Rep. Jim Banks probes Walz’s ‘obvious security risk’ in dozen trips to China while serving in Guard

 Rep. Jim Banks is demanding answers from the Pentagon about the “obvious security risk” Democratic vice presidential pick Tim Walz posed to the US due to at least a dozen trips he took to China while serving in the National Guard, according to a letter exclusively obtained by The Post.

Banks (R-Ind.) wrote to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday asking about the “risks of hostile foreign intelligence activity” the Minnesota governor faced, since Walz “almost certainly” had a security clearance as a senior-ranking Guardsman when traveling to China between 1989 and 2005.

“Any individual traveling dozens of times to an adversary nation in a personal capacity while having access to classified information poses an obvious security risk,” the Indiana Republican said.

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Rep. Jim Banks is demanding answers from the Pentagon about the “obvious security risk” Tim Walz posed due to his many trips to China while serving in the National Guard.AP

“I am therefore concerned that Governor Walz may have failed to comply with foreign travel reporting requirements during these trips to China, despite his duty as a security clearance holder to protect our national security,” he added.

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US service members are always ordered to report on such trips, but “especially” so when dealing with an adversarial nation, according to Banks, and often are “required to complete debriefing questionnaires” upon their return to note “any potentially suspicious interaction that occurred.”

Walz, 60, who speaks Mandarin, first visited China in 1989 as a college grad working as an American history and English instructor for the WorldTeach program in Foshan in southern China.

“No matter how long I live, I will never be treated that well again,” he recalled in 1990. “They gave me more gifts than I could bring home. It was an excellent experience.”

Three years later, Walz returned with his wife, Gwen, as part of an exchange program with Beijing that the couple helped set up for high school students.

The couple went on to make many more trips, with Walz claiming to have personally gone on as many as 30 excursions to China.

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Walz, 60, who speaks Mandarin, first visited China in 1989 as a college grad working as an American history and English instructor.Instagram / @timwalz

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“He wanted to have a date he’ll always remember,” said Gwen Walz, when recalling why her husband chose their wedding day to coincide with the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.Gwen Walz/Facebook

“I’ve lived in China, and as I’ve said, I’ve been there about 30 times,” Walz told Agri-Pulse in 2016. “I don’t fall into the category that China necessarily needs to be an adversarial relationship. I totally disagree.”

An interview of one of his former colleagues in the Chinese-language outlet Initium Media noted that Walz had been treated “like royalty” while he was there — and his wife revealed that he intentionally chose their wedding date to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.

“He wanted to have a date he’ll always remember,” said Gwen Walz, according to a report in the Guardian.

Many of those trips took place during his 24-year career as a member of a field artillery regiment in the Army National Guard, where he rose through the ranks to eventually become a command sergeant major.

According to Banks, a US Navy Reserve officer who served in Afghanistan, Walz’s “naïve” optimism was easily open to exploitation by the Chinese Communist Party.

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Many of those China trips took place during Walz 24-year career as a member of a field artillery regiment in the Army National Guard. He also served as an infantryman.Facebook / Governor Tim Walz

“Walz chose to have his honeymoon in China and even bizarrely planned his wedding date to coincide with the 5th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre,” he noted to Austin, later adding that the school teacher and later US congressman was also “willing to repeatedly accept gifts.”

Banks is requesting that Austin hand over by Aug. 20 information about the precise number of trips Walz took to China, what level of security clearance he held and for how long, and whether he attended foreign intelligence briefings and complied with reporting requirements.

The letter comes on the heels of attacks against Walz from members of his former battalion and congressional Republicans, many of whom have accused him of “stolen valor” after he abandoned troops under his leadership before deployment to the Iraq war.

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Banks wants Lloyd Austin to hand over information about the precise number of trips Walz took to China, what level of security clearance he held and for how long, and whether he attended foreign intelligence briefings.AP

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris made clear in announcing she’d tapped Walz to be her running mate that she was proud of his past roles as “a teacher and a veteran” who has “delivered for working families like his.”

Neither the Pentagon nor reps for the Harris-Walz campaign immediately responded to a request for comment.

https://nypost.com/2024/08/13/us-news/rep-jim-banks-probes-tim-walzs-obvious-security-risk-in-dozen-trips-to-china-while-serving-in-national-guard/

The maddening impossibility of prosecuting $300M a year MTA fare dodgers

 Nearly half of New York City’s 2 million bus riders evaded paying fares over the last three months, a pattern that helps explain why the MTA reportedly hemorrhaged over $300 million due to bus freeloaders in the last year.

Law-abiding New Yorkers will pay for this type of revenue loss in the form of fare hikes and tax increases.

But just deploying more NYPD officers and fare enforcement agents to combat fare evasion — as the transit authority announced last month it will do — won’t fix the problem.

Until Albany amends the 2020 “discovery law,” the actual consequences for farebeating won’t be enough to convince delinquents to cough up the $2.90 per ride.

In the state of New York, prosecuting “minor” crimes, like fare evasion, has become impossible under discovery reform, which advantages offenders often insurmountably.

Importantly, this is separate from the explicit policies for declining to prosecute fare evasion that district attorneys in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx have adopted since 2017.

The discovery law does not restrict the robust prosecution of farebeating. Instead, it imposes a compliance burden so great that prosecutors are simply unable to consistently prosecute such cases — even when they want to.

A perfect example is the case of Zayan Shar, who was charged last November in Staten Island with “Theft of Services,” a Class A misdemeanor, after dodging bus fare.

Prosecutors filed all the exhaustive material which discovery law now requires as evidence: body-worn camera recordings, a bus-fare evasion data sheet, a bus-fare evasion supporting deposition, video surveillance from the bus, a memo-book entry made by MTA Special Inspector Thomas Femia, who witnessed Shar’s farebeating — and more.

But Shar’s defense attorney was able to get his case dismissed by exploiting the bottomless stringency of the 2020 discovery statute, in combination with New York’s “speedy trial” law, which mandates prosecutors be ready for trial in a set number of days.

Shar’s attorney dilly-dallied for two weeks before raising an issue, all while the window for prosecution narrowed.

Then she claimed prosecutors had failed to “disclose the name of and adequate contact information” for two additional MTA employees who were seen momentarily on video surveillance and bodycam recordings.

The attorney also demanded the memo book and camera audit logs for one of these officers, Special Inspector Christopher Piegari.

Over the following weeks, prosecutors diligently tracked down and shared all these materials.

But defense counsel was nonetheless able to insist prosecutors took too long to collect these — meaningless — extra snips of information.  

How meaningless? Piegari neither witnessed Shar’s alleged fare evasion nor informed the NYPD about it. He was, in fact, “only in the presence of the defendant for mere seconds.”

Prosecutors reasoned that none of this new information was “discoverable” — material that constitutes required evidence — because they didn’t intend to call Piegari as a witness. And further, Piegari’s memo book contained “no information regarding the alleged incident.”

But still, the case was tossed.

Shar’s freebie is not a one-off fluke: The Staten Island DA’s Office had around 300 “speedy trial” dismissals in just the first 11 months of last year — 5% of its total caseload.

Compare this to the pre-discovery reform era, when the office dismissed basically zero cases due to “speedy trial” petitions.

Beyond just “speedy trial” dismissals, the discovery burden has pushed the increase of all case dismissals in Staten Island — from less than a quarter of cases in 2019, to almost half of cases in 2023.

And for misdemeanors, like Shar’s stolen bus ride, there were over a thousand more dismissals in the borough last year than in 2019, pre-discovery reform.

And that’s just one borough.

Citywide, “speedy trial” dismissals rose from under 5% of cases in 2019 to over 22% last year.

That’s an astounding increase of 23,564 cases that, like Shar’s, were dismissed because prosecutors couldn’t scramble together every conceivable scrap of “evidence” that defense attorneys could concoct before the permissible time window for prosecution closed.

This absurdity will continue until discovery reform is amended to only require the collection of relevant material, or to decouple discovery collection from the “speedy trial” timeframe.

Yes, greater police presence on buses and more proactive enforcement are important for encouraging the 25% of bus riders who stopped paying fares after 2019 to start doing it again. But it won’t return evasion levels to their 2019 rates.

Until robust prosecution for misdemeanor arrests is an option for district attorneys’ offices, police will also be understandably less motivated to attempt any enforcement beyond a toothless civil summons. 

And half the city’s bus straphangers, undeterred by the fear of prosecution, will continue to mooch off the chumps who pay to ride.

Hannah E. Meyers is a fellow and the director of policing and public safety at the Manhattan Institute.

https://nypost.com/2024/08/12/opinion/bus-moochers-take-mta-for-a-ride-thanks-to-discovery-reform/

Paramount Cuts 15% Of US Workforce, Closes TV Studio, As Traditional TV Market Slumps

 Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, BET, MTV, Nickelodeon, dozens of local TV stations, and Paramount Pictures, announced in an internal memo from top executives to employees that the first round of job cuts is set to begin. 

The multinational media conglomerate in Manhattan plans to reduce its US-based workforce by 15%, or about 2,000 workers, by the end of September. This is troubling news for the company that struggles with migrating one-time TV viewers to its streaming video platform and an even bigger warning that the traditional TV market languishes. 

"The industry continues to evolve, and Paramount is at an inflection point where changes must be made to strengthen our business. And while these actions are often difficult, we are confident in our direction forward," Brian Robbins, the head of Paramount Pictures; George Cheeks, the head of CBS; and Chris McCarthy, the head of Showtime and MTV Entertainment Studios, wrote in an internal memo to employees, first obtained by New York Times. 

The there co-CEOs said, "As we continue to advance our plan, we announced on our earnings call last week that we will be reducing our US-based workforce by approximately 15%, focusing on redundant functions and streamlining corporate teams." 

"This process will take place in three phases, starting today and continuing through the end of the year. We expect 90% of these actions to be complete by the end of September," they added. 

The Wall Street Journal noted, "Paramount Television Studios is shutting down this week as part of a cost-cutting effort by parent company Paramount Global." 

Last week, during an earnings call, Paramount's top executives said the company would incur $300 million to $400 million in charges related to the restructuring. It also took a second-quarter impairment charge of $5.98 billion across its cable networks. 

Variety provided more color on Paramount's struggles:

Paramount is one of several big U.S. media companies struggling with the migration of one-time TV viewers to streaming video. While the company owns the big CBS broadcast network, home to many of its big-audience sports properties, the bulk of the Paramount portfolio is centered around a cluster of cable networks that only show a few original programs and have seen the communities that once clustered around them dissipate over the past decade.

Did going 'woke' have something to do with Paramount's demise? 

The layoffs come as other major media players, such as Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent of CNN, TNT, and HBO, announced layoffs in mid-July. Just weeks ago, Disney cut 140 employees, or 2% of its workforce, in the television division. In news media, the cuts are worsening by month, with Axios laying off 10% of its employees in recent days. 

Meanwhile, the emergence of X, the world's news platform, is becoming the status quo in how people retrieve information, mostly free from government and corporate media censorship.

On Monday night, the conversation between Donald Trump and X owner Elon Musk generated a billion views. 

The death of legacy media is accelerating... 

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/paramount-cuts-15-us-workforce-traditional-tv-market-slumps

NY Times: Feds Accelerating Naturalization Of Immigrants To "Reshape The Electorate"

 by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

The New York Times reports that the federal government is accelerating the naturalization of immigrants in America as part of a process of “reshaping the electorate, merely months before a pivotal election,” according to one observer quoted in the piece.

“The federal government is processing citizenship requests at the fastest clip in a decade, moving rapidly through a backlog that built up during the Trump administration and the coronavirus pandemic,” reports the newspaper.

One Honduran woman marveled at the fact that authorities were able to process and approve her application in as little as six months.

The story highlights how many of these new citizens will immediately become eligible to vote in key battleground states, including Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

The piece includes a very revealing quote from Xiao Wang, chief executive of Boundless, a data analysis company.

“The surge in naturalization efficiency isn’t just about clearing backlogs; it’s potentially reshaping the electorate, merely months before a pivotal election,” said Wang.

“Every citizenship application could be a vote that decides Senate seats or even the presidency,” he added.

In other words, knowing that immigrants are far likelier to vote Democrat, the Biden administration is importing them at breakneck speed in order to tip the scales for Kamala Harris.

3.3 million immigrants have become citizens during Biden’s time in office, with data showing that more will vote Democrat than Republican.

This has partly driven the Trump campaign’s efforts to appeal more to “Jamal” and “Enrique,” and not so much “Karen,” although the strategy has caused division amongst Trump’s base.

The legacy media has consistently denounced the idea of mass migration being a deliberate ploy to increase the voter base for Democrats as part of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, while simultaneously admitting it’s happening.

A poll conducted by YouGov in 2022 found that 73 per cent of Trump voters believed Democrats are “trying to replace white Americans with immigrants and people of color” who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.

According to the media, when people on the right talk about it in a negative way, it’s a horrendous form of extremist radicalization, but when leftists celebrate it, it’s a progressive virtue.

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https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ny-times-feds-accelerating-naturalization-immigrants-reshape-electorate

4 Ways To Inoculate Your Children Against Marxism

 by Jeff Minick via The Epoch Times,

In 2007, President George W. Bush dedicated a memorial in Washington DC to the 100 million people murdered by communism over the past century. Here is a portion of what he offered in remembrance of those victims:

“They include innocent Ukrainians starved to death in Stalin’s Great Famine or Russians killed in Stalin’s purges; Lithuanians and Latvians and Estonians loaded onto cattle cars and deported to Arctic death camps of Soviet communism. They include Chinese killed in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution; Cambodians slain in Pol Pot’s Killing Fields; East Germans shot attempting to scale the Berlin Wall in order to make it to freedom; Poles massacred in the Katyn Forest and Ethiopians slaughtered in the ‘Red Terror’; Miskito Indians murdered by Nicaragua’s Sandinista dictatorship; and Cuban balseros who drowned escaping tyranny.”

This horrific record doesn’t include the countless millions who were imprisoned, tortured, or saw their dreams and potentialities ruined by Marxism. Yet not only do countries like China and North Korea remain communist, but here in the West, where we should know better by now, we have professors, teachers, corporate personnel, politicians, and ordinary citizens who salute the Red Star. They may not answer to the name of Marxist, but they go along with the movement.

This being the case, it’s up to parents, grandparents, and mentors to inoculate the young against falling prey to this ideology. Below are some vaccines we can give our young people to help prevent infection from this virus.

Read the Right Books

George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” is appropriate for middle schoolers. His classic “1984” should be on every high schooler’s reading list. Ayn Rand’s “We the Living,” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” Ruta Sepetys’s “I Must Betray You,” and other novels will give readers a look into life under communism. For a truly chilling look at how Marxism works in schools, read James Clavell’s overlooked short story “The Children’s Story,” now available online for free. YouTube also has a video drama of this story.

Teach them the truth about totalitarianism and communism through books such as these.

Listen to Real-Life Stories

If you know someone who grew up in a former communist country or who has escaped from a country like China or Cuba, invite them to speak to your children. These first-hand accounts can provide a powerful witness.

If you don’t have access to such people, you can find interviews with freedom fighters and survivors online at the Victims of Communism Memorial Witness Project. Here men and women from around the world share the stories of their ordeal and the miseries of life under Marxist governments.

Kitchen Table Learning

Discuss the daily news with your teens, both events abroad and here at home. Turn on the evening news and critique it. Point out that words like “privileged,” “marginalized communities,” “the oppressed,” “gender identity,” and more are all terms associated with the left.

Within the United States are far-left groups that either declare themselves Marxist or follow Marxist precedents. Others conceal themselves under innocuous titles. The Party for Socialism and Liberation, for instance, takes an “old-fashioned” approach to Marxism with its radical support of Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong. Other far-left groups fly under a variety of banners, often seeking these days to forward radical agendas of race and gender. Make your children aware that these groups are rarely concerned about liberty or human rights for all people.

This election year provides the perfect opportunity to compare the platforms and candidates of our political parties. Make the most of this opportunity to teach your children about the issues debated and how they reflect on such concepts as freedom, collectivism, and tradition.

The Best Antidote of All

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Teach those words from our Declaration of Independence to your children. Explain that no government can grant or take away their unalienable rights, that they are a core part of what it means to be human.

Teach your children about the men and women who built this country, who fought against injustice where they found it and who loved freedom. Teach them early on the stories of American explorers, scientists, soldiers, poets, and all the others whose work and sacrifices gave us the privileges we enjoy today.

Teach them that liberty and its many benefits demand responsibility. Do not let them confuse, as so many do today, liberty with license. Liberty means having the freedom to do the right thing, not simply to do as we wish. Responsibility implies duty, the obligation to be accountable for our actions, and to step up when necessary and defend our rights as a free people.

Do these things with love, and the torch of American liberty will never be extinguished.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/4-ways-inoculate-your-children-against-marxism

Carlyle to buy Baxter's kidney-care spinoff Vantive for $3.8 billion

 Buyout firm Carlyle Group struck a deal to acquire Baxter’s kidney-care unit Vantive for $3.8 billion, the companies said on Tuesday.

The proceeds from the deal, which is expected to close by early 2025, will help medical-device maker Baxter reduce its debt pile. Baxter, which paid down about $2.8 billion of debt last year after divesting its biopharma unit, had long-term debt of $13.8 billion at the end of 2023.

In 2022, Baxter started exploring options for its kidney-care units after completing its $10.5-billion takeover of medical-equipment maker Hill-Rom. It began the process of carving out Vantive early in 2023.

“Vantive is a strong, growing business with market-leading franchises, and we are delighted to partner with the Vantive team to pursue their strategic vision through the separation from Baxter and transformation into a standalone global business,” said Robert Schmidt, Carlyle’s global co-head of healthcare.

Atmas Health, a healthcare investment platform that was formed by Carlyle in 2022, partnered with the firm on the deal for Vantive.

Baxter’s kidney-care operations generated about $4.5 billion in revenue last year and have more than 23,000 employees.

“This transaction is the right step at the right time for Baxter, capping off a robust process we started in early 2023,” said Baxter CEO Joe Almeida.

The Wall Street Journal reported Carlyle's talks to acquire the Vantive unit in July.

Private-equity dealmaking has rebounded this year as buyout firms have deployed more capital, after a spike in financing costs last year had triggered a slowdown. Global leveraged-buyout volumes jumped 41% to $286 billion during the first half of 2024, according to Dealogic.

Carlyle, which is one of the world's leading buyout firms with $435 billion of assets under management, has been an active acquirer and seller of assets this year.

In July, Carlyle teamed up with KKR to clinch a deal for a $10-billion student loan book from Discover Financial Services.

Carlyle is exploring a sale of StandardAero that could value the U.S. aircraft maintenance services provider at about $10 billion, Reuters has reported.

Perella Weinberg Partners, JPMorgan and Sullivan & Cromwell advised Baxter on the deal. Barclays, Goldman Sachs and Kirkland & Ellis advised Carlyle.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/carlyle-buy-baxters-kidney-care-110430517.html

US to expand bird-flu testing of beef in slaughterhouses

 The U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Tuesday it will expand bird-flu testing of beef entering the food supply as part of its response to the ongoing outbreak among dairy cattle, adding that U.S. beef and dairy products remain safe to consume.

USDA officials, in a call with reporters along with staff from other U.S. health agencies, said the tests will begin in mid-September and urged livestock workers to remain vigilant.

Nearly 200 herds in 13 U.S. states have contracted bird flu since March after the virus jumped from wild birds to cows, according to USDA data.

The USDA in May tested 109 beef samples from dairy cows sent to slaughter and found bird flu virus particles in one cow's tissue sample. Older dairy cattle are often slaughtered for ground beef.

The expanded testing will continue for the rest of the year, and will focus on beef from dairy cows, said Emilio Esteban, USDA's under secretary for food safety.

Eric Deeble, deputy under secretary for marketing and regulatory programs, said the USDA is confident with the current level of bird-flu testing conducted by the nation's dairy farmers.

"I do feel that the response is adequate," he said.

The Food and Drug Administration is talking with states about the plausibility of additional nationwide raw milk testing, said Steve Grube, chief medical officer of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

Colorado implemented mandatory weekly milk testing for dairy farmers on July 22 and has since detected 10 additional positive herds in the state.

Farm workers remain at risk of bird-flu infections so long as the virus circulates among livestock, said Nirav Shah, principal deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Thirteen poultry and dairy workers have contracted bird flusince April, according to the CDC.

The CDC is working on expanding its surveillance wastewater testing to H5 viruses in advance of the fall and winter flu season, Shah said.

https://www.aol.com/news/us-expand-bird-flu-testing-160324497.html