted that it did not require a federal bailout of $50B in taxpayer capital to remain on life support as it downsized its workforce and production as GM did.  And taxpayers didn’t suffer an $11.2B loss as a result of Toyota’s business practices, either.

In 1975, market capitalization for Toyota was $5.1 billion.  GM’s market capitalization was more than twice that amount.

By 1985, Toyota had overtaken GM by roughly $3 billion, with nearly $15.5 billion in market capitalization.

On May 29, 2009, GM was trading at $0.75.  This was the final day of trading before declaring bankruptcy and being appropria… ahem, “restructured” by the federal government.  Toyota, on that same day, was trading at over $45 a share with a market capitalization of over $70 billion.

Today, Toyota directly employs 136K Americans.  It is in our country’s best interest that business-minded people at Toyota have more power in the auto industry than Barack Obama and the corrupt UAW.

To be clear, this is not about Toyota, and this is certainly not a criticism of GM’s current management or its current employees.  This is simply a matter of history and practical observation about appropriate incentives in a free market.

We should be creating incentives to make it attractive for domestic and foreign investors companies to produce and sell products in America, and to employ Americans as our collective success is cultivated.  And while I’m not crazy about Trump’s insistence that tariffs are some sort of magical economic panacea, Donald Trump does, at least, seem to understand this instinctively and conveys the message well.

“My message to every business in the world is very simple,” he says.  “Come make your product in America and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on Earth.”

That, at least, is a very welcome signal for America’s future when compared to his predecessor, Comrade Obama.
 

CRUISE SHiPS ARE A BIG PROFIT CENTER!

The Economics of Cruise Ships

For decades, the industry has done everything in its power to avoid paying into the system.

TCruise ships are often called “monsters” of the sea.

If you’ve ever seen one in action, you’ll understand why: A vessel like Royal Caribbean’s Symphony of the Seas is longer than 12 blue whales. At 228k gross tons, it is 5x the size of the once-formidable Titanic. It can hold 6,680 passengers and 2,200 crewmembers, the population of a small American town.

In 2018, 28.5m passengers — the bulk of them from America — spent more than $46B on cruises globally. The biggest players see annual profits in the billions.

But cruise companies have done more to earn the “monster” moniker than churning out huge ships and market gains.

For decades, these companies have utilized century-old loopholes to avoid paying corporate taxes. They’ve gone to great lengths to bypass US employment laws, hiring foreign workers for less than $2/hour. They’ve sheltered themselves as foreign entities while simultaneously benefitting from US taxpayer-funded agencies and resources.

Now, in the wake of a coronavirus crisis that sunk cruise stocks by double digits, these companies are lobbying for federal assistance.

To better understand the dynamics of this wild industry, we spoke with maritime lawyers, legislators, and cruise experts in 3 countries.

The cruise industry at large

Before we get into how cruise companies circumvent US taxes and regulations, let’s take a quick look at the major players, the money they make, and how they make it.

The global market comprises dozens of cruise lines and more than 250 ships. But 3 players — Carnival Corporation & PLC, Royal Caribbean Cruises LTD, and Norweigan Cruise Line HLD — control roughly 75% of the market.

Zachary Crockett / The Hustle

These companies, which preside over an empire of subsidiary cruise lines, collectively raked in $34.2B in revenue in 2018.

Cruise ships make this money through two channels: Ticket sales and onboard purchases (e.g., alcoholic drinks, casino gambling, spa treatments, art auctions, and shore excursions), which passengers pay for with pre-loaded cruise cards and chip-equipped wristbands.

On average, tickets account for 62% of total revenue and onboard purchases make up the remaining 38%.

Though tickets represent a majority of revenue, onboard purchases account for the lion’s share of the profit, according to several experts.

As a high fixed-cost business, a cruise ship relies on getting as many passengers as possible on the ship — even at fire-sale rates. The major cruise lines will often fill each ship to 105%-110% capacity, then upsell its captive consumers on additional services.

“They have mastered the ability to get their hands into people’s pockets and to take out every last dollar,” says Ross A. Klein, a professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, who has closely studied the cruise ship industry. “They can almost give a cabin away for free and still make a profit.”

Despite sizeable overhead costs — which include travel agent commissions, fuel, marketing, and payroll — these large crowds yield handsome profits. Industry-wide, cruise lines enjoy net margins of 17%, nearly double the average of some comparably large hotel chains:

  • Carnival: $3.2B net profit (17% margin)
  • Royal Caribbean: $1.8B net profit (19% margin)
  • Norwegian: $955m net profit (16% margin)

To make these figures a bit more relatable, here’s what this works out to on a per-passenger level for a 7-day cruise:

Zachary Crockett / The Hustle

On average, a passenger will spend $1,060 ($151/day) on a ticket and $650 ($92/day) on onboard purchases. After subtracting overhead costs, a ship will make out with roughly $291 in net profit per passenger, per cruise.

That means that at full capacity, a single ship like Royal Caribbean’s Symphony of the Seas might make $9.8m in revenue ($1.7m of which is profit) during one 7-day excursion. That’s $239k in profit per day at sea.

As 50% of this money comes from American travelers, one might expect the cruise industry to be a substantial contributor to the US tax system.

But there’s a catch: These companies aren’t technically American. And they harbor what one legal expert calls a “dirty little secret.”

How cruise companies avoid paying US taxes

Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and Norwegian all have headquarters in Miami, Florida, a city that brands itself as the “Cruise Capital of the World.”

With this homeland base, a large foundation of US customers, and red, white and blue logos, these cruise lines have manufactured an identity as authentically American corporations. President Trump has even called them a “great US business.”

Legal paperwork tells a different story.

International law requires every ship to register with a country and fly its insignia in open waters. A ship is only subject to the laws of the country it is registered in.

Under an obscure, 99-year-old section of the US tax code, cruise companies are able to register their ships with countries that have more lenient laws than the US — an act called flying a “flag of convenience” — and avoid paying into the US tax system.

It’s a tax loophole big enough to drive a cruise ship through.

Zachary Crockett / The Hustle

The cruise industry isn’t alone in avoiding Uncle Sam: US companies use offshore accounts to avoid paying an estimated $90B-per-year in taxes.

But it is especially adept at the practice: Carnival is incorporated in Panama and flies the flags of Panama and the Bahamas; Norwegian is incorporated in, and flies the flag of, the Bahamas; Royal Caribbean has been incorporated in Liberia since 1985, and flies the flags of the Bahamas and Malta.

These impoverished countries often compete with each other to offer cruise lines the cheapest services, much like many US cities groveled for Amazon’s HQ2 by offering large tax cuts.

“Cruise lines want to register somewhere where they pay no taxes, are exempt from labor and wage statues, and don’t have to follow health and safety codes,” says Jim Walker, a Miami-based maritime lawyer. “They’re looking for a place that will leave them alone, not oversee their operations.”

For the most part, that’s what cruise companies have gotten: According to annual report filings, the major cruise lines pay an average tax rate of 0.8% — for below the 21% US corporate tax rate.

The benefits of such arrangements are nominal for the countries that register the ships.

Cruise lines will generally pay a small head tax ($4-$15 per passenger) to call on a port. According to Klein, these countries often spend more on maintaining facilities for cruise ships than they make through the fees.

They might also promise a boost to the economies they frequent. But Klein says they work out deals with local vendors where they take up to 70% of the onshore revenue — and studies have shown that local populations in foreign ports don’t get much out of such partnerships.

A cruise ship employee cleans a slot machine onboard MSC cruises’ Magnifica in Saint-Nazaire (FRANCK PERRY/AFP via Getty Images)

Registering ships abroad also shelters cruise companies from US employment and safety laws.

Cruise ships hire crew members from Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and “anywhere else you can find people willing to work for nothing,” and demand grueling workloads in exchange for comparatively paltry wages.

The standard contract for a crew member like a cleaner or dishwasher requires a mandatory 308 hours per month — 11 hours a day, 7 days a week, for as long as 8-10 months, with no days off — for the equivalent of $400-700 per month, or $1.62 to $2.27 per hour.

Unprotected by labor laws and regulations, crew members who get injured on the job are swiftly replaced, like “fungible goods.”

In a 2019 report, the Cruise Lines International Association, an influential trade group, argues that the cruise industry has a $52.7B “total economic impact” on the US economy and “supports” 421k American jobs. But Klein says it’s unclear what goes into calculating these figures.

The Hustle asked several major cruise lines to comment on the concerns raised in this article. None of the companies responded.

There is one thing the cruise industry has been expeditious about doing on US soil: Lobbying to keep its exemptions in place.

According to the nonprofit Open Secrets, the cruise industry spent $66.2m in lobbying fees between 1998 and 2019. It also made contributions of at least $1.1m to candidates in cruise ship states, including $29.5k to a US representative from Florida who chairs the Panama Caucus, and $23.5k to a senator who fought to blockade a cruise tax.

$813,807 for a single taxpayer-funded rescue effort

While cruise ships avoid paying US taxes, they simultaneously benefit from the services of taxpayer-funded federal agencies.

Professor Klein, who has testified before Congress on matters of cruise ship safety, says that in the past 25 years:

  • 361 passengers have fallen overboard on cruise ships (14 per year)
  • 353 gastrointestinal/norovirus outbreaks have broken out on cruise ships
  • 500+ environmental violations have been charged to cruise ships

In many of these cases, US agencies have to intervene — and taxpayers, not cruise companies, usually eat the cost.

Rescue teams search for survivors on the Costa Concordia, which struck a rock off the Italian coast in 2012 (Target Presse Agentur Gmbh/Getty Images)

Klein has filed open-records requests and obtained documents on the companies, which he shared with The Hustle. They show that a single cruise ship passenger rescue effort can cost the US Coast Guard and the US Navy from $500k to $1m+. One 2009 search for a woman who fell overboard off the coast of Florida set the Coast Guard back $813,807.

When ships go dead in the water — as was the case with Carnival’s Splendor fire in 2010 and its Triumph disaster in 2013 — these costs can balloon to $5m+.

Walker, the maritime lawyer, adds that, in certain cases, cruise ships also require the resources of taxpayer-funded agencies like the US Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, and US Customs and Border Protection.

What does this all mean in the context of coronavirus?

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the hospitality industry is still reeling.

Cruise ships — often called “floating petri dishes,” for their adeptness at spreading illnesses — were hit especially hard. After at least 21 passengers tested positive for COVID-19 aboard Carnival’s Grand Princess in 2020, the State Department urged the public to “not travel by cruise ship.”

Customers clamored to cancel trips and cruise stocks fell by 60% — the worst stock performance on record for the industry.

Initially, some cruise lines attempted to weather the storm by selling tickets at all costs. According to emails obtained by the Miami New Times, salespeople at Norwegian were instructed to respond to coronavirus-inquiring customers with scripted one-liners, like “The only thing you need to worry about for your cruise is do you have enough sunscreen?”

When we called the company’s booking hotline at the time, a salesperson told us that coronavirus doesn’t exist in tropical climates.

US GOVERNMENT ALREADY SAVING ONE BILLION A DAY$

Elon Musk’s DOGE Already Saving $1 Billion/Day

The watchdog group is headed up by Elon Musk and is still expanding in size and scope. It aims to positively affect the country’s financial bottom line.

“If this trend continues, it could reduce the national deficit by $365 billion by January 2026—equivalent to a 20% cut in the FY2024 deficit of $1.8 trillion,” Coinpedia said Wednesday. “For context, the U.S. spent around $850 billion on defense in 2024, meaning DOGE’s savings could cover almost 43% of that budget. Additionally, with U.S. interest payments on debt reaching $882 billion last year, reducing the deficit by $365 billion could lower interest costs by over $12 billion annually.”

Elon Musk’s DOGE Already Saving $1 Billion a Day

President Donald Trump’s new government watchdog agency that’s headed up by Elon Musk, the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), announced it has already reduced federal spending by approximately $1 billion per day.

“DOGE is saving the Federal Government approx. $1 billion/day, mostly from stopping the hiring of people into unnecessary positions, deletion of DEI and stopping improper payments to foreign organizations, all consistent with the President’s Executive Orders. A good start, though this number needs to increase to > $3 billion/day,” the Department said in a social media post Tuesday.

Notably, DOGE is not a full-fledged federal executive department. Rather, it is a temporary organization focused on reducing government spending as part of Trump’s overall economic policy.

The watchdog group is headed up by Elon Musk and is still expanding in size and scope. It aims to positively affect the country’s financial bottom line.

“If this trend continues, it could reduce the national deficit by $365 billion by January 2026—equivalent to a 20% cut in the FY2024 deficit of $1.8 trillion,” Coinpedia said Wednesday. “For context, the U.S. spent around $850 billion on defense in 2024, meaning DOGE’s savings could cover almost 43% of that budget. Additionally, with U.S. interest payments on debt reaching $882 billion last year, reducing the deficit by $365 billion could lower interest costs by over $12 billion annually.”

The group’s social media page lists numerous budget cuts that it has successfully lobbied for.

INDIA RELIGIOUS FESTIVAL FOR 100 MILLION PEOPLE, KILLS SLEEPING FESTIVAL GOERS!

Crowd Tramples Sleeping Pilgrims in Deadly Rush at World’s Largest Religious Gathering

An estimated 80 million to 100 million were present at the Kumbh pilgrimage

At least 40 people are dead after the incident at the Maha Kumbh Mela, or Great Pitcher Festival.

At least 40 people are dead after the incident at the Maha Kumbh Mela, or Great Pitcher Festival.

PRAYAGRAJ, India—A celebration of ritual bathing at India’s largest Hindu religious festival turned into a scene of tragedy as a crowd early Wednesday trampled over sleeping pilgrims, according to witnesses and advisers to the festival.

At least 40 people are dead, and several more injured, according to a police official. The toll could rise.

Akanksha Rana, a senior official at the Maha Kumbh Mela, or Great Pitcher Festival, told reporters that there was a “stampede-like situation.” No official death toll has been given.

Religious festivals in India have been marred by deadly crowd crushes in previous years. But authorities in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh said they had carefully planned to avoid tragedy at this edition of the Kumbh, a pilgrimage billed as the biggest gathering of humans on the planet.

Pilgrims during the aftermath of the rush on Wednesday.

Pilgrims during the aftermath of the rush on Wednesday.

Officials projected up to 450 million people were expected to visit the city of Prayagraj over a six-week period in January and February. This time around, officials used cameras with facial recognition and satellite imagery to track crowds and alert officials to safety concerns.

On Wednesday, considered the most auspicious bathing day on the calendar, about 80 to 100 million were present at the festival, Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, told reporters. Tens of millions have already streamed into the festival grounds to take a ritual dip at the convergence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, which Hindus believe purify their sins.

An adviser to the festival, who requested anonymity, said that in the early hours of Wednesday a crowd broke through a barrier and crushed people sleeping on the river banks near the meeting point of the two rivers. Police had cleared the area of sleeping pilgrims overnight, but many people came back after authorities left. “It was unexpected, and we couldn’t have anticipated it,” the person said, referring to the pilgrims’ return to the area.

Sarita Devi, 48, said she was sleeping on the beach with her husband and daughter when a surge of people “came out of nowhere” and trampled her husband. She was trying to revive him when her daughter dragged her away.

“She said, ‘He’s gone, but we have to get out of here too,’” said Devi, amid sobs. She was brought to a temporary hospital on the festival grounds to await treatment for leg injuries.

Dozens of ambulances headed to the river banks. Around 2:30 a.m., emergency crew carried away dozens of people on stretchers, leaving blankets, clothes and shoes strewn on the beach.

At the temporary hospital, a doctor said that at least 200 injured had been brought in and more people were streaming in. “It’s a relentless flow of patients,” she said. “It hasn’t stopped.”

Belongings were left strewn on the ground.

Belongings were left strewn on the ground.

Officials said they had worked for at least two years to prepare safely for the Kumbh, which has been the scene of deadly overcrowding in the past. At the Kumbh Mela in 2013, at least 36 people were killed in crowding at the nearby train station as they headed to the festival site. A deadly crowd crush at the 1954 Kumbh Mela killed at least 500 people.

This time, officials said they were prepared to handle upward of 100 million devotees in a single day. At a command center in the festival, which spans an area the size of 8,000 football fields, police officers scan footage from about 1,600 security cameras throughout the fair, looking for trouble spots such as agitated crowds or bottlenecks, said Amit Kumar, superintendent of police in charge of the Kumbh’s Integrated Command and Control Centre.

Avoiding deadly crowding “is the holy grail,” he said earlier this week. Police have a number of tactics, including putting up additional barricades and forming human chains to divert and slow down crowds, Kumar said. Loudspeaker messages also remind pilgrims that the entire area is suitable for sacred bathing, not just where the two rivers meet, he said. On Wednesday, Kumar didn’t respond to multiple calls and requests for comment.

Festival organizers have encouraged pilgrims, sometimes over loudspeakers, to bathe at the convergence of the rivers and then head home.

The day is usually marked by a procession of holy men leading their followers into the rivers for a spiritual cleansing bath. Local news reports indicated many religious sects initially planned to cancel their dip for the day to avoid further chaos, but later some resumed the ritual bathing.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party have increasingly seized on religious events such as the Kumbh Mela as a symbol of Hindu pride in recent years. Banners were pasted throughout the fair grounds calling for the creation of a Hindu nation.

On X, Modi called the incident “extremely sad” and extended his condolences to “the devotees who have lost their loved ones.”

WHO OWNS THE MEDIA AND CONTROLS WHAT YOU SEE AND READ?

Who Owns the Media? There Are 6 Monolithic Corporations That Control Almost Everything We Watch, Hear and Read

We live in a society that is literally addicted to consuming media content.  Unfortunately, control of that content is dominated by just a handful of ultra-powerful corporations.  Back in 1983, the media industry was controlled by a group of about 50 large companies.  Today, the media industry is controlled by just 6 gigantic corporations.  They own television networks, streaming services, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music labels and even many of our favorite websites.

Sadly, most of us don’t ever stop to think about who is feeding us the endless hours of news, sports and entertainment that we constantly ingest.  But we should.  The truth is that each of us is tremendously influenced by the messages that are constantly being poured into our heads.  We are addicted to the “programming”, and we just keep coming back for more.  Most of us spend multiple hours each day consuming media content, and many of us actually begin to feel physically uncomfortable if we go too long without watching or listening to something.

The six corporations that collectively control the media industry are Disney, Time Warner, National Amusements, News Corporation, Comcast and Sony.  Collectively, the “big six” absolutely dominate news and entertainment in the United States.  If the “big six” were a country, they would have the 26th largest GDP in the world.  But even those areas of the media that the “big six” do not completely control are becoming increasingly concentrated.  For example, iHeartMedia now owns over 1,200 radio stations in the United States, and companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook are increasingly dominating the Internet.

When you control what Americans watch, hear and read, you acquire a great deal of influence over what they think.

The content that they produce for us is called “programming” for a reason.

The power to shape our culture is the power to alter the future of our society.  We have witnessed seismic cultural shifts in recent decades, and the media industry has been the driving force behind many of those shifts.

These gigantic media conglomerates are much larger than most people realize.  Below, I have listed just a sampling of some of the media properties that are owned and controlled by the “big six”…

Disney

  • ABC Television Network
  • Disney+
  • Pixar
  • Disney Publishing Worldwide
  • ESPN
  • A&E
  • Lifetime
  • The History Channel
  • Marvel
  • Lucasfilm
  • Buena Vista Home Entertainment
  • Buena Vista Records
  • Buena Vista Games
  • Disney Records
  • Hollywood Records
  • Miramax Films
  • Touchstone Pictures
  • Walt Disney Pictures
  • Vice

Time Warner

  • CNN
  • HBO
  • Time Inc.
  • Time Warner Cable
  • Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
  • Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
  • Castle Rock Entertainment
  • CW Network (partial ownership)
  • TMZ
  • New Line Cinema
  • Time Warner Cable
  • Cinemax
  • Cartoon Network
  • DC Entertainment
  • TBS
  • TNT
  • America Online
  • Sports Illustrated
  • Fortune
  • Marie Claire
  • People Magazine

National Amusements

  • CBS Television Network
  • Paramount+
  • Paramount Pictures
  • Paramount Home Entertainment
  • Showtime
  • Black Entertainment Television (BET)
  • CBS Films
  • CBS Games
  • Comedy Central
  • Country Music Television (CMT)
  • Gamespot
  • Logo
  • MTV
  • Nickelodeon
  • Nick at Nite
  • Nick Jr.
  • Spike TV
  • The Movie Channel
  • TV Land
  • VH1
  • The Smithsonian Channel
  • Pocket Books
  • Simon & Schuster

News Corporation

  • Fox Television Network
  • Fox News
  • Fox Sports
  • Fox Business
  • Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
  • The New York Post
  • Barron’s
  • Fox Searchlight Pictures
  • Beliefnet
  • FX
  • The Speed Channel
  • Times of London
  • 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
  • 20th Century Fox International
  • 20th Century Fox Studios
  • 20th Century Fox Television
  • The Wall Street Journal
  • Fox Broadcasting Company
  • Fox Interactive Media
  • HarperCollins Publishers
  • Harlequin
  • The National Geographic Channel
  • Tubi
  • Zondervan

Comcast

  • NBC Television Network
  • Peacock
  • MSNBC
  • CNBC
  • NBC News
  • Bravo
  • NBC Sports
  • Comcast Sportsnet
  • The Golf Channel
  • Fandango
  • FanDuel
  • Oxygen
  • Syfy
  • Telemundo
  • USA Network
  • The Weather Channel
  • Focus Features
  • NBC Universal Television Distribution
  • NBC Universal Television Studio
  • Universal Parks & Resorts
  • Universal Pictures

Sony

  • Sony Pictures
  • Sony Pictures Animation
  • Sony Entertainment Televsion
  • Sony Music
  • Sony Interactive Entertainment (Playstation)
  • TriStar
  • Triumph Films
  • Affirm Films
  • Animax
  • Crackle
  • CSC Media Group
  • Columbia Pictures
  • Destination Films

Big tech companies such as Amazon, Apple and Netflix have started to produce their own content in recent years, but their content is nearly indistinguishable from that produced by the “big six”.

The primary goal of these behemoths is to make money.

So they aren’t going to do anything that will threaten their relationships with their biggest advertisers.  This is one of the reasons why large pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars on advertising.  They realize that executives at these companies will be desperate to keep the gravy train rolling, and so negative coverage of pharmaceutical companies will be almost non-existent.

Fortunately, an increasing number of people are starting to wake up and are realizing that the media industry should not be trusted.

In fact, a Gallup survey that was conducted in October 2024 found that only 31 percent of Americans have a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of confidence in the mainstream media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly”.

The good news is that as the mainstream media loses credibility, the alternative media is growing.

Americans are starting to look elsewhere for the truth, and that has allowed independent journalists such as myself to flourish.

Of course the establishment has responded by aggressively censoring the alternative media, but now that we have a new administration in Washington that is anti-censorship, hopefully we will see some significant changes.

Every day, we are in a battle for hearts and minds.  Most of the population is still plugged into “the matrix” and still consumes endless hours of “programming” that is produced by the “big six”.  Meanwhile, those of us in the alternative media are desperately trying to get people to wake up and think for themselves.

Sadly, even most people that think that they are “awake” are still being very heavily influenced by movies, television shows and news programs.

The “programming” that they are constantly offering to us is so seductive, and very few are able to break the addiction entirely.

MOVE OUT ON A GOLDEN VISA…TO COUNTRIES THAT LOVE AMERICANS?

Have your heart set on moving abroad—but put off by the mountainous paperwork and frustrating delays of traditional visa applications? For those with savings to spare, “golden visas” can provide a short-cut for Americans to live and work in countries like Portugal, Thailand, and Panama—and some even provide pathways to second citizenship.

Formally known as residence-by-investment programs, golden visas provide legal residence rights—that is, the right to live, work, study, and receive healthcare—to foreign applicants who make a defined economic contribution to the host country, whether through a real estate purchase, philanthropic donation, or other type of investment.

Golden visas and passports can be controversial, especially those that encourage wealthy expats to buy up local homes. “In some countries, residents think the schemes are corrupt, in some they are baffled as to who would want to buy their citizenship, and in others like Saint Kitts they can be very defensive about the schemes and recognize their contribution to the economy,” Dr. Kristin Surak, an Assistant Professor in Sociology at LSE who studies golden passports and visas, explained in a blog post.

While some countries, such as Spain, are in the process of shutting down their residency by investment programs, there’s been a recent surge in American golden visa applicants, according to Henley & Partners, an investment migration advisory firm.

“The spike in interest and applications from US nationals for alternative residence and citizenship has continued unabated after a record-breaking year in 2024,” a Henley & Partners spokesperson tells Condé Nast Traveler, citing a nearly 60% increase in applications since 2023, which itself was an unprecedented year for the firm. And compared to the number of applications from 2019, interest in second residencies and citizenships has skyrocketed over 1000% in just five years, the firm says.

Some of the most popular golden visas among American applicants—including Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Malta—allow holders to travel freely within Europe’s Schengen Area. Other popular countries ranked within the top 10 offer a more affordable cost of living and warmer climes, such as Thailand and Panama.

Below, see the top 30 golden visa programs as recommended by Henley & Partners, in addition to a breakdown of the 10 golden visas that Americans applied to most in 2024 and how to apply. Exact requirements such as employment status, age, and residence requirements vary from country to country.

If it’s a second passport you’re after, these are the easiest countries to get second citizenship and countries where you can get a passport through ancestry. Plus, 66 countries with digital nomad visas.

The top 30 golden visas

  1. Australia National Innovation Visa Program
  2. Austria Private Residence Program
  3. Canada Start-Up Visa Program
  4. Canada Quebec Investor Immigration Program
  5. Costa Rica Residence by Investment Program
  6. Cyprus Permanent Residence Program
  7. Greece Golden Visa Program
  8. Hong Kong Visa Programs
  9. Hungary Guest Investor Program
  10. Italy Residence by Investment Program
  11. Jersey Residence by Investment
  12. Latvia Residence by Investment Program
  13. Luxembourg Residence by Investment Program
  14. Malaysia My Second Home Program
  15. Malaysia Premium Visa Program
  16. Malta Permanent Residence Programme
  17. Mauritius Residence by Investment Program
  18. Monaco Residence
  19. Montenegro Residence
  20. Namibia Residence by Investment
  21. New Zealand Active Investor Plus Visa Program
  22. Panama Residence by Investment Program
  23. Portugal Golden Residence Permit Program
  24. Singapore Global Investor Program
  25. Spain Residence by Investment Program
  26. Swiss Residence Program
  27. Thailand Residence by Investment Program
  28. UAE Residence by Investment
  29. UK Innovator Founder Program
  30. US EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program

BIDEN LEAVES BILLIONS IN CASH AND EQUIPMENT IN AFGHANISTAN

Taliban Defies Trump: Will Keep $7 Billion in Military Gear Left in Afghanistan by Joe Biden During Bungled Withdrawal

Piles of cash and rows of US military equipment Joe Biden and Mark Milley left the Taliban as the US surrendered in Afghanistan.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported – Joe Biden supplied the Taliban terrorist organization and their Islamist accomplices with billions of dollars worth of US weapons, armed vehicles, helicopters, ammunition, and piles of cash after Biden bungled his withdrawal from the country.

Rather than destroying the equipment before leaving the country, Joe Biden surrendered billions of dollars worth of US military equipment to the Taliban.

In fact, Joe Biden left 300 times more guns than those passed to the Mexican cartels in Obama’s Fast and Furious program.

The Taliban later released video of the weapons Joe Biden left behind and a room full of stacks of $100 bills Joe left for good measure.

The Taliban posted videos of pallets of weapons and stacks of $100 bills they had seized.

Here is a more complete list of US-supplied and left-behind equipment now controlled by Taliban:

  • 2,000 Armored Vehicles Including Humvees and MRAP’s
  • 75,989 Total Vehicles: FMTV, M35, Ford Rangers, Ford F350, Ford Vans, Toyota Pickups, Armored Security Vehicles etc.
  • 45 UH-60 Blackhawk Helicopters
  • 50 MD530G Scout Attack Choppers
  • ScanEagle Military Drones
  • 30 Military Version Cessnas
  • 4 C-130’s
  • 29 Brazilian made A-29 Super Tocano Ground Attack Aircraft
  • 208+ Aircraft Total
  • At least 600,000+ Small arms M16, M249 SAWs, M24 Sniper Systems, 50 Calibers, 1,394 M203 Grenade Launchers, M134 Mini Gun, 20mm Gatling Guns and Ammunition
  • 61,000 M203 Rounds
  • 20,040 Grenades
  • Howitzers
  • Mortars +1,000’s of Rounds
  • 162,000 pieces of Encrypted Military Communications Gear
  • 16,000+ Night Vision Goggles
  • Newest Technology Night Vision Scopes
  • Thermal Scopes and Thermal Mono Googles
  • 10,000 2.75 inch Air to Ground Rockets
  • Reconnaissance Equipment (ISR)
  • Laser Aiming Units
  • Explosives Ordnance C-4, Semtex, Detonators, Shaped Charges, Thermite, Incendiaries, AP/API/APIT
  • 2,520 Bombs
  • Administration Encrypted Cell Phones and Laptops all operational
  • Pallets with Millions of Dollars in US Currency
  • Millions of Rounds of Ammunition including but not limited to 20,150,600 rounds of 7.62mm, 9,000,000 rounds of 50.caliber
  • Large Stockpile of Plate Carriers and Body Armor
  • US Military HIIDE, for Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment Biometrics
  • Lots of Heavy Equipment Including Bull Dozers, Backhoes, Dump Trucks, Excavators

Much of the information included in the above list is public record.

But that was not enough.

It is as if we lost the war and now we’re paying reparations to the terrorists. You just can’t make this up!

In 2023, two years after Joe Biden’s famous surrender, the Taliban started posting videos of the fields of military vehicles the US left behind for the Taliban.

The Taliban also claimed the Abu Dujana brigade of the Al-Badr Corps had already repaired over 300 military vehicles and the vehicles are now ready for use.

And don’t forget the room full of $100 bills Joe Biden left the Taliban for good measure.

Earlier this week President Trump requested that the Taliban return the billions in US military equipment Joe Biden left behind in Afghanistan.

The Taliban declined the request, via ESSANEWS.

The Taliban do not intend to return the military equipment that remained in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of American troops. Donald Trump’s demand faced resistance, and recovering the weapons could be a significant challenge for the United States.

After the withdrawal of American troops in 2021, substantial armament remained in Afghanistan, including about 1,000 vehicles and artillery pieces, as well as an unspecified number of aircraft units.

Donald Trump has repeatedly called for the return of this equipment, conditioning further financial assistance to Afghanistan on meeting this requirement. However, the Taliban have decisively rejected these proposals.

In response to American demands, Kabul expressed the view that the United States should not only abandon attempts to recover the weapons but also support Afghanistan in fighting the Islamic State of Khorasan through additional supplies.

USA CRIPPLING ITSELF ON CLIMATE REGULATIONS, CHINA IS NOT!

United States Is Crippling Itself With Climate Change Regulations, China Is Not

Chinese Military

Maintaining a strong military requires a strong economy. And a strong economy requires reasonable regulations that make sense from both an economic and scientific viewpoint.

Unfortunately, many policy makers have bought into an extreme regulatory agenda driven by ideology that does not make sense scientifically or economically, that is harming both our economy and our military.

This agenda was on display at the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP29, held in Baku, Azerbaijan from November 11 to 22 of last year. The premise for the conference, and such agreements as the Paris Accord, is that man-made climate change poises an existential threat to human existence. Further it is claimed that even now climate change is wreaking havoc around the world and that regulations, mandates and new technology will slow down and even reverse it.

Those pushing these beliefs also claim that it is the duty of more developed countries to transfer 100’s of billions, even trillions of dollars to developing countries so that they can continue developing using so-called green technology vs. dirty old legacy technology.

Here in the United States, climate-change driven polities and mandates are being rolled out on the premise/claim that that climate change is even now disproportionately affecting the poor and disadvantaged. They also claim that man-caused climate change is negatively impacting GDP.

In other words, if you don’t support draconian climate-change driven policies and mandates you support a weaker economy and have a callous disregard for how climate change is hurting those occupying the lower socioeconomic strata.

These claims, believed by many in academia and the media establishment, have taken on religious overtones, and consequently there is little tolerance for opposing viewpoints in both academia and legacy media. Be that as it may, many scientists, engineers, and other knowledgeable, extremely bright people don’t believe the rhetoric and have provided convincing arguments debunking what they believe to be pseudoscience.

One such group of distinguished academicians is the Climate Intel group (Clintel). And one of the most distinguished members of this group is Nobel Prize winner Dr. John F. Clauser, who in August of 2023 signed the Clintel Climate Declaration which declares that there is no climate emergency. As of today, 1600 plus scientists and experts have signed the declaration, with Nobel Prize winner Dr. Ivar Giaever being the first signee.

The declaration states that climate science has become politized and is lacking scientifically. It notes that climate change models are fully dependent on what go into them including hypotheses, assumptions, relationships, parameterizations, stability constraints, etc. And that “to believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe [blind faith] what the model makers have put in. This is precisely the problem of today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science.”

Suffice it to say, the repeated failures of these models leaves plenty of room for doubt in the popular narrative on climate change. And given that the regulations and mandates aren’t actually stopping or even slowing climate change, we must question the wisdom of implementing regulations and mandates that cripple our economy and our military, even as China’ economy and military continue to expand unhindered by such crippling mandates and regulations.

Dioxide equivalent emissions from energy, process emissions, methane and flaring. Indeed, as compared to 2013, the U.S. has been able to reduce carbon dioxide equivalents by 8.5 percent even as it has massively grown it economy through aggressive drilling for and using cleaner burning natural gas, including natural gas from fracking instead of coal. During this same period, China’s CO2 equivalents went up by 20 percent to make China by far and away the biggest emitter of green-house gases (GHGs).

China also leads the world in plastics pollution, and only India beats China when it comes to the sulfur dioxide emissions (SO2) responsible for acid rain.

Of note, when it comes to SO2 emissions the United States produces about one-sixth that of China.

Hence, as of today if the climate change narrative is correct, it is China that by far and away that is doing the most damage and it the United States that has done the most to combat it.

Consequently, with the United States already leading the developed world in reducing GHGs and with huge chunks of the world producing GHGs and other pollutants largely unabated, it hardly makes sense for the United States to voluntarily cripple its economy and military even as China and other potential adversaries pay lip service to the climate change narrative.

GOVERNMENT WORKERS LOVE WORKING FROM HOME!

Stay-at-Home Bureaucrats: Congressional probe exposes billions in waste from federal tele-work gigs

“The Biden-Harris Administration has ceded too much authority to the federal union bosses, allowing their preference to work from home to take precedence over fulfilling agencies’ missions and serving the American people,” Rep. James Comer said.

The House Oversight and Accountability Committee found Wednesday that vast numbers of federal employees tele-work from home, wasting billions of taxpayer dollars spent on office space, and the Biden administration has enabled such accommodations to continue during President-elect Donald Trump’s next administration.

“The Biden-Harris administration has ceded too much authority to the federal union bosses, allowing their preference to work from home to take precedence over fulfilling agencies’ missions and serving the American people,” the committee declared in a report decrying the continued widespread use of tele-work  since the COVID-19 pandemic ended.

The report’s release came ahead of a hearing held by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., on Wednesday called “The Stay-at-Home Federal Workforce: Another Biden-Harris Legacy,” at 10 a.m. Eastern Time.

The committee found the Biden administration appears to exaggerate the number of federal employees working in-office. The administration’s own data shows that as of last May, among “the 2.28 million federal civilian employees, approximately 228,000 are never required to show up to the office, and nearly all of the other 1.1 million employees technically-eligible for telework are engaged in telework.” The employees eligible for telework “were in the office an average of three days a week.”

Additionally, several agencies have telework-eligible employees who “collectively spend less than half their work hours in the office.” Employees who telework “must report to the office on occasion,” whereas, “remote employees never need to show up to work.”

Teleworking employees have roughly doubled since before the COVID-19 pandemic, and remote workers have jumped from 2% to 10% since fiscal year 2019.

“[B]etween September 2019 and May 2024, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) went from 2 percent remote to 29 percent; OPM went from 7 percent remote to 40 percent remote; the General Services Administration (GSA) went from 6 percent remote to 50 percent remote; and the Department of Education (ED) workforce went from 2 percent remote to 55 percent remote,” the report reads.

Unused office space

In a July 2023 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report referenced by the House committee report, the federal agency “found that 17 of the 24 federal agencies used on average an estimated 25 percent or less of the capacity of their headquarter buildings.”

Furthermore, “Some agency headquarters reported occupancy rates as low as nine percent.” The U.S. government spends about $7 billion a year to lease and maintain federal agency office space.

During a November 2023 hearing with General Services Administration Administrator (GSA) Robin Carnahan, Comer said, “Federal agencies spent $3.3 billion dollars on furniture over the past few years apparently to furnish office spaces left mostly empty under maximum telework. Some agencies spent hundreds of thousands of dollars just on updating empty conference rooms.”

Carnahan herself “only worked at GSA headquarters in D.C. for 64 workdays—approximately one in four work days—from March 2022 to March 2023. She spent most of her time, 121 days, teleworking from Missouri,” according to the report.

Some Biden administration officials “collaborated with union allies to further entrench telework guarantees for portions of the federal workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements,” according to the report.

Last April, the Office of Personnel Management issued a rule “aimed to more deeply entrench the federal workforce by restricting executive discretion over the classification of federal employee positions,” the report reads. The rule does not include meaningful telework reforms and “seeks to prevent the incoming Trump Administration from holding ineffective bureaucrats accountable.”

Also, “the outgoing Biden-Harris Administration entered into long-term [collective bargaining agreements] with federal employee unions that limit management authority through unprecedented concessions, including guaranteeing telework for federal bureaucrats.”

For example, in late November, then-Commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA) Martin O’Malley approved an agreement with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) that “seeks to lock in minimum telework levels for 42,000 SSA employees until 2029.”

The agreement was reached after O’Malley announced that he would be running for Democratic National Committee chair and days before he resigned from SSA.

“Nearly all of the 58,875 SSA employees are telework eligible, and those eligible employees have spent only 46.9 percent of their time in the office,” according to the report.

“President Trump has promised to reform the federal workforce and bring federal employees back to their offices,” the report explains. “The Biden-Harris Administration’s lame duck political gamesmanship will hinder and constrain the ability of the incoming Trump Administration to manage employees effectively and responsibly, and to increase accountability to the public.”

AFGE released a statement ahead of the House Oversight panel hearing on Wednesday:

“As a preliminary matter, AFGE is compelled to note that the title of today’s hearing unfortunately distorts how telework fits into larger work practices and protocols at federal agencies in order to unjustly criticize federal employees. Hardworking, dedicated federal employees should not be derided as ‘stay-at-home workers.’ Our members perform vital roles in public safety, law enforcement, and health care – including providing care for active-duty military and millions of veterans. The majority of our members were ineligible for telework even when the pandemic was at its worst and no vaccines or treatments were available. Many members died of COVID during this period, likely contracted while performing their work for the American people. For many thousands of our members, it is thus bitterly ironic to now castigate the ‘stay-at-home federal workforce.’”

Report recommendations

The report lists nine recommendations for telework reform in the federal government. The recommendations are:

  • Base telework and remote work policies on achievement of mission outcomes, not employee preferences or union demands.

  • Establish automated systems for tracking the use of telework and remote work, and create clear, measurable metrics to evaluate its costs and benefits.

  • Impose more frequent and timely reporting requirements on agency-level telework, to better inform Executive Branch leaders, Congress and the public.

  • Use the White House and central management agencies to implement an enterprise-wide approach to telework and remote work that prioritizes the public interest. Do not permit a telework bidding war among agencies looking to attract federal workers that transfer between them based on which will let them stay home the most.

  • Align the federal property footprint with the government’s office space needs. Dispose of unneeded property and terminate unnecessary leases, while optimizing use of the space that remains.

  • Introduce and enact a new version of the SHOW Up Act, restoring agency telework to no more than pre- pandemic levels. Only permit higher levels at agencies that make a convincing, measurable case for doing so.

  • Consider legislation disallowing collective bargaining over federal employee telework.

  • Consider legislation that would open to renegotiation at the start of each new Presidential term all existing collective bargaining agreements with federal employees.

  • Consider legislation to pay all remote federal employees at the rest of United States’ locality pay rate, to encourage a broader geographic dispersion of the federal workforce, and to reduce cost to taxpayers.

“The lights may be on in federal buildings, but too many federal bureaucrats continue to work from home,” Comer said in a statement released Wednesday. “The House Oversight Committee’s investigation into prolonged pandemic-era telework reveals the Biden-Harris Administration has ceded too much authority to the federal union bosses, allowing their preference to work from home to take precedence over fulfilling agencies’ missions and serving the American people.

“President Trump was elected in a landslide to bring accountability to Washington,” Comer continued. “Our report not only identifies the many problems with massive federal telework but also proposes solutions to get federal employees back to their offices, dispose of unused and vacant federal property, and prioritize the needs of the American people over the wants of federal bureaucrats. We look forward to working with President Trump and his administration to ensure the federal bureaucracy is fully accountable to the American people.”