Federal Fiscal Burden Consumes 93% Of America's Wealth

 by James D. Agresti via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Based on data from a U.S. Treasury report, the federal government has amassed $142 trillion in debts, liabilities, and unfunded obligations. This staggering figure equals 93 percent of all the wealth Americans have accumulated since the nation’s founding, estimated by the Federal Reserve to be $152 trillion.

Unlike other measures of federal red ink that cover an arbitrary period, extend into the infinite future, or ignore government resources, the figure of $142 trillion applies strictly to Americans who are alive right now and includes the government’s commercial assets. Thus, it quantifies the financial burden that today’s Americans are leaving to their children and future generations.

Complete Versus Incomplete Accounting

Federal law requires the U.S. Treasury to publish an annual report that details the government’s “overall financial position.” In addition to the national debt, the “Financial Report of the United States Government” also includes the government’s explicit and implicit financial commitments, such as:

• federal employee pensions and other retirement benefits like healthcare.

• environmental liabilities like contaminated nuclear sites.

• unfunded obligations for social insurance programs like Medicare.

Such “fiscal exposures,” as explained by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), “represent significant commitments that ultimately have to be addressed.” Thus, GAO stresses that ignoring them can “make it difficult for policymakers and the public to adequately understand the government’s overall performance and true financial condition.”

Yet, that is precisely what the media does. Although the Treasury published the report in February, Google News indicates that no major media outlet has mentioned it. Meanwhile, the same outlets have frequently reported on the national debt and federal budget, which are incomplete measures of the federal government’s fiscal situation.

The commonly cited national debt and federal budget are mainly based on cash accounting, which is the simplistic process of counting money as it flows in or out. Thus, liabilities like pension benefits for federal workers aren’t measured until they are actually paid, which is often decades after they are promised.

In contrast, the Treasury report mainly uses accrual accounting, which measures financial commitments as they are made. This is how the federal government requires large corporations to report their finances. In the words of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which is tasked by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to create private-sector accounting rules, accrual accounting is the “most relevant and reliable” way to measure the financial health of pension plans.

The same applies to other retirement benefits like healthcare. The accounting rule that governs such benefits explains that “a failure to accrue” implies “that no obligation exists prior to the payment of benefits.” Since an obligation does exist, failing to account for it “impairs the usefulness and integrity” of financial statements.

The Grand Total

A methodical tally of accrual accounting data in the Treasury report shows that the federal government has amassed $142 trillion in debts, liabilities, and unfunded obligations beyond the value of its commercial assets. This reflects the government’s finances at the close of its 2023 fiscal year on Sept. 30, 2023.

The primary components of this burden, which are unpacked below, include:

• $26.3 trillion in publicly held national debt.

• $16.6 trillion in liabilities that are not accounted for in the publicly held debt.

• $104.2 trillion in unfunded social insurance obligations.

These figures tally to $147.1 trillion in debts, liabilities, and unfunded obligations. Offsetting this is $5.4 trillion in commercial assets owned by the federal government, leaving a grand total shortfall of $141.7 trillion.

Numbers in the trillions are hard to conceive, so it’s revealing to place them in context. The figure of $142 trillion amounts to 93 percent of the net wealth Americans have accumulated since the nation’s founding, estimated by the Federal Reserve to be $152 trillion. This includes all of their assets in savings, real estate, corporate stocks, private businesses, and consumer durable goods like automobiles and furniture.

The government’s $142 trillion shortfall also amounts to:

• $430,252 for every person living in the United States.

• $1,098,087 for every household in the United States.

• 2 times annual U.S. economic output (GDP).

• 30 times annual federal revenues.

Publicly Held Debt

The simplest major item quantified by the Treasury report is the publicly held debt, which is $26.3 trillion. This is the money the federal government owes to non-federal entities like individuals, corporations, state governments, and foreign governments.

Publicly held debt is a partial measure of the national debt that excludes $6.9 trillion the federal government owes to federal programs like Social Security and Medicare. The Treasury report also details these intergovernmental debts and consolidates them with the items below.

Liabilities

Pension and other retirement benefits are a large part of compensation packages for government employees. With these generous benefits included, civilian non-postal federal employees receive an average of 17 percent more total compensation than private-sector workers with comparable education and work experience. Postal workers receive even greater premiums ranging from 25 percent to 43 percent.

In 2022, federal, state, and local governments spent $2.3 trillion on employee compensation, costing each household in the nation an average of $17,299.

The Treasury report shows that the federal government currently owes $14.3 trillion in pensions and other benefits to federal employees and veterans that are not accounted for in the publicly held national debt. To pay the present value of these benefits will require an average of $109,005 from every household in the United States.

The Treasury reports other liabilities of the federal government, such as:

• $124 billion in accounts payable.

• $645 billion in environmental and disposal liabilities.

• $99 billion in insurance and guarantee program liabilities.

Altogether, the Treasury records $16.6 trillion in liabilities that are not accounted for in the publicly held debt.

Social Security & Medicare

A similar but far more expensive situation exists with social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare. This is because—contrary to popular belief—these programs don’t save workers’ taxes for their retirements. Instead, they immediately spend the vast majority of those taxes to pay benefits to current recipients. Thus, they are called “pay-as-you-go” programs.

In stark contrast, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis explains that “federal law requires private pension plans to operate as funded plans, not as pay-as-you-go plans.” The reasons for this, as explained by the American Academy of Actuaries, are to increase “benefit security” and ensure “intergenerational equity.”

Social Security and Medicare, on the other hand, have levied dramatically increased tax burdens on succeeding generations of Americans, thus creating severe generational inequality. And unless retirement ages are raised or benefits are reduced in some other way, taxes will need to be increased again to keep the programs solvent.

Federal actuaries measure the unfunded obligations of Social Security and Medicare in several different ways, but only one of them approximates accrual accounting. This is called the “closed-group” unfunded obligation, which is the money needed to cover the shortfalls for all current taxpayers and beneficiaries in these programs.

In the words of Harvard Law School professor and federal budget specialist Howell E. Jackson, the closed-group measure “reflects the financial burden or liability being passed on to future generations.” These burdens are $49.8 trillion for Social Security and $53.9 trillion for Medicare. Placing these figures in context:

• Social Security’s unfunded obligations amount to an additional $272,237 from every person who currently pays Social Security payroll taxes.

• Medicare’s unfunded obligations amount to an additional $201,932 from every U.S. resident aged 16 or older.

Those shortfalls are what remain after the federal government has paid back with interest all of the money it has borrowed from Social Security and Medicare.

Social Security and Medicare differ from true pensions because taxpayers don’t have a contractual right to receive these benefits. Nevertheless, paying these benefits is an implied commitment of the federal government, and federal law requires that these programs be included in the Treasury report.

The Treasury report estimates that the combined closed group unfunded obligations of Social Security, Medicare, and some smaller social insurance programs are $104.2 trillion. This figure doesn’t include intergovernmental debt, which is consolidated with other data in the report.

Federal Assets

The Treasury also records the federal government’s commercial assets, such as:

• $922 billion in cash and other monetary assets.

• $1.2 trillion in property, plants, and equipment.

• $1.7 trillion in receivable loans, mainly comprised of student loans.

However, the report doesn’t account for federal stewardship land and heritage assets, such as national parks and the original copy of the Declaration of Independence. While these items have tangible value, the report explains that they “are intended to be preserved as national treasures,” not sold to the highest bidder to cover debts.

In total, the government owned $5.4 trillion in commercial assets at the close of its 2023 fiscal year.

Adding up the federal government’s debts, liabilities, and unfunded obligations and then subtracting the value of its commercial assets yields a fiscal shortfall of $142 trillion.

Root Causes

The first critical step in solving a problem is to understand its root causes. However, scientific surveys show that many voters are misinformed about the root causes of government debt.

A scientific, nationally representative survey commissioned in 2020 by Just Facts found that 25 percent of voters believe the main driver of the rising national debt is military spending. This accords with the reporting of media outlets that frequently blame the debt on military spending.

In reality, military spending has plummeted from 53 percent of all federal expenses in 1960 to 17 percent in 2022:

The same survey found that another 25 percent of voters believe tax cuts were the main driver of debt, in accord with news stories that blame the debt on tax cuts.

In reality, federal revenues have stayed at a roughly level portion of the U.S. economy for the past 80 years:

As shown in the charts above, the primary driver of the national debt is increased spending, particularly on social programs. These programs—which provide healthcare, income security, education, nutrition, housing, and cultural services—have grown from 21 percent of all federal spending in 1960 to 64 percent in 2022.

Yet, only 39 percent of voters correctly identify social spending as the primary cause of rising debt.

Moreover, the vast bulk of the government’s unfunded obligations are due to Social Security and Medicare. Thus, the Congressional Budget Office projects that the main drivers of future debt will be Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Obamacare, and interest on the national debt. Under the weight of these, the publicly held debt is due to soar to unprecedented levels over coming decades.

Harmful Effects

A broad range of academic publications explain that excessive government debt can cause far-reaching negative outcomes, such as lower wages, increased inflation, weak economic growth, higher taxes, reduced government benefits, or combinations of such results.

Likewise, GAO warns that “the costs of federal borrowing will be borne by tomorrow’s workers and taxpayers,” which “may reduce or slow the growth of the living standards of future generations.”

Such effects may have already begun. Although association does not prove causation, the national debt has skyrocketed over recent decades, and with this, the United States has experienced episodes of historically poor growth in gross domestic product (GDP), productivity, and household income. Along with this, rapid inflation has set in, another common consequence of excessive government debt.

While some believe the U.S. government can spend and borrow with abandon because it can print money, one of the most established laws of economics is that there is no such thing as a free lunch. The prolific economist William A. McEachern explains why this is so:

“There is no free lunch because all goods and services involve a cost to someone. The lunch may seem free to you, but it draws scarce resources away from the production of other goods and services, and whoever provides a free lunch often expects something in return. A Russian proverb makes a similar point but with a bit more bite: ‘The only place you find free cheese is in a mousetrap.’”

From Just Facts Daily

https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/federal-fiscal-burden-consumes-93-percent-americas-wealth

J&J has enough support from claimants for $6.5 billion talc settlement: report

 Johnson & Johnson has cleared a key threshold of support for its proposed $6.5-billion settlement of tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging its baby powder and other talc products caused cancer, according to a Bloomberg report.

More than 75% of claimants voted in favor of the proposal, according to Bloomberg, a hurdle J&J set for a third attempt at placing a subsidiary in bankruptcy protection to resolve the litigation.

Reuters has not independently verified the report, for which Bloomberg cited sources familiar with the negotiations. Sources who spoke with Reuters said the votes are still being tallied.

J&J spokesperson Clare Boyle said the company could not comment as the vote tally was not final. The company has previously expressed confidence that its settlement proposal would ultimately win enough support from plaintiffs to proceed.

J&J faces lawsuits from about 61,000 claimants who alleged that its baby powder and other talc products were contaminated with asbestos and caused ovarian and other cancers. J&J denies the allegations and has said that its products are safe.

The company set the 75% vote percentage, matching a provision in U.S. bankruptcy law, as the benchmark to proceed with another bankruptcy bid, which now is expected in the near future. The deadline for casting votes was July 26.

Ticker	Security	Last	Change	Change %
JNJ	JOHNSON & JOHNSON	159.88	-0.74	-0.46%

After being rebuffed twice by federal courts, the healthcare giant is attempting again to end the litigation in a so-called "Texas two-step" bankruptcy.

The "two-step" maneuver involves offloading its talc liability onto a newly created subsidiary, which then declares Chapter 11. The goal is to use the proceeding to force all plaintiffs into one settlement – without requiring J&J itself to file bankruptcy.

But the company needs the votes of 75% of claimants before the subsidiary can ask a bankruptcy judge to impose the deal on all of them.

Bankruptcy judges can enforce global settlements that permanently halt all related lawsuits and forbid new ones. Outside of bankruptcy, any settlement J&J reached with some clients would still leave holdouts or future plaintiffs with the right to sue – and leave the company exposed to potential multibillion-dollar verdicts that encouraged it to use a two-step in the first place.

The company has been engaged in a bitter fight with lawyers opposing its third attempt to settle the litigation through this maneuver.

Andy Birchfield, who represents plaintiffs opposed to the settlement, called J&J's voting process a "fake bankruptcy election" that would not stand up in court.

"No matter what tally is announced, I expect it will be challenged and eventually rejected so that juries can decide what to do about J&J’s egregious conduct," Birchfield said.

J&J's third attempt at a bankruptcy settlement differs from its previous efforts in part because it focuses only on ovarian and other gynecological cancer claims, building on J&J's previous settlements with state attorneys general and people who had sued after developing mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer linked to asbestos exposure.

J&J's bankruptcy strategy still faces legal hurdles. The Supreme Court recently ruled in Purdue Pharma's bankruptcy to narrow the ability of courts to stop lawsuits against people and companies like J&J that are not bankrupt without the consent of the people who have sued.

J&J has said the Purdue ruling does not affect its settlement proposal because U.S. bankruptcy law includes explicit legal protections for asbestos defendants that have not filed for bankruptcy. J&J has said it qualifies for those protections because the lawsuits generally allege that the talc used in its products was mined from underground mineral deposits that also contained asbestos.

Some legal experts have said that J&J may not qualify for those specific legal protections, which were written to encourage settlement payments by insurers with indirect liability for asbestos lawsuits.

J&J's strategy also faces opposition from plaintiffs' attorneys who argue that its new settlement should fail for the same reason as its first two. Courts rejected J&J's first two talc bankruptcies because the subsidiary was not in "financial distress," and J&J must overcome similar arguments in this bankruptcy attempt.

Congress has proposed legislation that would limit the ability of companies to shield themselves from lawsuits by putting a shell company into bankruptcy.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/jj-has-enough-support-from-claimants-6-5-billion-talc-settlement-report

Harris launched IRS harassment of tipped workers in 2022, breaking tie vote to pass IRA

 By Monica Showalter

Like John Kerry, Kamala Harris was for it before she was against it. And Harris, who used to keep petty drug offenders in prison beyond their terms, has always had a mean streak for the little guy, not to mention, her own staff.

So what a surprise to learn that shortly after she brazenly stole President Trump's idea to end taxes on tips, Harris came out with the same proposal as if it were her own.

I suppose there's no law against it, but there is Harris's record, which is why Trump made the call to end taxes on tips in the first place.

Fox News's Liz MacDonald laid it out very well:

 

 So remember the badly misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, the government spendathon which brought us so much of the inflation we have now?

It was in that bill that 80,000 newly minted IRS agents would be hired, supposedly to go after all the billionaire tax cheats out there.

The U.S. billionaire count, according to Forbes magazine, is 813. Kamala played the key role in getting that law passed.

 

 

And with just 813 billionaires to harass, who did those 80,000 go after? That's right, the little guys, especially the ones who are paid in tips.

The Wall Street Journal's editorial page found a Treasury report indicating that middle class taxpayers were getting the brunt of the IRS offensive, which would also include some tip workers. Tips, after all, are easy pickings for underreporting owing to the lack of paper trail:

President Biden’s plan to hire a new army of tax collectors is falling flat, and the agents already at work are targeting the middle class.

Those are two findings of the IRS’s watchdog, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (Tigta). The report examines IRS progress on mandates from the Biden Administration backed by tens of billions in new funding. The first supposed goal was to audit more ultrawealthy and fewer middle-class filers, but it’s not going so well.

...

The most recent data suggests the IRS is still focused on the middle class. As of last summer, 63% of new audits targeted taxpayers with income of less than $200,000.

It gets worse, and here is where the second half of McDonald's tweet is described: With all that new federal money brought to them by Kamala Harris's tie-breaking vote, tip workers were the special little target of the IRS's shiny new army of auditors.

According to the Heritage Foundation's Preston Brashers in a February 2023 piece:

It may come as a surprise, then, that the IRS is proposing to direct new scrutiny at underreported tips by waitresses, barbers, and bartenders.

Tipped employees are currently required to pay both federal income taxes and payroll taxes on the tips they receive. Workers report tips to their employers, who pay the 15.3% payroll tax to the IRS on the employee’s behalf and adjust employee wage withholding to account for the taxes workers owe on tips.

To ensure compliance, many employers participate in tip-reporting programs with the IRS.

But now the IRS is attempting to replace existing programs with a more far-reaching and invasive program that would, for example, require employers to use point-of-sale systems to record all sales subject to tipping. Employers in the program would then be required to use these electronically recorded transactions to create detailed annual employee tipping reports for the IRS.

Brashers notes that the IRS and its cheerleaders then secured the funding under false or misleading pretenses that only the rich would be targeted, when in fact, the tip workers were in its gunsights, as well as the gig workers and the small, unincorporated businesses, the little guys who own laundromats or bodegas.

The IRS’ increased scrutiny on tipped workers isn’t a mistake. It’s an attempt to shore up what the agency sees as a significant weakness in its enforcement. The IRS has estimated that 10% of the underreported individual income-tax gap is from tips, even though tipping income accounts for a fraction of a percent of U.S. income.

So the entire controversy over taxes on tips, the unrest and worker unhappiness is the result of Kamala Harris's tie-breaking vote to win passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. It included secret plans to go after the little guy and his tips, even as officials insisted they would be targeting "the rich," and the IRS wouldn't be auditing little guys. But as Brashing points out, it was all bait-and-switch -- the IRS demanded a centralized tip-reporting system and threatened the restaurant and other business establishments with "compliance reviews" which are the same as audits, but with a different title, if they didn't comply with that. They did this to avoid bad public relations about the targeting of tips which was their plan all along.

And this was what Kamala Harris was all in for, a bait-and-switch, to get what she wanted, targeting the little guy for more money.

That is what the tipped workers are upset about, and that is why Trump proposed relief for them.

Now Kamala is proposing relief too, except that she's the one who caused the auditing and surveillance of tipped workers in the first place.

She always was one to get nasty with the little guy, the powerless ones, the guys who can't do much to defend themselves. She did it with petty marijuana offenders when as California attorney general, she kept them imprisoned beyond their terms in order to use their labor to fight wildfires, which Tulsi Gabbard deftly exposed in 2020, and she did it again with the tax bait-and-switch, targeting low-level tipped workers for fresh IRS scrutiny and harvestings.

She's a mean person with a repellent record of hitting the little guy, the easiest guy to target, over and over again. Note that it's now been revealed that Gabbard was subject to Harris-Biden harassment in retaliation for her exposure of Kamala's record.

Harris is mean and vindictive. You can bet that if she gets power, she'll pull a similar bait-and-switch on tipped workers if she wins office, based on her pattern.

That's why she'd be a horrible president. While laughing with the leftists at her rallies, and drawing fawning media coverage, and claims of joy, she's nothing but a sleazy bully looking for new ways to harass the powerless. She'll come after all of us if, God forbid, she ever gets power, because that's what hardcore socialists do. She is one of them, a predator looking for more prey to ruin for the sake of her own power.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/08/kamala_harris_launched_harassment_of_tip_workers_in_2022_through_the_inflation_reduction_act.html

Harris opposes voter ID laws, but requires ID to get into her modest rallies

 Credit to American Thinker contributor Jack Hellner for bringing this to my attention in his piece about the media propping up Kamala Harris as the safer bet regarding taxation policy, but this deserves a blog all on its own; from a report out at Fox News yesterday:

Kamala Harris panned for requiring ID to enter Arizona rally after previously painting voter ID laws as racist

Ahead of Harris’ rally alongside vice presidential running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in Arizona on Friday, her campaign sent out an email advising that only confirmed RSVPs will be admitted.

The email said those on the RSVP list must present a matching government-issued photo ID in order to be admitted to the venue, KTAR reported.

Now why would Harris’s campaign feel compelled to require “government-issued photo ID” for admission? I mean, it’s just a modest political rally, and with property security measures (don’t call the Secret Service for this), who cares if someone isn’t who they claim to be? Especially considering this is a Democrat event, can’t we just excuse any identification crises as saying “they/them” feels like “identifying” as another person for the duration of said rally? Or, like Harris reasoned when she argued against photo ID for voting, requiring ID might “restrict access” for people who would otherwise want to be engaged and involved in the democratic process—this is all about “democracy” and the voices of the people, right?

Oh, is it because the campaign wants to make sure the person in front of it is who he/she actually claims to be? I can understand that, especially considering the fact that somebody has encouraged and facilitated the entire bad-acting foreign world to violate American sovereignty and establish themselves on American soil to inevitably commit atrocities against American citizens... Where else but places where moderately-sized crowds or precious children gather? Now that I think about it though, crowd size might be a Harris rally’s only saving grace: they’re quiet small when compared to her opponent.

Was Harris also protected by guns? The right to self-defense is a God-given right, endowed to all of mankind, so I have no problem with her choice to utilize armed protection—yet while personally enjoying the security firearms provide, she actively seeks to rob her fellow man of the same privilege. We can’t all be taxpayer leeches and outsource our personal security, most of us have to do it on our own.

Did the rally venue rely on or utilize any “dirty” energy for the lights and air conditioning, or was everything powered entirely by wind and solar? (This isn’t to suggest that wind and solar are “clean” energy or that oil and gas are “dirty” energy, it’s merely to make the point.) If she

Did Kamala use traditional modes of transportation to get to and from her event, or was she running lithium-battery cars/planes the whole time? That was rhetorical.

So photo ID is only “racist” and restrictive when it comes to participating in American elections, a privilege that belongs to citizens and citizens alone, but not when it’s required for Kamala to grace you with her presence (or buy alcohol, or cigarettes, or a firearm, or open a bank account, or get through TSA, etc.).

Exaggerated hypocrisy continues to be a hallmark of Democrat platforms.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/08/kamala_harris_opposes_voter_id_laws_but_requires_id_to_get_into_her_modest_rallies.html

'NATO Countries Threatens Iran Over Plan To Supply Russia With Ballistic Missiles'

 NATO countries have been warning of swift and severe consequences in the wake of widespread reports that Iran is considering transferring sophisticated ballistic missiles to Russia for use in the Ukraine war.

A weekend Reuters story authored by multiple national security veteran reporters alleged that Russian personnel are already being trained to operate the Fath-360 close-range ballistic missile system. Several European intelligence sources were cited as the basis of the report, which Iranian leaders subsequently denied.

Biden's national security council has said this would mark a "dramatic escalation" in military cooperation between Tehran and Moscow, which has so far seen thousands of small Iranian drones transferred and utilized over Ukraine's skies.

Reuters details the following: 

Citing multiple confidential intelligence sources, the officials said that Russian personnel have visited Iran to learn how to operate the Fath-360 defence system, which launches missiles with a maximum range of 120 km (75 miles) and a warhead of 150 kg. One of the sources said that that "the only next possible" step after training would be actual delivery of the missiles to Russia.

Moscow possesses an array of its own ballistic missiles, but the supply of Fath-360s could allow Russia to use more of its arsenal for targets beyond the front line, while employing Iranian warheads for closer-range targets, a military expert said.

An expected delivery date wasn't disclosed in the report, but it would be consistent with the trend of much closer cooperation on defense between the two 'pariah' nations which are highly sanctioned by the West. 

At his point there's not much left to sanction, and so increasingly both Russian and Iranian leaders have demonstrated a "nothing to lose" attitude in terms of flaunting their defiance of Western warnings.

We also recently highlighted that Russia has appeared to step up supplies of air defense equipment to the Islamic Republic, at a moment Tehran is threatening massive retaliation attacks on Israel for the July 31 killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. The expectation in such a scenario is that Israel's counter-response would be bigger.

Allegations further say Russia has already received many Iranian ballistic missiles...

The Iranians are reportedly also pressuring Moscow to fulfill delivery of Su-35S fighter jet fighters which were previously pledged in a defense deal, given the regional temperature is heating up fast.

Moscow likely feels obliged given the significant Iranian drone transfers it has received throughout the course of the Ukraine war. Iran has heavily aided Russian forces, and now Russia is quickly coming to Iran's assistance.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/west-threatens-iran-over-plan-supply-russia-ballistic-missiles

'US Marshals Arrest Over 230 Fugitives, Including Rapists And Murderers, In Md. Op'

 by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Marshals Service has announced the conclusion of “Operation Silver Shield,” a 90-day interagency operation that resulted in the arrest of 232 fugitives across Maryland, including individuals wanted for serious crimes such as rape and murder.

The large-scale, public safety initiative, which ran from May through August 2024, targeted non-compliant sex offenders and fugitives associated with violent crimes, the U.S. Marshals said in an Aug. 9 press release. Among the arrested were 36 individuals wanted for sex offender registration violations, 17 for rape, and 14 for homicide.

“The arrest of these fugitives represents a step in the right direction to keep Maryland safe,” Erek L. Barron, U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, said in a statement.

As part of the operation, law enforcement also seized seven firearms and successfully recovered four critically missing children.

Dozens of federal, state, and local agencies participated in the operation, with deputies from the District of Maryland prioritizing the arrest of non-compliant sex offenders, while members of the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force, a unit of the U.S. Marshals, focused on catching violent fugitives.

“Throughout this operation, we worked hand-in-hand with local communities to take dangerous offenders off the streets,“ Mathew Silverman, chief deputy U.S. Marshal for the District of Maryland, said in a statement, adding that the results of the operation reflect ”the true power of our public safety partnership.”

The Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force, which has apprehended over 78,000 fugitives since its inception in 2004, has partnership agreements with over 133 federal, state, and local agencies operating in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.

Besides the U.S. Marshals Service, some of the law enforcement agencies involved in Operation Silver Shield include the Baltimore Police Department, Homeland Security Investigations, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), and the FBI.

Operation Silver Shield was launched on May 3, 2024, aiming to protect the community by prioritizing the recovery of critically missing children and arresting offenders who pose the biggest risk to public safety.

A similar operation in 2023, dubbed “Operation We Will Find You,” led to the recovery of 225 missing or endangered children.

At the time, the U.S. Marshals noted that cases involving missing or endangered children are some of the most challenging due to the presence of “high-risk factors,” such as involvement in child sex trafficking, child exploitation, sexual and physical abuse, and serious medical and mental health conditions.

The passage of the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act in 2015 strengthened law enforcement’s ability to recover missing children. The legislation enhanced the U.S. Marshals’ authority, enabling them to better address cases involving endangered children, even when a fugitive or sex offender wasn’t directly involved.

Since the law’s enactment, the U.S. Marshals, in collaboration with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, have successfully recovered over 3,100 missing children.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/us-marshals-arrest-over-230-fugitives-including-rapists-and-murderers-maryland-operation