Month: August 2023

The Fed’s Favorite Inflation Measure Just Ticked Back Up

Michigan Star Staff

The Federal Reserve’s preferred method of tracking inflation went up in July, following a similar move by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).

The Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index rose 0.2% for the month of July, culminating in a 3.3% rise for the year in the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, up from 3.0% year-over-year in June, according to BEA data. The CPI, which is another measure of inflation, rose 3.2% in July, up from 3.0% in June year-over-year.

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Newt Gingrich: House GOP Should Broaden Biden Investigation to Include Hillary Clinton and Obama

Just the News

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says that Republicans in the House should expand their Biden investigation to look into other Democrat politicians such as former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“There’s, I think, a second reason for dramatically broadening the investigation,” Gingrich said on the “John Solomon Reports” podcast. “I’m working now on a series of articles for the American Spectator – making the case that this is really about the weaponization of government, the collapse of the rule of law and its replacement by the rule of power. And that really involves three principles. It involves Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden.”

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Michigan Police Memos Raised Concern About Possible Nationwide Voter Registration Fraud Scheme

Just the News

Michigan authorities suspected there was a possible voter registration fraud scheme occurring across multiple states during the 2020 election and were concerned enough to bring in the FBI, according to police memos reviewed by Just the News. But what happened since remains mostly a mystery.

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Trump Can’t Be Barred from Arizona’s 2024 Ballot, Says Democratic Secretary of State

Admin

The Hill Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) said he does not have the ability to bar former President Donald Trump from running for president in his state Wednesday. There have been calls to bar the former president from being able to run in 2024 related to language in the 14th amendment where it states those who “have engaged in…

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Economy Grew Less than Previously Thought in Second Quarter

Michigan Star Staff

Economic growth was revised downward for the second quarter of 2022, coming more in line with economists’ original expectations, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).

Yearly real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was revised down from 2.4% to 2.1% growth in the second estimate for the second quarter of 2023, according to the BEA. The revision is more in line with original expectations from economists of around 2% growth for the second quarter, showing signs of a cooling economy.

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Consumer Confidence Hits Near-Recession Low

Michigan Star Staff

The latest index of U.S. consumer confidence fell to a new low in the month of August, hitting levels that would normally indicate a coming recession.

As Breitbart reports, the Conference Board confirmed on Tuesday that the index fell to 106.1 in August, down from 114 in July. Economists had originally projected that it would rise to 116.6, and had predicted that July would reach 117.0.

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Researchers Warn About Synthetic Opioids More Powerful than Fentanyl

The Center Square

Synthetic opioids estimated to be 10 times more potent than fentanyl are creeping into the illicit drug market in the U.S., according to new research. 

“Synthetic opioids, such as the fentanyl analog and nitazene drug class, are among the fastest growing types of opioids being detected in patients in the emergency department with illicit opioid overdose,” researchers warned in a paper published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open.

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Michigan Gov. Whitmer to Pursue Paid Family Leave, 100 Percent Clean Energy Standard

The Center Square

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer proposed enacting a paid family leave program, a 100% clean energy standard and codifying the Affordable Care Act in her “What’s Next” speech that outlined the fall agenda Wednesday morning.

The second-term Democratic governor outlined her priorities as state Democrats control the governor’s office, House and Senate in Michigan for the first time in 40 years.

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Commentary: Saving the Environment from Environmentalists

Michigan Star Staff

The oceans director of Greenpeace told USA Today that groups attempting to link offshore wind to whale deaths are part of a “cynical disinformation campaign.”
–  Whale carcasses on Martha’s Vineyard fuel speculation about wind turbines, New Bedford Light, June 22, 2023

If you want to know just how far the environmentalist movement has fallen in recent years, the destruction of marine life off the coast of Massachusetts in 2023 provides a disgraceful example. Greenpeace, an organization that not only led the earliest vanguard of the modern environmental movement, but was specifically formed to save the world’s whales, is actively denying what is likely the most egregious massacre of whales by Americans in more than a century.

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Commentary: ‘The Thales Way’ Is the Book That Can Save American Education

Michigan Star Staff

Would you be interested in a book on reforming education by a man who created flourishing grade, middle, and high school charter schools, all with waiting lists today, found them too mired in government bureaucracy and so started 13 even more successful purely private campuses in 2007 — and who is willing to share his secrets of success with you?

In hiring young people for his large private business, Bob Luddy of Raleigh, North Carolina, ran head-long into the problem shared by other employers — namely, that many potential employees with a public-school education did not have the elemental skills required to hold jobs, some unable to understand basic logic or even to read.

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Food Prices Expected to Continue Rising Through 2024

The Center Square

Recently released federal pricing analysis from the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that food prices will continue to rise through 2024.

The USDA pointed to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index released earlier this month, which showed consumer prices overall rose 3.2 percent in the previous twelve months. Food prices, though rose more quickly at 4.9 percent during the same time.

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Comer Accuses Biden of Abusing Power by Letting Son Travel on Foreign Trips, Demands Flight Records

Michigan Star Staff

House Government and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer on Wednesday formally accused Joe Biden of abusing his power as vice president by allowing his son to travel aboard Air Force Two to help score foreign business deals, formally demanding the National Archives turn over all flight records from such trips.

“The Committee seeks unrestricted special access under the Presidential Records Act (PRA) to certain records related to then-Vice President Biden’s foreign travel with his family on Air Force Two and Marine Two,” Comer and fellow committee member Rep. Byron Donald, R-Fla., wrote in a letter to the National Archives and Records Administration.

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Illegal Migrants from Mexico Assault Northern Border Agent, Official Says

Michigan Star Staff

Three illegal migrants from Mexico assaulted a Border Patrol agent along the northern border on Aug. 20, according to an Instagram post from Swanton sector Chief Robert Garcia.

The three illegal migrants crossed the northern border from Canada illegally before assaulting the agent near Churubusco, New York, according to Garcia’s post. Border Patrol agents in the Swanton sector, which includes areas of New York, Vermont and New Hampshire have made more than 4,900 arrests of illegal migrants from 68 countries between October 2022 and July, amounting to more apprehensions than the last eight years combined in the region.

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Trump Open to Vivek Ramaswamy as Vice President

Admin

Axios Former President Trump showered Vivek Ramaswamy with praise when asked in an interview if he’d considered the 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur for vice president. It’s the most Trump has weighed in on Ramaswamy’s presidential candidacy, revealing his openness to a significantly younger and arguably more radical anti-Washington unknown. Trump called Ramaswamy “smart” and “young”…

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Democrat-Corporate Alliance: Big Banks, BlackRock, Pfizer Back Hochul Plan to Have Americans Bail Out New York for Illegal Immigration

Admin

Breitbart News The nation’s biggest banks on Wall Street, investment firms, and pharmaceutical companies are among a number of multinational corporations throwing their support behind a plan from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) that would have American taxpayers bail out the sanctuary state for an illegal immigration influx. As…

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Biden Admin Seeks Long-Term Ukraine Aid Plan to Prevent Next President from Scaling Back Funding

Michigan Star Staff

The Biden administration is seeking to hammer out a long-term Ukraine aid agreement with European allies in hopes of both preventing Russia from gaining an edge on the battlefield and hamstringing a future president’s ability to scale back U.S. commitments, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The scheme emerged during sideline talks among Group of Seven leaders at a NATO summit in July, and so far involves negotiations between the U.S. and Ukraine, and between the United Kingdom (U.K.) and Ukraine, according to the WSJ. It’s an attempt, in part, to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin he can simply wait until a new American administration, as several top GOP political contenders have expressed intention to reduce or eliminate U.S. aid that makes up the brunt of Western support.

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Average American Workers Now Demand $80K Salary to Start New Jobs

Michigan Star Staff

On Monday, the Federal Reserve published research suggesting that the preferred starting wage for the average American worker is at an all-time high.

According to Fox Business, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York determined that the average “reservation wage” – that is, the lowest salary at which a prospective employee will accept a job – reached $78,645 in the second quarter of 2023. This is an 8% increase from the second quarter of 2022, when the average reservation wage was approximately $72,873.

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Commentary: Left Seizes Election Worker Training Organization

Michigan Star Staff

A nonpartisan organization that trains election workers from across the country is now being run by two liberal voting activists—one who previously worked for the nonprofit that distributed hundreds of millions of dollars of Mark Zuckerberg’s election grants during the 2020 elections. The grants were supposedly to “help” local governments run elections, but most of the money went to election offices in Democrat-run localities.

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Michigan Gov. Whitmer Seeks to Codify Obamacare, Give Legislative Priorities Update

Michigan Star Staff

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer appears to be taking advantage of the Democratic majority in Lansing and plans to call on state lawmakers to pass legislation which would protect key provisions in the Affordable Care Act.

The Governor’s call-to-action comes as the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” faces a battle in federal court.

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Poll: Oregon Voters Want to Repeal Drug Decriminalization

Michigan Star Staff

A new poll shows that residents in the state of Oregon now want to repeal a law that they previously passed which led to the decriminalization of drug use in the state.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Emerson College reveals that a clear majority of 56% want a full repeal of the law, while 64% said they would prefer a partial repeal over simply leaving it in place.

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Biden’s Mining Strategy Is Undermining His Agenda and Helping China, Experts Say

Michigan Star Staff

President Joe Biden’s climate agenda is handicapping America’s ability to source key raw materials to build green technologies that the agenda simultaneously requires, a reality that experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation makes America more dependent on China in the long-term.

The Biden administration has blocked several domestic opportunities to mine raw materials for which China is the global leader in extraction, refining or both, according to a 2022 report on electric vehicles (EVs) by the International Energy Agency (IEA). Many of the minerals and materials that Biden’s agenda is restricting domestically are essential components for green technologies that his climate agenda depends upon at the same time, such as electric vehicles and solar panels, according to a different report by the IEA.

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Commentary: The Specter of the Far Right and Its Hidden Asymmetry

Michigan Star Staff

“Aspecter is haunting Europe — the specter of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter,” is the first sentence of perhaps the most important political pamphlet in history — the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. That famous sentence would still be relevant today only if we change one word, that is, if we remove the word communism and replace it with the “far right.”  

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Commentary: Woke U.S. Diplomacy Is Not Popular Around the Globe, nor at Home

RealClearWire

The Biden administration is fraying relations with some allies and generating pushback from Congress by spending millions of taxpayer dollars to promote the woke ideology abroad that has stirred controversy at home since President Biden took office.  

In a “national security memorandum” shortly after his swearing-in, Biden ordered all federal agencies with dealings abroad not only to protect LGBT rights in the face of discrimination and violence but to actively advance them. His State Department has said one of its goals is to “embed intersectional equity principles into diversifying public diplomacy and communications strategies” in relations with other nations. 

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‘Total Lack of Critical Thinking’: Experts Question COVID Vax, Mask Mandates amid ‘Surge’

Just the News

by Greg Piper   Governments and private entities are using a small rise in COVID-19 hospitalizations and new viral variants to juice interest in bivalent boosters that only 1 in 6 Americans have taken and to urge a return to routine masking, if not outright mandating new jabs and face coverings. What they aren’t…

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More Than 1,600 Scientists, Nobel Laureates, Declare ‘Climate Emergency’ a Myth

Just the News

A coalition of 1,609 scientists from around the world have signed a declaration stating “there is no climate emergency” and that they “strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy” being pushed across the globe. The declaration does not deny the harmful effect of greenhouse gasses, but instead challenges the hysteria brought about by the narrative of imminent doom.

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IRS Lost Millions of Taxpayer Records That Could be Used for Identity Theft

The Center Square

The Internal Revenue Service lost millions of taxpayer records and federal employees don’t know where they have gone.

Lawmakers want answers and accountability for the IRS over those documents, which could be used by nefarious actors to steal Americans’ identity.

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Multiple Analyses: The California ‘Single-Use Plastic Bag’ Ban Is a Flop

The Center Square

According to a new analysis from the Los Angeles Times, California’s ban on thin plastic bags is a failure, as thicker, “recyclable” replacement bags are largely unable to be recycled in California, and the majority of consumers still opt not to bring their own bags to reuse for shopping.

Additional analyses have also found increases in purchases of plastic trash bags chip away at the plastics savings from single-use plastic bag bans, the pounds of plastic bags per-capita placed in landfills has increased since the ban, and many of the alternatives to single-use plastic bags typically end up being worse for the environment. Nonetheless, a major decrease in grocery bag litter suggests at least a partial success.

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‘Legal’ Concerns Halt NIH $154 Million ‘False Information’ Program

Michigan Star Staff

The National Institutes of Health halted a $154 million research program intended to study “equitable health communication” and combat alleged medical misinformation.

The “pause” came “in the context of the current regulatory and legal landscape around communication platforms,” according to a website for the initiative.

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Legal Opinion on New Michigan Education Agency ‘Premature,’ AG Nessel Says

The Center Square

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has said it’s too early to determine whether Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s new education agency is legal or not.

On August 8, the State Department of Education requested an attorney general legal opinion regarding the constitutionality of Whitmer’s executive order creating the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential.

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Consumer Goods Giant 3M Fined More than $6.5 Million for Wooing Chinese Government Officials with Overseas Trips

Just the News

The consumer goods company 3M agreed to pay more than $6.5 million to resolve charges that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act after its China-based subsidiary took Chinese government officials on overseas trips in an attempt to convince them to purchase 3M products, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said.

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Commentary: As Americans’ Righteous Indignation Grows, Out-of-Touch Power Brokers Believe Their Coup Has Public Support

Michigan Star Staff

Looking at the multiple indictments against Trump, culminating in the former president’s humiliating arrest procedure in Fulton County, Georgia on August 24, some of us may feel dismayed by these highhanded actions. Both the Democrats and their allies in the Deep State and media are working, or so it seems, to create a one-party dictatorship, one in which the opposition party functions as an ineffectual check on the wielders of power.

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Commentary: America’s Moms Saw a True Leader on the GOP Debate Stage

Michigan Star Staff

Donald Trump’s decision to skip the first Republican primary debate left a huge vacuum on the stage in Milwaukee. That vacuum was filled by Vivek Ramaswamy, who showed poise, conviction, and grace under fire – in the process making most of his opponents look like the career politicians they are.

Like Trump, Ramaswamy is a businessman who feels called to run for office because he sees that the country is facing dark times and needs to be saved from the political establishment, which prioritizes self-interest and the status quo over patriotism and the sort of decisive action that our country needs.

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Commentary: Christianity and the Globalist Agenda

Michigan Star Staff

The power of these 10 words threatens the most powerful individuals and institutions on the planet, and what might otherwise be their total control over governments. These words express a principle that an authoritarian government cannot tolerate. They proclaim “Government is not the ultimate sovereign. God is the ultimate sovereign. And if you challenge my God and make me choose, I will obey God, and I will defy you.”

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Commentary: Searching for Truth and Excellence in Youth Literature and Movies

Michigan Star Staff

A couple of months ago, a friend of my wife and of mine, a young Italian priest, was visiting with us. Our conversation veered toward youth books and movies. Our friend lamented what he perceived as a lack of substance in contemporary books and movies for young people. He said that the books kids read and the movies they watch should reflect the truth and impel them toward right living and virtue, instead of simply mirroring the symptoms of a wounded culture. Perhaps my friend was onto something.

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