Day: December 8, 2021

The Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association Announces $400-Per-Vehicle Refund

The Center Square

The Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association (MCCA) will return surplus funds to Michigan policyholders and refund $400 per vehicle to Michigan drivers.

Drivers are expected to receive checks in the second quarter of 2022.

“These refunds and the recently announced statewide average rate reductions are lowering costs for every Michigan driver,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement. “Michiganders have paid into the catastrophic care fund for decades, and I am pleased that the MCCA developed this plan so quickly after unanimously approving my request to return surplus funds to the pockets of Michiganders.”

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Commentary: Anthony Fauci and the Creation of the Bio-Security State

The Epoch Times

A new populist spirit, represented by Donald Trump, among others, has led to a reshuffling of seemingly settled ideological alliances.

The reshuffling is ongoing.

I know this because I find myself approving of at least parts of “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,” the new bestseller book by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

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Report: Nearly 10,000 Illegal Immigrants Have Evaded Arrest at the Border Since October

Michigan Star Staff

Over 9,500 illegal immigrants have evaded arrest and entered the country in one part of the southern border since Oct. 1, Fox News reported.

The Rio Grande Valley sector of the border in Texas also had 100,000 illegal encounters since the beginning of Oct., a 163% increase since the same time frame in 2020, an anonymous Department of Homeland Security (DHS) source told Fox News.

Migrants continue to cross the border in large numbers. From Oct. 1, 2020 to Sept. 30, 2021, border agents encountered over 1.7 million at the southern border.

The Biden administration reportedly reinstated former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy that requires asylum seekers to apply and await a court date in Mexico.

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Experts Predict Less Economic Growth, Elevated Inflation for Years to Come

The Center Square
Woman shopping, going up escalator

A survey released Monday found that business experts expect prices and inflation to rise at elevated levels for years to come.

The National Association for Business Economics released the results of a survey of 48 economic experts who downgraded their growth predictions and projected elevated inflation through the second half of 2023, if not later.

“NABE Outlook survey panelists have ramped up their expectations for inflation significantly since September,” said NABE Vice President Julia Coronado, founder and president, MacroPolicy Perspectives LLC. “The core consumer price index, which excludes food and energy costs, is now expected to rise 6.0% from the fourth quarter of 2020 to the fourth quarter of 2021, compared to the September forecast of a 5.1% increase over the same period.”

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Pennsylvania Teacher, NEA Director Wants Unvaccinated Shot

Peter D'Abrosca

A teacher at a Pennsylvania high school is in hot water after wishing death upon those unvaccinated against COVID-19 in a now-deleted Facebook post. 

“Screw this guy and screw them all who are all about religious exemptions because they don’t want anyone to tell them what to do,” General McAlane High School English teacher Mollie Mumau said on Facebook. “People tell you what to do all the time, and you do it. This is such BS. “He and his ilk deserve whatever comes their way, including job losses, getting sick, and perhaps dying from the virus. But in the meantime, he’s going to put all the people around him in danger.”

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Commentary: Platform Transparency Can Help Build Antitrust Cases

RealClearWire

There is growing bipartisan concern over the power Silicon Valley’s oligopolies wield over American society. Amazon alone controls 72% of U.S. adult book sales, Airbnb accounts for a fifth of domestic lodging expenditures and Facebook accounts for almost three-quarters of social media visits. Just two companies, Apple and Google, act as gatekeepers to 99% of smartphones, while two others, Uber and Lyft, control 98% of the ride-share market in the U.S. Yet, for government to take robust antitrust action against Silicon Valley requires the kind of data it currently lacks: documenting the harm this market consolidation inflicts on consumers. A new RealClearFoundation report offers a look at how amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to require platform transparency could aid such antitrust efforts.

When it comes to Silicon Valley’s social media platforms, they have long argued that antitrust laws don’t apply to them because their services are provided free of charge. In reality, users do pay for their services: with their data rather than their money. Companies today harvest vast amounts of private information about their users every day, using that data to invisibly nudge their users toward purchases and consuming ads, or the companies simply sell that data outright.

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Instagram Rolls Out Teen Safety Features One Day Before CEO Will Testify in Congress

Michigan Star Staff
Adam Mosseri

Instagram unveiled a host of child safety measures and parental controls for its app just one day before chief executive Adam Mosseri is due to testify in Congress.

“At Instagram, we’ve been working for a long time to keep young people safe on the app,” Mosseri wrote in a blog post. “As part of that work, today we’re announcing some new tools and features to keep young people even safer on Instagram.”

The new features include controls allowing parents to set time limits for their kids’ use of Instagram, providing resources on how Instagram works and options allowing kids to notify parents if they report another user. Instagram will also launch its “Take A Break” feature, which asks users to take some time away from Instagram if they’ve been scrolling for a while.

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Big Oil CEOs Thumb Nose at Green Energy Transition, Say Fossil Fuels Still Have ‘Essential Role’

Michigan Star Staff
Mike Worth, Darren Woods and Amin Nasser

Executives of major oil companies slammed the aggressive global push to renewable forms of energy and warned that such policies could crash economies.

Crude oil and natural gas continue to be key to the world economy’s health and cannot be discounted, CEOs of ExxonMobil, Chevron, Halliburton and Saudi Aramco said during the ongoing World Petroleum Congress in Texas on Monday. The executives agreed that climate change should be addressed, but not to the detriment of current energy needs.

“I understand that publicly admitting that oil and gas will play an essential and significant role during the transition and beyond will be hard for some,” Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said during his remarks at the summit, the Financial Times reported.  People “assume that the right transition strategy is in place. It’s not,” Nasser said, Reuters reported. “Energy security, economic development and affordability are clearly not receiving enough attention.”

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Studies: Trump Tax Cuts Helped Lower Income Families, Build Back Better Helps Wealthier Americans

The Center Square
family of three eating pizza

Democrats have argued that the tax reforms implemented through the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) only benefited the rich, and that the Build Back Better Act (BBBA) will help middle-and working-class Americans the most.

But several nonpartisan groups found that the TCJA reduced the tax burden for the middle- and working-class by up to 87% and, they argue, the $2.4 trillion BBBA – before the U.S. Senate this week – would increase taxes on the middle- and working-class by up to 40%.

A new analysis published by the Heartland Institute found that the TCJA reduced the average effective income tax rates for taxpayers in every income tax bracket – but the lower- and middle-class saw the greatest benefits – with the lowest-income filers receiving the largest tax cuts.

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Congress Wants to Make Big Tech Responsible for Online Speech

Michigan Star Staff
Person on space gray iPhone

While there is agreement between large factions of both Republicans and Democrats that social media companies should be liable for certain third-party content hosted on their platforms, the parties differ on what that content should be, and why platforms should be liable in the first place.

Congress appeared no closer to finding common ground following a House Energy and Commerce hearing Wednesday, in which lawmakers considered several bills seeking to reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

“Wednesday’s hearing made clear that Republicans and Democrats have drastically different solutions to hold Big Tech accountable,” Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who serves as Ranking Member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Republicans are fighting for free speech, while Democrats continue to push for more censorship and control. Bipartisanship will not be possible until Democrats agree that we need less censorship, not more.”

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Plurality of Hispanic Voters Offended by New Gender-Neutral Term ‘Latinx’

Michigan Star Staff
Indy residents were invited to participate in a unique conversation model to discuss the changing demographics of our community and specifically how Latino Hoosiers are playing a vital role in the future of Indiana education, business, arts and culture, and our shared civic life. On Feb. 9, Indiana Humanities will hosted simultaneous dinner conversations from 6-7:30 p.m. across the city called “Chew on This: Latinos & The Next Indiana” at seven locally-owned restaurants featuring Latin American cuisine.

Recent polling data has found that Hispanic voters may not be nearly as receptive to the new gender-neutral term “Latinx” as Democrats may have originally imagined, as reported by the New York Post.

The word, which first began being used just a few years ago, is meant to address the rising left-wing notion that gender is simply a “social construct,” as well as the scientifically-debunked claim that there are more than two genders. In the Spanish language, many words are “gendered,” with adjectives often ending with a letter that signifies whether they are addressing a male or a female; words meant to address men end with an “o,” while words addressing women end with an “a.” As such, in the case of the widely-used words “Latino” and “Latina,” the far-left sought to eliminate the inclusion of the gendered letter by replacing both with “Latinx.”

However, a new poll conducted by the Democratic firm Bendixen & Amandi International finds that 40 percent of registered Hispanic, Latino, and Latina voters are offended by the use of the word. Another 30 percent said they are “less likely to support” any political candidate or party that seriously uses the word.

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Michigan Duo Charged with Unemployment Insurance Fraud, Allegedly Stole over $3 Million

Cooper Moran

Two Michigan residents were charged in criminal complaints for conducting an unemployment insurance benefit fraud scheme that stole millions.

The two defendants, Tauheed Wilder and Shuqueni Franklin, are alleged to have engaged in mail fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering.

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