AwesomeCapital

Tuesday, September 9, 2025

The BLS Blows It Again!

When President Donald Trump tapped economist EJ Antoni to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the elites in Washington clucked their thick tongues. Antoni might have a doctorate in economics, but he’s not “widely recognized”! He’s tweeted some things that turned out wrong! Worse still, he seems to like Trump!

But on Friday, the BLS proved once again why it is in desperate need of an overhaul by an outsider such as Antoni.

When it released its monthly jobs report on Friday, the BLS said the economy had created 22,000 jobs in August – a weak number that generated countless headlines.

But who knows what the actual number is? These days, you could throw a dart at a wall while blindfolded and be as accurate as this agency.

In each monthly report, the BLS revises the previous two months’ numbers as additional data come in.

You’d think that these revisions would be rather small, given the massive size of the survey it conducts each month – more than 100,000 businesses and government agencies.

You’d be wrong.

The chart below shows the initial report, and the subsequent revisions, since the November elections. Does this look like the work of top professionals?

The BLS revised its job number for July up by 8%, and that was as close as it’s been for months.

While the BLS initially said that 147,000 jobs had been created in June, it whacked that back by 133,000 in its first revision, and by another 27,000 in its latest revision.

So, instead of a gain of 147,000 jobs, it turns out the economy lost 13,000 jobs in June. The BLS was off in its initial estimate by 108%!

For May, the BLS said the economy gained 139,000. Then, in its first revision, it increased that to 144,000. But in its second revision, it put the gain at a mere 19,000. How is that even possible?

So far this year, the BLS has claimed the economy created 483,000 jobs that later turned out not to exist.

This isn’t a new problem. As we noted in this space last month, the BLS has an absolutely abysmal track record when it comes to accurately reporting the number of jobs gained or lost in a given month (here’s the chart we ran).

But while the initial estimates make headlines, the subsequent – often massive – revisions get ignored.

During the latter part of the Biden administration, the BLS wildly exaggerated job growth month after month, which it then sharply downgraded in later reports. Many, including us, reasonably began to wonder if its mistakes were politically motivated. Every month, President Joe Biden would brag about strong job gains, only to have the BLS quietly erase most of them in its later revisions.

It’s still possible that politics is playing a role in how those allegedly pure and unbiased number crunchers at the BLS make their estimates.

But it’s looking more and more like plain old incompetence.

Except in the case of the BLS, it’s rising to the level of malfeasance because its initial jobs reports can have ripple effects throughout the economy.

The “widely respected” economists who’ve been running the BLS can’t or won’t fix this glaring – and worsening – problem. So why not give Antoni a shot? Things could hardly get worse.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/09/08/the-bls-blows-it-again/

Who Runs the Executive Branch?

by John Hinderaker

Under Article II of the Constitution, the President is the executive branch. But over the years, Congress has tried to limit the power of the President by establishing a number of “independent” agencies–the SEC, the FDIC, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, and so on. In many cases, Congress has purported to limit the President’s ability to fire employees of those “independent” agencies, even though they are part of the executive branch and nominally under his control.

Democrats like this arrangement, since the agencies are staffed overwhelmingly by Democrats. They have served to undermine every Republican president of the last generation. Until now, Republican Presidents have generally put up with the fact that they do not effectively control the executive branch, but President Trump has moved to assert his proper constitutional authority in several ways.

Most notably, in February he issued an executive order which we wrote about here. It asserted, in several ways, his authority over the “independent” agencies. He has also fired a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve for cause, and, more importantly, he has fired other executive branch officials without cause, as should be his prerogative under Article II.

This has given rise to the vitally important case of Slaughter v. Trump. Rebecca Slaughter was a Federal Trade Commissioner. President Trump fired her without asserting any “cause,” even though the Federal Trade Commission Act says that a Commissioner can be removed by the President only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” The administration takes the position–correctly, I think–that this limitation on the President’s control of the executive branch is unconstitutional.

Slaughter sued Trump, and D.C. District Judge Loren AliKhan, a Biden appointee–to be fair, one with a distinguished academic record–ruled in Slaughter’s favor and granted an injunction barring the President from firing her and requiring other FTC commissioners to treat her as one of their own.

The case went to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, which denied the government’s emergency motion to stay the District Court’s order pending appeal. In one sense, that decision was easy: two of the three appellate judges who heard the case at this stage pointed out that in the famous case of Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935), the Supreme Court specifically upheld the “for cause” requirement of the Federal Trade Commission Act. So what is left to argue about?

Circuit Court Judge Neomi Rao wrote a spirited dissent, in which she pointed out that Humphrey’s Executor, a case so narrowed by more recent Supreme Court precedent that many doubt its ongoing validity, has not prevented the current Supreme Court from staying other recent District Court orders that seek to limit the President’s control of the executive branch. Those Supreme Court cases, Rao argued, are the most relevant precedents.

It turns out that Rao was right, insofar as she predicted what the current Court would make of this case, at this point in its procedural history. Earlier today, the Supreme Court issued a one-paragraph order, signed by Chief Justice John Roberts, staying Judge AliKhan’s order, and thus vindicating Judge Rao’s dissent.

What does it all mean? Recently, Justice Brett Kavanaugh has said publicly that the Supreme Court is issuing such laconic orders because it does not want to prejudge the merits of the case that ultimately will come before it. That position is sensible. It is hard not to notice, however, that the Trump administration has an excellent record in cases that have come before the Supreme Court, albeit, for obvious reasons, in their early stages.

What is being teed up here is, ultimately, an epic battle between Congress and the President. Democrats are on the side of Congress, mostly because Congress has, in turn, ceded power to the Administrative State, which is overwhelmingly Democratic but which, as Professor Philip Hamburger among others has persuasively argued, is essentially unconstitutional. Republicans are now mostly on the President’s side, because the current President is a Republican, and because they have seen how the Administrative State has become a permanent and unaccountable fourth branch of government.

Of all the battles to which the Trump administration has given rise, this one may, in the end, be the most important.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/09/who-runs-the-executive-branch.php

No Lives Matter (Unless Democrats Can Exploit Them)

George Floyd was a saint, probably better than you could ever even imagine being, a wonderful father, and was murdered by police because he was black. OK, none of that is true. George Floyd was a junkie criminal who died of a drug overdose in police custody, and the best thing he ever did for his daughter was live far away from her so she didn’t have to see her addict, criminal father steal her toys to sell for drugs. Which version do you believe says everything about your politics? If it’s the latter, you’re likely a conservative; if it’s the former, you’re probably an idiot.

On whichever side you fall, the reality is that Floyd’s death was a political opportunity of a generation for the Democrats. If you cut out the drugs and the passing off of counterfeit money, the violence, and all the other crimes, you have a wonderful man there. Of course, George was not a wonderful man; he was a bad one who died because he took too many drugs and didn’t tell the police who were arresting him that he had ingested them. It’s pretty simple.

Now he’s a mural, an abstract idea where Democrats project only good thoughts and ideals onto, ignoring the reality that they’d call the police themselves if they’d seen him walking down the street in their neighborhood. For all the “Black Lives Matter” talk, if any of those people raising money or virtue signaling off his memory had given a single damn about him while he had a life to matter, he likely wouldn’t have died of an overdose.

Hell, if any of those liberals cared beyond Floyd being a weapon, he may well have been a productive member of society who could live with, or at least near, his daughter.

Iryna Zarutska was a productive member of society, as much as any 23-year-old can be. If a junkie’s life, after decades of bad, deliberate choices, mattered, Iryna’s life mattered too. Even more.

But you aren’t allowed to say that. Left-wing media outlets lined up staff to tattoo George Floyd’s likeness on their lower backs, but couldn’t bring themselves to mention Zarutska because of her skin color. While attractive white girls being murdered usually lead to wall-to-wall coverage by the media, if the perpetrator is black, it doesn’t rate at all. It’s not that it doesn’t fit the liberal narrative; it’s that it is the exact opposite of the narrative.

The reality is it is far more common for people of any color to be victims of crime by people who look like they do. But when you move outside that truth, the data becomes wildly inconvenient for Democrats and the narrative of victimhood and racism they pretend is real life. Anything that reflects that reality is ignored; it has to be.

Euphemisms are tossed around like “teens” to describe a mob beating people or looting, but don’t ever expect to solve a problem if you can’t explain it. Now, news stories are omitting any description of suspects, making informing the public to be on the lookout for “a human” the new norm. What could go wrong?

You only let things get to this point if sane, rational actions are counter to your best interests, and they are to Democrats. There is no circumstance under which truth or reality favors Democrats.

Illinois Governor Fat Bastard, JB Pritzker, is all over liberal networks (too scared to talk to the other half of the country) insisting “crime is worse in red states!” He doesn’t have to worry about it being pointed out that the states of Tennessee and Missouri are, in fact, red, but Memphis and St. Louis, for example, are deep blue and have been run for the entirety of the walking cholesterol Governor’s life by members of his own party.

Facts don’t matter to the left any more than the lives of any configuration of human beings do.

The whole “Black Lives Matter” was a brilliant marketing scheme – a real estate play that paid off well for anyone lucky enough to suckle at the teat of corporate America. The milk is gone, but mentality is not. Now, however, the emperor has no clothes – people not only aren’t falling for it anymore, they aren’t interested in the concept. Black Chicagoans are sick of attending funerals that Democrat politicians use as sets for campaign speeches. And all Americans can look at the murder of a white girl as the horror it is, while being sickened by the idea that a mentally defective monster with a violent arrest record longer than Pritzker’s belt was on the streets to do it.

We need a new accountability in America, where politicians feel the wrath of their poisonous policy prescriptions and judges face consequences for their political rulings. There is a large enough body of evidence to show these are not unintended consequences, but the end and obvious result of deliberate actions with indifference toward the outcomes. Voters need to be protected not only from rabid thugs and mentally defective sociopaths, but from the political and prosecutorial class that empowers them.

Derek Hunter is the host of the Derek Hunter Show on WMAL in Washington, DC, and has a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be.

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2025/09/09/no-lives-matter-unless-democrats-can-exploit-them-n2662952

Detained South Korean workers to depart U.S. on Wednesday, Yonhap says

South Korean workers detained in an immigration raid last week in the U.S. state of Georgia will depart from the U.S. around 1430 local time (1830 GMT) on Wednesday, Yonhap news agency said, citing an unidentified diplomatic source.

South Korea's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet South Korea's Foreign Minister Cho Hyun on Wednesday at the White House, the U.S. Department of State said.

South Korea had arranged for a chartered plane to bring back about 300 workers detained in the raid at the site of the $4.3 billion Hyundai Motor and LG Energy Solution project to build batteries for electric cars.

Before leaving for Washington on Monday, Cho said he planned to work with the U.S. to prevent a repeat of similar incidents and was seeking assurances that Koreans who return home would be allowed to re-enter the U.S..

In a social media post on Sunday, Trump said the U.S. would make it "quickly and legally possible" for foreign companies to bring their staff into the country if they respected U.S. immigration laws.

When asked about the comment and what changes it might signal for the U.S. visa system, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt reiterated Trump's message and noted that the U.S. government was working on the matter.

"The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Commerce are working on this matter together," she told a news conference on Tuesday.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/detained-south-korean-workers-depart-003857508.html

Wearable Devices Launches Neural Control Wristband, Expands to Military Market

Wearable Devices (NASDAQ:WLDS) reported its H1 2025 financial results, marking its commercial debut with the Mudra Link wristband. The company generated revenues of $294,000 from B2C sales and B2B collaborations, though this represents a decrease from $394,000 in H1 2024. Net loss improved to $3.7 million ($2.3 per share) compared to $4.2 million ($16.52 per share) in H1 2024.

Key developments include launching Mudra Link for Android devices, expanding into Japan through a partnership with Media Exceed, releasing updates for Mac/Windows users, and initiating a military project for touchless neural control systems. The company also strengthened its patent portfolio in neural interface capabilities and gesture recognition technology.

https://www.stocktitan.net/news/WLDS/wearable-devices-announces-first-half-2025-financial-zpxlvftjarit.html

US health secretary says on Fox News vaccines won't be taken away

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Fox News' "Special Report with Bret Baier" on Tuesday that President Donald Trump's administration will make no change that will take vaccines away from people if they want them.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/us-health-secretary-says-fox-233346627.html

Wikipedia accused of censoring page on murder of Ukrainian refugee at hands of career criminal

Wikipedia has faced furious accusations of censorship after alleged attempts to delete a page on the killing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska by a homeless career criminal on board a train in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Outrage erupted on social media on Monday as multiple conservative influencers shared screengrabs suggesting the site’s editors were trying to take down a page detailing the 23-year-old’s grisly death at the hands of suspect Decarlos Brown Jr. on Aug. 22.

“The left is cancelling Iryna Zarutska for the crime of embarrassing them by dying,” wrote Tara Servatius, host of “The Tara Show” on 98.9 WORD FM, a radio station covering the Carolinas and north Georgia.

“People who die due to Democrat crime or open borders policies are always cancelled. It’s the penalty for embarrassing the party,” she wrote in a post on X, featuring a screengrab of a Wikipedia page titled “Killing of Iryna Zarutska.”

The grab shows a notice at the top of the page reading, “An editor has nominated this article for deletion.”

“Wikipedia editors looking to memory hole the killing of Iryna Zarutska,” wrote Washington Free Beacon and former Post journalist Jon Levine on X.

“She was 23, stabbed to death on a Charlotte train by a man with 14 prior arrests. The system kept turning him loose, and she ended up dead. Now, instead of confronting that failure, the media stays quiet and Wikipedia tries to scrub her name,” wrote Malaysia-based influencer Ian Miles Cheong on X.

“It is deliberate censorship. They would rather delete her existence than admit the system killed her.”

Wikipedia did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

The article on Zarutska’s killing remained live as of Tuesday afternoon, but made no mention of the suspect’s name, due to the website’s restrictions on reporting during live cases.

Zarutska’s death sparked a nationwide conversation about crime and safety in US cities, after the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) published chilling video showing the moments before the fatal stabbing.

President Trump on Monday described the suspect Brown as “evil” and said the country must confront violent crime.

“There are evil people and we have to confront that,” Trump said, speaking at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC.

“We have to be able to handle that. If we don’t handle that, we don’t have a country.”

Many leading figures in the Trump administration, including deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, have pointed to the attack in a blue-run city as evidence Democrats are “soft on crime.”

Charlotte’s Mayor Vi Lyles drew outcry over her initial comments on the killing, which did not name Zarutska, and stressed the mental illness of the suspect.

Her statement, which she later rowed back on Monday, was attacked by many, including city council members.

“I believe that was a mistake made by our mayor, but I don’t believe that’s where her heart was for the situation, and I wish she would have thought through that a little more,” City Councilman Edwin Peacock told NewsNation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Report” Monday.

Brown, who was charged with first-degree murder, is currently undergoing a 60-day medical evaluation to determine whether he is fit to stand trial.

https://nypost.com/2025/09/09/us-news/wikipedia-accused-of-censoring-ukrainian-refugee-iryna-zarutskas-killing/

Search This Blog

Tuesday, September 9, 2025