Category: Macroeconomics

Why Medical Expenses Are Completely Overpriced

4/22/2024

"There is a conspiracy of her prophets in her midst like a roaring lion tearing the prey. They have devoured lives; they have taken treasure and precious things; they have made many widows in the midst of her.
Her priests have done violence to My Law and have profaned My holy things; they have made no distinction between the holy and the common, and they have not taught the difference between the unclean and the clean; and they have closed their eyes from My Sabbaths, and I am defiled among them.
Her leaders within her are like wolves tearing the prey, by shedding blood and destroying lives in order to make dishonest profit.
And her prophets have coated with whitewash for them, seeing false visions and divining lies for them, saying, ‘This is what the Lord God says,’ when the Lord has not spoken.
The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery, and they have oppressed the poor and needy, and have oppressed the stranger without justice."
---Ezekiel 22:25-29

GE Medical Technologies Inc. is the primary worldwide manufacturer of high tech healthcare equipment. The company holds the patent rights on MRI machines, CAT scan equipment, X-ray equipment, and dental machinery, and hospital lab tech equipment. In 2023, GE Medical earned $5.2 Billion USD in revenues and reported a bright outlook for the future.

During their 4th quarter report to shareholders, the company's CFO announced: "I’m extremely proud of our team’s execution in 2023 and our focus on patients and customers as well as the progress we’ve made as a standalone company. We achieved or exceeded our financial and operational objectives we laid out at the beginning of the year." In truth, GE Medical has little or no regard for patients. The company is essentially a monopoly. They engage in racketeering and routinely bribe bureaucrats and public officials to maintain their monopoly status.

MONEY LENDERS HAVE POISONED THE MARKET
Aside from a few loss leaders, every product GE Medical manufactures is grossly over-priced. Their MRI machines for example cost less than $2,500 USD to manufacture. On average, GE Medical sells those machines to hospitals, HMOs , and specialty care facilities for over $500,000 GBP each. Their executives mark the prices up over 20000% because they can. They have politicians and bureaucrats are in their back pockets, and their senior executives collude with insurance industry executives.

The healthcare industry is a close-knit community. GE Medical's chairman sits on the Board of Directors of fourteen different companies. Two of those are medical supply companies and three are insurance companies (Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and United Healthcare). The company's CEO sits on the board of Pfizer Pharmaceuticals. Both are invested in Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and United Healthcare. So too are their CFO, their top three sales executives, and their head of research.

Healthcare is the 7th largest industry worldwide in terms of revenues (over $9.1 Billion USD ) and the largest in terms of assets. This wasn't always the case. Fifty years ago, healthcare ranked as the 27th largest industry. In 1971, analysts at Brown Brothers Harriman recognized a slow in population growth in Western industrialized nations and forecast the growth in healthcare expenditures amongst geriatrics. Based on their extrapolations, Brown Brothers Harriman's hedge fund managers began pouring money into insurance companies. Other firms followed suit.

For all intents and purposes, insurance companies are hedge funds. They offer protection against catastrophe and predict the likelihood of catastrophe. They collect premiums from customers, invest those premiums in stocks, bonds, commodities, and futures and pay out a fraction of what they collect.

Over the past fifty years, healthcare has become the most sophisticated insurance product on the market. Insurance companies that specialize in healthcare gather enormous amounts of data on their customers and predict the likelihood of catastrophe for each. Within Western industrialized nations, their executives have deliberately fixed prices within the market to bleed the median household income just below the median household expense threshold. They do this to force consumers into debt.

Nine of the ten largest healthcare insurers are owned by seven of the world's largest banks. Morgan Stanley owns Kaiser Permanente, Anthem is owned by Citigroup, HCSC is owned by Bank of America, UnitedHealth is owned by Barclays, Centene Corp is owned by Wells Fargo, Aetna is owned by Solomon Partners, Guidewell is owned by Goldman Sachs, Highmark is owned by J.P. Morgan, and Humana is owned by RBC. Each of the last ten years, each of these insurers has churned out record profits. Each insurer has also more than doubled premiums over that span.

These same banks have profited from consolidation they themselves have forced within the industry. Each firm manages multiple legal defense funds that back trial attorneys that specialize in injury accidents and malpractice suits. The legal defense funds used to back injury cases are a specialty class of hedge fund known as Fixed Index Price Floats that offer guaranteed yields of at least 11%. The banks target small to medium businesses that fit their portfolios with the cases they back. These types of cases have increased by more than 400% over the last quarter century.

Malpractice suits have increased at a similar rate over the same time period. This increase has been driven by banking pressures. In a push to maximize profits, institutional investors have forced hostile takeovers throughout the industry. Fifty years ago, more than three quarters licensed physicians within Western industrialized nations were self-employed. Today, less a tenth of all physicians own their own practice.

Corporatization within the healthcare industry has been detrimental for patients. Adjusted for inflation, prices have risen tenfold over the past past fifty years. At the same time the level of care has deteriorated. These trends are expected to continue as the industry continues to consolidate.

DELIBERATE PRICE GOUGING
GE Medical's MRI machine is a glaring example of the price gouging that exists throughout the healthcare industry today. The parts and materials used to manufacture their most expensive machines cost less than $1,100 USD to manufacture. The frame is made of fiberglass poly resin, the load bearings are steel, the seat is made of PVC, the scanning equipment consists of infrared sensors, and the circuitry is comparable to an IBM hard drive.

With the exception of the circuit boards, GE Medical's MRI machines are factory assembled and require no more than eight man-hours to complete. The machines have seven circuit boards and a skilled worker can effectively hand-assemble a full set within a single day. The total labor costs required to assemble a machine are less than $700 USD. This includes administrative expenses and worker's benefits.

In 2001, GE Medical's Executive Steering Committee challenged engineers to "redesign the appearance" of their MRI machines to make them "appear futuristic". Committee members believed the change in design would "confound" customers and that they would be willing to "spend more than they were worth." Their Business Development Team spent that afternoon developing a "pitch plan" that included bribes, kickbacks, and untraceable gifts.

In 2007, GE Capital's Healthcare Finance Team unveiled the new design to healthcare executives and secondary suppliers during trade shows and industry conferences. To secure contracts, they even supplied prostitutes and narcotics to a handful of buyers.

In terms of bribes, kickbacks, and illegal activities GE Medical isn't alone. Most pharmaceutical companies employ the same tactics. The same is true with a handful of surgical suppliers including McKesson.

HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS ALSO INFLATE COSTS
On average, GE Medical has manufactured and sold 1000 MRI machines each of the last seven years. Buyers include hospitals, specialty care facilities, HMOs, and a handful of secondary suppliers that cater to the healthcare industry. GE Medical warranties their machines for seven full years.

A typical specialty care facility performs three MRIs per day, a typical hospital five, and a typical HMO seven. The material costs to perform an MRI are around $91.58 USD for specialty care facilities, $54.95 USD for hospitals, and $39.25 USD for HMOs. Despite these relatively affordable costs, patients are typically billed more than $1,000 USD for an MRI. Insurance companies eat most of that cost.

Insurance companies pass much of that cost on to taxpayers. Within the United States for example, Federal, state, and local governments subsidize healthcare insurers with more than $500 Billion USD in aid each of the last seventeen years. That figure jumped to $1.7 Trillion USD in each of the last four, and is forecast to $3.0 by 2027.

Author: Erik Gagnon - Chi Rho Consulting

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The Great Divide

1/10/2022

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If I shut the sky so there is no rain, or if I command the grasshopper to consume the land, or if I send pestilence on my people, and my people, who bear my name, humble themselves, pray and seek my face, and turn from their evil ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.
---2 Chronicles 7:13-14

Ever ask yourself why our public schools are in the toilet? It all began at home.

For the most part, Baby Boomers and Gen Xers forsook their parental responsibilities after the Berlin Wall fell and the U.S.S.R. crumbled. We focused on selfish pursuits and allowed gambling, inebriation, filth, pornography, fornication, and debt to rot away the soul of our nation. We've failed to pass along the oral tradition of our nation's history to our children; and they wallow away in ignorance as a consequence.

The threats of fascism and communism are alive and well; and most Americans under the age of 50 have little or no idea the evil nature of these two beasts. Unless we open our eyes to the cancers we have wrought upon Western civilization, we will lose the blessing of liberty and the freedoms afforded us by the Magna Carta, our Bill of Rights, and the United States Constitution to these scourges.

This article traces how we've enabled Marxist ideologues to resurface and gain momentum. As you read through it, ask yourself: Am I willing to do whatever it takes to stop these authoritarian cancers for the good of the nation?

For the Brave Soldiers Who Fell at Dunkirk
The Battle of Dunkirk marked a turning point for Western Civilization and all of humanity. Before the battle, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had the rug sold out from underneath him by American career politicians and crony capitalists. The Catholic Church played a part in it as well. Western civilization has been in decline ever since.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt deserves much of the blame for this. The fat cat progressive President feasted on American tax dollars while Great Britain’s brave soldiers fought gallantly to preserve freedom and democracy, preventing Nazi Germany’s unholy Third Reich from advancing over the English Channel.

In desperate need of resources and capital to mobilize Great Britain for the war effort, Churchill pleaded with FDR to join the fight against the Nazis for the sake of Western civilization. Roosevelt humiliated the British Prime Minster and denied his request. Thousands of British and French soldiers lost their lives as a result.

FDR was beholden to the elite. The upper crust of American society pandered to Roosevelt so they could bleed the middle class dry during the Great Depression. He and his administration were aligned with a legion of vultures: nihilists backed by big tobacco and gambling syndicates, as well as a consortium of Wall Street robber barons.

Together, FDR and his cronies altered the landscape of the American experience. They birthed the welfare state and gave rise to corporatocracy. They forsook many of our God-given rights to line their own pockets and solidify their oligarchy.

It was a short-sighted scheme. The house of cards they established has been in state of collapse since the end of the Cold War. In the time since, remnants of their oligarchy have covertly sold our nation out to the People's Republic of China as well as interests controlled by the Bilderberg syndicate.

Have I Not Told You
Our public education systems would have you believe that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party were the root of all the evil that gave rise to the Second World War. The wool has been pulled over your eyes if you truly believe this.

World War II was in fact a Holy Crusade of sorts. A battle against an unholy two-headed hydra manipulated by God's true enemy. That hydra is commonly known as Marxism.

Germany's fascist Third Reich was one head of the serpent. Joseph Stalin's communist Soviet Union was the other. Both regimes aimed to destroy Christendom to further their own despotic ambitions.

The seeds of the Second World War were planted at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 when the Treaty of Versailles was ratified. Our Allied representatives allowed their own wrath to get the better of them. They closed the table to their defeated foes. Germany was locked out of the negotiations and forced to accept the terms of the treaty unconditionally.

Additionally, the unholy Communist threat manifesting within the Soviet Union was largely ignored at the Paris Conference as were the growing nationalist movements in the Far East. Both omissions proved fatal after the terms of the treaty were set into stone.

Throughout the Roaring Twenties, the Western Allied powers celebrated excessively as Germany and much of Europe destabilized, Japan militarized, and China engaged in a civil war. The general malaise of that period laid the groundwork for the Second World War and set the stage for the political upheavals we are presently witnessing across Western civilization today.

Sewing the Seeds of Wrath
Allied representatives burdened Germany with costly reparations at the Paris Peace Conference. The newly formed Weimar Republic was required to repay the debt the Allied powers had incurred to defeat the Axis. The treaty also limited Germany's future military production. And with the specter of communism rapidly advancing out of the Soviet Union, this posed a serious threat to the safety and security of the German people.

Before World War I, Germany’s industrial system was a bedrock of the global economy. After the war, it simply could not function. Factories were shuttered, banks foreclosed on loans, and transportation stalled. As a result, Germany's unemployment skyrocketed. This had a ripple effect on economies all throughout Europe.

Men across the continent were stripped of their dignity and their hope. They took to the streets largely because they could not afford to feed their families. Poverty and hunger sparked political uprisings throughout most of Europe; and Satanic political ideologies began to take root outside Soviet Russia. Born from the infantile minds of privileged children who’d gathered in Vienna in the 1880's, Marxism bore fruit all over the continent and quickly spread across the globe.

Sensing that a second global conflict was inevitable, moneylenders drew wise to the volatile situation and hedged their lending. In parallel, unscrupulous speculators stockpiled precious materials and tilted the markets in their favor. This triggered what is known today as the Great Depression.

Burgeoning Marxist movements metastasized throughout Europe during this period: most notably in Russia, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Adolph Hitler’s National Socialist Democratic Party was among them.

The Austrian-born Hitler was of Jewish heritage. He resented his father and found Marxist economic theories appealing. That said, he despised Communist leadership principles and abhorred religion. In league with the devil, he set about to transform Germany and all of Europe under an authoritarian dictatorship guided by Marxist economic principles.

The battle between the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions within the Russian Empire during the First World War gave birth to another insidious Marxist movement. That maniacal struggle unseated Tzar Nicholas II; and the Bolshevik's victory produced the Soviet Communist Party under Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky's leadership

After Lenin passed away in 1924, the U.S.S.R. endured a bloody reign of terror under Joseph Stalin that cost an estimated 20MM Eastern Europeans their lives. The genocide Stalin, his lieutenants, and their reign of successors committed nearly destroyed the soul of the Russian people and much of Eastern Europe's as well.

Pope On The Ropes
After the Nazi regime successfully toppled the Weimar puppet state in 1933, shylocks within the German Gestapo began to undermine banking efforts around the globe in order to generate wealth and resources for the Third Reich's ascension.

From 1937 to 1940, the Nazis expanded their territory in all four directions. Hitler and his underlings set the stage for this by neutralizing the Catholic church within Germany and most of Europe through the Reich Concordat of 1933. In effect, the European Catholic church became subservient to the Third Reich through most of the Second World War.

In August of 1939, Hitler signed a non-aggression pact with Joseph Stalin. This enabled Germany to concentrate their blitzkrieg efforts in France, Belgium, Holland, and the Scandinavian countries the remainder of that year and the next. The Catholic church offered no quarter to resistance fighters in the occupied territories during the war for the most part. They also frequently collaborated with German officials to facilitate the Holocaust all throughout Europe.

By May of 1940, the German army had boxed Allied forces in near the French town of Dunkirk. Churchill groveled for assistance from FDR and was given the cold shoulder by the American President.

Our British allies were all but abandoned by FDR and his crony capitalists prior Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Had it not been for the valiant effort of every able-bodied British sea captain, the bulk of the British army would have perished on the beaches at Dunkirk and the war would have had a much different outcome.

The mass evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk effectively galvanized the British Empire. Nearly every man, woman, and child on the isle of Great Britain dug in and prepared for the battle ahead. Similarly, the British Colonies fortified themselves for the war effort.

A bitter Churchill eloquently surmised Britain's resolve in the "We Will Fight On the Beaches" speech he delivered at the House of Commons that June. That moment would turn out to be a fait acompli for the Third Reich.

The Nazi's knew that taking Great Britain would be arduous, so Hitler broke his non-aggression pact with Stalin largely to feed the Third Reich's war machine. Their invasion of the Soviet Union began in June of 1941 and met with great success early on. That said, divine providence derailed the Nazi invaders that winter and Operation Barbarossa ground to a standstill.

The Soviets launched an aggressive series of counter-attacks starting on December 6th that carried on into the following year. Their steadfast efforts during the winter of 1941-42 effectively crippled and the Nazi war machine and turned the tide of the war against the Germans.

Washing Away Our Moral Values
The Vatican made a deal with the devil when they signed the Reich Concordat of 1933, and they have not repented. In fact, many Catholic Bishops continue to commit apostasy to this day.

We can largely thank Pope Francis and his predecessors for the decline in morality and decency throughout most of Western Civilization over the last four generations. With few exceptions, the Vatican and their Archbishops have routinely embraced sins worthy of a Spanish Inquisition since the end of the Second World War.

When Pope Pius XI decided to hand the fate of the Catholic Church over to the Enemy, he effectively sold Catholics over to the devil for what amounted to a coffer full of silver. The Vatican assumed that the German Chancellor and the Reichstag would deliver "Caesar's tribe" to their promised land. They elected to rob Peter to pay Paul.

The Vatican repeated a similar pattern in their dealings with the Soviet Union near the end of the Second World War. They largely deceived Catholics throughout the West when they released Pope Pius XII's  Christmas statement on the “Subject of Democracy and a Lasting Peace” in December of 1944.

Believing the Soviets would ultimately be victorious in their struggle with the West, the Vatican had quietly aligned itself with the Communists as the Second World War was drawing to an end. They forsook Our lord and savior Jesus Christ in the process. They largely ignored the plight of the Jewish people within the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War, and all but abandoned their sacrosanct obligations in the West.

The plague of sex scandals that have infested Catholic archdiocese around the globe since the 1950’s should come as little surprise given these facts. The Catholic church was once a foundation for benevolence and acts of charity in our most impoverished neighborhoods. This no longer happens to be the case in America; nor in most of the rest of the free world for that matter. Instead, many Catholic diocese have become breeding grounds for sodomites and pedophiles.

The dismantling of our classical education system by the Vatican in recent decades truly began in earnest following Nikita Krushchev's infamous 1956 “We will bury you” speech.

Once Krushchev laid down the gauntlet with the West, the Vatican reaffirmed their commitment with the Communists and set their sights on China. They began divesting their North American and European interests; and ramped up investment in Asia and the Pacific Isles.

I Tell You the Truth
Unless we swiftly return to our Biblical foundations, the bedrock of Eden will soon go dark for non-believers and false Christians alike. Satan has planted roots within the People's Republic of China, and that regime is preparing for war with the West.

They have already begun a campaign to compromise corporate executives, media icons, civil servants, and elected public officials with loose moral values through bribery, extortion and corruption. Additionally, they spend billions of dollars every year on political propaganda and misinformation campaigns to sow dissension and discord amongst our citizenries.

Their efforts are paying off. Marxist movements of the fascist variety are budding throughout Western Europe, the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. And in the Americas, there is a growing Communist insurgency as well.

Like 1920s Europe, the two-headed hydra of communism and fascism is resurfacing. And with no end in sight to the growing inflationary pressures throughout the world, a second Great Depression is certain. Armageddon will follow when this happens.

Given our rising geopolitical tensions with China and the Bilderberg syndicate's deliberate attempts to dismantle our Constitutional Republic, the time has come to rid ourselves of fear and cast light on the people and institutions that threaten the very fabric of our civilization.

Like Daniel, it’s time for the faithful to enter the Lion’s den. We must confront the purveyors of evil within our civilization and hold them to the fire. We need also hold our corrupt corporate executives, media icons, public servants, and elected officials to account for their moral turpitude. Otherwise, we will be doomed to a dystopian future similar to the one George Orwell described in his novel 1984.

The political divide within our nation and much of the Western world is symptomatic of our moral decay. Marxist ideologues leverage our weakness to lull us to sleep; and prey upon our ignorance to stoke irrational fears.

Since time immemorial, despotic rulers have understood the power of fear. Fear breeds dependency and distracts us from fulfilling our role in God's plan. A fearful population is easily manipulated, quickly divided and painless to conquer. As Benjamin Franklin once remarked: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Like sheep among the wolves, they are led to the slaughter.

A Clarion Call
May Our lord and savior Jesus Christ bless you and keep you as you decide your place in history: eternal life for those who welcome Him; or eternal damnation for those who refuse to bow down before Him upon Judgment Day. His will shall prevail during the trying times ahead.

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
---Revelation 7:9-12

Author: Erik Gagnon - Managing Partner, Chi Rho Consulting

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Pirates With a Periscope: Big Tech & The FUTURE OF THE FREE PRESS

8/26/2021

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“Journalism is dead in America…”
---Sean Hannity 2009

Journalism may not be completely dead yet. However, the industry in aggregate seems to be dying. Newspapers are in steep decline; and the cornerstones of the craft (magazines & periodicals) are locked in a death spiral. Similarly, local television news programs have experienced dramatic declines in viewership for more than a decade; and revenues for radio stations with all-news formats have flatlined.

The explosion of social media in recent years has undoubtedly disrupted the news and publishing industries. These days, online news sources are a staple for a vast majority of adults in the United States. In fact, 43% of U.S. adults turned to social media, news websites and news apps for political news this past election cycle. In parallel, online media subscriptions grew at an astonishing 300% rate last year.

So why are so many industry bellwethers floundering in an era where content is supposedly “King”? The sad truth is that publishers in aggregate have largely abandoned their tradecraft. Most bought in to the assertion that “the broad opportunities…involve supplying information or entertainment“ while largely neglecting the other two pillars of their art: educating & enlightening their audiences. Additionally, many unwittingly bought into the assertion that their audiences “must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will.” Quantity over quality seems to be the manta; and publishers are paying a hefty price for their shoddy craftsmanship.

Make no mistake, the digital publishing realm is a world within itself. Cyberspace happens to be real estate; and publishers failed to fortify their kingdoms when they colonized their online territories. Metaphorically speaking, they entrusted pirates to patrol their waters at the outset. Gradually, the pirates established strongholds within the publishing castles and extorted their naivety. Today, these pirates hold the publishing world hostage; charging those they deem fit a king’s ransom to publicize and distribute their wares to the public at large.

By pirates, we are referring to search engines, social media companies and content aggregators (specifically: the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube). Perniciously, they have a stranglehold on the distribution and circulation of Web content. In parallel, these same companies also control a lion’s share of the advertising market within the online publishing world. Like robber barons of the 19th Century, the tech giants have created monopolistic empires of their own, decimating the publishing industry and leaving behind a wake of public discord in the process.

We will examine the genesis of the present situation in this article. We will also explain why the status quo has become a threat to democracies around the world as well as our own Constitutional Republic here at home. Lastly, we will offer our thoughts on how to best balance the playing field and hopefully restore public trust in our media institutions.

Just the Facts, Ma’am
A free fall within the publishing industry has been evident for years. In 2013, U.S. newspaper circulation fell below the lowest level in recorded history as digital consumption became more mainstream. According to PEW Research, the shrinkage has continued at an astounding rate since then. In 2018 for example, the combined circulation for print & digital daily newspapers in the U.S. fell 8% for weekdays and 9% for Sundays. Sadly, the future looks even bleaker for publishers if present trends continue.

Revenue for magazine and periodical publishers was expected to decline 13.8% in 2020 according to IBISWorld. As revenues from print advertising dry up, digital revenue streams simply are not accounting for the difference. This isn’t surprising given that the bulk of revenues generated through digital advertising (52%) now go to Facebook and Google rather than to the publishers themselves.

But why? Prior to the digital revolution, publishing houses typically had in-house sales teams that aggressively pursued advertisers themselves. It was as much an art as it was a science; and it served both the publisher and the advertiser quite well.

For instance, publishers could command premiums for the most visible advertising spaces; and repeat advertisers could (and would) often tell stories to their audiences within their real estate from issue to issue. Absolut Vodka’s advertising campaign of the 80’s & 90’s is one of the best examples.

As a whole, publishers and the media failed to fully assess the governing dynamics of the World Wide Web when they launched their digital ventures. They did not have to make each & every article, story, news piece, opinion column and publication under their license visible for the entire world to see. However, for some inexplicable reason, this is precisely what most publishers and news organizations chose to do. Instead of protecting and nurturing their intellectual properties as treasured assets, both industries effectively treated their intellectual property like trash and dumped them onto the World Wide Web.

Picture cyberspace as a solar system and the World Wide Web as a planet within that system. Now imagine you were a publishing mogul looking to set up shop on that planet. You probably would not dump your wares onto the surface of that planet without understanding and testing the terrain first. Yet, this is essentially what a vast majority of publishers and news outlets did when they launched their online publishing ventures.

The surface of the Web itself happens to be fluid and transparent. Adroit travelers within cyberspace are able to see everything on the surface web at quick glance; meaning that it’s ripe for piracy and theft. Much like the surface of the Earth; most of the solid ground on the Web lies well below the planetary surface.

In aggregate, the Web’s subterranean layers are known the deep web which is often ignorantly conflated with the dark web - the Web’s murky undersurface that is permeated with illegal content. That said, the deep Web is where the bedrock lies. In fact, around 90% of the world’s websites exist within the deep web rather than the surface web. Sites within the deep web are not indexed by the search engines and oftentimes aren’t made visible to the public in general. Additionally, websites within the deep web are frequently encrypted to ward off pirating operations as well as hackers.

When publishers first launched into cyberspace and claimed their domains on the Web, hackers were a clear predatory threat. Consequently, protocols were quickly established within the surface web to deter hackers. Savvy tech pirates on the other hand, were lying in wait. Many of them appeared innocuous on the surface. They had a native understanding of the Web’s subterrain and were often collegial toward publishers. However, business ventures are a combination of war and sport and pirate captains soon prepared their vessels to perform stealth forms of grand larceny within the publishing world.

Houston, We Have a Problem
The original champions of the World Wide Web were long on dreams and big on aspirations. In a 1994 speech to the International Telecommunications Union, then Vice-President Al Gore remarked:

“In this decade, at this conference, we now have at hand the technological breakthroughs and economic means to bring all the communities of the world together. We now can at last create a planetary information network that transmits messages and images with the speed of light from the largest city to the smallest village on every continent.”

He went on to say that “to accomplish this purpose, legislators, regulators, and business people must do this: build and operate a Global Information Infrastructure. This GII will circle the globe with information superhighways on which all people can travel.”

That said, he emphasized that the National Information Infrastructure as he called it, would be “built and maintained” by the private sector. He envisioned an architecture consisting of hundreds of different networks, varying technologies and run by a multitude of companies.

Apollo 13 movie line Houston, we have a problem

Like many tech visionaries of the period, Mr. Gore envisioned a utopian “marketplace of ideas, experiences, and products” available to everyone within free society. Effectively, they equated the distribution of data and access to information with knowledge transference. In general, he and many others tended to view the emerging cyber world with rose colored glasses. They seemingly imagined that collaboration and friendly competition would prevail in perpetuity for the greater good.

Time has proven these visionaries shortsighted and unpragmatic. They either ignored, were oblivious to, or had forgotten that immense political and social upheavals inevitably followed every major technological advancement throughout all prior human history. In his 1996 essay Content Is King, Bill Gates alluded to what was to come:

“I expect societies will see intense competition-and ample failure as well as success-in all categories of popular content-not just software and news, but also games, entertainment, sports programming, directories, classified advertising, and on-line communities devoted to major interests.”

Mr. Gates fully recognized the viability of the emerging markets as well as their enormous potential for scale. He also implied that social upheaval of some sort would be inevitable as macroeconomic principles played out over time. In those days, cyberspace was much like the North American continent during the 17th century. In effect, the World Wide Web would be an ethereal fountain for new raw materials with computer code comprising the basic elements.

Navigational maps would be required to conquer the terrain. They would be required to link people and institutions together; and to effectively promote trade. Also, library systems would have to be built to warehouse the perpetually renewing supply of maps. Inevitably, something along the lines of the Great Library of Alexandria would need to be built for the public at large to catch on and colonize the Web.

Intuitively, one would think that visionaries and architects devising the National Information Infrastructure would have realized this at the outset and built one into their rollout plan. Yet, it was left entirely up to the private sector to develop, build, and maintain them instead. Consequently, rudimentary libraries sprouted up throughout the 1990s. They are of course known as search engines today.

The first of these search engines was named Archie. Archie made its debut in 1990. That said, it was more of a simple card catalog than an exploratory tool for Web. Archie was followed by W3Catalog and JumpStation in 1993. Jumpstation was the first search engine to combine crawling, indexing and searching all into one package; features which are now industry standards. This innovation was followed in 1994 by Webcrawler; the first tool that enabled visitors to search for any word on any webpage, which is also of course an industry standard today.

During the latter part of the decade, competition within this category heated up as Web usage became more mainstream. Several search engines debuted during this period vying for popularity. Among the better known: Magellan, Excite, Infoseek, Inktomi, Northern Light, and AltaVista.

Then in 2000, Google gained traction. The brainchild of entrepreneurs Sergey Brin and Larry Page quickly rose to the forefront of the market largely due to their sophisticated PageRank system as well as their novel paid-search capabilities. Both were game-changing features as far as e-commerce was concerned, especially for publishers, entertainment companies and media outlets. For that matter, an argument can be made for the whole of Western civilization as well.

The Booty Call
Mr. Brin & Mr. Page met as undergrads at Stanford University. Mathematical geniuses armed with computer science backgrounds; they set out to change our world by organizing and cataloging the World Wide Web in an effective and easy to reach manner. A sophisticated mathematical gear system was at the heart of their solution, better known today as algorithms. The machinery they developed was groundbreaking to say the least.

From the outset, Google’s product had an intuitive end-user interface and an engaging demeanor. It was also fast and efficient. Beyond that, Brin & Page’s search engine was generations ahead of their competition mechanically. Both factors were enormous competitive advantages and they quickly leaped to the top of the market. The company has remained there ever since; driving most of their competitors into the graveyard.

Being one of the greatest free-market success stories of all-time, tales of Google’s origin, founding and history are widely known. Most suggest an earnest desire to change the world for the better during the company's nascency. Journalist Steven Levy provides such an example in his book: In the Plex, recounting the origin of the Google’s infamous slogan ‘Don’t Be Evil’:

Paul Buchheit was thinking, This is lame. Jawboning about citizenship and values seemed like the kind of thing you do at a big company. He’d seen enough of that at his previous job at Intel. At one point the chipmaker had given employees little cards with a list of values you could attach to your badge. If something objectionable came up you were to look at your little corporate values card and say, “This violates value number ﬁve.” Lame. “That whole thing rubbed me the wrong way,” Buchheit later recalled. “So I suggested something that would make people feel uncomfortable but also be interesting. It popped into my mind that ‘Don’t be evil’ would be a catchy and interesting statement. And people laughed. But l said, ‘No, reaIIy.”’

The slogan made Stacy Sullivan uncomfortable. It was so negative. “Can’t we phrase it as ‘Do the right thing’ or something more positive?” she asked. Marissa and Salar agreed with her. But the geeks—Buchheit and Patel—wouldn’t budge. “Don’t be evil” pretty much said it all, as far as they were concerned. They fought off every attempt to drop it from the list.

“They liked it the way it was,” Sullivan would later say with a sigh. “It was very important to engineering that they were not going to be like Microsoft, they were not going to be an evil company.”

Today, the Google brand is synonymous with Web search in much the same way that the term Mafia is synonymous with organized crime. An accurarate analogy because, Google’s business model had dubious underpinnings from the outset no matter how noble their founding origins may have been.

Monopoly board game Rich Uncle Pennybags

For starters, Google’s PageRank methodology was rife for corruption. Instead of assessing the overall value of a particular website on a given topic or Search term, their Web Crawler scours every visible published page to monetize the value. Like a submarine with a periscope, Google’s algorithmic machinery then targets and prioritizes pages based on their potential yield – for their preferred partners as well as for themselves instead of for their patrons.

And while Google’s founders insist that they were not moved by money, they were entrepreneurs at heart and ingrained their passion for success within the corporate culture. Regardless of their profit motives, competing to win has always been a strategic imperative for the company. As Mr. Brin once remarked: “We want Google to be the third half of your brain.”

The company understood from the outset that the World Wide Web happens to be a world of real estate. A world comprised of the elements visible to the naked eye and measured by occupancy. Over time, the search industry’s 800-pound gorilla has effectively built locks on both.

Google’s domain is arguably the most valuable piece of cyber real estate ever created as far as occupancy is concerned. More people visit Google every single day than other site on the Web. They also spend a great deal of time there. An average of 16 minutes per day; taking in over 17 page views during their stays.

Early in the game, publishers and the media seemingly thought allowing Search Engines like Google to freely crawl, catalog, and index everything they created was a wise and business savvy idea. Time has proven them wrong. At least for the ones that consistently fail to appear above the fold on Google’s first page of search results that is. Google has controlled over 86% of the global Search market for well over a decade. On top of that, they presently have a stranglehold on the industry’s advertising market – estimated at over 80% for 2019. In short, the conglomerate has effectively monopolized both industries.

Make no mistake, free press in America is no longer free. In effect, the media and the press have acquiesced to a sophisticated band of pirates who pilfer their profits and arbitrarily doll out their creative assets to the public. Online publicity has essentially become a pay-for-play racket over the years. Arguably, designed along the same lines as the Payola schemes that have scandalized the music industry off and on again since the 1950s. Like a mafioso godfather, Google demands tribute. And the publishing world willingly lines up to kiss their ring day in and day out.

Mr. Brin & Mr. Page no doubt had a sense of humor about them when they christened their pirate vessel. They originally dubbed Google’s new technology BackRub – a tongue-in-cheek phrase used within underworld establishments that are known to supply Happy Endings to their clientele. God knows if they had this in mind when they set out to conquer the Internet. That said, the monopoly they spawned within their dorm rooms has since grown to become the most powerful member of an oligarchical information technology syndicate. A syndicate that has grown so powerful that it now threatens the very fabric of free society.

What We’ve Got Here Is Failure to Communicate
It is little wonder that Western civilization began to fragment almost in parallel with Mr. Gore’s 1994 speech. Competition within the news and entertainment industries went into hyperdrive with the advent of the Web. With the internet, fringe publications were no longer hidden behind the counter of a local newsstand. Instead, they were right out in the open for all the world to see. Everything from hardcore pornography and violent videotaped crimes; to exploitative human tragedy exposes and even the narcissistic rantings of deranged sycophants. The public gobbled this garbage up like kids in a candy store and they continue to do so today

Quickly, mainstream media outlets began to lose a substantial share of their market to boundary-pushing upstarts. The explosion of online social media in the mid-2000’s furthered the exodus. In the United Kingdom for example, broadcast television experienced a 25% decline in viewership during the 2010’s. Similarly, U.S. television viewership has dropped an astounding 36% over the last eight years as more and more Americans continue to turn to online sources for their news & entertainment.

Cool Hand Luke movie line What we've got here is failure to communicate

Consider these figures and their implications:

33% of American adults have no trust at all in mass media according to a recent Gallup poll.
An additional 27% of those surveyed reported having very little trust.
Only 9% of those surveyed have full confidence in America’s media establishments.

Last year, American media’s trust factor sank to the second-lowest level in half a century per Gallup. Even more alarming, the 33% of Americans who indicate that they completely distrust the media is an all-time high in the 48 years history of Gallup's poll.

And why wouldn’t the general public distrust the so-called 'mainstream media'? The marketplace for news and information is hypercompetitive today. An oligopoly controls a bulk of the produce; and they have nearly eliminated scale. Media monkeys frantically compete with one another to get their share of bananas for their organ grinders - quality be damned. This analogy aptly applies to media executives that bow before Big Tech’s moguls as if they were an Emperor; as well as the frontline reporters tasked with spewing out garbage 24/7.

Another Fine Mess
Because an overwhelming majority of American adults (82%) now obtain all or some of their news online, Google and their brethren within the Social Networking industry wield ungodly power. Power to shape and form public opinion well-beyond any other media conglomerate that has ever existed.

Laurel and Hardy Movie Poster Another Fine Mess

Far more threatening, they also have power to bend and manipulate political decisions around the world in a direction of their choosing. Case in point, the 2020 U.S. election campaigns.

From an unbiased standpoint, it is nearly impossible to argue that Big Tech did not lean heavily in favor one political party over another in 2020. The rampant reports of online censorship and corporate collusion are damning because the facts ring true. Nowhere was this more evident than in the 2020 Presidential election campaigns. Time Magazine’s National Political Correspondent Molly Ball even boasted about it in an article shortly after the election. She writes in The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election that:

Quinn’s research gave ammunition to advocates pushing social media platforms to take a harder line. In November 2019, Mark Zuckerberg invited nine civil rights leaders to dinner at his home, where they warned him about the danger of the election-related falsehoods that were already spreading unchecked. “It took pushing, urging, conversations, brainstorming, all of that to get to a place where we ended up with more rigorous rules and enforcement,” says Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, who attended the dinner and also met with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and others. (Gupta has been nominated for Associate Attorney General by President Biden.) “It was a struggle, but we got to the point where they understood the problem. Was it enough? Probably not. Was it later than we wanted? Yes. But it was really important, given the level of official disinformation, that they had those rules in place and were tagging things and taking them down.”

In other words, Big Tech assumed the role of moral arbiters on behalf of the Democrat Party and their organized affiliates. If you happen to be a student of early 20th century history, this should send shivers up your spine. This is exactly what fascist and communist regimes of that period did with big industry. They seized control of mass communications deemed, distorted and twisted the truth, and stymied dissent in order to extinguish any and all opposition to their will. The atrocities committed by autocrats in within both systems speak to the consequences.

We are seeing more of the same today out of big tech. Like greedy European industrial profiteers the did with the Nazi and Soviet regimes, Silicon Valley's pirate captains are presently settling into an unholy alliance with China’s fascist regime. America's tech giants deliberately tilted their algorithms toward one side of the political equation in advance of the 2020 elections in order to to serve their overseas corporate interests; Our nation is now sliding toward tyranny. Our Bill of Rights and the free market be damned for all eternity if this trend continues.

All that Glitters Isn’t Gold
Vice President Gore delivered a second speech on the UCLA campus in 1994 where he remarked that: “the future of language is in our hands. Or put more broadly, the future of communications.” He went on to share a parable by author Toni Morrison:

“It was about a blind old woman renowned for her wisdom, and a boy who decided to try to play a trick on her. He captured a small bird, cupped it in his hands, and said to her, "Old woman, is this bird alive or dead?"

If she said "Dead," he planned to set it free and prove her wrong. If she said "Alive," he planned to quickly crush its life away and prove her wrong.

She thought a moment and said, "The answer is in your hands."”

Ironically, mass communications have not been nurtured. The buckshot approach taken by the Clinton Administration to catalog and index the Internet backfired on the public. Foolishly, politicians allowed carnivores into Publisher’s hen houses. Obliviously or corruptly, they have taken handouts from Big Tech fat cats and overlooked the best interests of their constituency. Our inalienable rights are now being crushed or smothered by capitalist wolves in the hands of greedy communist pigs largely in consequence.

Marie-Antoinette was infamously quoted for saying: Let them eat cake. That’s effectively what the unholy alliance between Big Tech and our mainstream media establishments have been feeding news consumers for years: sugar mixed with poison. And the public has developed a large addiction problem.

All That Glitters Isn't Gold Big Tech Oligarchy

According to PEW research, there were 37 digital-native news outlets as of 2018 that averaged 22.4 million unique viewers each month. The typical viewer only consumed two minutes-worth of news each jaunt. Imagine you only had two-minutes to prepare your meal each morning. That leaves little time to discern what is good for you let alone digest a meal.

In closing, the Big Tech consortium has produced little in return for the good faith entrusted upon them by our government officials. For instance, the American literacy rate has not improved over the past 25 year. Furthermore, despite near-universal access more reading material than the world has ever known through the internet and our mobile devices, The Read Center reports that 1 in 6 adults cannot read above a 4th grade level today. More remarkable, The World Literacy Foundation recently estimated that 2/3 of Americans could not pass a basic financial literacy test covering credit, interest, investing diversification and inflation.

In other words, Leonard Cohen’s song Everybody Knows seems prophetic: “the poor stay poor and the rich get rich”. If the pendulum doesn’t adjust soon, a day of reckoning will no doubt soon occur. As former President Ronald Reagan once remarked: "Freedom is never more than one generation from extinction.” The Time of Choosing he eloquently in his speech outlined is well at hand.

Time to Rise Up
The time has come to break up the Big Tech’s four horsemen for the good of the nation and all of humanity. Congress must recognize Amazon, Facebook, Google & Twitter's key commodity happens to be information capital. Everything you do or say online can be monetized; meaning that an individual's right to privacy effectively no longer exists. Worse still, beyond the inherent threat to our personal liberties and guaranteed freedoms; there is perhaps an even greater threat to our national security interests if the Big Tech oligarchs continue to remain unchecked.

With the exception of Amazon, Big Tech’s other three horsemen effectively serve as public utilities in the digital age. Collectively, the top brass within these companies effectively dictate and control the flow of information from town to town and city to city across the country. Facebook being akin to Bell Telephone and National Public Radio; and Twitter being world's “town square” so to speak. Similarly as we've mentioned, Google effectively serves as a global public library; and an argument could be made that their conglomerate also serves as a sort of mass transit system within the cyber world as far as business and commerce are concerned.

Beyond the breakup, re-formulating America's communications infrastructure will require an innovative approach. Re-tooling our National Library system seems a natural place to start. The information superhighway requires a Grand Central Station; and the National Library has the potential to serve as such if were retooled and properly scaled.

Therefore let us stop passing judgement on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother’s way. As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean. your brother is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy your brother for whom Christ died. Do not allow what you consider good to be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating or drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Sprit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men.

Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and mutual edification. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, But it is wrong for a man to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble.
ROMANS 14:9-21

Rise Up (Lazarus) - Cain and Zach Williams Christian Music LP

Author: Erik Gagnon - Managing Partner, Chi Rho Consulting

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Revitalizing Education In America (From an Entrepreneur and Investor's Perspective)

11/27/2018

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“The public library system of the United States is worth preserving.”
---Henry Rollins (American Musician)

Up front, we want to make one thing perfectly clear: we are NOT in favor of nationalizing our primary schools nor our secondary educational institutions. Under our Constitution, these matters reside with our state and local governments; and we believe that it should remain that way. Nevertheless, it would be foolish or naive to ignore that the fabric of American education is changing dramatically during the digital revolution.

Take a look at the numbers. The education market in the United States has grown dramatically since the advent of the Internet and it's only expected to grow more over the next several years. In short: the ED hasn't kept pace with the changes; and it’s time we recognize the cultural shift that's occurring as a result. In other words, we ought to re-engineer and re-tool our educational systems; and we ought to act quickly!

THE STARTING POINT
The amount of information available today to the public over the world wide web is unprecedented in our history. Concurrently, the information age has spawned a number of innovations in the field of education. Among the most sweeping changes in primary and secondary research:

Search Engines have effectively replaced the traditional library “Card Catalog” - as well as librarians for the most part.
Wiki sites have become our society's primary encyclopedias.
A plethora of dictionaries, thesauruses and other reference tools are currently available at a moment's notice over the web and through digital distribution platforms.

When you take a step back and look at the big picture, it's evident that how and where we learn in this era is much different than it was before. This led us to ask the following questions:

Aren’t the tools and resources described above the very foundations of a public library system? If so, why are corporations and select non-profits the principal gate-keepers of vital strategic resources like these? Does the current situation pose national security risks?
If guarding, growing and enhancing these resources is crucial for our nation, then shouldn’t our federal government step in and assert some span of control?
If both are true, then when, where, and to what degree should the federal government be involved?

These are the fundamental questions we’ll address in this article. We’ll argue that Americans need to fully understand and quickly accept the fact that educational tools like Google, Wikipedia, and the Dictionary.com’s of the world all serve the public interest and ought to be nationalized to some degree. In other words, a complete re-tooling of our Department of Education is long overdue.

AS SIMPLE AS 1,2,3
Here’s where we’d start:

A search engine, an encyclopedia, and other reference tools (e.g. a dictionary and a thesaurus) ought to be considered part of our national library system.
It makes sense for Google & Wikipedia to become public utilities (similar to AT&T way back when), or whole parts of the ED as soon as possible.
Still allow for competition within these categories through private enterprise.

The proposed system would re-tool the Department of Education; and also support crucial National Security and Defense initiatives. We’ll explain what we mean as you read on:

MOST OF US NOW CARRY A “POCKET LIBRARY”
Like 77% of all Americans, I own a smartphone; and I often download and access useful apps for personal education, writing and research purposes. The apps on my device include a couple of different Search Engines (Google and Bing), a global encyclopedia (Wikipedia), a dictionary and a thesaurus (my preferred version is Merriam-Webster), as well as a multitude of other small reference tools (e.g. area code lookups and zip code lookups, etc.).

If you were born after 1989, these things probably seem natural. However, for those of us who are older, the Internet revolutionized access to libraries of information as well as primary and secondary research tools. Imagine: before the 1990's, people actually had to travel (by automobile or by foot) to a library to access a wide body of research materials if they weren’t fortunate enough to own them themselves. Furthermore, if their research requirements were extensive, they often had to travel to multiple locations to complete their research!

Research tools and materials are vital necessities for individuals with an entrepreneurial mindset: people who wish to invest time and energy in determining their own futures. Nearly every entrepreneur and investor will tell you that if you want to gain advantages over your competition, you need to excel in school and continuously strive for personal growth. In other words, you spend a great deal of time in library facilities.

Any way you look at it, a public library is about education, growth. and learning. It’s a core extension of our public education system. As Campbell Brown of Facebook notes, “It comes down to what your priorities are, and if public education is about children and learning. It’s a core extension of the public education system. As kids, then every decision we make should be focused on the question of 'Is this good for a child?' And that should be the driving focus and the priority when we decide what our policies should be and what our laws should be.”

(Keep in mind that we are all considered children in eyes of our Creator to a certain degree regardless of our age...)

Currently, we have libraries in our public school systems for our children from grades K-12; and reference materials are of course vital to those systems. Ask any teacher, and they’ll definitively tell you that high-caliber tools facilitate quality education. So then, why aren't the tools in our "pocket library" considered an extension of our public education system, if public libraries in fact are?

It boils down to this: some of the tools within our aggregate pocket library must be integrated into the ED in order to effectively manage public education in the United States today. Otherwise, we may put the American way of life at risk as things currently stand.

A CASE FOR NATIONALIZING OUR POCKET LIBRARY
Is it in our best interests to have all our digital research tools developed, managed and updated by private corporations and select non-profits? The answer is unequivocally NO!

Of course, Innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity are the driving factors behind the success of the corporations that maintain our "pocket library" (Google and Microsoft as well as the Wikimedia Foundation and others). For example, Google launched in 1996 as a research project by PhD students at Stanford University. Two years later, the company received a $100,000 angel investment; and away it went!

Nevertheless, Google has received a great deal of scrutiny and criticism recently from conservative & libertarian political pundits and conservative economists; as well as from radical leftist ideologues like Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

on the right side of the political spectrum, Conservative and Libertarian political pundits accuse the tech monolith of down-ranking sites and pages that don’t align with corporate’s political positions, thereby suppressing free speech. The concerns of the conservative economists are largely geopolitical in nature. For example, Google has agreed to build a censored version of their search engine for communist China. Both sets of concerns suggest that Google deliberately stifles competition and suppresses the very principles that led to the company’s founding: entrepreneurship and innovation!

On the other hand, far-left zealots have seized upon these factors to push forth visions of an impossible socialist utopia. For example, Sanders (a self-proclaimed "Democratic Socialist” demagogue) contends: “You go to your public library, or you call your fire department or police department, what do you think you are calling? These are socialist institutions.”

To be blunt, Senator Sanders full of crap. The police, the fire department and the public library ARE NOT socialist institutions. Rather, they’re public resources; and there’s are HUGE differences between the two!

BERNIE SANDERS MAY BE MISGUIDED... BUT HE DOES HAVE A POINT
Several of the tools we've listed (i.e. search engines, dictionaries and encyclopedias) and are in-fact primary and secondary research staples used in libraries the world over. However, unlike brick and mortar libraries, the information available within our "Pocket Library" is decentralized, poorly curated and loosely maintained at the present time.

For example, a dictionary reference tool now often appears in Google's search results when you include the word “definition” with a search term. That said, the word inclusion criteria (and definitions) appear to be determined by Google itself!

This should concern anyone who believes in the American Dream. If you look under the surface, you'll find that terms like Fascism were completely omitted from Google's dictionary tool last year after the Daily Caller questioned the definition that Google supplied.

Perhaps even more disturbing, Google has now integrated a feedback tool to report “wrong and offensive” definitions; quite possibly modifying or altering definitions on a day-to-day basis in most extreme cases.

Google currently dominates the search industry. Coupling search with a dictionary and thesaurus in effect makes Google (and the semi-anonymous voting body that supplies feedback on word acceptance) the principle arbiters of English, Spanish and a multitude of other human languages!

We must question whether it’s reasonable and prudent to allow companies like Google and non-profits like Wikimedia such enormous sway over the literacy and education of the American public! It seems to us that leverage these monoliths have over our society could in-fact fuel Fascism; very word Google omitted from their dictionary back in 2017!

THIS IS A NO-BRAINER
Clearly, the "Pocket Library" we’ve discussed here is vital to our national interests. In-fact, you could say that it’s a national treasure of sorts: Young and old men and women of varying backgrounds and ethnic persuasions scour their "Pocket Libraries" daily seeking to educate themselves, better their lives and expand their horizons.

When it comes to the tools and resources in our "Pocket Library" we need to ensure there's a level playing field. We must ensure the accuracy and integrity of the information available to the public, preserve our national heritage and cultivate advancements that strengthen our society.

So, why not:

Nationalize some of the tools and materials that comprise our aggregate Pocket Library?
Create a repository under one branch of the federal government, where the library's tools and resources can be effectively curated, expanded and protected?

For the reasons we've described, both these ideas make clear sense to us.

CONCLUSIONS
There is little doubt that it’s time for a complete re-tooling of the Department of Education. Again, we believe that digital reference tools like search engines and encyclopedias are key strategic resources and therefore should be considered public resources.

Google recently removed their motto “Don’t Be Evil” from their employees’ code of conduct. Given, their dominance of search and the vital role Google plays in educational research today, this should be very disconcerting to anyone who believes in the American way of life. Simply put, it's a dangerous concentration of power.

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's socialist ideals are in-fact Utopian fantasies. They're a means to an apocalyptic end for American free enterprise, free speech and free expression. We’re not proposing an end to the free market in the case we've presented. Instead, we’re talking about centralizing a core set of vital public services; just like the United States postal service does for mail and package delivery. Not the whole enchilada mind you; just the meaty part of it.

We also argue that setting up such a service will lead to a much fairer competitive environment and open the door for a wide array of entrepreneurial business ventures within the affected industry categories. You only need look at the success of shipping companies like Federal Express, UPS and DHL to realize that opportunity will eventually open up in this space if the federal government steps in and asserts a degree of authority.

I hope more Americans soon realize the strategic importance of the research tools that comprise our aggregate "Pocket Library" and demand immediate action from our lawmakers. Otherwise, we’re headed toward a world where George Orwell’s "Doublespeak" becomes a real possibility.

Author: Erik Gagnon - Managing Partner, Chi Rho Consulting

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Thoughts On The Kavanaugh Hearings, Due Process, The Court Of Public Opinion, and What It All Means For America

10/8/2018

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"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
---George Santayana (American Philosopher 1906)

So far, 2018 has been a very busy and productive year for our consulting firm. So much so, that we decided to put our blog articles on hiatus while we focused our attention on our clientele's priorities. We’ve also gone dark on our social media pages for much the same reason.

However, this past Saturday a client of ours posted a statement on his personal Facebook page which I happened to catch. His statement related to the allegations of sexual assault made against Supreme Court Justice Brett during his confirmation hearings. Frankly, the sentiments our client chose to share disturbed me greatly. So much so, that I felt they warranted a response.

Sadly, much of social media has become a thought ghetto in recent years. Rational debates and logical discussions have largely been silenced and replaced with emotional outbursts by angry mobs. Their comments are largely rooted in animus and in fear; and are oftentimes agenda driven. Consequently, I decided to write a personal letter to him expressing my concerns instead of posting my thoughts to his feed or sending him an instant message.

As I said, our client’s statements on this matter were deeply disconcerting on many levels. The responses he received troubled me even more. As a result, I've chosen to share my response letter publicly. His original comment is included near the opening of my very lengthy response which follows below:

OUR LETTER IN RESPONSE TO THE KAVANAUGH CONFIRMATION HEARINGS AND THE QUESTION OF DUE PROCESS

Dear (Name Withheld),

Yesterday I sat down to finish the content for your website. I logged in to Facebook to check my feed before I began. The very first post in my feed was from you and it related to the Kavanaugh hearings. It read:

"I always believe the women! Always! To all women everywhere...I'm in awe of you [sic] courage and restraint for not burning it all down right fuckin' now! Today marks a dark day in the history of our country but I know a change is coming! And you can count on me to support you."

Your first statement, “I always believe women! Always!” really struck me sideways. It seems to run contradictory to the FB post by Dan Rather that you shared today which discusses both the “Rule of Law” and evidence “Based on Fact”. It is also counter-intuitive to other principles that Rather remarked on in his post. Specifically, the principles of Justice and Equality. In short, It’s an absolutist's statement.

Knowing you personally, I don’t believe that you made this statement wittingly. Why? Because absolutists are bullies. They ignore objective truths and are oftentimes willing to disregard the rule of law. They also rely on subjective facts to justify their opinions and render judgement. In other words, their end goals always justify their means - even to the extreme.

The media and news outlets that chose to convict Justice Kavanaugh in the court of public opinion are nothing more than propaganda outlets. If you didn't watch the full body of the Congressional hearings and if you haven't read the entire body of written evidence submitted during the hearings, then your judgement has likely been colored by propaganda.

No rational person would argue that a victim of any heinous felony does not deserve to have their voice heard by the legal authorities that serve to protect the rights, liberties and freedoms guaranteed to all of us under the Constitution and our Bill of Rights. That said, the accused also deserves the presumption of innocence before being proven guilty in a court of law. The rights of the accuser do not outweigh the rights of the accused; no matter how egregious the claims of the accuser may be.

The fact of the matter is that sometimes people are falsely or wrongly accused of crimes they did not commit. In some cases, claims are brought forward by accusers with ulterior motives. Other times, there are cases of mistaken identity. Also, there are proven examples of displacement and transference: cases where an accuser unconsciously redirects emotional trauma from one person to another.

Claiming that you “Always believe the women! Always!” is in fact prejudicial. It suggests that you hold animus toward other people based on their immutable characteristics. Specifically, in this case, a person’s birth sex. Given that we live at a time in our nation where our most basic founding principle, “All Men Are Created Equal” now extends to every single person (regardless of their race, creed, color, sex, handicap or national origin), I found your moral absolutism very disconcerting. I also found your comments elitist and dangerously extreme.

Absolutists fuel extremism, and extremism propels zealotry. Zealotry gives rise to authoritarians who enable totalitarian regimes . There are indisputable examples of this throughout world history, most notably throughout Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. I don’t know if your aware of this, but my mother emigrated from Latvia to America with her parents and her sister in the 1950's. I chose to study the European socialist/communist/fascist phenomenon at Princeton largely due to first-hand accounts of the atrocities that were committed within these regimes, told to me by family members and a close knit community of Latvian, Russian, German and Polish survivors with whom they associated.

Most Americans are ignorant of (or choose to ignore) the fact that some of the totalitarian regimes that rose to power in Europe during the 1900's did so through democratic processes. The leaders of those movements preyed upon animus, fear and prejudice to sow societal division. If you examine the facts closely, there are eerie parallels between the grievances over racial, gender and income disparity that we’re witnessing in America today from the far-left and the demagoguery espoused by the leaders of Europe’s 20th century totalitarian movements during their nascency.

Statements like the one you made only serve to further our societal division. They do not heal our wounds. Our nation may not be a perfect representation of the ideal society outlined within the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Nevertheless, abandoning basic core principles like Due Process will only produce an extreme dystopia in the end. Consequently, I’m left to question the type of “change” you alluded to in your post? Also, pertaining to the fate of our nation, what good can you possibly envision if the rights of one immutable subset of our population supersede the rights of others?

I am not disputing that very real inequities still exist within our society today. That said, our nation continues to make enormous strides from generation to generation in advancing equality of opportunity. Therefore, I have to ask you: are you advocating for "equality of outcome" - an arbitrary measure which (by consequence) imposes substantial restrictions on our individual liberties and ultimately suppresses the creativity, freedom, innovation and prosperity of all but the very top-echelon?

If so, I can assure you that you will wake one day and find that you live in a society that has abandoned democratic principles all together for dictatorial rule, or rule by an unelected collectivist elite. If that ever happens, Martin Luther King’s dream for America will have been completely extinguished.

For the record, I don’t really care whether you believe Kavanaugh or Ford. For what it's worth, I watched most of the live testimony myself and have also taken time to read a well-rounded body of media reports from reporters and pundits on both sides of the aisle who covered the hearings. Having done so, it is my perspective that the entire confirmation process was a national disgrace. I also believe that there have been deliberate and calculated attempts by radical elements within our society to obfuscate the facts of this case in hopes of furthering societal division and undermining the public’s trust in our judicial system.

Having said all this, I ask that you pause to reconsider your statement. If it was an emotional response made in a moment of anger and frustration, please set the record straight on your beliefs.

Respectfully,
Erik

THE INEVITABLY DIRE CONSEQUENCES IF WE DEMOCRATICALLY FORGO OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS
I have yet to receive a response to my letter from our client. That said, I am hopeful that he will take the time to reflect on my arguments, recognize the extreme nature of his original statement and recant his position. That said, we are witnessing a rapid spread of absolutist rhetoric within our society today. It is a very real danger to anyone who disagrees with agenda-driven propaganda based on subjective truths and partial facts. That's why I felt compelled to come forward and speak out on this matter.

Radical leftist ideologues repeatedly ignore objective truths in order to push forward agendas premised on "equality of outcome". They fail to grasp the fundamentals of Natural Law. Additionally, they willfully or blissfully ignore the repeated failures of Marxist and Socialist ideology all throughout history. The fact of the matter is that "equality of outcome" is an impossible Utopian ideal. Humans are inherently flawed; and there are individuals among us who crave absolute and unlimited power over others. There always have been and always will be such individuals. All throughout history, they have risen within socialist regimes to impose authoritarian or totalitarian forms of rule.

Based on the circus we have witnessed on Capitol Hill in recent days, my hope is that more and more Americans are waking up to the fact that leftist rhetoric is becoming increasingly radical in our society. It's no wonder this is occurring when you take into account that authoritarian extremists permeate our educational institutions and our media outlets. In fact, journalistic standards have been all but been abandoned by a majority of prominent American media outlets that lean left of center.

To loosely paraphrase the Santayana quote I cited above: we will one day find ourselves in shackles if we forget the aggregate lessons world history teaches. Make no mistake, sowing distrust in our judicial system and chipping away at our Constitutional protections are but a means to an end. Evil in fact exists. There are individuals walking the planet today who would like nothing more than than to see an erosion of America's founding principles and the complete destruction of our Constitutional Republic. Doing so would open the gates for tyranny, injustice and oppression around the world.

CONCLUSIONS
No matter how righteous they believe their causes to be, the social justice "warriors" that disrupt our democratic establishments with protests, harass public officials in their private lives and riot in the streets, are mere pawns in a much greater and dangerous game. Ultimately, they serve the vile interests of global power brokers who will gladly discard them when it serves their interests. You only need to look back at Germany's Night of Long Knives that took place in 1934 to understand that.

The Washington Post has recently adopted the slogan "Democracy Dies In Darkness" to promote their newspaper. While their slogan rings true, it's also true that our Constitutional Republic will be murdered in

the shadows of ignorance if more Americans who believe in MLK's Dream don't soon wake up to the fact that we are forgetting a fundamental chapter of world history. Indeed, we are starting to repeat mistakes that led to the the death of countless millions during the political upheavals of the 20th century. May God help us all.

NOTES
For anyone interested:

A complete archive of Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings is available for view fee of charge on the RealClearPolitics website.
The complete list of written questions submitted by Justice Kavanaugh to the Senate Judiciary Committee is available Here.
The documents submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee by Christine Blasey-Ford's attorneys can be found Here.

Author: Erik Gagnon - Managing Partner, Chi Rho Consulting

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