Dearest Couples. DEI Declines. Soaring Deficits. Chinese Farmland Spying. More.

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Over my entire life I always connect with at least one but generally no more than 2 couples with whom we are very compatible because they are special. Because the Landings is such a unique place our "favorite couple list" has a significant second level.

The Bourland's and Bodziner's are the 2 we are the closest to and the above pictures depict a trip we took on The French Country Waterway canal barges several years ago with the Bourland's. 

Charlie loves to record dining experiences and is a world class family biographer. He has worked closely with our equally experienced editor daughter, Lisa.

In fact, Charlie and Susanna know most  all our family members as do the Bodziner's.  Being an only child, it is amazing our entire family now numbers 30 and a great grandchild (our 5th) will soon bring us to 31 and we still have Henry and Jessica who want children.

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Progressive, neo-Marxist stupidity is starting to be curtailed.
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Recruiting For Diversity Is Cut Back

Minority students worry about effect on searches for jobs in tight market

By Kaily Rhone

White-collar companies that once championed programs to recruit diverse employees are now tiptoeing away from them.

PricewaterhouseCoopers and JPMorgan Chase are among those that recently removed or altered descriptions of their programs for underrepresented students. The shift came after an “anti-woke” movement took aim at U.S. companies and a Supreme Court decision overturned affirmative action in college admissions.

Employers’ embrace of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives peaked in 2021, sparked by the death of George Floyd and the height of the Black Lives Matter movement a year earlier. 

In the years since, access to diversity programs has been slowly declining, a Glassdoor study in April found.

Companies have made the changes quietly, often by playing down terminology such as “DEI” and opening up programs once reserved for diverse applicants to everyone. Many stopped referencing their DEI programs in annual reports altogether, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

Minority students are concerned about what the cutback means for their future in an already tight job market.

As an undergrad, Chad Fuselier, 24 years old, remembers searching on job sites such as Glassdoor and LinkedIn for postings that referenced “diversity programs” or “Black students.” That helped him land an internship through a program at PwC.

Similar searches today yield fewer results, said Fuselier, now a second-year law student at the University of Florida. He has an internship at KPMG this summer that wasn’t part of a diversity program.

Accounting firm PwC’s well-known Start internship program, which accepted only “traditionally underrepresented” minority applicants for years, removed that requirement last fall. The program’s description now says it encourages students of diverse backgrounds to apply. PwC declined to comment.

Consulting firm McKinsey & Co. in May removed “self-identify as a member of a historically underrepresented group” from a list of attributes ideal candidates should possess for its sophomore summer business-analyst program.

McKinsey said the program is designed to expose historically underrepresented groups to management consulting and is one of many diversity recruiting programs it maintains.

Law firm Kirkland & Ellis now clarifies that its diversity and inclusion fellowship is open to all second-year law students, regardless of their backgrounds.

 JPMorgan Chase has done the same for its Black and Hispanic & Latino fellowship programs, adding that all sophomore students regardless of their background are welcome to apply.

JPMorgan said it remains committed to a workforce with diverse backgrounds and perspectives. Kirkland & Ellis declined to comment.

Law firm King & Spalding no longer notes “the best talent is diverse in many ways” on the description of its diversity fellowships as it once did. The firm didn’t respond to a request for comment.

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On Tuesday, June 18, 2024, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its updated budget projections for fiscal years (FY) 2024-2034. This is an update to its February baseline.

CBO now projects that deficit spending for FY24 will reach a staggering $1.9 trillion, an estimate that is $400 billion higher than CBO predicted just four months earlier. This is the third highest annual deficit in American history.

A key driver of this increase is the Biden Administration’s use of executive actions. 138 executive actions have been issued over the past three years and five months, costing more than $2 trillion. Over a third of the increase in CBO’s deficit projection for FY24 is the direct result of President Biden’s unilateral cancelation of student loans earlier this year.

A recent Wall Street Journal editorial argues that the updated baseline offers a reality check. Spending is the real problem, and it’s getting worse.

I have been warning, for years, there would come a serious day when the American economy would reach a point that would impact the nation's entire future and limit our options.  We are now past that date. 

We no longer even have funds to defend our nation as social spending, interest rates absorb more of our GDP.

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Soaring U.S. Debt Is a Spending Problem

By The Editorial Board

“You may have heard that the 2017 GOP tax cuts blew a giant hole in the federal budget—or so Democrats tell voters. The Congressional Budget Office’s revised 10-year budget forecast out Tuesday offers a reality check. Spending is the real problem, and it’s getting worse.”

“CBO projects that this year’s budget deficit will clock in at roughly $2 trillion, some $400 billion more than it forecast in February and $300 billion larger than last year’s deficit. This is unprecedented when the economy is growing and defense spending is nearly flat. The deficit this fiscal year will be 7% of GDP, which is more than during some recessions.”

“CBO says deficits will stay nearly this high for years, and the total over the next decade is now expected to total $21.9 trillion compared to $19.8 trillion in its February forecast. Debt held by the public will grow to 122.4% of GDP in 2034 from 97.3% last year.”

"Notably, CBO’s revenue projections are little changed. Revenue is expected to total 17.2% of GDP this year—roughly the 50-year average before the pandemic, as the nearby chart shows. But CBO significantly revised up projections for federal spending. Outlays are now expected to hit 24.2% of GDP this year and average 24% over the next decade. Wow.”

“Not so President Biden’s latest plans for student-loan debt transfer to taxpayers, which CBO estimates could cost $211 billion this year above what it estimated in February. This is on top of the hundreds of billions of dollars in student debt that Mr. Biden has already written down in part with his SAVE plan, which turns loans into de facto grants.”

“Spending on Affordable Care Act subsidies and Medicaid is also exceeding earlier projections owing to higher enrollment. CBO increased its ACA spending estimate by $22 billion for this year and $244 billion over the next decade. It also raised its ACA enrollment projection by four million for this year and an average of three million over the next 10 years.”

“That’s because the Inflation Reduction Act’s sweetened subsidies and a Biden Administration regulatory change increased eligibility for subsidies. CBO also notes that the recent surge in immigration—migrants qualify for premium tax credits—has boosted enrollment. The result: ACA subsidies this year will cost more than double pre-pandemic projections.”

“The end of the pandemic emergency was expected to cause Medicaid enrollment to plunge. That hasn’t happened, in part because Democratic-run states have been slow to remove able-bodied adults who are no longer eligible. CBO has thus increased its forecast for Medicaid spending by $50 billion in 2024 and $314 billion over the next decade.”

“Entitlement spending—which now includes student loans—is growing at a pace that is fiscally unsustainable. Financing these programs has also become more expensive owing to higher interest rates, which CBO also projects will need to stay higher for longer in order to subdue inflation. Spending on interest is now expected to be $1.02 trillion next year, exceeding $964 billion for defense.”

“CBO’s budget forecasts are getting progressively uglier, but it’s not because Americans aren’t paying their fair share in taxes. If spending as a share of GDP remained at the pre-pandemic average, the deficit would be roughly $890 billion this year and $13.4 trillion smaller than CBO’s 10-year projection. This would keep debt as a share of GDP at roughly 90%.”

“Mr. Biden’s plan is to raise taxes by $5 trillion or more, which would put the overall federal tax burden above 20% of GDP, which is close to the highest in peacetime. That still won’t finance Mr. Biden’s spending ambitions, which will continue to cost trillions in future years even if he loses the election.”

"Mr. Trump says he wants to renew and maybe expand the Trump tax cuts, and the best way to finance that is by repealing the Biden spending blowouts in the Inflation Reduction Act, student-loan write-offs and pandemic-era welfare expansions. Failing to take on that challenge means either a monumental tax increase or a debt panic down the road.”

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Bibi has always maintained Hamas could be totally destroyed as a functioning Islamist Terrorist military entity.

The IDF now is actively rebuking Bibi' assertion and has concluded Hamas can't be destroyed.

I myself have generally sided with the IDF because Hamas is supported by Palestinians who are more than willing to fill it's ranks as the IDF repeatedly thins them. Granted the IDF can, overtime , eliminate senior Hamas leadership  which will assuredly weaken it's power. However, as long as Palestinians walk the earth, Hamas will continue to exist.

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Map shows Chinese-owned farmland next to 19 US military bases in ‘alarming’ threat to national security: experts

By Mary K. Jacob 

China has been buying up strategically placed farmland next to military installations across the US, raising national security fears over potential espionage or even sabotage.

The Post has identified 19 bases across the US from Florida to Hawaii which are in close proximity to land bought up by Chinese entities and could be exploited by spies working for the communist nation.

They include some of the military’s most strategically important bases: Fort Liberty (formerly Fort Bragg) in Fayetteville, North Carolina; Fort Cavazos (formerly Fort Hood) in Killeen, Texas; Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego, California, and MacDill air force base in Tampa, Florida.

Robert S. Spalding III, a retired United States Air Force brigadier general whose work focuses US-China relations told The Post: “It is concerning due to the proximity to strategic locations

“These locations can be used to set up intelligence collection sites and the owners can be influential in local politics as we have seen in the past,” he added.

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“It is alarming we do not have laws on the books that would prevent the Chinese from buying property in the US.”

Under the guise of farming, the Chinese landowners could set up reconnaissance sights, install tracking technology, use radar and infra-red scanning to view bases or attempt to fly drones over them as ways to surveil military sites, sources told The Post.

A report in the Wall Street Journal from September 2023 found Chinese intruders attempted to breach military facilities over 100 times in recent years, including sneaking onto a missile range in New Mexico and scuba divers spotted near a government rocket-launch site in Florida.

The threat the Chinese government poses to America is huge, with the FBI labelling it a “grave threat” and director Christopher Wray saying in April hackers have made their way into US critical infrastructure and are waiting “for just the right moment to deal a devastating blow” and “physically wreak havoc.”

Brigadier General Robert S. Spalding III, formerly of the United States Air Force. US Air Force

Corbis via Getty Images

The Department of Homeland Security has also warned of the threat of Chinese spies slipping over the US Southern border, disguised as among the more than 30,000 who have already been admitted this since October last year. Those spies will likely “employ economic espionage” and “seek to illicitly acquire our technologies and intellectual property” according to DHS’s Homeland Threat Assessment 2024.

Morgan Lerette, a former contractor for private military contractor Blackwater is sounding the alarm.

“The Chinese are, or will, use this farmland to learn more about US military capabilities, movements, and technology,” Lerette told The Post.

“This will allow them to better understand how to transition their military from a defensive strategy to an expeditionary one,” he said, adding they’ll figure out “how to move forces quickly for conflicts such as taking Taiwan and how and when US forces would respond to their incursions based on troop movement at these bases,” he explained.

He added China will be watching troop movements into and out of bases in an attempt to form an idea of the patterns of behavior and movements.

Morgan Lerette, a former contractor for private military contractor Blackwater, is raising the alarm about Chinese interests buying up US farmland. 

“It would allow the Chinese to research what is moving and how to combat it. It’s easy to identify mobilization if you know what to look for.”

Lerette cited specific examples: “Listening to GIs at a bar talking … Local storage units being rented out near a base is an indicator troops are leaving.

“A train carrying tanks, Strykers [armored fighting vehicles], and [Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles], followed by an increased number of cargo planes landing and leaving a joint base like Lewis-McChord in Washington state, would indicate when US forces are moving,” all of which is invaluable military knowledge.

According to the latest analysis from the Farm Service Agency of the USDA, Chinese investors owned 349,442 acres of US farmland as of December 31, 2022.

One of the biggest investors in Texas is secretive billionaire Sun Guangxin, who has deep ties to the communist party and spent an estimated $110 million buying up land next to Laughlin Air Force Base in Val Verde County, a training ground for military pilots.

Farmland with cows 

Chinese billionaires and companies tied to the country’s communist government have been buying up US farmland at an alarming pace. This picture shows an area in North Dakota. TANNEN MAURY/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Although no overt evidence of spying by Guangxin’s companies, which use the land as a wind farm, has emerged the state’s republicans have raised the alarm.

Senator Ted Cruz, speaking in relation to the project, told Forbes: “The Chinese Communist Party has demonstrated time and again they’re willing to invest billions of dollars to expand their espionage capabilities and their global reach, including through land purchase schemes near military bases.”  

Fufeng Group, a Shandong, China-based company that specializes in flavor enhancers and sugar substitutes, purchased 300 acres of farmland 40 miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota, in 2022.

Billionaire and Chinese Communist Party member Chen Tianqiao is the second-largest foreign owner of farmland in the US. He bought nearly 200,000 acres of farmland in Oregon in 2015 at about $430 an acre, according to the Land Report.

However, his purchase of the acreage did not appear in government records of land ownership by foreign investors when it was first revealed in January,  according to the Daily Caller.

Chinese holdings total under one percent of foreign-owned agricultural land in the US, per NBC, but its the proximity to critical military installations which raises concerns, critics have charged.

An aerial view of a proposed factory site for the Fufeng group in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The factory was later abandoned after local pushback, but the company still owns 300 acres of farmland Google Earth

For example, Fort Liberty in North Carolina, for example, is surrounded by Chinese-owned farmland within a 30-mile radius.

In a move acknowledging these security risks, a Chinese-backed cryptocurrency mining firm was barred from owning land in Wyoming in May by the Biden administration.

MineOne Partners, a firm partly backed by Chinese nationals, was told to move equipment from less than one miles from F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, saying it was a “national security risk,” per the Air Force Times.  

Potential espionage attempts by Chinese operatives have prompted the Defense Department, FBI, and other agencies to heighten their investigations on so-called “gate-crashers” attempting to breach US military installations.

According to the Wall Street Journal report, the incidents largely appear designed to test security practices, officials explained.

Troops marching at Fort Liberty 

Troops from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Liberty in North Carolina, the largest military base in the US and one of the largest in the world. Andrew Craft / USA TODAY NETWORK

US-China tensions also spiked in early 2023 after a Chinese surveillance balloon flew over the mainland.

The FBI has previously warned: “The Chinese government is engaged in a broad, diverse campaign of theft and malign influence without regard to laws or international norms that the FBI will not tolerate.”

At Fort Wainwright, Alaska, home to the Army’s 11th Airborne Division, a group of Chinese nationals attempted to push past guards, claiming they had hotel reservations on base.

In New Mexico, officials reported repeated cases of Chinese nationals taking pictures at a US Army range after straying from nearby White Sands National Park, according to WSJ.

Chinese nationals have also used drones to enhance their surveillance efforts. Key West, Florida, has seen repeated incidents at an intelligence center, where Chinese ‘tourists’ were found swimming near the military facility and snapping photos.

In 2020, three Chinese citizens were sentenced to prison after illegally entering the naval air station there, either walking around the fence or driving in and ignoring orders to turn back, the WSJ reported.

troops exiting an aircraft 

US troops arriving at Fort Cavazos, formerly known as Fort Hood, in Killeen, Texas Getty Images

Meanwhile, the border has proven an even greater threat to America’s security.

By the end of the 2023 fiscal year, Customs and Border Protection officials apprehended 24,048 Chinese citizens at the border with Mexico, they revealed. That number is more than 12 times the 1,970 arrests in the previous fiscal year.

“They are a communist dictatorship no different from the [Soviet Union], except they have been integrated into the global economic system.

“This makes them even more dangerous than the USSR because of their political influence,” Spalding added.

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Dear Dick, New reports this week revealed Iran is significantly expanding its Fordow nuclear enrichment plant, which could triple the site's production of enriched uranium, giving Tehran new options  for quickly assembling a nuclear arsenal.  International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors confirmed Iran’s construction inside  Fordow as well as plans for expanding production at its main enrichment plant, Natanz.  At Fordow alone, the expansion could allow Iran to accumulate several bombs’ worth of  nuclear fuel every month. According to David Albright, a nuclear weapons expert and head  of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, "Iran would achieve  a capability to breakout quickly, in a deeply buried facility, a capability it has never had before." U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies are also looking into new reports regarding computer modeling used by Iranian scientists for the research and development of nuclear weapons.  Crippling economic pressure, creative diplomacy, and a credible threat of force must  all be utilized to ensure the regime never obtains a nuclear weapon. This week, Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ)  led a bipartisan letter calling on the Biden administration to implement new sanctions on Iranian petroleum and to fully implement the SHIP Act and the Iran-China Energy Sanctions  Act. 38 other House members joined the letter, which states, “Iran’s export regime has allowed  them to raise significant revenue, allowing the distribution of funds to Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran’s other anti-American and anti-Israel terrorist proxies. The Hamas attack on October 7th would not have occurred without Iranian backing.” Sincerely,  Alisha Tischler, AIPAC ++++