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Note: This podcast episode was recorded Nov. 20, 2024, and since then, the U.S. House of Representatives races have been called, giving the Republicans 220 congressional members and the Democrats 215. This balance could change depending on potential special elections if some members of the House are appointed to positions within President-Elect Trump's administration. In this episode of the AICPA's Tax Section Odyssey podcast, Kasey Pittman, CPA, MST, Director of Tax Policy ­— Baker Tilly US LLP, discusses potential upcoming tax legislation for 2025, focusing on the complexities and challenges of extending the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and other tax provisions.   What you'll learn from this episode: The potential complexities and challenges of extending provisions of the TCJA and other tax legislation. The implications of a unified government and the reconciliation process for passing tax legislation. The financial constraints posed by the national debt and the importance of managing the deficit. The influence of individual policymakers and the importance of state and local tax (SALT) deductions. Potential revenue raisers like tariffs and ending the employee retention credit early, and their impact on the overall tax legislation. AICPA resources Planning for tax changes — CPAs need to not only brace for tax law changes such as the TCJA and expiring provisions but also be proactive in planning for them. Tax advocacy — Advocacy is a core element of our purpose and value proposition. It is a strong mechanism for promoting trust and confidence in the CPA and CGMA credentials around the world.   Transcript April Walker: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the AICPA's Tax Section Odyssey podcast, where we offer thought leadership on all things tax facing the profession. I'm April Walker, a lead manager from the tax section, and I'm here today with Kasey Pittman. Kasey is the director of Tax Policy with Baker Tilly's National Tax Office. Welcome, Kasey. Kasey Pittman: Thank you for having me. April Walker: I thought we'd spend a few minutes today setting expectations for tax legislation for 2025. First, a little bit of a spoiler, tax legislation is likely, right, but what it will actually entail is probably a lot more complicated than just a straight status quo extension of TCJA. Kasey, let's set the stage a little bit and talk about what we know about the makeup of the government and what that will mean for upcoming legislation. Kasey Pittman: I think going into the election, the vast majority of people assumed we were going to wind up in some divided government. We knew it was very likely that Republicans would capture the Senate. The math there was not very good for Democrats, just in terms of how many seats were up, and one of the Democratic-turned-independent retiring senators from a deep red state was almost a certainty to flip. I think the general thinking was that either Democrats would capture the White House or the House, and neither of those things came to fruition. We are sitting here in the 2024 election was a Republican sweep. We've done a lot of worrying about things that we can let go of, and I think probably we'll touch on that a little bit later in the podcast. But the margins aren't very big. Trump captured the White House actually by a good margin in terms of both electoral votes and total votes in the country. It looks like Senate Republicans will have the majority with a 53-47 split between Republicans and Democrats. The house is currently unknown. We know that the House has captured 218, and that's what you need for the majority. There's 435 seats. 218 is literally a one seat majority. There are five races outstanding, and probably threeish, maybe four of those are likely to go Republican. We're just waiting on final vote counts. In the House, we're looking at a few vote margin, in the Senate, we're looking at a few vote margin, and that can make legislating really difficult. One of the themes we touch on here as we go through is reconciliation. When you have a unified government, and a unified government is one where one party has both chambers in Congress, and the White House, which is what we're going into in 2025, there's this process that you can use for certain types of legislation, fiscal legislation called reconciliation. What reconciliation does is it allows you to overcome the filibuster in the Senate. You actually only need a simple majority, like 51 votes in the Senate to pass a bill, but anybody can hold up a bill with a filibuster, and you need 60 votes to end debate and force the vote on the floor. But this type of legislation doesn't require that, so we can move forward with a simple majority. However, there are a lot of limitations to the reconciliation process. Everything in a reconciliation bill has to be financial. It needs to deal with spending or revenues and it can't be incidentally related to those. That has to be its primary purpose. Tax provisions are perfect for this. It cannot increase the deficit outside of the budget window. The budget window is typically 10 years. Then inside that budget window, you can only increase or decrease the deficit by the amount in the reconciliation instructions. Reconciliation instructions are set again, by a simple majority on a budget resolution in the House and in the Senate. That number can be hard to define. We also can't touch Social Security, by the way, which is why you never see Social Security in a reconciliation bill. However, that number is really difficult to come to an agreement on sometimes, and I predict that we're going to face some issues just in getting to that budget reconciliation number before we even start to put together the bill. April Walker: That's a great summary, and we used reconciliation before to actually pass TCJA and some other legislation in the past few years, but it's still not how I grew up learning how law was passed. It's a little bit interesting and that's a great summary. Kasey, I led with saying, we don't think it's going to be a straight extension of TCJA and some of the other proposals that have been thrown out throughout campaigns. Talk through a little bit about specific provisions, what they're scoring out at, why they may or may not be included in this legislation. Again, I don't think we have to say this. This is all just speculation on our part. We will have to see what we will see once it turns to 2025. Kasey Pittman: Some of it is really speculative. We're guessing, they are educated guesses based on history and based on what influential policymakers are telling us. For many months, Republicans have really optimistically been planning for reconciliation, hoping to capture both chambers, hoping that Trump would be in the White House. They've been planning. Honestly, there's been a ton of organization inside the House Ways and Means Committee around it. What I said just a minute ago was that I think we're going to have trouble getting to that number, and here's why. If we want a blanket 10-year extension of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, all these taxpayer-favorable provisions, they're mostly taxpayer-favorable and we'll get into that in a second too. It's going to cost $4.6 trillion. Just for benchmarking for everybody, our national debt, which is the sum accumulation of all the deficits we've ever run right now is $35 trillion. That's really impactful because each year, honestly, I believe since Clinton, we've run at a deficit and some of the Clinton years too. But each year, since I was in middle school, we've run at a deficit, which means we're spending more money than we're bringing in, and part of the reason we're spending more money than we're bringing in is because we have to pay interest on all this debt. It's really come to a head over the last couple of years for two reasons. One, our debt skyrocketed. Recently, TCJA added to it. COVID certainly didn't help it at all. Then additionally, because we've had such high inflation, the Fed has increased interest rates and that's the rate that we pay to service the debt. In FY 24, which ended at the end of September. This year, we paid over a trillion dollars just to service our debt, not paying down our debt, just paying the interest on our debt. That's more than we spent on defense spending for the entire year. It becomes a liability if our debt is too large. Particularly, we like to compare it to our GDP. This year we ran a $1.8 trillion deficit. Over a trillion of that we could say is attributable to interest costs. Anyway, here we are. We've got $4.6 trillion to extend the TCJA. Then we've got a whole host of other campaign proposals that Trump made on the trail. No SALT, and we'll get to SALT in a second. No SALT, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security benefits. There's family caregivers credit for home caregivers. There's just a number of things, and some of them are hard to score because there's not a lot of details around the policy yet. They're more on the idea than the actual detailed policy phase at this point but those are a lot and estimates are 8-10 trillion with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act plus all of the other campaign promises, and that is just wild as compared to our current national debt and the fiscal responsibility that I think a lot of policymakers and Americans really are focused on. Do I think that Senate Republicans and House Republicans are going to come together and say, let's write a $10 trillion bill that's not paid for at all, that increases the deficit? No, I don't. We still have deficit hawks in the Republican Party, we have people who are really concerned about it and for good reason. That's going to be a struggle. I want to say SALT is really important here. Republicans are fairly united in the general extension of Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. There's a lot of campaigning this cycle on it. It's been a priority where we're fairly unified. However, that's not where it ends. We're looking again at these small margins in the House and the small margins in the Senate. When we have that, we have individual policymakers who have a lot of influence. We saw that in 2021- 2022, when Democrats had a big bill and they said, Hey, this is our wish list, and Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema, who are Democrats, turned independents in the Senate, said, Oh gosh, no, thank you, that's way too big. Here's what we can do. We'll do the Inflation Reduction Act, which was a fraction and a little bit of a different direction on some than the original Democratic priorities. That's what we passed, because again, these two policymakers were able to exert a ton of influence. Then we saw it in 2023, when I think it was a total of eight house members ousted their speaker, which was the historic moment for Republicans in the House, what we see is a lot of power when we have those small vote margins. In the House, there's a really strong caucus for repeal of the state and local income tax, a limitation of $10,000. It's bipartisan. But there are a number of Republicans on there, particularly from high tax states, from traditionally blue states, New York, California, Connecticut, New Jersey. There's dozens of them, really, and they've won re election to the House and they've campaigned on this, and this is going to be a priority for them. I think it's really impractical to think we're going to see a tax bill that doesn't have SALT attached to it because this is a pretty strong caucus. Again, the margins are small, and to fully repeal SALT for 10 years is another $1.2 trillion. Now I'm at $6 trillion April, and that's before the overtime and before the Social Security, which is already system in peril in terms of being able to fund it. It's not quite that simple, and we do have deficit hawks. When we saw Tax Cuts and Jobs Act originally come through in 2017, we used the reconciliation process, Republicans did, and then Democrats used it in 2022 to pass the Inflation Reduction Act. There were many Republicans who wanted much more than TCJA cost. TCJA eventually they came to an agreement, and they said, We can do $1.5 trillion. 1.5 trillion is what we can sign on for. We can get everybody on board for that. That's what the budget instruction said. You can write a bill that increases the deficit by 1.5 trillion dollar over 10 years and so they did that. But it's not quite that simple. People say, $1.5 trillion, it wasn't 1.5 trillion dollar in tax cuts. It was $5.5 trillion in tax cuts with four trillion dollar in revenue raisers, some of them were pretty simple.  I replaced these itemized deductions with the standard deductions, they kinda offset, but there were some provisions in there that were just revenue raisers and one of them is 163(j), the business interest limitation. Then additionally, we couldn't see them all through the entire budget window and still hit that mark. When I originally described it literally in 2017, 2018, when I was talking about it, I would say. Hey, look, we've got all these dials, and at the top, we've got this big number, and this is what we've added up to. We want to turn this dial up, but that costs too much money, and that puts us over, so maybe we dial it down on the number of years or maybe we add this revenue raiser. We're trying to back into this $1.5 trillion number, and that's part of the reason we saw some of these changes that transitioned under TCJA. We're seeing right now the bonus depreciation number come down. We've seen a change in how we calculate ATI for that business interest limitation, and we've changed how we deduct research and experimental expenditures. Honestly, they just couldn't make it all the way through that budget window at that number. Just a quick note on those things that have already changed, we saw a bipartisan bill sail through the House, sail through 83% vote margin, 357-70, I want to say on January 31 this year, and it died in the Senate. Senate Finance Committee Leader Ranking member, Mike Crapo, said, No, thank you. [He was] really confident that he was going to have a majority in the Senate in 2025 and he does, and he now also is able to have a Republican House to work with. One of the questions I get a lot is, do I think that we're going to see that bill be taken up in the lame duck session? My answer is no, I do not. I don't see what the incentive is for Republicans to make the concessions in there with Democrats around the refundability of child tax credit because they've got different methodologies on that. I don't see an incentive for them when they know they're going to run the table next year. April Walker: One thing I know you and I have talked about before, there's in evaluating “pay fors” and revenue raisers, there's the ERC provisions that are in that legislation that you're talking about in the past. I guess that's still potentially on the table ending ERC in January, that's potentially out there. What about tariffs? Tariffs have been suggested as a revenue raiser. How does that work with reconciliation? Kasey Pittman: There are a couple of revenue raisers that have been widely talked about, and I think there's a lot of bipartisan agreement around ending the employee retention credit early, and that's scored, if they use it from the old bill, that's scored around $77 billion. But you have to think that's drop in the bucket when we're talking about $6 trillion, $8 trillion, $10 trillion dollars. But it helps - every bit helps, obviously right?  And then there's another one that's clawing back a lot of the IRA provisions, some of those clean energy provisions and semi recently, I think last weekend, President Elect Trump said,"Hey, I'm going to take away this $7,500 EV credit. We're not doing that anymore once I'm president." That's one item, but there are a lot of energy provisions outside of just that. That's the one that I think most individuals know about, but there are a lot of energy provisions outside of that. How they dismantle that is going to be really interesting to me, because there are some proponents who just say kill it all. This is not where our priorities are. There are others and there was a letter, I want to say to Speaker Johnson in the summer, that came from a number of House Republicans, a dozen or so that said, Hey, these are really beneficial in my district. I really hope that we and the language we've heard a lot of here is take a scalpel and not a sledgehammer. That's the talking point, scalpel and not a sledgehammer, to clawing back some of these provisions. I do expect some exploration of clawing back those provisions, and then tariffs. President Trump has talked a lot about tariffs and we've heard a number of things between 10 and 20% across the board tariff rate for anything coming into the country, about 60% on China. I believe we've heard 100% on cars coming from Mexico. What we don't know is and I've gotten a ton of questions on this, honestly. What we don't know is how serious he is about those. Is it an idea? Is it something that he intends to use as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations? Is it something that's going to be applied potentially in a more specific niche, these particular areas? That's what we saw in his first presidency was that it was particular items coming in. We saw it on aluminum, we saw it on steel. Or is it going to really be, does he intend to do it across the board? The thing is that presidents do not have completely unfettered power here, but they have the ability to enact certain tariffs without the consent of Congress. That being said, unless they find a way to write that into the reconciliation bill, they can't use the money they believe they'll generate from the tariffs as an offset to try to get back into that number. Because again, TCJA, $5.5 trillion in cuts, $4 trillion in revenue, if we want to include that in revenue, it's going to have to be present in the bill in some fashion. What I have been reading and researching a little bit, does it have to be explicit or does it have prescriptive or does it have to authorize him to move in that area? I'm still doing a little research there. But anyway, it would have to be in the bill in order to be included in the revenue scoring. April Walker: Lots of items to think about as we're rapidly going towards the end of the year and our listeners are [a  lot of] tax partitioners talking to clients. I think another top question I'm sure you've been getting is, what are we thinking about timing? When is this going to happen? When is legislation going to happen? Because we really think it's going to happen, they're not going to let TCJA expire at the end at 12/31/25. But what are we thinking? Kasey Pittman: Speaker Johnson has been very bullish on this and saying he would like a bill coming out of the house, not necessarily enacted, but out of the house in the first 100 days of Trump's presidency. Just if we're going from inauguration day of January 20th, that date would be April 30th. That is a really ambitious goal. There's a number, it's ambitious in ideal scenarios. There's a ton of other priorities as well, including government funding, which as of this moment, is not done, and we don't know if it'll be a continuing resolution or if they'll fund the government through the end of the year.  But there are a lot of priorities for this Congress, and one of them is the confirmation of all of President Trump's picks for various administration positions, which is going to complicate this. Because right now, the House Republicans have the generally accepted number is 218 seats. There are five seats outstanding. They could wind up with a total of 223. That's probably more like 221, 222, maybe 220, but probably 221, 222 (See note above for the final results). There are three people from the House that President Trump has nominated. They're leaving their seats, assuming they get this job, Matt Gaetz has already left his seat, and that's going to complicate matters. It's not an easy swap. Speaker Johnson will be working with a very tight majority, like a very razor thin majority in the House until all of that is sorted out, and you've got new policymakers in seat. That's going to complicate things as well, and it's going to be difficult to get to that number. Again, I think that there are a lot of different, even within the Republican Party, even though they believe in the TCJA. They believe it was stimulating. They think that they should extend it. Deficit funding for a large number is going to be really difficult. First, we're going to have to come to that number, and that is going to be a negotiation in and of itself. It's not going to be $10 trillion. It's not going to be, hey, we get everything we want for 10 years. In addition, then they have to figure out how to work with that number. Let's say $2 trillion, I'm just going to throw that out there, $2 trillion, $3 trillion, whatever they've decided on. You can increase the deficit over the budget window by $2 trillion dollars, $3 trillion dollars. I've got 10 years. In my budget window, what am I going to do with it? I could try to find a ton of revenue raisers, and I think it's honestly going to be a mix of these things. I could try to find a ton of revenue raisers. I could try to reduce government spending. I could not put everything in place for 10 years. We could see a bill that comes out for four years. Even though the budget window could be larger, they could say, hey, they're all going to expire after four years because that's how we can get most of our priorities in, and then we're going to kick this can down the road. When they crafted TCJA, it was very intentional. The portion that they made permanent was the corporate rate, there's a much longer planning runway for large corporations and businesses than there are for individuals, typically.That was smart. In addition, the things that are expiring are the things that are popular with voters, lower rates, increased child tax credit. It puts political pressure on the extension of these items. They could do that again because the items we're talking about are by and large, popular with voters. Nobody's looking, nobody raises their hand and says, I'd really love you to increase my tax rate. Personally, thank you so much. I'd like my bill to go up every year. Now, many taxpayers are okay with it and they believe in the methodology of a graduated system, but nobody's personally asking for an income tax increase that I've seen anyway in my practice. They're popular, they could kick it down the road and put pressure on the 2028 election, if they only do it for four years. I'd be interested to see what happens. They could also only enact them partially or phase them out or make other changes. There's a lot to figure out. There are a lot of dueling priorities and there's a lot of money at stake. April Walker: Lots to think about as we move into 2025, but I so appreciate your sitting down with us today, Kasey, and thinking through the scenarios. Very helpful for me. In closing, as we wrap up this podcast, I like to take a little bit of a left turn and think about, hey, we're together, we're taking a journey together towards a better profession in doing that, I like to get a glimpse of my guest other journeys outside of the world of tax. Kasey, tell me about a trip you have planned or a bucket list item you've got on the agenda. Kasey Pittman: Actually, we took our kids out of the country for the first time this summer, and we had a little bit of a larger trip planned and it got delayed because of a couple of years, mostly because of COVID, honestly. It was wonderful. We went to Germany and Austria and London, and we were hoping to add France on there too, but we couldn't because it was the Olympics and it was bananas getting into France. It was absolutely bananas. We are hoping to go, not next summer, but maybe the following summer go back and bring the kids to France. I enjoy traveling a lot, but I think it's so cool to see it through their eyes, too. I think it's really neat because the world. April Walker: I love to do that, too. Traveling is definitely I didn't do it a ton as a kid, and so I try to do it and get my daughter on the road as much as possible. Kasey Pittman: But in the short term, April, I'm going to come down your way. Let's see. I want to say it's the first Sunday of December to watch because on Monday, it is the Women's NCAA soccer championship, which will be very exciting. It'll be our third year and it's in Cary. Unfortunately, the next three years, I think, after that are in California, and we're not going to make that trip. It's probably our last year. April Walker:  Yes, you're always welcome to come down to a lovely North Carolina. Hopefully the weather will cooperate. Kasey Pittman: Fingers crossed. April Walker: Thanks again so much, Kasey. Again, this is April Walker from the AICPA Tax Section. This community is your go to source for technical guidance and resources design, especially for CPA tax practitioners like you in mind. This is a podcast from AICPA and CIMA together as the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcast and we encourage you to follow us so you don't miss an episode. If you already follow us, thank you so much. Please feel free to share with a like minded friend. You can also find us at aicpa-cima.com/tax and find our other episodes and get access to any resources we mentioned during this episode. Thank you so much for listening and wishing everyone a happy upcoming holiday season. Keep your finger on the pulse of the dynamic and evolving tax landscape with insights from tax thought leaders in the AICPA Tax Section. The Tax Section Odyssey podcast includes a digest of tax developments, trending issues and practice management tips that you need to be aware of to elevate your professional development and your firm practices. This resource is part of the robust tax resource library available from the AICPA Tax Section. The Tax Section is your go-to home base for staying up to date on the latest tax developments and providing the edge you need for upskilling your professional development. If you're not already a member, consider joining this prestigious community of your tax peers. You'll get free CPE, access to rich technical content such as our Annual Tax Compliance Kit, a weekly member newsletter and a digital subscription to The Tax Adviser.

Welcome to today's exciting session in the OVTLYR Trading Room, where we dive deep into real-time market analysis and tactical trading strategies. In this video, we analyze several key stocks, including NC, USB, INFY, and GPI, and break down the winning moves that generated significant returns despite market volatility. Key highlights: NC: A 7.4% win, with a positive impact on the portfolio of 0.94%. Learn how strategic exits on this stock helped capture gains while minimizing risk. USB: A 9% win, contributing 1.71% to the overall portfolio. This segment shows how to work the spreads effectively, even in unpredictable market conditions. GPI: A massive 21% win, boosting the portfolio by 2.47%. This stock shows the power of using OVTLYR's AI to identify high-profit opportunities. INFY: Although we took a small 7% loss on this trade, the calculated approach kept portfolio impact minimal at 1.41%. This video provides a comprehensive look at how to navigate volatile markets, use AI trading tools to your advantage, and make smarter decisions with less risk. The Golden Ticket Trading Strategy and the Master Key are showcased as key components to capturing consistent profits, with theoretical returns showing a 94.75% potential versus the actual 12% gain achieved this year. Learn how to close positions with precision, manage spreads, and use OVTLYR's data-driven insights to elevate your trading. Whether you're trading options or managing a stock portfolio, this session equips you with the knowledge and tools to maximize returns. Don't forget to subscribe for more market insights, strategies, and expert tips designed to help you win in the markets. #OVTLYR #StockAnalysis #NC #USB #INFY #GPI #TradingStrategies #OptionsTrading #MarketVolatility #GoldenTicketStrategy #MasterKeyStrategy #StockMarketAnalysis #AITrading #WinningTrades #PortfolioManagement #SmartTrading

The Biden-Harris administration expects to resettle more than 100,000 refugees into the U.S. by the end of Fiscal Year 2024 — the highest number in three decades. In this week's episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, the Center's Executive Director Mark Krikorian and the Center's Senior Researcher and refugee expert Nayla Rush discuss how the administration has transformed the resettlement program to reach these high admission numbers. The episode highlights concern about whether the remade program truly helps the most vulnerable, or if the distinction between humanitarian resettlement and ordinary immigration has been blurred.Key topics discussed in this episode include:Executive Branch Role: While the resettlement program is established in law, the president sets the cap on refugee admissions each year, which is now viewed more as a target than a limit.Expansion of Who Is Treated as a “Refugee”: The Biden-Harris administration has effectively redefined the term “refugee,” extending benefits and privileges to individuals who do not meet the traditional legal definition.An Expanded Domestic Resettlement Network: Ten religious or community-based organizations which assist with resettling refugees inside the U.S. maintain nationwide networks of local affiliates to provide refugees with services, including assistance in signing up for taxpayer-funded benefits. The local affiliate number is up from 150 to 350.Modernization of the Refugee Program: Efforts to modernize the program have significantly reduced processing times from years to just a few months, allowing for faster refugee arrivals. In FY 2023, despite a cap of 125,000, only half that number were resettled. However, with ongoing modernization and the introduction of “private” sponsorship, the cap is expected to be met or even raised in FY 2025.Private Sponsorship through the “Welcome Corps”: The administration has introduced the Welcome Corps initiative, allowing private groups and individuals to select their own refugees and future American citizens, bypassing the traditional role of the UN. The “Welcome Corps” was further expanded to include the “Welcome Corps on Campus”, bringing “refugees” straight to U.S. campuses; and the Welcome Corps at Work, bringing them straight to U.S. jobs. There is also a Latin American program and an Afghan targeted program.Concerns and Controversies:Chain Refugee Resettlement: Former refugees sponsoring new refugees, potentially creating issues with accountability and oversight.Private Sponsorship Challenges: Despite being labeled as “private,” the Welcome Corps is heavily subsidized by federal taxpayer funding.Future Expansion under a Potential Harris Administration: Pressure is already being exerted to create a “Welcome Corps” program for Gaza refugees.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestNayla Rush is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Immigration Studies.RelatedRemaking the U.S. Refugee Resettlement ProgramLatest Biden/Harris ‘Lawful Pathways' Scheme: Declare Latin American Migrants to be ‘Refugees'Parolees Paroling More ParoleesIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

Tune in here to this Wednesday edition of the Brett Winterble Show!   .Brett kicks off the program by examining Vice President Kamala Harris's elusive public strategy. Despite her active campaigning, Harris remains tightly scripted and rarely deviates from prepared statements. She has distanced herself from her past positions and current agenda, with changes communicated through anonymous aides and unsourced statements. What's behind her deliberate opacity, and what risks does it pose? Brett also covers the latest figures on federal borrowing. In FY 2024, the government borrowed $5 billion a day. The Congressional Budget Office reports a $1.5 trillion deficit for the first 10 months of the fiscal year—$103 billion less than the same period last year. Meanwhile, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation tracks the national debt at $35.08 trillion, or $104,193 per American. What do these numbers mean for the economy and everyday citizens?  Vice President Kamala Harris, aiming to distance herself from President Biden's struggles with economic issues, is shifting her focus to address middle-class concerns. She plans to unveil new initiatives aimed at reducing the costs of healthcare, housing, and food for middle-class families. Additionally, Harris will outline her strategy to tackle corporate price-gouging and provide relief to consumers.  We're joined by Gordon G. Chang from  to talk about U.S. Superpower Status Winterble questions whether the U.S. is still considered a superpower given recent challenges, including the situation in Afghanistan and tensions in regions like the South China Sea. And Chang acknowledges that the U.S. is still the sole superpower but criticizes the current administration for not effectively using American power. He argues that the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan has emboldened adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran, making the world more dangerous.  Brett is also joined by Alfredo Ortiz to talk about The Consumer Price Index (CPI) shows a slowing rate of increase, inflation remains a significant issue due to the compounded effects of past price hikes. He emphasizes that basic costs like gas and food have increased substantially and that ordinary Americans are feeling the strain.  Bo Thompson from Good Morning BT is also here for this Wednesday  episode of Crossing the Streams. Brett and Bo talk about and The classic movie Back to the Future and marvels End game as they compare to Kamala Harris's campaign also talks about JJ McCarthy season ending injury  also shares what Beth and Bo have coming up Thursday on Good Morning BT!  Listen here for all of this and more on The Brett Winterble ShowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to Top of the Morning by Mint, your weekday newscast that brings you five major stories from the world of business. It's Monday, April 22, 2024. My name is Nelson John. Let's get started: The earnings season is in full swing for India's 245 billion dollar IT industry. Over the last couple of weeks Indian IT giants like TCS, Infosys and Wipro announced their quarterly earnings for the last quarter of FY24. But what about the future of the industry that employs close to 5.4 million Indians? Recent deal wins and Gartner's forecast have painted a pretty optimistic picture for the IT sector's future. For instance, Infosys just announced its highest-ever annual contract value at $17.7 billion for FY24, and it's not just Infosys riding this wave. Wipro and TCS have also reported strong order books, with TCS raking in a whopping $13.2 billion in the last quarter alone. They're all betting on better times post the upcoming US presidential elections, expecting a boost in client spending. Mint's Shelley Singh takes a look at what the future could look like for the Indian IT industry amidst a rapidly declining workforce. Top three companies in the sector - TCS, Infy and Wipro saw a deduction of more than 64,000 in their workforce.  Chocolates are about to get pricier and it's not just regular inflation at work. Cocoa prices have shot up recently, and not just by a little. Crop failures in big cocoa-producing countries like Ivory Coast and Ghana, have sent cocoa prices up by 133 per cent since last June! Behind this failure is climate change, adverse weather and a crop disease that affects the root of the cocoa tree. India too is set to feel the pinch. This story by howindialives.com breaks down the bitter truth unfolding in the chocolate industry. Even though we grew about 30,000 tonnes of cocoa in 2022-2023, it wasn't enough to keep up with our chocolate cravings. We had to import close to 1 lakh tonnes of cocoa products like beans, butter, and powder last year, and with global prices on the rise, our costs have soared as well. This price hike might cool down later this year if the crop yields improve, but it's not just about the weather. The cocoa market has some deep-rooted issues. Most cocoa farmers are barely scraping by, earning much less than what their valuable crops should bring in.  India's tech epicentre and the internet's favourite city Bengaluru lately has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Be it the soaring temperatures in a city otherwise famous for its “air conditioned” weather or the severe water crisis it's been going through for the past couple of months. Amidst the empty tanks and drying lakes one has to ask whether the city's companies are using its water judiciously. An analysis of Bengaluru-based top BSE-listed firms reveals an 11% spike in water usage in the last year, signalling the severity of the situation. 56 of the top 1000 listed companies on BSE are headquartered in Bengaluru. Only 45 had usable data, showing a collective water consumption increase to 33.3 million kiloliters in the fiscal year 2022-23. Notably, public sector companies saw a modest 2.2 per cent rise, while private sector firms ramped up their water usage by 21 per cent. Mint's senior associate editor and data journalist Niti Kiran breaks down the water consumption pattern of each industry in Bengaluru Niti also takes a look at their water management practices.  Taylor Swift - the pop culture phenomenon had a terrific 2023, ending the year as the TIME magazine's person of the year. This year too the pop juggernaut of Taylor Swift - with millions of “Swifties” behind her - doesn't seem to be slowing down. This next story, however, is not about her music. Taylor's Eras Tour in Singapore not only dazzled fans but also showcased the innovative use of 5G technology, according to Per Narvinger, Ericsson's Senior Vice President for Cloud Software and Services. At the heart of this tech integration was Singtel's 7 dollar worth 5G Express Pass, which offered fans high-speed data priority to stream and share the event. This service highlights a burgeoning opportunity to monetize 5G technologies through network slicing, which allows for dedicated broadband bandwidth tailored to specific events and needs without additional infrastructure. Network slicing is akin to a toll highway for data, offering a premium path separate from regular traffic. This technology is not yet widespread globally, but India, with its rapidly expanding 5G infrastructure, stands to benefit significantly. Mint's telecom correspondent Gulveen Aulakh reports on this path breaking phenomenon and how a Taylor Swift concert proved helpful in testing it out. What can 70,000 rupees get you? In some cities, it's enough for a month's rent in a decent apartment. But if you're eyeing a night at some of India's posh resorts like AmanBagh in Rajasthan or BrijRama Palace in Varanasi, that same amount might just cover one night, especially during peak season. Yeah, the pandemic has really changed the game for hotel pricing, sending rates sky-high. The luxury hotel scene has been on a roll, with domestic tourism fuelling a surge in demand. Mint's Varuni Khosla spoke to several hospitality industry insiders, who noted that the travel patterns have shifted, with Indians now opting for more frequent short stays rather than the occasional long vacation. This change has undoubtedly played a role in the climbing rates. Rating agencies such as Crisil and CareEdge, predict that the hotel industry is in for a few good years, with steady revenue growth thanks to robust domestic demand and a gradual uptick from international visitors. The scene is set for a continued boom, with minimal new hotels opening up, which just tightens the supply further.We'd love to hear your feedback on this podcast. Let us know by writing to us at feedback@livemint.com. You may send us feedback, tips or anything that you feel we should be covering from your vantage point in the world of business and finance. Mint Primer | Let the good times roll: IT services eye a better futureThe bitter truth unfolding in chocolates industry Bengaluru water crisis: Firms gulp more but also pledge to reduce usageSilent Symphony: Taylor Swift's cryptic 5G taleScent of growth for Indian hotels as the good times check in

Welcome to Top of the Morning by Mint, your weekday newscast that brings you five major stories from the world of business. It's Friday, April 19, 2024. My name is Nelson John. Let's get started:Markets continued to fall for the third consecutive trading session. Benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty both fell by about 0.6 percent. Markets aren't likely to be any better tomorrow, if the annual results for Infosys are anything to go by. Infosys reported that revenue increased by only 1.4 percent over the previous financial year. FY2025 doesn't look much better either: revenue is likely to grow less than 3 percent. Analysts remain disappointed, write Shouvik Das and Jas Bardia. Marginal increase in revenue, lower profits, and poor future projections: the situation is not kind for Infosys right now Let's talk about Infy's rival, TCS. India's largest IT company is now assessing in-office attendance as part of its appraisal system. Jas Bardia reports that TCS employees who attended office regularly received much better annual pay hikes than their colleagues who chose to work from home frequently. An executive from TCS told Jas that the IT giant has been nudging its employees to come to office regularly for more than 15 months. That led to a directive in January, where everyone was asked to come to the office all five working days of the week. Those who chose to ignore that notice are now facing the consequences.In most parts of India, summer came early — and it seems, is here to stay. But the weather department's prediction of a bountiful monsoon season provides some much-needed hope. Of course, the IMD's weather predictions have often been mocked for being wrong. Sayantan Bera explains this year's prediction in his primer. A healthy monsoon would provide relief to India's sluggish farm economy and poor rural consumption. Equal distribution of rains is more important than the quantity of rainfall, Sayantan writes. That would help in reducing food inflation too.Foxtrot nuts are touted as a healthy alternative for snacks like chips. Now, they are being sold the world over, but closer to home, we might recognise them as makhana . Believe it or not, these white, fun to eat pops actually originate in muddy waters. About one lakh families from Bihar are the only ones engaged in the farming and harvesting of the foxtrot nut, writes Alisha Sachdev. But, makhana could emerge as the next big thing in India's 20 billion dollar snacking industry. Makhana goes up against millets in the health foods category, but is already bigger than the pulse in terms of sales. As more FMCG companies venture into selling makhana, industrial processing might soon propel it in everyone's kitchens as a healthy snack to have with your evening tea.Baahubali, KGF, and RRR had Indian audiences flocking to a movie theatre to watch vernacular movies. But the filmmakers of these movies chose to dub it in Hindi, English, and other languages, making it an easier sell. However, Manjummel Boys, a Malayalam movie, is now bucking that trend: it recently grossed more than 200 crore rupees. The makers of this movie chose not to dub it in any other language. Manjummel Boys is part of a slew of low-budget movies from southern India that are doing well, despite little or no dubbing, writes Lata Jha. Earlier, such movies rarely got a pan-India release unless they starred huge stars like Rajnikanth or Ram Charan. With the success of these movies, perhaps a good story wins over any language barriers.We'd love to hear your feedback on this podcast. Let us know by writing to us at feedback@livemint.com. You may send us feedback, tips or anything that you feel we should be covering from your vantage point in the world of business and finance.That's all for today. Thank you for listening.We'll be back next week with a fresh episode of Top of the Morning. Have a nice weekend!Show notes:Infosys projects bleak market to continue this year with paltry growth guidanceNot been regular to the office? Here's what India's largest IT company didThe 2024 monsoon forecast has a hidden warningMade in Bihar: How superfood makhana works its magicManjummel Boys sets a new trend for southern films: mega success at home

Jeffrey Mosher welcomes Jennifer Hayes, Senior Vice President, Operations & Policy from Invest Detroit Jennifer and Jeffrey had a discussion about the Michigan CDFI Coalition. Michigan Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Coalition is celebrating its one year of operations. The coalition is committed to providing financial resources to underserved borrowers and supporting economic growth in Michigan. Here are some key talking points to highlight the achievements and goals of the Michigan CDFI Coalition: Jennifer could you tell the Michigan business community about the Mission and Objectives of Michigan CDFI? MICDFI Coalitions' overall mission is to increase awareness of CDFIs, expand programming to support more borrowers, businesses, and projects, and continue to support economic growth throughout Michigan. What's the Role of CDFIs? CDFIs as mission-based lenders, providing flexible and affordable financing to underserved communities, small businesses, and affordable housing projects. CDFIs are particularly integral in reaching borrowers who often cannot access traditional bank financing. What's the Impact in Michigan? To date, Michigan's CDFIs have deployed more than $4 billion in loans throughout the state and have made the following impact: ● Created almost 30,000 permanent jobs ● Developed almost 23 million square feet of real estate ● Over 14,000 total housing units, 72% affordable ● Supported over 7,000 small or micro-businesses ● Created the largest state CDFI fund in the nation with $85 million to date. CDFIs also played a significant role in providing Michigan small businesses and nonprofits access to the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) forgivable loans and serviced $1.5 billion in loans, preserving 165,000 jobs. In FY 2021, MI CDFIs deployed $1.4 billion in loans. ● Michigan CDFIs support several areas of the economy including: ○ Small and Micro-Businesses. ○ Single, Multi-Family, and Affordable Housing. ○ Real Estate and Mixed-Use Projects. ○ Consumer Loans and Banking Products. ○ Non-Profit Projects, and more. ● MICDFI Coalition has been integral in the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) forgivable loans during the COVID-19 pandemic. ● Have supported small businesses and nonprofits statewide through the servicing of $1.5 billion in loans. Tell us about Statewide Support and Advocacy? MICDFI Coalition has had support from the following organizations and individuals: ● State Senator Mary Cavanagh, CEED Lending, Chi Ishobak, Cinnaire, Core Community Partners, Detroit Development Fund, Grow, Invest Detroit, Michigan Community Capital, Michigan Credit Union Foundation, Michigan Women Forward, Northern Shores Community Development, Inc., Northern Initiatives, Opportunity Resource Fund, ProsperUs Detroit, Rende Progress Capital, Venture North, Capital Impact Partners, Community Economic Development Association of Michigan, ELGA Credit Union, IFF, Michigan Assistive Technology Loan Fund. And if the listeners care to learn more About Michigan CDFI Coalition how might they do so? The Michigan CDFI Coalition was founded in 2022 with a mission of bringing Michigan CDFIs together to collaborate on the development of inclusive policies, deliver vital programs, and bolster their efforts in community investment across the state of Michigan. Prospective Michigan CDFI partners, communities, and individuals can learn more about the Michigan CDFI Coalition by visiting www.micdfi.org. » Visit MBN website: www.michiganbusinessnetwork.com/ » Subscribe to MBN's YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCqNX… » Like MBN: www.facebook.com/mibiznetwork » Follow MBN: twitter.com/MIBizNetwork/ » MBN Instagram: www.instagram.com/mibiznetwork/

The right support during the right time can save a life. Listen to how Padma's colleagues at Infy helped her family during difficult times.

HOST: MARK LONGO, THE OPTIONS INSIDER MEDIA GROUP CO-HOST: MARK SEBASTIAN, THE OPTION PIT CO-HOST: MIKE TOSAW, ST. CHARLES WEALTH MANAGEMENT ON THIS EPISODE MARK, THE GREASY MEATBALL AND UNCLE MIKE BREAK DOWN: THEIR MEMORIES TITO SANTANA - KING OF THE RING THE LATEST IN THE OPTIONS MARKETS MOST ACTIVE EQUITY OPTIONS TODAY INCL RIVN UNUSUAL OPTIONS ACTIVITY IN MU, INFY, NTRA BUILDING YOUR OWN BONDS COLLAR WHERE THEY ARE COMFORTABLE BUYING INTO OR BUYING MORE SPX RIGHT NOW OUR SEPTEMBER PRO TRADING CRATE WINNER WHAT'S ON OUR RADAR FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK AND MUCH MORE

HOST: MARK LONGO, THE OPTIONS INSIDER MEDIA GROUP CO-HOST: MARK SEBASTIAN, THE OPTION PIT CO-HOST: MIKE TOSAW, ST. CHARLES WEALTH MANAGEMENT ON THIS EPISODE MARK, THE GREASY MEATBALL AND UNCLE MIKE BREAK DOWN: THEIR MEMORIES TITO SANTANA - KING OF THE RING THE LATEST IN THE OPTIONS MARKETS MOST ACTIVE EQUITY OPTIONS TODAY INCL RIVN UNUSUAL OPTIONS ACTIVITY IN MU, INFY, NTRA BUILDING YOUR OWN BONDS COLLAR WHERE THEY ARE COMFORTABLE BUYING INTO OR BUYING MORE SPX RIGHT NOW OUR SEPTEMBER PRO TRADING CRATE WINNER WHAT'S ON OUR RADAR FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK AND MUCH MORE

After a late onset, monsoon seems to be finally making good time. It has covered almost 80% of the country -- arriving in Delhi and Mumbai at the same time. While the rains are again giving the civic bodies a tough time, the policy makers are a relieved lot. But how long will this relief last? Has monsoon solved this year's food inflation problem?  Last weekend, when the monsoon clouds were progressing towards Delhi, neighbouring Russia was grappling with a different kind of march towards its capital Moscow. It was that of heavily armed Russian mercenaries led by former Vladimir Putin ally Yevgeny Prighozhin? While the march was cut short and Prighozhin was forced to leave the country, the development has certainly exposed chinks in Putin's regime. Find out about the controversial Wagner leader and how he came into prominence in Russia.  Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, has described this rebellion as another crack in the Russian façade. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has dealt a big blow to the world economy. India too has been feeling the heat. In FY 23, IPO filings declined nearly 54%. But, this week, it seems, investors will be spoilt for choice as seven IPOs are set to hit the markets. The push comes amid a broad-based market revival. But, as global uncertainties keep secondary markets volatile, will this momentum in the primary market sustain?  Asset managers, meanwhile, are racing to develop artificial intelligence solutions that can help their clients get more returns. People are talking about AI's application in almost every field. AI, it seems, now has baggage of expectations to carry. And a new term has been coined to explain this. It is AI hype. Today we explain what ‘AI hype' is?

HOST: MARK LONGO, THE OPTIONS INSIDER MEDIA GROUPCO-HOST: MIKE TOSAW, ST. CHARLES WEALTH MANAGEMENT CO-HOST: ANDREW GIOVINAZZI, THE OPTION PIT IN THIS EPISODE MARK, UNCLE MIKE, AND THE ROCK LOBSTER BREAK DOWN: THE LATEST IN THE OPTIONS MARKETS INCL AMC, MSFT MOST ACTIVE EQUITY OPTIONS TODAY INCLUDING KBH, TSM, INFY, BAC, C, JPM, UAL, AA, NFLX UNUSUAL OPTIONS ACTIVITY IN KBH, RKT, LILAK WHAT'S ON OUR RADAR FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK AND WEEKEND AND MUCH MORE

HOST: MARK LONGO, THE OPTIONS INSIDER MEDIA GROUPCO-HOST: MIKE TOSAW, ST. CHARLES WEALTH MANAGEMENT CO-HOST: ANDREW GIOVINAZZI, THE OPTION PIT IN THIS EPISODE MARK, UNCLE MIKE, AND THE ROCK LOBSTER BREAK DOWN: THE LATEST IN THE OPTIONS MARKETS INCL AMC, MSFT MOST ACTIVE EQUITY OPTIONS TODAY INCLUDING KBH, TSM, INFY, BAC, C, JPM, UAL, AA, NFLX UNUSUAL OPTIONS ACTIVITY IN KBH, RKT, LILAK WHAT'S ON OUR RADAR FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK AND WEEKEND AND MUCH MORE

Equity Cash: BPCL, MTAR Tech and Mukand Equity Derivative: MGL 870 CE, INFY 1500 PE Index Derivatives: Nifty 18000 CE, Nifty Bank 42700 CE --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/kunvarji-group1/message

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily Newsbrief for Thursday, January 5th, 2023. Happy Friday Jr. everyone! I hope you and your’s have had a great week thus far! Before I get into today’s news… Club Membership Plug: Let’s stop and take a moment to talk about Fight Laugh Feast Club membership. By joining the Fight Laugh Feast Army, not only will you be aiding in our fight to take down secular & legacy media; but you’ll also get access to content placed in our Club Portal, such as past shows, all of our conference talks, and EXCLUSIVE content for club members that you won’t be able to find anywhere else. Lastly, you’ll also get discounts for our conferences… so if you’ve got $10 bucks a month to kick over our way, you can sign up now at fightlaughfeast.com. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-says-its-his-intention-visit-u-s-mexico-border-amid-historic-crisis Biden says it's his 'intention' to visit US-Mexico border amid historic crisis President Biden says it's his "intention" to visit the U.S-Mexico border amid a record high number of border crossings, according to a report. Biden made the comments Wednesday at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, saying that it's his "intention" to visit the border during his trip to the North American Leaders' Summit on Jan. 9-10, which will include meetings with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The visit would mark Biden's first trip to the border during his presidency. People familiar with discussions surrounding the potential visit told the Wall Street Journal that Biden will not be making a policy announcement if he visits the border. The potential trip comes amid a record-breaking crisis at the southern border, with 617, 250 total migrant encounters occurring so far in FY 2023 as of Dec. 29, 2022, according to Customs and Border Protection sources, adding that there's an average of 6,858 encounters per day. In FY 2022, migrant encounters reached 2.3 million. On Dec. 6, Biden said that "there are more important things going on" when asked why he'd visit a border state but not the U.S. -Mexico border itself. The Biden administration has pushed for Title 42 — the pandemic-era policy which allows immigration officers to quickly remove migrants from the country on the basis of public health — to be lifted. After U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled in favor of immigration advocates and gave Title 42 an end date of Dec. 21, the Supreme Court temporarily halted the policy's termination. Without providing evidence, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in November that Biden has been to the border. https://www.theepochtimes.com/white-house-defends-covid-travel-restrictions-as-beijing-threatens-countermeasures_4961495.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=BonginoReport Now from the southern border, to this! Donald Trump Says "China"- Play 0:00-0:10 You guessed it, we’re talking about China! https://www.theepochtimes.com/white-house-defends-covid-travel-restrictions-as-beijing-threatens-countermeasures_4961495.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=BonginoReport White House Defends COVID Travel Restrictions as Beijing Threatens ‘Countermeasures’ The White House is defending its decision to issue travel restrictions related to COVID-19 following several threats from China’s communist regime. The Biden administration said there was no cause for retaliation from Beijing after its communist leadership criticized Washington’s decision to require a negative COVID-19 test from those who travel from China to the United States. “There’s no cause for retaliation here just because countries around the world are taking prudent health measures to protect their citizens,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a Jan. 3 press conference. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state, announced that it will reopen its borders on Jan. 8. The move comes just one month after the regime abruptly terminated its zero-COVID policy in response to mass unrest, causing cases of COVID-19 to surge throughout China. The move prompted a global outcry, and nations around the world are hurrying to put in place testing requirements for all arrivals from China. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a statement on Dec. 28, 2022, saying that passengers would need to present a negative COVID-19 test result or proof of recovery before boarding a U.S.-bound flight from China. The CDC said the move was meant to “slow the spread of COVID-19 in the United States during the surge in COVID-19 cases in the PRC [People’s Republic of China] given the lack of adequate and transparent epidemiological and viral genomic sequence data being reported from the PRC.” The United States joins the UK, Australia, Canada, France, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Malaysia, Qatar, and other nations seeking to place stronger restrictions on arrivals from China. A spokesperson for the CCP said that the testing requirements were “unacceptable” and vowed that the regime would “take countermeasures” against nations that issue travel restrictions on flights originating in China. The White House defended the decision to require testing from all China-originating travelers based on the international consensus that COVID-19 is currently ravaging China’s populace. That’s funny though… anyone remember when Trump shut down travel to China? Speaker Pelosi Visits SF's Chinatown To Show Support Amid Coronavirus Fears Play 1:16-1:40 The CCP has attempted to cover up the scale of COVID-19 infections in China and the number of deaths it’s causing among the Chinese population, which has no natural immunity following almost three years of constant lockdowns. Leaked images of papers from a CCP conference in December 2022 revealed that Party authorities believe that as many as 248 million Chinese became infected within the first 20 days of December. Publicly, the regime claims that only 10 people died from the disease throughout the month. That’s generally what happens when you don’t allow for herd immunity. https://bigleaguepolitics.com/report-at-least-769-recently-vaxxed-athletes-collapsed-last-year-during-competition/ Report: At Least 769 Recently Vaxxed Athletes Collapsed Last Year During Competition One of the underlying stories of 2022 is the enormous number of professional athletes – primarily men with an average age of 23 – collapsing during competition. Though many of these instances have been documented in singular reports. Mainstream media outlets appear reluctant to link this unprecedented surge in collapses to the Covid-19 jab. Or to even bother asking follow up questions as to why or how this is happening. This is especially suspicious considering the majority of these collapsing instances involved recently vaccinated and or boosted athletes. One America News Network (OAN) did some digging and discovered more than 769 athletes have collapsed on the field during a game from March 2021 to March 2022. As outlined by The Defender, this spike “in cardiac arrest and other heart issues among elite athletes coincides with the rollout of COVID-19 jabs.” Pearson Sharp of OAN asks: How many 23-year-old athletes were collapsing and suffering heart attacks before this year? Do you know any 23-year-old people who had heart attacks before now? And these are just the ones we know about. How many have gone unreported? Nearly 800 athletes — young, fit people in the prime of life — falling down on the field. In fact, 500% more soccer players in the EU are dropping dead from heart attacks than just one year ago. Sharp discussed how this unprecedented surge is not a coincidence. Especially because “the Pfizer vaccine is known to cause heart inflammation.” He also alluded to the fact this number may be grossly underreported. The reason for these unreliable figures stems from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) showing only between 1 and 10% of adverse reactions according to past investigations. Kyle Warner, for example, is an athlete who filed a VAERS report about his own health injuries following the COVID-19 jab. As Dr. Joseph Mercola put it; the filing took Warner 45 minutes – “a length of time that many doctors can’t or won’t devote when it comes to reporting adverse vaccine reactions seen among their patients.” Regardless, elite athletes collapsing in game increased so much in 2022 that even a mainstream media sports channel in Australia has speculated that the health issues could be linked to COVID-19 shots. https://twitter.com/i/status/1513542808531046409 - Play Video As this number steadily grows, mainstream outlets appear to be ignoring these collapses and their potential linkage to the Covd-19 vaccine. At the same time, the White House and other institutions continue pushing for more to take the experimental jab and get boosted. https://thepostmillennial.com/two-thirds-of-us-big-bank-economists-predict-a-recession-for-2023?utm_campaign=64487 Recession predicted in 2023 for US economy by economists at major banks Two-thirds of top economists at the United States' largest financial institutions are predicting a recession in 2023, according to a survey conducted by the Wall Street Journal. Primary concerns cited in the survey of 23 primary dealers, including those from Barclays PLC, Bank of America Corp, TD Securities, and UBS Group AG, were a dwindling of pandemic savings, a decline in the housing market, and a tightening of lending rules as potential warning signs of an incoming recession. The prediction follows a year of soaring inflation, accompanied by rapid interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve that have risen from nearly zero in March, to 4.5 percent by the year's end. The Federal Reserve reportedly plans to continue its increase to 5 percent, then 5.5 percent in 2023. Economists predict that this will force unemployment rates above five percent, resulting in millions of Americans losing their jobs. The central bank doesn't forecast a decline in interest rates until 2024 at the earliest, as it attempts a balancing act of attempting to lower inflation levels without triggering a recession. Inflation began to increase at the beginning of 2022, rising at its fastest pace in 40 years. It currently sits at three times the government's preferred rate of two percent. Americans' savings during the pandemic from decreased spending and government stimulus measures have started to dwindle, as consumers increasingly dig in to weather rising prices of most products, from groceries to gas. Households have also increasingly had to take out lines of credit to afford their lives, as total household borrowing increased by $351 billion between the second and third quarter, to a total of $16.51 trillion, the fastest increase in 14 years. The high interest rates have hit the housing market particularly hard, as mortgage rates continue to soar and home sales plummeted. Banks have also significantly tightened their lending standards, more often than not an indicator of an incoming recession. Out of the 23 primary dealers surveyed, only five believed that there would not be a recession: Credit Suisse Group AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., HSBC Holdings PLC, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Morgan Stanley. Jeremy Schwartz, Senior US Economist at Credit Suisse, one of the five banks that didn't predict a recession, wrote of the outlook for 2023, "Several historically reliable lead indicators are sending recession signals, but in our view these measures are unable to correctly gauge recession risk in the current environment." https://www.foxnews.com/world/zelenskyy-warns-russia-planning-prolonged-attack-iranian-shahed-drones Zelenskyy warns Russia planning ‘prolonged’ attack with Iranian Shahed drones Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Kyiv has gained intelligence suggesting that Russia is planning a prolonged attack by using Iranian-supplied Shahed drones. In an overnight address Monday, Zelenskyy warned that in the two days since the world welcomed in 2023, Ukraine has stopped more than 80 drone strikes. "We have information that Russia is planning a prolonged attack with Shaheds," he said. Zelenskyy said that Russia is looking to exhaust "our people, our air defense, our energy sector" by constantly pummeling the country with air strikes – a strategy Moscow has been employing for months but which it has escalated as winter sets in. "Now is the time when everyone involved in the protection of the sky should be especially attentive," he said addressing Ukrainian pilots and those in charge of air defense. Moscow and Tehran, Iran, have repeatedly denied any drone partnership or the use of Iranian supplied drones in Ukraine despite evidence supplied by Kyiv and backed by Western defense officials. Zelenskyy urged his forces on the front lines, particularly those fighting in areas like Bakhmut – which has seen intense ground warfare for months – to continue to hold the line amid harsh winter conditions, which has likely slowed fighting in other areas like Kherson. Ukrainian forces have continued to push the lines eastward in areas like Donetsk, and fighting has begun to intensify in the Donbas region where Russian backed forces have fought since 2014. Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces championed this week that Ukrainian forces have liberated 40% of the territory Russia occupied following its invasion. He also said that in the regions where Russian forces remain Moscow has lost roughly 28% of the land. Armored Republic The Mission of Armored Republic is to Honor Christ by equipping Free Men with Tools of Liberty necessary to preserve God-given rights. In the Armored Republic there is no King but Christ. We are Free Craftsmen. Body Armor is a Tool of Liberty. We create Tools of Liberty. Free men must remain ever vigilant against tyranny wherever it appears. God has given us the tools of liberty needed to defend the rights He bestowed to us. Armored Republic is honored to offer you those Tools. Visit them, at ar500armor.com Now for my favorite topic, sports! Take a listen to ESPN football analyst Dan Orlovsky on the hospitalized Damar Hamlin: ESPN's Dan Orlovsky Praying for Damar Hamlin on NFL Live Play video That took place on ESPN ladies and gentleman. This is why I love sports… sports has gone woke in recent years, but it’s situations like this, that bring people together… God is always at work, but it’s amazing to see His handiwork in this situation.

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily Newsbrief for Thursday, January 5th, 2023. Happy Friday Jr. everyone! I hope you and your’s have had a great week thus far! Before I get into today’s news… Club Membership Plug: Let’s stop and take a moment to talk about Fight Laugh Feast Club membership. By joining the Fight Laugh Feast Army, not only will you be aiding in our fight to take down secular & legacy media; but you’ll also get access to content placed in our Club Portal, such as past shows, all of our conference talks, and EXCLUSIVE content for club members that you won’t be able to find anywhere else. Lastly, you’ll also get discounts for our conferences… so if you’ve got $10 bucks a month to kick over our way, you can sign up now at fightlaughfeast.com. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-says-its-his-intention-visit-u-s-mexico-border-amid-historic-crisis Biden says it's his 'intention' to visit US-Mexico border amid historic crisis President Biden says it's his "intention" to visit the U.S-Mexico border amid a record high number of border crossings, according to a report. Biden made the comments Wednesday at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, saying that it's his "intention" to visit the border during his trip to the North American Leaders' Summit on Jan. 9-10, which will include meetings with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The visit would mark Biden's first trip to the border during his presidency. People familiar with discussions surrounding the potential visit told the Wall Street Journal that Biden will not be making a policy announcement if he visits the border. The potential trip comes amid a record-breaking crisis at the southern border, with 617, 250 total migrant encounters occurring so far in FY 2023 as of Dec. 29, 2022, according to Customs and Border Protection sources, adding that there's an average of 6,858 encounters per day. In FY 2022, migrant encounters reached 2.3 million. On Dec. 6, Biden said that "there are more important things going on" when asked why he'd visit a border state but not the U.S. -Mexico border itself. The Biden administration has pushed for Title 42 — the pandemic-era policy which allows immigration officers to quickly remove migrants from the country on the basis of public health — to be lifted. After U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled in favor of immigration advocates and gave Title 42 an end date of Dec. 21, the Supreme Court temporarily halted the policy's termination. Without providing evidence, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in November that Biden has been to the border. https://www.theepochtimes.com/white-house-defends-covid-travel-restrictions-as-beijing-threatens-countermeasures_4961495.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=BonginoReport Now from the southern border, to this! Donald Trump Says "China"- Play 0:00-0:10 You guessed it, we’re talking about China! https://www.theepochtimes.com/white-house-defends-covid-travel-restrictions-as-beijing-threatens-countermeasures_4961495.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=BonginoReport White House Defends COVID Travel Restrictions as Beijing Threatens ‘Countermeasures’ The White House is defending its decision to issue travel restrictions related to COVID-19 following several threats from China’s communist regime. The Biden administration said there was no cause for retaliation from Beijing after its communist leadership criticized Washington’s decision to require a negative COVID-19 test from those who travel from China to the United States. “There’s no cause for retaliation here just because countries around the world are taking prudent health measures to protect their citizens,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a Jan. 3 press conference. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state, announced that it will reopen its borders on Jan. 8. The move comes just one month after the regime abruptly terminated its zero-COVID policy in response to mass unrest, causing cases of COVID-19 to surge throughout China. The move prompted a global outcry, and nations around the world are hurrying to put in place testing requirements for all arrivals from China. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a statement on Dec. 28, 2022, saying that passengers would need to present a negative COVID-19 test result or proof of recovery before boarding a U.S.-bound flight from China. The CDC said the move was meant to “slow the spread of COVID-19 in the United States during the surge in COVID-19 cases in the PRC [People’s Republic of China] given the lack of adequate and transparent epidemiological and viral genomic sequence data being reported from the PRC.” The United States joins the UK, Australia, Canada, France, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Malaysia, Qatar, and other nations seeking to place stronger restrictions on arrivals from China. A spokesperson for the CCP said that the testing requirements were “unacceptable” and vowed that the regime would “take countermeasures” against nations that issue travel restrictions on flights originating in China. The White House defended the decision to require testing from all China-originating travelers based on the international consensus that COVID-19 is currently ravaging China’s populace. That’s funny though… anyone remember when Trump shut down travel to China? Speaker Pelosi Visits SF's Chinatown To Show Support Amid Coronavirus Fears Play 1:16-1:40 The CCP has attempted to cover up the scale of COVID-19 infections in China and the number of deaths it’s causing among the Chinese population, which has no natural immunity following almost three years of constant lockdowns. Leaked images of papers from a CCP conference in December 2022 revealed that Party authorities believe that as many as 248 million Chinese became infected within the first 20 days of December. Publicly, the regime claims that only 10 people died from the disease throughout the month. That’s generally what happens when you don’t allow for herd immunity. https://bigleaguepolitics.com/report-at-least-769-recently-vaxxed-athletes-collapsed-last-year-during-competition/ Report: At Least 769 Recently Vaxxed Athletes Collapsed Last Year During Competition One of the underlying stories of 2022 is the enormous number of professional athletes – primarily men with an average age of 23 – collapsing during competition. Though many of these instances have been documented in singular reports. Mainstream media outlets appear reluctant to link this unprecedented surge in collapses to the Covid-19 jab. Or to even bother asking follow up questions as to why or how this is happening. This is especially suspicious considering the majority of these collapsing instances involved recently vaccinated and or boosted athletes. One America News Network (OAN) did some digging and discovered more than 769 athletes have collapsed on the field during a game from March 2021 to March 2022. As outlined by The Defender, this spike “in cardiac arrest and other heart issues among elite athletes coincides with the rollout of COVID-19 jabs.” Pearson Sharp of OAN asks: How many 23-year-old athletes were collapsing and suffering heart attacks before this year? Do you know any 23-year-old people who had heart attacks before now? And these are just the ones we know about. How many have gone unreported? Nearly 800 athletes — young, fit people in the prime of life — falling down on the field. In fact, 500% more soccer players in the EU are dropping dead from heart attacks than just one year ago. Sharp discussed how this unprecedented surge is not a coincidence. Especially because “the Pfizer vaccine is known to cause heart inflammation.” He also alluded to the fact this number may be grossly underreported. The reason for these unreliable figures stems from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) showing only between 1 and 10% of adverse reactions according to past investigations. Kyle Warner, for example, is an athlete who filed a VAERS report about his own health injuries following the COVID-19 jab. As Dr. Joseph Mercola put it; the filing took Warner 45 minutes – “a length of time that many doctors can’t or won’t devote when it comes to reporting adverse vaccine reactions seen among their patients.” Regardless, elite athletes collapsing in game increased so much in 2022 that even a mainstream media sports channel in Australia has speculated that the health issues could be linked to COVID-19 shots. https://twitter.com/i/status/1513542808531046409 - Play Video As this number steadily grows, mainstream outlets appear to be ignoring these collapses and their potential linkage to the Covd-19 vaccine. At the same time, the White House and other institutions continue pushing for more to take the experimental jab and get boosted. https://thepostmillennial.com/two-thirds-of-us-big-bank-economists-predict-a-recession-for-2023?utm_campaign=64487 Recession predicted in 2023 for US economy by economists at major banks Two-thirds of top economists at the United States' largest financial institutions are predicting a recession in 2023, according to a survey conducted by the Wall Street Journal. Primary concerns cited in the survey of 23 primary dealers, including those from Barclays PLC, Bank of America Corp, TD Securities, and UBS Group AG, were a dwindling of pandemic savings, a decline in the housing market, and a tightening of lending rules as potential warning signs of an incoming recession. The prediction follows a year of soaring inflation, accompanied by rapid interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve that have risen from nearly zero in March, to 4.5 percent by the year's end. The Federal Reserve reportedly plans to continue its increase to 5 percent, then 5.5 percent in 2023. Economists predict that this will force unemployment rates above five percent, resulting in millions of Americans losing their jobs. The central bank doesn't forecast a decline in interest rates until 2024 at the earliest, as it attempts a balancing act of attempting to lower inflation levels without triggering a recession. Inflation began to increase at the beginning of 2022, rising at its fastest pace in 40 years. It currently sits at three times the government's preferred rate of two percent. Americans' savings during the pandemic from decreased spending and government stimulus measures have started to dwindle, as consumers increasingly dig in to weather rising prices of most products, from groceries to gas. Households have also increasingly had to take out lines of credit to afford their lives, as total household borrowing increased by $351 billion between the second and third quarter, to a total of $16.51 trillion, the fastest increase in 14 years. The high interest rates have hit the housing market particularly hard, as mortgage rates continue to soar and home sales plummeted. Banks have also significantly tightened their lending standards, more often than not an indicator of an incoming recession. Out of the 23 primary dealers surveyed, only five believed that there would not be a recession: Credit Suisse Group AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., HSBC Holdings PLC, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Morgan Stanley. Jeremy Schwartz, Senior US Economist at Credit Suisse, one of the five banks that didn't predict a recession, wrote of the outlook for 2023, "Several historically reliable lead indicators are sending recession signals, but in our view these measures are unable to correctly gauge recession risk in the current environment." https://www.foxnews.com/world/zelenskyy-warns-russia-planning-prolonged-attack-iranian-shahed-drones Zelenskyy warns Russia planning ‘prolonged’ attack with Iranian Shahed drones Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Kyiv has gained intelligence suggesting that Russia is planning a prolonged attack by using Iranian-supplied Shahed drones. In an overnight address Monday, Zelenskyy warned that in the two days since the world welcomed in 2023, Ukraine has stopped more than 80 drone strikes. "We have information that Russia is planning a prolonged attack with Shaheds," he said. Zelenskyy said that Russia is looking to exhaust "our people, our air defense, our energy sector" by constantly pummeling the country with air strikes – a strategy Moscow has been employing for months but which it has escalated as winter sets in. "Now is the time when everyone involved in the protection of the sky should be especially attentive," he said addressing Ukrainian pilots and those in charge of air defense. Moscow and Tehran, Iran, have repeatedly denied any drone partnership or the use of Iranian supplied drones in Ukraine despite evidence supplied by Kyiv and backed by Western defense officials. Zelenskyy urged his forces on the front lines, particularly those fighting in areas like Bakhmut – which has seen intense ground warfare for months – to continue to hold the line amid harsh winter conditions, which has likely slowed fighting in other areas like Kherson. Ukrainian forces have continued to push the lines eastward in areas like Donetsk, and fighting has begun to intensify in the Donbas region where Russian backed forces have fought since 2014. Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces championed this week that Ukrainian forces have liberated 40% of the territory Russia occupied following its invasion. He also said that in the regions where Russian forces remain Moscow has lost roughly 28% of the land. Armored Republic The Mission of Armored Republic is to Honor Christ by equipping Free Men with Tools of Liberty necessary to preserve God-given rights. In the Armored Republic there is no King but Christ. We are Free Craftsmen. Body Armor is a Tool of Liberty. We create Tools of Liberty. Free men must remain ever vigilant against tyranny wherever it appears. God has given us the tools of liberty needed to defend the rights He bestowed to us. Armored Republic is honored to offer you those Tools. Visit them, at ar500armor.com Now for my favorite topic, sports! Take a listen to ESPN football analyst Dan Orlovsky on the hospitalized Damar Hamlin: ESPN's Dan Orlovsky Praying for Damar Hamlin on NFL Live Play video That took place on ESPN ladies and gentleman. This is why I love sports… sports has gone woke in recent years, but it’s situations like this, that bring people together… God is always at work, but it’s amazing to see His handiwork in this situation.

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily Newsbrief for Thursday, January 5th, 2023. Happy Friday Jr. everyone! I hope you and your’s have had a great week thus far! Before I get into today’s news… Club Membership Plug: Let’s stop and take a moment to talk about Fight Laugh Feast Club membership. By joining the Fight Laugh Feast Army, not only will you be aiding in our fight to take down secular & legacy media; but you’ll also get access to content placed in our Club Portal, such as past shows, all of our conference talks, and EXCLUSIVE content for club members that you won’t be able to find anywhere else. Lastly, you’ll also get discounts for our conferences… so if you’ve got $10 bucks a month to kick over our way, you can sign up now at fightlaughfeast.com. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-says-its-his-intention-visit-u-s-mexico-border-amid-historic-crisis Biden says it's his 'intention' to visit US-Mexico border amid historic crisis President Biden says it's his "intention" to visit the U.S-Mexico border amid a record high number of border crossings, according to a report. Biden made the comments Wednesday at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, saying that it's his "intention" to visit the border during his trip to the North American Leaders' Summit on Jan. 9-10, which will include meetings with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The visit would mark Biden's first trip to the border during his presidency. People familiar with discussions surrounding the potential visit told the Wall Street Journal that Biden will not be making a policy announcement if he visits the border. The potential trip comes amid a record-breaking crisis at the southern border, with 617, 250 total migrant encounters occurring so far in FY 2023 as of Dec. 29, 2022, according to Customs and Border Protection sources, adding that there's an average of 6,858 encounters per day. In FY 2022, migrant encounters reached 2.3 million. On Dec. 6, Biden said that "there are more important things going on" when asked why he'd visit a border state but not the U.S. -Mexico border itself. The Biden administration has pushed for Title 42 — the pandemic-era policy which allows immigration officers to quickly remove migrants from the country on the basis of public health — to be lifted. After U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled in favor of immigration advocates and gave Title 42 an end date of Dec. 21, the Supreme Court temporarily halted the policy's termination. Without providing evidence, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in November that Biden has been to the border. https://www.theepochtimes.com/white-house-defends-covid-travel-restrictions-as-beijing-threatens-countermeasures_4961495.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=BonginoReport Now from the southern border, to this! Donald Trump Says "China"- Play 0:00-0:10 You guessed it, we’re talking about China! https://www.theepochtimes.com/white-house-defends-covid-travel-restrictions-as-beijing-threatens-countermeasures_4961495.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=BonginoReport White House Defends COVID Travel Restrictions as Beijing Threatens ‘Countermeasures’ The White House is defending its decision to issue travel restrictions related to COVID-19 following several threats from China’s communist regime. The Biden administration said there was no cause for retaliation from Beijing after its communist leadership criticized Washington’s decision to require a negative COVID-19 test from those who travel from China to the United States. “There’s no cause for retaliation here just because countries around the world are taking prudent health measures to protect their citizens,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a Jan. 3 press conference. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state, announced that it will reopen its borders on Jan. 8. The move comes just one month after the regime abruptly terminated its zero-COVID policy in response to mass unrest, causing cases of COVID-19 to surge throughout China. The move prompted a global outcry, and nations around the world are hurrying to put in place testing requirements for all arrivals from China. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a statement on Dec. 28, 2022, saying that passengers would need to present a negative COVID-19 test result or proof of recovery before boarding a U.S.-bound flight from China. The CDC said the move was meant to “slow the spread of COVID-19 in the United States during the surge in COVID-19 cases in the PRC [People’s Republic of China] given the lack of adequate and transparent epidemiological and viral genomic sequence data being reported from the PRC.” The United States joins the UK, Australia, Canada, France, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Malaysia, Qatar, and other nations seeking to place stronger restrictions on arrivals from China. A spokesperson for the CCP said that the testing requirements were “unacceptable” and vowed that the regime would “take countermeasures” against nations that issue travel restrictions on flights originating in China. The White House defended the decision to require testing from all China-originating travelers based on the international consensus that COVID-19 is currently ravaging China’s populace. That’s funny though… anyone remember when Trump shut down travel to China? Speaker Pelosi Visits SF's Chinatown To Show Support Amid Coronavirus Fears Play 1:16-1:40 The CCP has attempted to cover up the scale of COVID-19 infections in China and the number of deaths it’s causing among the Chinese population, which has no natural immunity following almost three years of constant lockdowns. Leaked images of papers from a CCP conference in December 2022 revealed that Party authorities believe that as many as 248 million Chinese became infected within the first 20 days of December. Publicly, the regime claims that only 10 people died from the disease throughout the month. That’s generally what happens when you don’t allow for herd immunity. https://bigleaguepolitics.com/report-at-least-769-recently-vaxxed-athletes-collapsed-last-year-during-competition/ Report: At Least 769 Recently Vaxxed Athletes Collapsed Last Year During Competition One of the underlying stories of 2022 is the enormous number of professional athletes – primarily men with an average age of 23 – collapsing during competition. Though many of these instances have been documented in singular reports. Mainstream media outlets appear reluctant to link this unprecedented surge in collapses to the Covid-19 jab. Or to even bother asking follow up questions as to why or how this is happening. This is especially suspicious considering the majority of these collapsing instances involved recently vaccinated and or boosted athletes. One America News Network (OAN) did some digging and discovered more than 769 athletes have collapsed on the field during a game from March 2021 to March 2022. As outlined by The Defender, this spike “in cardiac arrest and other heart issues among elite athletes coincides with the rollout of COVID-19 jabs.” Pearson Sharp of OAN asks: How many 23-year-old athletes were collapsing and suffering heart attacks before this year? Do you know any 23-year-old people who had heart attacks before now? And these are just the ones we know about. How many have gone unreported? Nearly 800 athletes — young, fit people in the prime of life — falling down on the field. In fact, 500% more soccer players in the EU are dropping dead from heart attacks than just one year ago. Sharp discussed how this unprecedented surge is not a coincidence. Especially because “the Pfizer vaccine is known to cause heart inflammation.” He also alluded to the fact this number may be grossly underreported. The reason for these unreliable figures stems from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) showing only between 1 and 10% of adverse reactions according to past investigations. Kyle Warner, for example, is an athlete who filed a VAERS report about his own health injuries following the COVID-19 jab. As Dr. Joseph Mercola put it; the filing took Warner 45 minutes – “a length of time that many doctors can’t or won’t devote when it comes to reporting adverse vaccine reactions seen among their patients.” Regardless, elite athletes collapsing in game increased so much in 2022 that even a mainstream media sports channel in Australia has speculated that the health issues could be linked to COVID-19 shots. https://twitter.com/i/status/1513542808531046409 - Play Video As this number steadily grows, mainstream outlets appear to be ignoring these collapses and their potential linkage to the Covd-19 vaccine. At the same time, the White House and other institutions continue pushing for more to take the experimental jab and get boosted. https://thepostmillennial.com/two-thirds-of-us-big-bank-economists-predict-a-recession-for-2023?utm_campaign=64487 Recession predicted in 2023 for US economy by economists at major banks Two-thirds of top economists at the United States' largest financial institutions are predicting a recession in 2023, according to a survey conducted by the Wall Street Journal. Primary concerns cited in the survey of 23 primary dealers, including those from Barclays PLC, Bank of America Corp, TD Securities, and UBS Group AG, were a dwindling of pandemic savings, a decline in the housing market, and a tightening of lending rules as potential warning signs of an incoming recession. The prediction follows a year of soaring inflation, accompanied by rapid interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve that have risen from nearly zero in March, to 4.5 percent by the year's end. The Federal Reserve reportedly plans to continue its increase to 5 percent, then 5.5 percent in 2023. Economists predict that this will force unemployment rates above five percent, resulting in millions of Americans losing their jobs. The central bank doesn't forecast a decline in interest rates until 2024 at the earliest, as it attempts a balancing act of attempting to lower inflation levels without triggering a recession. Inflation began to increase at the beginning of 2022, rising at its fastest pace in 40 years. It currently sits at three times the government's preferred rate of two percent. Americans' savings during the pandemic from decreased spending and government stimulus measures have started to dwindle, as consumers increasingly dig in to weather rising prices of most products, from groceries to gas. Households have also increasingly had to take out lines of credit to afford their lives, as total household borrowing increased by $351 billion between the second and third quarter, to a total of $16.51 trillion, the fastest increase in 14 years. The high interest rates have hit the housing market particularly hard, as mortgage rates continue to soar and home sales plummeted. Banks have also significantly tightened their lending standards, more often than not an indicator of an incoming recession. Out of the 23 primary dealers surveyed, only five believed that there would not be a recession: Credit Suisse Group AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., HSBC Holdings PLC, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Morgan Stanley. Jeremy Schwartz, Senior US Economist at Credit Suisse, one of the five banks that didn't predict a recession, wrote of the outlook for 2023, "Several historically reliable lead indicators are sending recession signals, but in our view these measures are unable to correctly gauge recession risk in the current environment." https://www.foxnews.com/world/zelenskyy-warns-russia-planning-prolonged-attack-iranian-shahed-drones Zelenskyy warns Russia planning ‘prolonged’ attack with Iranian Shahed drones Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Kyiv has gained intelligence suggesting that Russia is planning a prolonged attack by using Iranian-supplied Shahed drones. In an overnight address Monday, Zelenskyy warned that in the two days since the world welcomed in 2023, Ukraine has stopped more than 80 drone strikes. "We have information that Russia is planning a prolonged attack with Shaheds," he said. Zelenskyy said that Russia is looking to exhaust "our people, our air defense, our energy sector" by constantly pummeling the country with air strikes – a strategy Moscow has been employing for months but which it has escalated as winter sets in. "Now is the time when everyone involved in the protection of the sky should be especially attentive," he said addressing Ukrainian pilots and those in charge of air defense. Moscow and Tehran, Iran, have repeatedly denied any drone partnership or the use of Iranian supplied drones in Ukraine despite evidence supplied by Kyiv and backed by Western defense officials. Zelenskyy urged his forces on the front lines, particularly those fighting in areas like Bakhmut – which has seen intense ground warfare for months – to continue to hold the line amid harsh winter conditions, which has likely slowed fighting in other areas like Kherson. Ukrainian forces have continued to push the lines eastward in areas like Donetsk, and fighting has begun to intensify in the Donbas region where Russian backed forces have fought since 2014. Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces championed this week that Ukrainian forces have liberated 40% of the territory Russia occupied following its invasion. He also said that in the regions where Russian forces remain Moscow has lost roughly 28% of the land. Armored Republic The Mission of Armored Republic is to Honor Christ by equipping Free Men with Tools of Liberty necessary to preserve God-given rights. In the Armored Republic there is no King but Christ. We are Free Craftsmen. Body Armor is a Tool of Liberty. We create Tools of Liberty. Free men must remain ever vigilant against tyranny wherever it appears. God has given us the tools of liberty needed to defend the rights He bestowed to us. Armored Republic is honored to offer you those Tools. Visit them, at ar500armor.com Now for my favorite topic, sports! Take a listen to ESPN football analyst Dan Orlovsky on the hospitalized Damar Hamlin: ESPN's Dan Orlovsky Praying for Damar Hamlin on NFL Live Play video That took place on ESPN ladies and gentleman. This is why I love sports… sports has gone woke in recent years, but it’s situations like this, that bring people together… God is always at work, but it’s amazing to see His handiwork in this situation.

As India's original startup turned 40, its founder and face NR Narayana Murthy said he wants to reverse its biggest unwritten rule of not allowing family into the management.  How will this impact the company's succession plan? Are the founders' children willing and worthy? Does it really need a reversal of its brilliant run? Host Anirban Chowdhury talks to Peter Bendor-Samuel, founder, Everest Group, Vivek Wadhwa, tech entrepreneur and academic, professor at Carnegie Mellon's School of Engineering and Archana Rai, editor, South, ET.Credit: CNBC-TV18, NDTVYou can follow our host Anirban on his social media:Twitter - https://twitter.com/AnirbanETLinkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anirban-chowdhury-b5067219/ Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief' on ET Play, The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Google Podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Paying for college is one of the biggest financial decisions students and their families make. In FY 2022, the Department of Education provided $112 billion in federal student financial aid to more than 10 million students. But there are concerns…

In this episode, Dan and Albert break down InfoSys. Infosys Limited is an Indian multinational information technology company that provides business consulting, information technology and outsourcing services. The company was founded in Pune and is headquartered in Bangalore. Infosys is the second-largest Indian IT company, after Tata Consultancy Services, by 2020 revenue figures, and the 602nd largest public company in the world, according to the Forbes Global 2000 ranking. Leave us a Review! If you enjoy listening to the podcast, we'd love for you to rate us 5-stars on iTunes / Apple Podcasts. Here's a link to leave a review right now :) In this episode we cover: What is Infosys? (2:48) How consultancy companies and Infosys use arbitrage (9:46) Infosys' competitive moat (14:43) Offshore vs Onshore business trends (22:10) Concerns about Infosys (30:18) Follow and subscribe to our content. All information contained in this podcast is for education and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional financial, legal or tax advice. The hosts of Fresh Capital are not financial professionals and are not aware of your personal financial circumstances. Any opinions expressed herein are not recommendations or advice. Please consult a licensed financial professional before you invest. For more information visit our website at https://www.freshcapital.media/ Got feedback or suggestions? Send them to freshcapitalpodcast@gmail.com

Related Reports:OIG Determination of Veterans Health Administration's Occupational Staffing Shortages Fiscal Year 2022 Pursuant to the VA Choice and Quality Employment Act of 2017 (VCQEA), the OIG conducted a review to identify clinical and non-clinical occupations experiencing staffing shortages within Veterans Health Administration (VHA). This is the ninth iteration of the staffing report, and the fifth evaluating facility-level data. The OIG evaluated staffing shortages by surveying VHA facilities, and compared this information to the previous four years.The OIG found that all 139 VHA facilities reported at least one severe occupational staffing shortage. The total number of reported severe shortages was 2,622. Twenty-two occupations were identified as a severe occupational staffing shortage by at least one in five facilities. Every year since 2014, the Medical Officer and Nurse occupations were reported as severe shortages. Practical Nurse was the most frequently identified clinical severe occupational staffing shortage in FY 2022, with 62 percent of facilities reporting this occupation. Custodial Worker was the most frequently reported non-clinical severe occupational shortage in FY 2022, with 69 percent of facilities reported the occupation. Medical Support Assistance was the most frequently reported Hybrid Title 38 severe occupational shortage.In FY 2022, VHA reported twenty-two percent more severe occupational staffing shortages as compared to FY 2021. FY 2022 is the first year since implementation of VCQEA reporting requirements in which the OIG did not observe a yearly decrease in the overall number of severe occupational staffing shortages; it was also the first time that facilities identified more than 90 occupations as severe shortages. The OIG again determined the ongoing need for Custodial Worker and Medical Support Assistance, noting an increase in the number of facilities identifying these occupations as severe shortages. The OIG emphasizes the importance of VHA's continued assessment of severe occupational staffing shortages given the increases from FY 2021 to FY 2022.The Veterans Health Administration Needs to Do More to Promote Emotional Well-Being Supports Amid the COVID-19 PandemicThe Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Office of Emergency Management issued the initial COVID-19 Response Plan on March 23, 2020, and then an updated version on August 7, 2020. The National Center for Organization Development created a COVID-19 rapid response consultation process for VHA leaders in a supervisory role. The Organizational Health Council developed a team that coordinated with multiple VHA program offices to create a COVID-19 Employee Support Toolkit and other resources. Additionally, several program offices independently created and disseminated employee well-being resources specific to the COVID-19 pandemic, including National Center for Organization Development, Patient Centered Care & Cultural Transformation, Chaplain Service, and the Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention.The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) identified a generally diminishing awareness of employee emotional well-being supports in relation to organizational hierarchy, low utilization of support resources by leadership and frontline employees, as well as employee perception of inadequate support and responsiveness from leadership.The OIG conducted a review to assess how the VHA addressed the emotional well-being of employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. The OIG also conducted an overview of VHA programs, including what specialized programs were developed and deployed in response to the unique psychological challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic for VHA's staff. The OIG interviewed VA and VHA leaders in multiple offices. The OIG developed and deployed a survey about VHA guidance regarding employees' emotional well-being during the pandemic, available resources, monitoring of available support programs, and employee engagement with available support programs.The OIG made one recommendation to the Under Secretary for Health related to increasing leadership and staff awareness of COVID-19 emotional well-being resources for VHA employees and awareness of resources about potential risks and signs of burnout.

AI Eye Podcast 721: Stocks discussed: (NYSE: $INFY) (OTC: $AIAD)

AI Eye Podcast 721: Stocks discussed: (NYSE: $INFY) (OTC: $AIAD)

Infosys (INFY) is an Indian IT outsourced business. George Tsilis joins Alex Coffey and Jenny Horne to discuss INFY's earnings which were reported yesterday, July 24th. They talk about how the company is experiencing marginal weakness and is down about 26% year-to-date. They then go over how there is a bright spot for the company seeing as sales were higher. Finally, they mention how INFY is making huge investments in artificial intelligence. Tune in to find out more.

In this second episode of a 2 part series, Lloyd Dean, CEO of CommonSpirit Health sits down with Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice in the historic Danforth Chapel to talk about some of the greatest lessons learned along his leadership journey and the incredible opportunities created for Health & Racial Equity with the More Common Alliance between Morehouse School of Medicine and CommonSpirit Health. ADDITIONAL RESOURCES RELATED TO THIS EPISODE Visit https://www.msm.edu/about_us/office-president-ceo About More in Common Alliance The More in Common Alliance is a partnership between Morehouse School of Medicine and CommonSpirit Health. Morehouse School of Medicine is a historically Black medical school and one of America's leading educators of primary care physicians, and CommonSpirit Health is one of America's largest health systems with locations in 21 states from coast to coast. Knowing patients consistently fare better when treated by clinicians of similar backgrounds who share lived experiences, the More in Common Alliance seeks to address critical gaps in care by increasing cultural competency and expanding representation. Together, we are leading a 10-year, $100-million initiative to expand undergraduate and graduate medical education to build a more diverse and dynamic workforce that reflects the communities we serve. About CommonSpirit Health CommonSpirit Health is a nonprofit, Catholic health system dedicated to advancing health for all people. It was created in February 2019 by Catholic Health Initiatives and Dignity Health. With its national office in Chicago and a team of over 150,000 employees and 25,000 physicians and advanced practice clinicians, CommonSpirit operates 140 hospitals and more than 1,500 care sites across 21 states. In FY 2021, CommonSpirit had revenues of $33.3 billion and provided $5.1 billion in charity care, community benefit, and unreimbursed government programs. Learn more at www.commonspirit.org. CREDITS Theme Music

Lloyd Dean, CEO of CommonSpirit Health sits down with Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice in the historic Danforth Chapel to talk about some of the greatest lessons learned along his leadership journey and the incredible opportunities created for Health & Racial Equity with the More Common Alliance between Morehouse School of Medicine and CommonSpirit Health. ADDITIONAL RESOURCES RELATED TO THIS EPISODE Visit https://www.msm.edu/about_us/office-president-ceo About More in Common Alliance The More in Common Alliance is a partnership between Morehouse School of Medicine and CommonSpirit Health. Morehouse School of Medicine is a historically Black medical school and one of America's leading educators of primary care physicians, and CommonSpirit Health is one of America's largest health systems with locations in 21 states from coast to coast. Knowing patients consistently fare better when treated by clinicians of similar backgrounds who share lived experiences, the More in Common Alliance seeks to address critical gaps in care by increasing cultural competency and expanding representation. Together, we are leading a 10-year, $100-million initiative to expand undergraduate and graduate medical education to build a more diverse and dynamic workforce that reflects the communities we serve. Learn more at MoreInCommonAlliance.org About CommonSpirit Health CommonSpirit Health is a nonprofit, Catholic health system dedicated to advancing health for all people. It was created in February 2019 by Catholic Health Initiatives and Dignity Health. With its national office in Chicago and a team of over 150,000 employees and 25,000 physicians and advanced practice clinicians, CommonSpirit operates 140 hospitals and more than 1,500 care sites across 21 states. In FY 2021, CommonSpirit had revenues of $33.3 billion and provided $5.1 billion in charity care, community benefit, and unreimbursed government programs. Learn more at CommonSpirit.org. CREDITS Theme Music

India is the world's second largest producer of wheat. But most of it was being consumed by the country itself -- leaving little room for export. And whatever little we exported, it mostly went into neighbouring countries. Like 55% of our wheat went to Bangladesh. But over the years, our wheat export has been on the rise. In FY 22, India exported a record 7.85 million tonnes of wheat. It was a 270% jump from 2.1 million tonnes the previous year.  And this year, when Russia invaded Ukraine, India found itself in a spotlight. Scores of countries which used to purchase wheat from the two countries looked towards New Delhi to fill the void. During the second week of April, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told US President Joe Biden that India was ready to supply its food stock to the world if the World Trade Organization (WTO) allowed it. Orders for wheat ocks started pouring in from foreign shorests. Farmers were happy and so was the government. Egypt, which typically gets 80% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine, approved imports from India in mid-April.  On May 4th, Food Secretary Sudhanshu Pandey said the Centre was not moving to curb wheat exports as India had sufficient stocks.  But the food secretary said that due to an increase in market prices and higher demand by the private players, both for domestic as well as export purposes, the Centre's wheat procurement would be lower this year. He added that a large quantity of wheat was being bought by traders at a higher rate than the Minimum Support Price, which was good for the farmers. Around the same time, addressing the Indian diaspora in Germany, Prime Minister Modi said Indian farmers were coming forward to feed the world when big nations were worried about food security. Just two days before announcing the ban, the government said it would send trade delegations to nine countries including Indonesia, Thailand and Turkey for exploring possibilities of boosting wheat exports from India. But on May 13, the Indian government pulled a surprise and shocked many. It ordered a ban on export of wheat with immediate effect. Just before the ban, the government had plans to export a record 10 million tonnes of wheat this year. According to the government, the main reason for the ban was to “manage the overall food security of the country and to support the needs of the neighbouring and other vulnerable countries”. It comes against the backdrop of the hottest March in 122 years which stunned the grain -- leading to a considerable drop in yield. The yield, this year, may barely cross the 100 million tons mark, down from the government's initial estimate of a record 111 million-ton harvest. Meanwhile, the stock in the granaries of the Food Corporation of India is also low. And if the government extends its free grain programme, the FCI stocks may dwindle further. Currently it has 30 million tons in storage. A

India is the global leader in IT-enabled services (ITeS) or more commonly referred to as the Business Process Management market. In FY 2021-22 Indian BPM sector earned $44 billion in revenues and directly employed 1.4 million with several multiples of that being employed indirectly. The addressable global BPM market this year is estimated at $254 billion and is estimated to grow to $336 billion by 2025. The industry has undergone a paradigm shift over the few decades of its existence. While BPM 1.0 was all about cost-saving and labour arbitrage, in BPM 2.0 the emphasis was on operational excellence through efficiency and quality of processes. BPM 3.0 heralded the advent of deep technology and domain expertise. The new shift towards BPM 4.0 in the immediate aftermath of the receding pandemic wave, lays stress on enabling business outcomes and ensuring resilience plus agility. To enable BPM 4.0 to become a reality where the scale of challenges is multi-fold and the skillsets required to deliver them are much more the Indian BPM industry needs to focus on training and deploying more of an Artificial Intelligence skilled workforce which means they need to be design thinking led, extremely data and digital-driven. Sukanya Selvarajan, Innovation Head - CFO Operations at TCS, Prashant Achanta, CTO of Firstsource, and Amneet Chowdhury, who is VP and Global Head for Infrastructure Technologies at Sutherland Global Services spoke at a BusinessLine – Nasscom roundtable on the challenges and opportunities in the BPM 4.0 evolution. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/business-line/message

India's $195 billion IT industry is increasingly making its presence felt across the world. In FY 22, its revenue grew by $30 billion to reach the $227 billion mark. The industry registered an impressive 15.5% growth. And, according to Nasscom, it was the highest since 2011. The industry also added the highest ever 450,000 new employees in FY22, taking the employee base to 5 million. But, even as it recruited a record number of new talent, the industry was besieged with an all time high attrition rate. Just look at the IT bellwethers. At Infosys, on a last twelve months basis, the attrition rate hit a record high of 27.7 percent in the fourth quarter of FY22. Meanwhile, India's largest IT services company, Tata Consultancy Services, saw record attrition in the March quarter at 17.4 percent.   And IT companies have been at their wits end, doing their best to retain talent. Some resorted to novel ways to keep employees on board. According to reports, companies doled out salaries much above the prevailing market rates. Some even gave 100 percent hikes. Employee stock options were also being dangled in front of software engineers. Fintech firm BharatPe offered BMW bikes to new entrants. Techies, who have a few years under their belt, are now getting multiple job offers. Some IT companies, fintechs, and even startups, have started delaying the payout of employee's performance bonus in a bid to delay their departure. Apparently, this gives the company more time to find a replacement.   But why this churn? Experts believe that demand for digital talent has outpaced supply. The pandemic has also caused an acceleration in digital adoption. This, too, has contributed to the intense race for talent, not only from the IT giants, both global and domestic, but also from nimbler start-ups. But some experts also believe that this churn cannot continue indefinitely and that things will settle down sooner rather than later. However, the skill sets that were at the centre of the talent race will still be necessary for any aspiring techies who want to make it big. According to the TeamLease Digital Employment Outlook Report, released last December, the IT-BPM industry had set its eyes on digital skills in FY22. And, among them, 13 skill sets were going to largely be in demand. In fact, they were expected to record a 7.5 per cent growth in FY22 over FY21.   Also, according to the same report, the demand-supply gap is widening for data engineering, data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence skills. Recreate the table from the attached image. (PLEASE DO NOT USE THE IMAGE ITSELF) A talent solution and IT staffing expert Business Standard spoke to also emphasised on these skill sets. However, the IT industry -- and in fact most businesses-- are standing on the cusp of momentous changes, the effects of which are yet to be fully understood. Clearly, techies will have to adhere to up-skilling religiously. But, what about the industry? At the end of the day, a company can either build the talent or buy it. But, if the churn doesn't indeed subside in the coming year, could it be perhaps time for the industry to look at a third option? They may also look to borrow, so to say, talent by engaging companies that provide temporary staffing solutions. There will indeed be dearth for digital talent in the market who can keep pace with the technology. Take for example the potential of the metaverse, and the skills that it will require. With 5G becoming the norm in the coming years, the Internet of Things will also take off in a big way. The situation is dynamic and thus, it is hard to predict whether the same skills that are so in demand today will still be at the top five years down the line. They will remain relevant, no doubt, but will they still command the premium that they do today? Only time will tell. 

HAPPY TUESSSSSDAYToday we’re covering some news stories about Upstart, Shopify, Okta, and The Trade Desk then diving into my notes from GitLab’s (GTLB) earnings call last week. TLDR I was very impressed, opened a position, and tend to DCA in overtime keeping it a “large” position in my portfolio. BUT FIRSTThis newsletter would not be possible without Commonstock. In my mind, Commonstock is like Twitter without the bots and people trolling you because they think they are the ruler of all opinions on stocks/investing. This isn’t an advertisement, but I love the platform so much that I badgered the team so much over the last couple of years that they basically had to give me a job so I’d stop bothering them.In all seriousness, I joined because the team is focused on improving the world’s financial health by creating a platform that amplifies transparency and accountability alongside people’s opinions on everything from crypto to stocks. My portfolio is linked securely on Commonstock and you can always see my positions, trades, and performance at this link. Portfolio NewsUpstart (UPST) is down 7% after Wedbush downgraded it to underperform with a $75 price target (Down from $110). The analyst noted weakening delinquency trends. This doesn’t concern me at all and I intend to keep dollar-cost averaging (DCA) into UPST so I’ll take lower prices due to short-term fears all day!Shopify (SHOP) was down 12% yesterday after an announcement that Google intends to offer “Last Mile Fleet Solution” to help business owners optimize deliveries/logistics. At this point, I’m not concerned and SHOP will move towards the top of my list for new contributions if prices drop more from here. If we see Shopify’s results suffer in the next few quarters, then it could indicate they’re losing part of their competitive advantage. I’ll research this new offering from Google and share it in a future email.Okta (OKTA) is currently down 8% pre-market after hacking group Lapsus$ posted screenshots on its Telegram claiming to have hacked Okta. Okta has stated it sees no signs of a breach. As of right now, I’m not concerned and I certainly trust Okta’s track record + management to quickly fix anything (and make the platform better) if there was a breach. Okta is currently at the top of my list to buy when my next contributions hit. I talked about that in yesterday’s email. Adobe (ADBE) reports earnings this afternoon. I own a starter position in Adobe because it is a fantastic company with a very long track-record of success. I don’t intend to add to my position because its multiple is a bit high considering forward growth estimates and I believe there are better opportunities elsewhere (see link to yesterday’s email). I’d start to get interested in adding shares if the P/E gets down to around 29-30. It’s currently at a blended P/E of 35.3. That’d be about a 20% drop from here down to around $390/sh. I have no idea what happens with earnings.The Trade Desk (TTD) launches new certified service partner program for SMBs. “This program expands self-service access to The Trade Desk’s demand-side platform, as client demand for data-driven advertising continues to rise. As part of this announcement, Goodway Group becomes The Trade Desk’s first certified service partner to help meet this rising demand.” I own TTD and won’t be selling my shares anytime soon, but I’d love for the multiple to come down a bit before adding. GitLab (GTLB) Conference Call NotesAfter Gitlab’s earnings last week I sent an email saying I intended to buy shares with the new contributions that were coming into my account (link). I ended up purchasing shares on Tuesday and Wednesday and the position is up nicely. It’s currently a large position for me and I have some catching up to do in building other positions so I won’t be buying more in the next month or two but I’m very bullish on the company’s future. Here are my notes from the earnings conference callCEO Sid Sijbrandij opening remarks:Beat revenue expectations with revenue of $77.8 million, 69% year-over-yearDollar-based net retention rate exceeded the 152% we reported in S-1 filing Strength was broad-based across enterprise, mid, and SMB customersUltimate remains fastest growing tier of product offeringStrength indicates the market is moving from DIY DevOps to a DevOps platform which plays to GitLab’s strengthGartner Market Guide for value stream delivery platforms states that by 2024, 60% of organizations will have switched to a platform approach, up from 20% in 2021Management believes “the source of our product differentiation is our platform approach to DevOps.”“We believe our single application helps companies to deliver software faster, improve organizational efficiency and reduce security and compliance risk. The DevOps platform also enables our customers to manage and secure the entire DevOps workflow across any hybrid and multi-cloud environment.”“Acquisition of Opstrace, a pre-revenue open-source observability solution will allow GitLab to offer robust monitoring and observability capabilities that will enable organizations to lower incident rates, increase developer productivity and reduce mean time to resolution.”Management believes DevOps platform addresses a $40B market opportunity. Bain & Company study showed 90% of companies believe DevOps is a priority but only 12% believe they have mature DevOps practicesAdded over 500 net new base customers. New logos/expansions include U.S. Army, Deutsche Telekom and Travis Perkins.Travis Perkins expansion: “Travis Perkins is the U.K.'s largest distributor of building materials. They accelerated their migration to the cloud using GitLab Premium by consolidating their software to it. Doing so increased their velocity, cut down overall cost by 20% and it allowed their team members to focus on building new customer-facing digital services and capabilities instead of managing their toolchain. This quarter, they upgraded from Premium to Ultimate licenses and more than doubled the number of users on the system. This will expand usage of GitLab to their security teams and allow development operations and security to collaborate on a single DevOps platform.”CFO Brian Robbins remarks:Revenue is the key metric to evaluate the health and performance of the business. Because approximately 90% of revenue is ratable, it serves as a predictable and transparent benchmark for how we are growing.“Cohorts from six years ago are still expanding today. This is a testament to how we're constantly adding value to our customers. Most of our customers start using GitLab with small teams with just one to two stages of our platform. From there, they typically increase their spend with us 2x over the first year as our platform is adopted across multiple teams. Customers then continue to increase their spend as our platform expands to more teams across their organizations or they upgrade to a higher paid tier.”“We are also effective at retaining our customers. When our customers deploy the DevOps platform, it becomes a central platform from which all their DevOps workflows originate from, making it sticky and difficult to replace. The result is that we ended our fourth quarter with a dollar-based net retention rate exceeding 152% which is higher than the disclosure we provided in our S-1 at the time of our IPO.”“Our platform is offered with a free version and two paid subscription tiers which we call Premium and Ultimate. Our paid tiers are priced per user with different features per tier. Every user within an organization is on the same plan which helps keep our business model transparent and easy to understand. The Ultimate tier is our fastest-growing tier, now representing 37% of our annual recurring revenue for the fourth quarter compared with 26% of annual recurring revenue in the fourth quarter of FY 2021 and growing in excess of 100%. In FY '22, our non-GAAP gross margin held steady at 89%. Over time, we expect this to compress as our SaaS offering becomes a larger portion of our business and associated hosting costs will increase.”Over 4,500 customers with ARR of at least $5,000 per customer compared to over 4,000 customers in the prior quarter and over 2,700 customers in the prior year. This represents a year-over-year growth rate of approximately 67%. Currently, customers with greater than $5,000 in ARR represent approximately 95% of our ARR.Over 490 customers with ARR of at least $100,000, up from 420 customers and over 280 customers compared to the prior quarter and year, respectively. This represents a year-over-year growth rate of approximately 74%39 customers with ARR of at least $1 million compared to 20 customers at the end of the prior fiscal year which represents a year-over-year growth rate of 95%.Total RPO grew 95% year-over-year to $312 million.Non-GAAP gross margins were 89% for the quarter which compares to 90% in the immediately preceding quarter and 89% in the fourth quarter last year. As we move forward, we're estimating a moderate reduction in this metric due to the rapid year-over-year growth rate of our SaaS offeringNon-GAAP operating loss was $27.4 million or negative 35% of revenue compared to a loss of $22.2 million or negative 48% of revenue in Q4 of the last fiscal year. Q4 includes $5 million of expenses related to our JV and majority-owned subsidiary.Guidance:For first quarter of FY 2023, we expect total revenue of $77 million to $78 million, representing a growth rate of 54% to 56% year-over-year.We expect a non-GAAP operating loss of $38.5 million to $37.5 million.We expect a non-GAAP net loss per share of $0.28 to $0.27, assuming 147 million weighted average shares outstanding.For the full year FY 2023, we expect total revenue of $385.5 million to $390.5 million, representing a growth rate of 53% to 55% year-over-year.We expect a non-GAAP operating loss of $142 million to $138 million.We expect a non-GAAP net loss per share of $1.02 to $0.97, assuming 148 million weighted average shares outstanding.Our annual FY 2023 guidance implies non-GAAP operating margin improvement of almost 300 basis points year-over-year at the midpoint of our guidance ranges. Over the longer term, we believe that a continued targeted focus on growth initiatives and scaling the business will yield further improvement in unit economics.Q&AQuestion about where strength in 152% net-dollar retention rate is coming fromAnswer: Ultimate is driving a lot of upsell because of the advanced security capabilities. Create and verify are used heavily; so they are important too. Apart from create, verify and secure, we see growth in packaging and release. Packaging, for example, is replacing JFrog Artifactory at more and more customers.Question on acquisition of Opstrace, the pre-revenue open source application in the category of observability.Answer: Observability lets you close the loop. You plan to make something, you make it, you roll it out and then you see how it does. So it's a really important element of a DevOps platform and we're really early. But because it's so important, we wanted to accelerate how fast we got there and we love the team and the product that Opstrace already built. So we acquired them to rebuild that inside GitLab and we think that closing that loop will help our customers achieve better business outcomes. If you get feedback faster, you reduce your cycle time and you get better outcomes. And it's really important to note that we'll do it in an iterative fashion. So in the beginning, our solution will not so much compete with existing vendors but with nonconsumption. People haven't set up monitoring yet and we'll start from a simple product and work with our users and customers contributing to expand the functionality over time.Links to company news articlesUpstart downgraded by WedbushShopify - Google “Last Mile Fleet Solution”Okta potential security breachAdobe Investor Relations PageThe Trade Desk Launches New Certified Service Partner Program for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit austin.substack.com/subscribe

Assistant Director Terry Roach of the Policy and Procedures Branch of the VA Home Loan Guaranty Section, explains current VA home loan opportunities and debunks a number of myths concerning the agency. He points out that the VA has an extensive program not only for new homes but also for refinancing. In FY 2021 over 1.44 million loans were covered, 204,000 foreclosures were prevented and 2,300 special adaptive housing grants were approved. If you are thinking about making a real estate purchase any time in the future this program will be of great assistance and probably save you money. 

Tairhodes. Interviews Artist Rikki Blu for the first episode of MoneySZN: Breaking Thru. Let's take a trip to the Grove !

Abstract: Most ethics and compliance professionals have heard of the “seven hallmarks” of an effective E&C program that is enshrined in the U.S. Sentencing Commission's Federal Sentencing Guidelines: Implementing written standards of conduct, policies, and procedures. Designating a compliance officer and compliance committee. Conducting effective training and education. Developing effective lines of communication. Conducting internal monitoring and auditing. Enforcing standards through well-publicized disciplinary guidelines. Responded promptly to problems and undertaking corrective action. But where did these guidelines come from, and who is involved in the process of deciding these standards? In this episode of the Principled Podcast, host Eric Morehead of LRN's Advisory group talks about the evolving role of the U.S. Sentencing Commission with Kathleen Grilli, the commission's General Counsel. Listen in as the two discuss the history of compliance—going back more than 30 years—and unpack what sentencing data can tell us about E&C today. Read the full Federal Sentencing Guidelines for an effective E&C program.   What You'll Learn on This Episode: [1:19] - The history of the sentencing commission and the different roles of the organization. [2:36] - How did the sentencing commission become such an integral part of corporate compliance? [6:40] - With whom does the sentencing commission consult with to find collaboration when considering revisions to guidelines? [12:35] - The 2004 amendments and incorporating ethics into the criteria for an effective program and examples of how changes to the organizational guidelines can come about. [15:36] - Does public comment have to come from advocacy organizations? [17:01] - Trends seen in organizational data over the years. [21:26] - Potential future changes to the organizational sentencing guidelines.    Featured guest: Kathleen Cooper Grilli is the General Counsel for the United States Sentencing Commission, having been appointed to the position on October 7, 2013. Ms. Grilli has been on the staff of the Commission since 2003, serving as an assistant general counsel from 2003-2007 and deputy general counsel from 2007-2013. As the General Counsel, Ms. Grill provides legal advice to the Commissioners on sentencing issues and other matters relating to the operation of the Commission. Ms. Grilli is the agency's Ethics Officer and has conducted training on white collar crime and the organizational guidelines at numerous training events. Prior to working for the Sentencing Commission, Ms. Grilli was with the Office of Staff Counsel for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Before relocating to Virginia, Ms. Grilli was a partner in a small firm in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, handling civil and criminal litigation. Her previous work experience includes serving as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in the Southern District of Florida and as an associate at Akerman, Senterfitt and Edison, handling commercial litigation. Ms. Grilli is a member of the Bars of Florida and Virginia. She received a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations, with honors, from Florida International University. She graduated cum laude from the University of Miami School of Law.   Featured Host:  Eric Morehead is a member of LRN's Advisory Services team and has over 20 years of experience working with organizations seeking to address compliance issues and build effective compliance and ethics programs. Eric conducts program assessments and examines specific compliance risks. He drafts compliance policies and codes of conduct, works with organizations to build and improve their compliance processes and tools, and provides live training for Boards of Directors, executives, managers, and employees. Eric ran his own consultancy for six years where he advised clients on compliance program enhancements and assisted in creating effective compliance solutions. He was formally the Head of Advisory Services for NYSE Governance Services, a leading compliance training organization, where he was responsible for all aspects of NYSE Governance Services' compliance consulting arm. Prior to joining NYSE, Eric was an Assistant General Counsel of the United States Sentencing Commission in Washington, DC. Eric served as the chair of the policy team that amended the Organizational Sentencing Guidelines in 2010. Eric also spent nearly a decade as a litigation attorney in Houston, Texas where he focused on white-collar and regulatory cases and represented clients at trial and before various agencies including SEC, OSHA and CFTC.   Transcription:  Intro:                                     Welcome to The Principled Podcast, brought to you by LRN. The Principled Podcast brings together the collective wisdom on ethics, business, and compliance, transformative stories of leadership, and inspiring workplace culture. Listen in to discover valuable strategies from our community of business leaders and workplace change-makers. Eric Morehead:                 Why is the US Sentencing Commission involved in compliance and ethics? It's a question that both new compliance officers, as well as seasoned professionals, often ask. We've all heard of the seven hallmarks of an effective compliance program that are enshrined in the sentencing guidelines, but where did they come from and who is involved in the process of deciding these standards? Hello, and welcome to another episode of LRN's Principled Podcast. I'm your host, Eric Morehead with LRN's advisory services team. And today, I'm joined by Kathleen Grilli, the General Counsel for US Sentencing Commission. We're going to be talking about the Sentencing Commission, discussing a little compliance history going back more than 30 years, covering what the Commission's role is and was, and talking about what sentencing data might tell us about compliance today. Kathleen, thanks for coming on The Principled Podcast. Kathleen Grilli:                   Eric, thanks for inviting me. Eric Morehead:                 Can you tell us a little bit about the history of the Sentencing Commission itself and the different roles of the organization? Kathleen Grilli:                   Certainly. The Commission is an independent agency in the judicial branch of the federal government. It was established in 1984 by a bipartisan act of Congress called the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984. Congress tasked the Commission with the responsibility of developing federal sentencing policy. So the Commission's principle purposes are to establish sentencing policies and practices for the federal courts, including issuing guidelines regarding the appropriate form and severity of punishment for offenders convicted of federal crimes, to advise and assist Congress, the federal judiciary, and the executive branch in the development of effective and efficient crime policy, and to collect, analyze, research, and distribute a broad array of information on federal crime and sentencing issues. The Commission effectuates this mission in various ways through the guideline amendment process, our data collection research on the issuance of publications, and by providing training to judges, lawyers, and probation officers on federal sentencing issues. Eric Morehead:                 And historically, why and how is it that this Sentencing Commission became such an integral part of corporate compliance? Kathleen Grilli:                   Well, in 1984, when the Sentencing Reform Act was enacted white-collar crime scandals abounded, and the prevailing view was that corporate crime was a cost of doing business, Congress was concerned about inequities and sentencing and created the Commission to ensure that similarly situated defendants convicted of similar crimes received similar punishments. One of the perceived inequities was that affluent defendants were treated more leniently than indigent defendants. Although the primary focus of the Sentencing Reform Act was individual defendants and not organizational defendants or companies, the Act did make changes to the law that impacted companies. It authorized courts to impose a sentence of probation, or fine, or both on companies, and further permitted companies to be subject to orders of forfeiture notice to victims and restitution orders. The Commission understood these changes to mandate that it developed guidelines for sentencing organizations in addition to developing guidelines for sentencing individual defendants. This was quite controversial at the time and many in the business community openly opposed the Commission as it engaged in the process of developing the organizational guidelines. Back then, as I understand the historical record, there were no professional ethics and compliance officers, no professional organizations focused on ethics and compliance, no professional field of study, no business certifications in the topic. There was at least one voluntary association of defense contractors seeking to promote business ethics, and compliance programs in some form were recognized in the antitrust field but were not a prevalent part of corporate America. So the Commission wanted to find a way to deter corporate crime. Because it arises when an employee or an agent commits a crime while acting within the scope of his employment, the Commission thought that self-policing by corporations was the most effective tool to accomplish the goal of deterring corporate crime. Corporate criminal sanctions are a monetary payment to the court and/or restitution to the victims. Since corporations are in the business of making money, the Commission came to the realization that financial incentives would probably be the best way to incentivize corporations to self-police. The implementation of ethics and compliance programs was an outgrowth of the notion of self-policing. Under the chapter 8 guideline fine provisions, an organization has the ability to significantly reduce its fines by having an effective compliance and ethics program, reporting its crime to authorities, and cooperating with those authorities. The Commission thought that this punishment scheme would promote crime deterrence in this area of the law. Chapter 8 was the product of years of work with input from a wide variety of sources. The Commission started work on it in 1986 and held several public hearings featuring witnesses from federal and state agencies, probation officers, academics, the corporate sector, and special interest groups. After publishing several drafts of the organizational guidelines and about five years' worth of study, the Sentencing Commission received and considered a broad array of public comment, including proposals for incorporating affirmative governance factors into the guidelines. These efforts were informed by staff and outside working groups, and the seven elements for an effective ethics and compliance program grew out of this collaborative process. In addition, the Commission purposely drafted the elements in broad terms so that they could be individually tailored by a vastly different types of organizations to which they would apply. Eric Morehead:                 One of the things that I think comes up when you start talking about the role and the process of the Commission is this collaborative effort you mentioned. And the organizational sentencing guidelines have evolved since that first promulgation back in 1991, now, over 30 years. Can you talk a little more specifically about where the Sentencing Commission looks for that collaboration? Whom does it consult with when considering revisions to, not broadly speaking the guidelines, but maybe more specifically, the organizational sentencing guidelines? Kathleen Grilli:                   Sure, Eric. So I've already briefly described the multi-year pro that led to the creation of chapter 8. I would note that while the Commission has made over 800 amendments to the guideline manual, only two of those in the last 30 years have made substantive changes to chapter 8, where you find the organizational guidelines. The 2004 amendment and the 2010 amendment, both of which changes to the criteria for an effective ethics and compliance program. Each of those changes became part of the Commission's amendment cycle in a different way. So let me just briefly describe how that cycle works. The amendment cycle is annual, it's scheduled around certain deadlines set by Congress in the Sentencing Reform Act, our organic statute. For example, the earliest that the Commission can deliver amendments to Congress is at the start of a congressional session in January. And the latest date for delivery is May the 1st. The Act requires the Commission to comply with a notice and comment provisions of the Administrative Procedures Act, which means the Commission has to publicize proposals for Commission action and receive and consider public input about those proposals. So there are various opportunities for solicitation for public comment throughout the amendment cycle. The cycles typically starts in May or June when the Commission holds a planning session. At that session, they consider written materials that detail the work completed on priorities from the prior year and identifying any work that remained to be completed, and includes possible ideas for Commission action from a variety of outside sources. Correspondence, possibly received from judges and/or other members of the public. If we receive those suggestions outside of common period, what we do is we save them and we deliver them to the Commission during an open common period. We look at case law, particularly focusing on opinions from circuit court of appeals that arrive at conflicting decisions on issues surrounding the guidelines. We look at other scholarly materials that suggest changes to the guidelines. Crime legislation is considered. Our helpline database is looked at to find frequently occurring questions that we receive on guideline issues. And our training staff provides input on questions that they receive while training on the guidelines around the country. Sometimes, individual commissioners receive notes from judges or their other acquaintances containing similar suggestions. And the commissioners themselves often have ideas on policy issues that they want to address an amendment cycle. So they discuss these materials and they decide on a tentative list of priorities for the upcoming amendment cycle. We publish that in The Federal Register and on the Commission's website with a deadline for submission of public comment. And the Commission considers that public comment prior to deciding on its final priorities. Certain organizations send a letter to the Commission every year, like the Department of Justice who provides the executive branch a suggestion, for Commission action, the federal public defenders who represent indigent defendants. They also offer suggestions. The Commission has standing advisory groups that represent specific interest groups. Privately retained criminal defense lawyers, probation officers, victims, and Native American tribes who also submit public comments. And then we have certain advocacy groups that are regular submitters to the Commission. But in any given year, the Commission receives a variety of public comment letters from any number of organized groups and individual members of the public. The Commission reads that, decides on final priorities, votes on that at a public meeting, and then we begin our work. Work on these priorities is assigned to the staff of the Commission, which includes lawyers, social scientists, and training staff. And we assist the Commission in developing a robust administrative record on the issues under consideration. So we review case law, legislation, legislative history, Commission historical documents, and other scholarly or scientific literature. We also conduct data analysis using the sentencing data regularly compiled by the Commission. We meet with interested stakeholders to obtain additional information designed to inform the Commission's policy discussion. The staff working groups or the teams report their findings to the Commission in written materials and in oral presentations at the Commission's regular monthly business meetings. Ultimately, these teams develop proposed guideline amendments for the Commissioner's consideration. Draft amendments are published in The Federal Register for a 60-day comment period after the Commission votes to publish those amendments at a public meeting. Those are usually held in December, January. And during the public common period, the Commission holds at least one public hearing, which invited witnesses testify on the policy changes under consideration. After the hearing and review of all public comments, the Commission votes to promulgate amendments at a public meeting in April. The Commission delivers those amendments to Congress no later than May the 1st, at which point Congress has 180 days to review the amendments. Unless Congress enacts legislation, affirmatively disapproving the amendments, the guidelines automatically take effect at the end of the 180-day review period. So the 2004 amendment initially grew out of comments made to a group of seven new commissioners who were appointed in 1999. And they began hearing from these commenters that the organizational sentencing guidelines had been successful in inducing many organizations, both and indirectly, to focus on compliance and to create programs to prevent and detect violations of the law. But these commenters also suggested that changes could and should be made to chapter 8, to give organizations greater guidance regarding the factors that are likely to result in effective programs. Among other things, the Commission was urged to expressly incorporate ethics into the criteria for an effective program. In light of this feedback, the Commission decided to create an ad hoc advisory group to examine the issue and develop proposals for its consideration. Among the members of that group were the current Inspector General for the Department of Justice, Mike Horowitz, the former Attorney General, Eric Holder, and many ethics and compliance professionals from both small and large organizations. Not long after the formation of that group, Congress enacted the Sarbanes–Oxley Act, which directed the Commission to examine penalties for organizations. So the ad hoc groups work tied in very nicely to help the Commission respond to that directive. The ad hoc group did its due diligence, reviewing literature, public comment, soliciting feedback, conducting a hearing. And its work resulted in a draft proposal for changes to chapter 8 for the Commission to consider. The Commission then went through the regular amendment cycle that I just described to you, which resulted in the 2004 changes. As you well know, Eric, since you were at the Commission in 2010 and worked on this policy issue, that amendment grew out of the Commission's catch-all priority for the miscellaneous guideline amendment issues. Then Commissioner, now Chief Judge for the United States District Court in DC, Beryl Howell, believed that chapter eight could be approved upon. And she was able to convince her colleagues to consider this issue. Because the Commission believed that the issue would be very important to the ethics and compliance community, the Commission, through its staff, Eric, made concerted efforts to bring the matter under consideration to the attention of the actors in that community, soliciting comment, and inviting witnesses from the ethics and compliance community to testify at a public hearing. I must say, I have been on the staff of the Commission for 18 plus years, and that was the only hearing at which a miscellaneous amendment garnered two panels of witnesses at a hearing and more public comment than any other amendment under consideration during the amendment cycle. So that's a different example of how changes to the organizational guidelines can come about. Eric Morehead:                 And just to clarify one thing, you talked about advocacy groups, and earlier on mentioned that with the original promulgation in 1991, the Defense Initiative was involved. But does public comment have to come from advocacy organizations? Can it come from anyone? Kathleen Grilli:                   Public comment can come from anyone, and it can come in any form. Folks can email it to our Public Affairs Office. They can send a letter to a Commissioner saying, "Commissioner, I think you need to make this change to the guidelines." They can send it to a member of staff and we compile it, and keep it, and present it to the Commission, no matter who it comes from. In the past, in some of our other guideline amendments, the Commission has received and considered a huge amount of public comment that came from individuals out in the community who were not necessarily active at all in the criminal justice arena. Eric Morehead:                 Yeah. And I think that's an important point as that this process is very well documented and transparent. We see guidance on compliance coming from other regulators out there, but the process that goes on at the Sentencing Commission is something that really is public-focused. And I think that's an important distinction. One of the other key components of the Commission that you mentioned when you were talking about the role is data gathering, and that's gathering data on all the individuals and organizations who have either pled guilty, or been found guilty, and are now being sentenced in front of a federal court. What are some of the trends that we see when we look at organizational sentencing data over the years? Kathleen Grilli:                   Well, I'm glad you asked me about trends, Eric, because one of the things that we're working on right now is a publication to sort of commemorate the 30th anniversary of the organizational guidelines. And we're actually going to be taking a deeper dive into looking at trends. Because normally, when we report out data on the organizational guidelines, it's on an annual basis using our fiscal year data. Well, let me give you some information about a couple of things that I do know about. And I have seen in the years that I've been working on this. First of all, in the 30 years since the adoption of the organizational guidelines, only 11 organizations have received a culpability score reduction for having an effective ethics and compliance program. I view this as a very positive statistic because the Department of Justice tells the business world that it considers ethics and compliance program when evaluating whether to prosecute an organization criminally. Now, I know that there are other ways that organizations get sanctioned by regulatory authorities. Civil fines, non-prosecution agreements, and deferred prosecution agreements. But the bottom line is that Commission data reflects that very few organizations with an effective ethics and compliance program have been prosecuted and criminally sentenced. And I think that's a very big deal. I can tell you that the majority of organizations sentenced in recent years have fewer than 50 employees. And as I mentioned, the publication will be able to report whether that trend holds true over the almost three decades that we've been collecting data on organizational offenders.                                                In the last 20 years, we've seen a steady increase in the percentage of cases in which courts have ordered the development of an ethics and compliance program as a condition of probation. In FY 2000, only 14% of cases involve such a condition compared to nearly that 27% in FY 2020, our fiscal year. Likewise, we have observed an increase in the percentage of cases involving co-defendant individual offenders who were not high-level officials of the organization. In the fiscal year 2000, we observed only 31% of the cases involving a co-defendant who is not a high-level official compared to almost 60% in FY 20. Eric Morehead:                 I think that's a real key data point that can be helpful to organizations when they're talking to their employees about the potential risks involved in misconduct and compliance failures, that doubling basically, of the percentage of individual actual humans that might find themselves facing a federal criminal sanction. Kathleen Grilli:                   Yes. But it's also important to note that they are not high level officials, which might contribute to the fact that you haven't seen so many organizations sentenced in our dataset. That and the culpability score reduction. Eric Morehead:                 Yeah. There's a lot of conventional wisdom. I think that can get debunked by looking at the Sentencing Commission's data. There's that point that it's not all the high level officials, but also that it's smaller organizations because we the headlines that involve the Enrons and other major corporations all the time. That's what gets the ink publications about corporate misconduct. But when we look at the data, it tells a different story. Kathleen Grilli:                   Yes, it does. Eric Morehead:                 And then one other thing that I think is helpful when we're looking at this data is it gives a proper context to the organizations that are facing the most significant punishment, if you will. Because you mentioned before, non-prosecution agreements and deferred prosecution agreements and other regulatory settlements, but there are other consequences out there for organizations that take a federal conviction, including debarment from doing future federal work. And I think the most famous case also is Arthur Anderson, that ceased to exist because they could no longer audit public corporations after they took a federal conviction. So there's other consequences out there when organizations face this ultimate consequence. Last area I wanted to spend just a couple minutes talking about, Kathleen, is what we might see down the road. What are some potential future changes to the organizational sentencing guidelines? What might be over the horizon for people that are paying attention to this? Kathleen Grilli:                   Well, Eric, let me get out my crystal ball and see what I can tell you. First of all, let me just say that I need Commissioners. Eric Morehead:                 Yes. That's true. Kathleen Grilli:                  This lack of voting quorum of Commissioners for three years now, and I'm quite hopeful that sometime in the very near future, the president will be nominating a slate of seven to replace the terms of the Commissioners that have expired. And the one last man standing are acting here, judge Brier. So I don't know what the potential future is. What I can say is that the guidelines were purposely drafted. The organizational guidelines that is were purposely drafted to broadly apply to all types of organizations.                                                And the Commission has been loathed to make changes to those guidelines in the absence of a real hue and cry from either enforcement officials like the Department of Justice, or from the ethics and compliance community identifying a real need for changes. We are well aware of the fact that the two times that the Commission has made substantive changes to the chapter 8 guidelines, that it caused quite a ripple in the stream. And we're hearing a lot about the impact whether intended or not of the chapter eight guideline changes. So I think a new Commission would be loathed to take on consideration of policy changes in this area, absent that hue and cry. But I am not a presidential appointee. I'm simply the general Counsel of the agency. And I will go where my bosses tell me to go. So if they want to work on it, I say, Let's do it.: Eric Morehead:                 Wow. I hope that our audiences got a sense that there's a little bit more to the Sentencing Commission than just the seven hallmarks of the sentencing guidelines that they learned about when they first came into this area. But I'm afraid we're out of time for today. But Kathleen, thank you so much for joining me on this episode. Kathleen Grilli:                   Eric, thank you so much for inviting me. I really had a good time. Eric Morehead:                 Well, my name is Eric Moorhead, and I want to thank all of you for listening to The Principled Podcast by LRN. Outro:                                   We hope you enjoyed this episode. The Principled Podcast is brought to you by LRN. At LRN, our mission is to inspire principled performance in global organizations by helping them foster winning, ethical cultures rooted in sustainable values. Please visit us at lrn.com to learn more. And if you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google podcasts, or wherever you listen. And don't forget to leave us a review.

Infosys (INFY) stock price was up almost 4% today. Infosys provides consulting, technology, outsourcing, and next-gen digital services. INFY has recently been added to Wedbush's "Best Ideas' list as they maintain an outperform rating with a $30 price target on the stock. They say that the company is "well-positioned" to bring the highest growth rates in the sector. George Tsilis weighs in on a potential buying opportunity on the INFY stock.

Equity: Apollo Micro, Wipro, Dr Reddy Derivative: 17100 CE, 35100 CE, INFY 1860 CE --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/kunvarji-finstock/message

Georgia is one of the few states in the United States with a ‘production-friendly' tax incentive program, and many projects get filmed in the Peach State. From 2020 to 2021, productions such as Marvel Studios' Black Panther, Sony's Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Netflix's Ozark filmed in the state. In 2020, Georgia was home to an estimated 242 film productions amid a pandemic. In FY 2020, that added $2.2 billion to the state's economy. In FY 2019, Georgia was home to 399 productions, raking in $2.9 billion.

Peter Pischke - A painful struggle: Opioids can be dangerous, but restrictions — or a ban — are worse The Not Old Better Show, Author Interview Series... Welcome to The Not Old Better Show.  I'm Paul Vogelzang, and this is episode #528.  Today's show is brought to you by Feals. Our guest today is Peter Vaughn Pischke, who is an independent journalist covering health and disability, and host of The Happy Warrior podcast, and has just written an investigative journalism piece on the opioid crisis in The New York Daily News, titled: A painful struggle: Opioids can be dangerous, but restrictions — or a ban — are worse. For the last nine years, this country has suffered from a growing overdose crisis caused by illicit fentanyl — aka “the opioid crisis” — which is responsible for killing more than 80,000 Americans in 2020 alone. The crisis started with good intentions by public health authorities.  In 2009, the Obama FDA forced Purdue Pharma to reformulate their popular pain medication, OxyContin, which had been the primary substitute to produce heroin for the user on the cheap. In theory, forcing a reformulation would make conversion impossible, thus pushing users away from abuse and addiction. This turned out to be an enormous mistake. Since the CDC is mentioned in this story, I reached out to contacts at the CDC and have a statement from them at the end of the program. Please join me in welcoming to The Not Old Better Show via internet phone, journalist Peter Vaughn Pischke. My thanks to Peter Vaughn Pischke for his generous time and reporting today.  My thanks to Feals for sponsoring today's show.  Please support our sponsors.  My thanks, as well, to you, my wonderful Not Old Better Show audience.  Please join me next time, be safe, be healthy…I hope you're listening today as you're waiting in line for your vaccine, and remember, let's talk about Better.  The Not Old Better Show.  Thanks, everybody. http://feals.com/notoldbetter CDC's Response to the Opioid Overdose Epidemic A Public Health Crisis Drug overdoses have dramatically increased over the last two decades, with deaths increasing more than four times between 1999 and 2017. In 2017, more than 70,000 people died from drug overdoses, making it a leading cause of injury-related death in the United States. Of those deaths, about 68 percent involved a prescription or illicit opioid. Adults between the ages of 25 and 6 4 years old have the highest rates of opioid overdose deaths. CDC's Work to Prevent Opioid Overdoses and other Opioid-Related Harms In 2006, CDC initiated efforts to better track and understand data related to the growing opioid overdose epidemic. A scientist from CDC noticed an uptick in poisoning deaths and heard troubling news from state medical examiners about increases in drug overdose deaths. Prescription opioids were identified as the primary concern. Since then, CDC has provided leadership by promoting a public health approach to the problem. In FY 2019, CDC received $475 million for opioid overdose prevention and surveillance activities with the majority of these funds supporting state-based for prevention efforts. Programs across CDC are working to prevent opioid overdoses and other opioid-related harms, including opioid use disorder, hepatitis and HIV infections, and neonatal abstinence syndrome. Thank you.

March 15, 2021 Rockingham County Commissioners Meeting(Wentworth, NC) - Audio of the MArch 15, 2021 meeting of the Rockingham County Board of Commissioners. The meeting was held at the Rockingham County Governmental Center.AGENDA1. MEETING CALLED TO ORDER BY CHAIRMAN HALL2. INVOCATION3. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE4. APPROVAL OF MARCH 15, 2021 AGENDA5. INTRODUCTION - DR. TERRY WORRELL, ROCKINGHAM COUNTY SCHOOLSINTERIM SUPERINTENDENT6. CONSENT AGENDA (Consent items as follows will be adopted with a single motion, second and vote, unless a request for removal from the Consent Agenda is heard from a Commissioner)A) Jennifer Woods, Clerk to the BoardApproval of Minutes- February 15 and March 1, 2021 Regular MeetingsB) Pat Galloway, Director of Financial Services1. Approval- Create a Special Revenue Fund and adopt a FY 20-21 budget forcertain Register of Deeds fees that are set by NC General Statutes (NCGS) andare required by the same NCGS to be remitted to other State Agencies or Funds.GASB Statement No. 84 and LGC guidance have clarified that this portion of thefees should be accounted for in a Special Revenue Fund rather than GeneralFund. Fees include Deeds of Trust ($6.20 per deed), Excise Tax (50% afterdeducting administrative fees) and Marriage License fee ($5 per license to NCChildren's Fund and $30 per license to NC Domestic Violence Fund)2. Approval- Create a Special Revenue Fund for DSS Representative PayeeAccounts and adopt a budget of $750,000 which is based on previous yearsreceipt of Federal and State funds for these individuals. GASB Statement No. 84and LGC guidance has clarified that DSS Representative Payee Accounts shouldbe accounted for in a Special Revenue Fund rather than in a Fiduciary Fund ashistorically reported. This change is required for FY 20-21.3. Approval- Transfer the existing FY 20-21 Fines and Forfeiture budget of $600,000from an Agency Fund to a new Special Revenue Fund. New GASB StatementNo. 84 and LGC guidance have clarified that Fine and Forfeiture revenuecollected that is required by NCGS to be remitted to the school system is to beaccounted for in a Special Revenue Fund.4. Approval- Transfer the existing FY 20-21 budget of $14,000 for the Library TrustFund-Vera Holland Center from an Agency Fund to a new Special Revenue Fund.New GASB Statement No. 84 and LGC guidance that are to be implemented inFY 20-21 clarify that this activity does meet the criteria of a Fiduciary Fund andshould be accounted for in a Special Revenue Fund.5. Approval- Transfer the existing Airport Capital Project Fund bUdget to a newSpecial Revenue Fund. While analyzing County financial activity against newGASB guidance on Fiduciary Funds, it was determined that the Airport Fund ismore appropriately classified as a Special Revenue Fund. The transactionsaccounted for in this fund are the Federal and State grant revenues awarded toairport projects that are assets owned by the Airport Authority.C) Mark McCIi"ntock, Tax Administrator1. Approval- Tax Collection & Reconciliation Reports for February 20212. Approval- Reappointments to the Board of Equalization and Review; terms toexpire March 31, 2024: Ms. Jillianne C. Tate, Mr. John Edward Ashe, Jr.D) Trey Wright, Public Health DirectorApproval- Appointment to the Board of Health and Human Services; term to expireMarch 14,2025: Dr. Laurie SuthardE) Ronnie Tate, Director of Engineering & Public UtilitiesApproval- Parks and Rec Advisory Board By-LawsF) Captain Jennifer Brown, Sheriffs OfficeRetiring K9 Bronco (age 11) after 10 years of dedicated service to the RockinghamCounty Sheriff's Office. Bronco's handler, Deputy Terry Gautier, has requested topurchase Bronco for $1.7. PUBLIC COMMENT8. PRESENTATION- Janice Wilkinson, Rockingham County Planning Committee forServices to the Elderly - Aging Plan for Rockingham County9. PUBLIC HEARING- Case #2021-06 - Applicant: McKinney & Son Builders, Inc. LillardRoad & NC 700, Ruffin Township - Rezoning from Residential Agriculturalto Residential Protected10. PUBLIC HEARING- Case #2021-07 - Applicant: Isometrics, Inc. - NC 87,Wentworth Township - Rezoning from Neighborhood Commercial andNeighborhood Commercial-Conditional District to Heavy Industrial-ConditionalDistrict11. NEW BUSINESS12. COMMISSIONER COMMENTS13. ADJOURN# # #

Exploring Mining Podcast Episode 150 - News from (NYSE: NEM) (TSXV: GTT) (NYSE: INFY) (NYSE: RIO) (ASX: 3DA) (ASX: NCM)

Exploring Mining Podcast Episode 150 - News from (NYSE: NEM) (TSXV: GTT) (NYSE: INFY) (NYSE: RIO) (ASX: 3DA) (ASX: NCM)

Open. Mask-less Guy Robs Roscoe's. Let's Take Naps. Robo-Excuse Generator. A.D.D. News. Overrated/Underrated. Omar Shock Collar Fail. Robo-Excuse Generator. A.D.D. News. Klein Buys Tampons For His Wife. Infy Awards. Our Company Meeting Video. A.D.D. News. Average Bowl. Stryker For Jeopardy Host. Prop A Day.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

AI Eye Podcast 510: Stocks discussed: (NYSE: $IBM) (NYSE: $INFY) (NasdaqGS: $NVDA)

AI Eye Podcast 510: Stocks discussed: (NYSE: $IBM) (NYSE: $INFY) (NasdaqGS: $NVDA)

Infosys Limited (NSE: INFY) Q2 2021 earnings call dated Oct. 14, 2020 Corporate Participants: Sandeep Mahindroo — Financial Controller and Head – Investor Relations Salil Parekh — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director Pravin Rao — Chief Operating Officer and Whole-Time Director Nilanjan Roy — Chief Financial Officer Analysts: Yogesh Aggarwal — HSBC Securities — Analyst Nitin Padmanabhan — Investec — Analyst Moshe Katri — Wedbush — Analyst Keith Bachman — BMO Capital Markets — Analyst Sandip Agarwal — Edelweiss Capital — Analyst Bryan Bergin — Cowen — Analyst Kawaljeet Saluja — Kotak Securities — Analyst Diviya Nagarajan — UBS — Analyst Ankur Rudra — J.P. Morgan — Analyst Pankaj Kapoor — CLSA — Analyst --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/earningspodcast/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/earningspodcast/support

AI Eye Episode 441: Infosys (NYSE: INFY) Delivering AI-Powered Features at Roland-Garros and Aruba (NYSE: $HPE) Leveraged by Homebase Smart Building Company

AI Eye Episode 441: Infosys (NYSE: INFY) Delivering AI-Powered Features at Roland-Garros and Aruba (NYSE: $HPE) Leveraged by Homebase Smart Building Company

Almost everyone believes in India’s potential. But its inability to eliminate the myriad social and economic barriers has been its undoing. Nandan Nilekani the former UIDAI chief and Infy co-founder believes this can be achieved through internal globalization.

Episode 0018 “For The Culture” This episode we dive back into the culture and discuss some unusual behavior in our culture. Are these things happening because of money, clout or destruction. Dive into another episode with Rese and Infy and see where we take this one.  Tell us what you think and join us in the comments!   Don’t forget to Like, Comment and Subscribe!   Checkout this Weeks Playlist “For The Culture Pt.1” available on SoundCloud    Social Media: @UnsolicitedCulture @ItsInfy @Rese_AD   Website: Unsolicitedculture.com

Episode 0014 “What is your new normal?” Since May, is Mental Health Awareness month we decided to explore anxiety and Infy explains how it effects her decision making. We then connect the dots with toxic behavior and mental illnesses listen closely because  they go hand in hand. Not only do we explore toxic traits we also explain the flip side and share our toxic traits we would love to get rid of. Tell us what you think and join us in the comments! Don’t forget to Like, Comment and Subscribe!   Checkout this Weeks Playlist “Vibes Pt.2“ available on SoundCloud    Social Media: @UnsolicitedCulture @ItsInfy @Rese_AD   Website: Unsolicitedculture.com

In FY 2018-19, the Union Budget proposed to improve school education in a holistic manner and launched the Samagra Shiksha programme in April 2018. In the recently announced union budget, the Government of India allocated Rs 38,751crore for Samagra Shiksha in FY 2020-21. The Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan is an overarching programme for the school education sector extending from pre-school to class 12 and has been prepared with the broader goal of improving school effectiveness and better learning outcomes. To know more about Samagra Shikha and how the budget is allocated-we reached out to Mridusmita Bordoloi, a senior researcher at the Accountability Initiative, Centre for Policy Research. See sunoindia.in/privacy-policy for privacy information.

The #AI Eye: IBM (NYSE: IBM) Announces Global Alliance with Infosys (NYSE: INFY) and Sidetrade to Invest £30 Million in UK AI by 2025

The #AI Eye: IBM (NYSE: IBM) Announces Global Alliance with Infosys (NYSE: INFY) and Sidetrade to Invest £30 Million in UK AI by 2025

We are back for 2020! Infy finally made it back to LA and it’s about damn time. We have so much to discuss and just ready to take over the new year. Thank you all for hanging in there during our hiatus but the wait is finally over. It’s the Unsolicited Culture Podcast and we’re here to stay. Join us for Episode 0008 “We’re Back”, as we are discuss a few topics such as Cheating, Sex Drive, the New Years and Holidays.  Don't forget to add us on social media! Instagram: @UnsolicitedCulture @itsInfy @Rese_ad Thank you and appreciate the support!

Related TEK2day article: "Go Vertical or Go Home" (premium): https://tek2day.com/2020/02/17/go-vertical-or-go-home/ Unless your name is Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google or Microsoft, it is best to pursue vertical go-to-market and product strategies. Only the previously mentioned Technology giants have the requisite scale to take a horizontal approach. We provide examples of “Vertical Leaders” and “At-Risk Horizontal Players”. Tickers mentioned: ACN, AMZN, AAPL, AVGO, BOX, CCC, CRM, CSCO, CSGP, DBX, DDOG, FB, FDS, GOOG, IBM, INFO, INFY, MFGP, MSFT, NEWR, NOW, ORCL, OTEX, SAP, SPLK, SSNC, TEAM, TWLO, VRSK, WDAY, WORK It is increasingly risky to pursue a horizontal strategy when the platforms giants – Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft – are doing the same. For example, Apple invested $4.5 billion in R&D during the most recent quarter, Microsoft $4.6 billion and Google/Alphabet $7.2 billion. Quarterly R&D spend for these giants is larger than annual revenue for most technology companies. Therefore, we believe the best growth strategy for young technology companies is to build industry vertical expertise into products, services, user experiences and everywhere that domain expertise may provide your company with a sustainable competitive advantage.

It would be hard to get an accurate count of the number of lives that Dr. Geoff Tabin has either saved or improved, often by his own hands. The figure is in the thousands because he and Dr. Sanduk Ruit are co-founders of the Himalayan Cataract Project. As its website name, cureblindness.org suggests, the project provides high-quality eye care in some of the most remote or under-served parts of the world. And, as Geoff Tabin, Professor of Ophthalmology and Global Medicine at Stanford, will happily tell you, this project, his life’s work, never would have happened had it not been for some serious serendipity. Key Takeaways: [:23] Ray Hoffman introduces Dr. Geoff Tabin, Co-Founder of the Himalayan Cataract Project. [1:05] In the poorest countries, 85% of blindness is preventable or treatable. Of all cases of blindness, 50% are from treatable cataracts. [1:52] Dr. Tabin was specifically inspired by a Dutch ophthalmologist running a humanitarian program called Eye Care Foundation Himalaya doing lens implants in Nepal. These implants altered lives and the welfare of families. [2:34] Dr. Tabin talks about his educational path and what inspired him at Yale and Oxford, England. On a mountain-climbing scholarship named for Andrew Irvine, he went to Asia and Africa to climb. He observed first-hand the disparity between the haves and the have-nots, regarding medical care. [4:24] Dr. Tabin matriculated at Harvard Medical School with the intent of working in global medicine to bridge the gap in care between the wealthy countries and the poor countries. [4:47] In 1988, Dr. Tabin climbed Mt. Everest while he was working as a general doctor in Nepal. He was searching for a way that an individual doctor could make a difference. He saw the Dutch ophthalmologist team set up and give new hope to cataract patients. He was amazed by how the surgery could change lives. [5:45] Dr. Tabin immediately found an ophthalmology residency at Brown University in the States and came back to enter the residency. [6:21] At the same time, Dr. Tabin’s future partner, Dr. Sanduk Ruit, was finishing his training in Australia. Dr. Ruik came from a small village in Nepal with no running water, electricity, or schools, a three-days’ walk from the road. After a house fire, his parents had taken him to a monastery in Nepal where the monks saw he needed an education. [7:03] As a child, Dr. Ruik’s father walked him 11 days to Darjeeling, India to an English Jesuit school. Dr. Ruik only spoke his native language. He emerged from the education with a full scholarship to one of the best medical schools in India. He got top boards. He trained as an ophthalmologist in Delhi and did a cataract fellowship also in India. [7:42] Dr. Ruit returned to Nepal and caught the attention of the same Dutch ophthalmology group Dr. Tabin had seen. Dr. Ruit went to the Netherlands for training in microsurgery and to Australia for a two-year fellowship. He came back to Nepal as a world-class ophthalmologist, looking to bring high-quality eye care to Kathmandu. [9:20] Dr. Tabin spent a couple of weeks during his fellowship working with Dr. Ruit. He told Dr. Ruit he wanted to work with him. When he finished his fellowship, he moved to Nepal to work with Dr. Ruit. [9:36] This project wouldn’t have come to pass if not for Dr. Tabin’s passion for mountain climbing, and a lot of help from great mentors. Dr. Tabin explores the serendipity involved. [11:03] Dr. Tabin learned hiking from his father, a nuclear physicist who worked with Enrico Fermi on the Manhattan Project. Dr. Tabin tells how his father hiked with Enrico Fermi and later, with him when he was a teen. Dr. Tabin started studying as a teen about the great mountaineers and explorers. [12:14] In Dr. Tabin’s later teen years, he focused on tennis and was recruited to play tennis at Yale. At Yale, he started rock climbing with a friend. [12:56] Dr. Tabin tells how he and Dr. Ruit co-founded the Himalayan Cataract Project. It started with transferring skills to doctors, ophthalmic nurses, ophthalmic technicians, and ophthalmic assistants. They taught primary health care workers a basic understanding of eye diseases. They created a teaching system. [13:39] Dr. Tabin and Dr. Ruit took the best cataract surgeons and sent them to specialty surgical fellowships for pediatric ophthalmology, glaucoma, retinal surgery; all the sub-specialties. Once they had the full range of specialties, they had a world-class residency program. [14:07] They were not getting funding from the U.S., so they turned to other countries, but they were also skeptical. To gain credibility, Dr. Tabin took an assistant professorship at the University of Vermont. The doctors decided to incorporate as a 501(c), named the Himalayan Cataract Project, with a website cureblindness.org. [15:32] They started raising funds to support the work. After two years, they hired their first full-time employee. They started in Nepal, then brought Bhutanese doctors into the program, then doctors from Tibet, then Indonesia. [16:42] In 2006, Dr. Tabin took a professorship at the University of Utah. By that time, the surgeons in the program were better than Dr. Tabin, so he was confident for them to continue without his presence. One of the doctors in the cataract project, Dr. Alan Crandall, went to Ghana and was one of the highest-volume cataract surgeons there. [17:26] Dr. Tabin started going on missions to Ghana with Dr. Crandall to see about extending the program to meet the need in Africa. [17:41] In FY 2014, the organization had $8 million in assets and did 78,000 sight-restoring surgeries. In FY 2016, they did 97,000 surgeries and treated over one million patients. In FY 2018, they performed 123,000 surgeries with assets of $12 million. Besides these procedures, their focus is on training local providers to perform the same procedures. [18:58] In 1996, when they started with $100,000, Dr. Tabin never expected to grow into the success they have had to this day. In that period, Nepal went from 0.88% blindness down to 0.2% blindness, today. Nepal is the one poor country that has reversed its rate of blindness. [20:43] Dr. Ruit instilled in Dr. Tabin that they were looking for the next young superstars. In 2007–08, Dr. Tabin started the first global ophthalmology fellowship in American academic ophthalmology. Now there are eight universities that have a global ophthalmology fellowship, following Dr. Tabin’s example. [21:20] Dr. Tabin is proud of his former fellows who, as early career ophthalmologists, are pushing ophthalmology forward in Asia and Africa. [21:56] Dr. Tabin reflects on the expansion and success of the program and discusses potential future expansion in Africa. It is estimated that it would take $100 million to completely reverse blindness in Ethiopia and Ghana. Similar changes need to be made in other African countries. Dr. Tabin names some amazing doctors from the program. [23:58] Based on the progress of the program, Dr. Tabin sees a realistic goal of turning the tide on needless blindness. The program has brought the material cost of a cataract surgery down to under $25. 12 million people could have their life completely changed from a $25 surgery. [24:42] Dr. Tabin hopes that Melissa Chen or Mark Zuckerberg will listen to this podcast and be inspired to donate to CureBlindness.org. Blindness is a low-hanging fruit to cure, as diseases go. Dr. Tabin tells about his role as a fundraiser. He speaks about donors. [25:43] Three years ago, Dr. Tabin went from the University of Utah to take an endowed chair for ophthalmology and global medicine at Stanford University. In Silicon Valley, Dr. Tabin has exposure to a lot of people who could potentially make a huge impact on global blindness. [26:33] Over the last few years, fundraising has been extremely successful. They always spend less than they secure. They have had USAID grants for big capital projects. Dr. Tabin wants it to be a $30 million charity to fully address blindness in Ethiopia and Ghana. Funding is half from grants and half from private philanthropy. [27:48] Studies have shown that restoring sight gives a direct impact of four-to-one to the local economy. Dr. Tabin would like to see more direct investments from governments and global funds like the World Health Organization. [28:29] 88% of their funds go directly into programs. Will that efficiency continue while scaling up? Dr. Tabin explains how it can. Dr. Tabin doesn’t want to spend a lot of money on fundraising. [30:17] Dr. Tabin talks of the 5,000 cataract surgeries they have done recently in Ethiopia. They are reaching out to Eritrea and are taking Eritrean doctors into their Ethiopia training program. [32:17] In 2019, Dr. Tabin traveled to Ethiopia, South Sudan, Bhutan (where they just opened a new state-of-the-art eye hospital), and Nepal, while working about six months at Stanford and six months between Asia and Africa. [32:55] Dr. Tabin hopes people in America realize we are all one world and one human race. It does matter what happens in Africa and Asia. Once someone has the cataract surgery, they are no longer “a statistic” but a person cured 100%. [33:58] In six years, the organization will be 30 years old. Dr. Tabin hopes that in six years, Ethiopia and Ghana will have followed Nepal and Bhutan in reversing their backlog of blindness and sustaining high-quality care for all their people, and the programs will be expanded into other African countries in great need. [34:41] Dr. Tabin also wants to be closer in six years, in connection with other organizations, to reversing blindness for the two greatest populations, China and India. [35:39] Dr. Tabin acknowledges he was in the right places at the right times with some incredible mentors. [36:15] Ray Hoffman provides the website name, CureBlindness.org and signs off.   Mentioned in This Episode: Stephens.com Himalayan Cataract Project (CureBlindness.org) Eye Care Foundation Himalaya Dr. Geoff Tabin Dr. Sanduk Ruit Yale Oxford Andrew Irvine Harvard Medical School Mt. Everest Brown University Professor Hugh Taylor University of Chicago Enrico Fermi University of Vermont University of Utah Melissa Chen Mark Zuckerberg Stanford University World Health Organization Nobel Peace Prize Sick Kid’s Hospital, Toronto

Apple [Nasdaq: AAPL] announced its fourth quarter 2019 earnings last week. We review the FY 2019 earnings. And, we discuss what is Apple doing well to scale so fast. In FY 2019, Apple generated revenues of over $260B. Twenty years ago, Apple FY1999 revenue was $6.1B. And, iPhone, which generates more than half of Apple's revenue today and is mainly responsible for ~47B in services revenue, did not exist until 2007. Useful Links1. Apple Watch: A giant leap for Apple and a small step for wearables 2. The phone we love 3. Apple 4Q2019 earnings press release

1. USCIS updated Form I-912, Request for Fee Waiver, by removing receipt of a means-tested benefit to establish eligibility. 2. Individuals may still request a fee waiver if their documented annual household income is at or below 150% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines or they demonstrate financial hardship. 3. The new policy is effective on Dec. 2.   Form I-912, Request for Fee Waiver https://www.uscis.gov/i-912 Additional Information on Filing a Fee Waiver https://www.uscis.gov/feewaiver Eligibility https://www.uscis.gov/feewaiver#Eligibility What is a means-tested benefit? https://www.uscis.gov/feewaiver#meanstested How to show you are currently receiving a means-tested benefit https://www.uscis.gov/feewaiver#meanstested Federal Poverty Guidelines https://www.uscis.gov/i-912p Financial Hardship https://www.uscis.gov/feewaiver#financial_hardship How requesting a fee waiver affects your current immigration status https://www.uscis.gov/feewaiver#status uscitizenpod: USCIS Updates Fee Waiver Requirements (subtitled video of this podcast episode) Video posted October 28, 2019. http://bit.ly/I-912-2019 uscitizenpod: The USCIS N-400 and Fee Waivers (includes Fee Reduction) Video posted January 13, 2018. Available at http://bit.ly/I-912-2018 10/25/2019 USCIS Press Release I-912 Revised Criteria Provides Clarity for Demonstrating Eligibility https://www.uscis.gov/news/news-releases/uscis-updates-fee-waiver-requirements WASHINGTON — U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has revised Form I-912, Request for Fee Waiver, by removing the means-tested benefit criteria that was previously used as a factor in determining whether an applicant was exempt from paying for filing fees or biometric services. Individuals may still request a fee waiver if their documented annual household income is at or below 150% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines or they demonstrate financial hardship. A means-tested benefit is a public benefit—offered by federal, state, or local agencies—for which eligibility and amount considerations are based on a person’s income and resources. USCIS formerly considered Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and Supplemental Security Income during eligibility evaluations. USCIS has determined that receiving a means-based benefit is not an appropriate criteria in reviewing fee-waiver requests because income levels used to decide local assistance eligibility vary greatly from state to state. “USCIS relies on fees to cover the costs of adjudicating applications and petitions, implementing operational efforts, and ensuring the nation’s lawful immigration system is properly administered,” said USCIS Acting Director Ken Cuccinelli. “USCIS waives hundreds of millions of dollars in fees annually. The revised fee waiver process will improve the integrity of the program and the quality and consistency of fee waiver approvals going forward. Providing clear direction to agency adjudicators for more uniform determinations will help us to uphold our mission of efficiently and fairly adjudicating immigration requests.” USCIS has estimated that the annual dollar amount of fee waivers increased from around $344.3 million in fiscal year 2016 to $367.9 million in FY 2017. In FY 2018, the estimated annual dollar amount of fee waivers USCIS granted was $293.5 million. Fee revenues account for more than 95% of the USCIS budget. Under the revised criteria, individuals may still request a fee waiver if: Their documented annual household income is at or below 150% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines; or They demonstrate financial hardship. However, USCIS will require applicants to complete Form I-912 and submit supporting documentation, including federal income tax transcripts. USCIS will not accept a letter stating the applicant is unable to afford filing fees or biometric services without a completed Form I-912. As of Dec. 2, those seeking a fee waiver must submit the 10/24/19 version of this form to request a waiver of a required fee for immigration benefits. After Dec. 2, USCIS will reject any Form I-912 with an edition date of 03/13/18 or earlier, a fee waiver request submitted with a letter, or documentation of receipt of means-tested benefit to show eligibility for a fee waiver. USCIS will adjudicate any fee waiver request postmarked before Dec. 2 under the previous policy, AFM 10.9, Waiver of Fees. The new form does not change the applications and petitions that are eligible for a fee waiver. For the list of eligible applications and petitions, see the Form I-912 Instructions. In addition, USCIS has updated policy guidance in the USCIS Policy Manual to accompany this form revision. The updated policy guidance is effective on Dec. 2. For more information on USCIS and our programs, please visit uscis.gov or follow us on Twitter (@uscis), Instagram (/uscis), YouTube (/uscis), Facebook (/uscis), and LinkedIn (/uscis).  

Back with another one, Episode 0003 "Adulting". This episode we are celebrating iNFY born day, please wish the homie a Happy Birthday. After the celebration we dive deep into Adulthood and a few other topics.   Please Like, Subscribe, and Comment!   Don't Forget to follow us on Instagram: @UnsolicitedCulture @Infyxrebel @Rese_ad   Thank you and appreciate the support!

Award-Winning Business & Leadership Coach, Adjunct Professor, Forbes Contributor and Doctoral Candidate, Jason William Johnson is the Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Chicago Urban League. In his role, he develops programming and provides strategic direction for an award-winning program that serves over 500 businesses annually. In FY 2017 the Center’s clients obtained 121 contracts worth $55,991,000 and created 80 new jobs. The Center also provided clients with over 750 hours of one on one counseling and 3943 hours of entrepreneurship training. Jason is a doctoral candidate in Organizational Leadership and holds a Masters in Industrial-Organizational Psychology. He is a subject matter expert in personality psychology and the CEO and Co-Founder of Konveau, an app that uses personality type and personal interests to help people connect at social gatherings. Publications such as Chicago Tribune Blue Sky Innovation, Chicago Inno, Technori and South Florida Business Journal have featured Konveau. Jason is also an alum of PowerMoves, the country’s largest accelerator for technology startup founders of color. Before Konveau, Jason founded Identity Engineers, a boutique branding and business strategy firm that operated in the Chicago Loop from 2010-2013.Jason is a Forbes.com contributor, was selected as one of Chicago Inno’s 50 on Fire for 2017, and a presenter at 2017 New Orleans Entrepreneurship Week. He also served as Educational Advisory Board Secretary for IAEOU, an online entrepreneurship incubator for small business owners in Chicago and Amman, Jordan. Jason was Central Regional Vice President for National Urban League Young Professionals’ (NULYP) from 2015 to 2017 and President of the Metropolitan Board of the Chicago Urban League from 2013 to 2015. In his spare time, Jason meditates twice a day, is an avid reader, and a YouTube junkie. He also enjoys dining, arts and culture, and travel.

Episodio (menos)-1 de Sin palomitas de maíz. Juan David, Felipe y Carlos hacen un rápido resumen de los Emmy's 2018 y la relevancia de estos premios con una televisión globalizada. Hablamos del fenómeno mundial de La Casa de papel https://www.antena3.com/series/casa-de-papel/La ganadora del Emmy 2018 a mejor miniserie: The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2788432/?ref_=tt_ov_infY la comedia de Netflix creada por Chuck Lorre, Disjointed (Fumados)https://www.netflix.com/co/title/80117694Además recomendamos El Desconecte, el MTV Unplugged de la banda mexicana Molotov disponible en MTV play: http://play.mtvla.com/4637aa32-ec17-46ae-869d-29fd7303c368/365ea16e-a04f-11e8-af1e-70df2f866aceY finalizamos el episodio hablando de la última película de Cristina Gallego y Ciro Guerra la película colombiana Pájaros de Verano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke-8-Byrl44

In today's podcast we hear that Iran's crackdown on Internet channels of dissent continues. Intel processors are determined to have a deep security flaw: cloud users are likely to be affected. A macOS local privilege escalation vulnerability is published. The "Trackmageddon" location service vulnerability seems to originate in a buggy API. The suicide forest video appears to have passed through YouTube's human curators. The man arrested in the Wichita police shooting may have been a serial SWATTER. Joe Carrigan from JHU on holiday IoT devices. Guest is Thomas Jones from Bay Dynamics on updated NIST rules for DOD contractors. 

Mike Zinkin - Mike is a former Oro Valley Town Councilman and he has numbers from Oro Valley's website showing the golf course, tennis courts, and restaurant lost over $2.5 million! Listen to my interview with Mike about how the town is ignoring these losses and ignored a resident that wanted to take over the restaurant. In FY 15/16: The Town collected $2,030,750 in the increased sales tax Troon lost $2,567,385 Net loss = $536,635 In FY 16/17: The Town collected $2,199,366 in the increased sales tax Troon lost $2,512,938 Net loss = $313,572 Total for two years = $850,207 This does not include the money taken out of the Genera Fund: $1,000,000 to purchase the property $1,200,000 to start the Community Center Fund $350,000 to supplement the Community Center Fund Total from General Fund = $2,550,000 + net two year loss ($850,207) = $3,400,207

Director of Postal Affairs, Bob Schimek elaborates on the latest developments with the United States Postal Service: USPS Files January Financial Numbers: · USPS had an operating income of $42M while in the black, the plan was $263M and the previous year was $293M · After non-controllable expenses and unfunded liabilities the USPS reported a loss of $245M for the month · Key concern: Controllable expenses were above plan by 3% and above SPLY by 5.1% o January work hours were 3.7% above plan and up 4.2% over SPLY · Total Mail volume was down 0.4% below SPLY and revenues were up 0.6% over SPLY · Good news story continues to be Packages: Volume was up 14.5% over SPLY and Revenue was up 17.4% over SPLY OIG Looks at USPS Officer Travel: · USPS has identified 50 positions as Postal Career Executive Service · Includes PMG, DPMG, and all the USPS VP’s. · These officers shape the strategic direction of the USPS by setting goals, targets, and indicators · OIG was looking to ensure their travel was properly supported and complied with Postal policies and procedures · In FY 2016 there were 1,006 travel reimbursement requests totaling ~$948,000 · OIG reviewed 69 totaling $165,000 · In general the travel did comply with policies and procedures, but 3 items were identified o Officers did not always obtain approval for travel deviations o Credit Card Coordinators did not review balance refunds in cases o Corporate Accounting did not review Sloan Fellow travel reimbursement requests before payment. USPS Informed Delivery Going Nationwide: · USPS is stating by late April it should be available nationwide. · It will be rolled out in major metropolitan areas first. · Anyone interested can use the ZIP Code Lookup feature at informeddelivery.usps.com to see if it is available for you. · Site also include signup instructions. USPS Q1 Service Performance: · USPS publishes their service performance numbers on their website, but publishes more detailed numbers with the PRC · Better than SPLY, but still below targets. · With Q1 being the heavy mailing season, all service performance for First Class was lower than the previous quarter. · USPS also failed to meet any service performance target in First Class mail. · Periodicals also failed to hit all service performance targets. · Marketing Mail that was drop shipped did well, but origin entered “end-to-end” remained pretty much dismal. o Letter mail pretty consistently out performing flat mail. USPS Proposes Changes for Mailing Lithium Batteries: · USPS looking to align regulations with that of applicable regulatory agencies · Industry has the ability to provide comment before March 24, 2017 · Changes include marking options and warning labels. · USPS will be looking to implement these changes 60 days from official rule making. · USPS may entertain requests for extensions. USPS has one less option for next generation of delivery vehicles: · Last Fall the USPS announced 6 suppliers would build 50 prototype vehicles as functional prototypes to test. · Spartan Motors was one of the 6, but has backed out. · They noted it was not possible to meet USPS requirements with their chassis supplier. · So there are now only 5 suppliers vying for the ability to produce up to 180,000 vehicles for the USPS FedEx contract with USPS extended for 7 years: · FedEx provides the USPS express air transportation for Priority Mail and Priority Mail Express in the US. · Current contract agreement started in 2013 and now has been extended to Sept 29, 2024 · The modified contract is expected to generate $1.5B per year for FedEx

The Federal Aviation Administration performs the essential work of keeping airplanes from crashing into each other in the sky; in this episode, we take a look at the new law that temporarily funds the FAA and makes some important changes to aviation law. We also travel back in time to the week after 9/11 to examine the origin of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and we examine some ideas that the current leaders of Congress have for the future of air travel in the United States and beyond. Please support Congressional Dish: Click here to contribute with PayPal or Bitcoin; click the PayPal "Make it Monthly" checkbox to create a monthly subscription Click here to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Mail Contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North #4576 Crestview, FL 32536 Thank you for supporting truly independent media! H.R. 636: FAA Extension, Safety, and Security Act of 2016 Title I: FAA Extension Funding Extends FAA funding through September 30, 2017 Extends fuel and ticket taxes through September 30, 2017 Title II: Aviation Safety Critical Reform Safety Establishes a deadline of April 30, 2017 for the FAA to have a pilots records database online and available for use. Creates a maximum $25,000 fine for pointing a laser pointer at an aircraft or in the path of an aircraft. Prohibits the FAA from hiring newly trained air traffic controllers over the age of 35 The FAA must make sure that each employee of repair stations outside of the United States are given pre-employment background checks Drone Safety Over the next two years, the FAA and industry will have two work together to develop a method of remotely identifying drone operators. Starting in three years, drone manufacturers will have to include safety notices informing customers of drone safety laws and regulations. The FAA will work together with the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture to authorize drone use for firefighting and utility repairs. A person who uses a drone to interfere with firefighting operations, law enforcement, or emergency response can be fined up to $20,000. The FAA will conduct a pilot program testing unmanned aircraft detection systems. In the next year, the FAA and NASA will conduct tests of drones crashing into various sized airplanes and helicopters. Time Sensitive Aviation Reform By July 2017, regulations must be in effect requiring airlines to automatically refund bag fees to anyone whose bags are not delivered within 12 hours after the arrival of a domestic flight or 15 hours after the arrival of an international flight. FAA needs to submit a report, including public comments, about the risks of eliminating contract weather observer service at 57 airports and can not discontinue contract weather observer service before October 1, 2017. FAA must enact regulations requiring pilots of small airplanes to have driver's licenses and pass all medical tests required for a drivers license, completes a medical education course, Airlines will have to let passengers off a plane if it's waiting on the tarmac for 3 hours of a domestic flight or 4 hours for an international flight. Title III: Aviation Security TSA PreCheck Expansion TSA will add "multiple private sector application capabilities" for citizens to use to enroll including online enrollment, kiosks, tablets, or staffed laptop stations. Private sector will collect biometric identification information with "comparable" privacy standards to the standards developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology Private risk assessments will be used instead of fingerprint-based criminal history records checks Private administrators will be allowed to charge fees in excess of the costs of administering the program. Securing Aviation from Foreign Entry Points and Guarding Airports Through Enhanced Security TSA Administrator will be allowed donate security screening equipment to foreign airports with direct flights to the United States TSA must create an international training program to train authorities of foreign governments in air transportation security. Aviation Security Enhancement and Oversight Enacts stricter vetting requirements for people granted access to secure sections of airports Checkpoints of the Future Creates a new pilot program at between 3 and 6 airports that will test new technologies and new baggage and personal screening systems. Services, supplies, equipment, personnel, and facilities can be obtained from the private sector for the pilot programs. Sound Clip Sources: Hearings Hearing: Aviation Security, Joint House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation and Senate Appropriations Committee, September 20, 2001. Witnesses: Gerald Dillingham, Associate Director of the General Accounting Office Jane Garvey, Administration, FAA Kenneth Mead, Inspector General of the Department of Transportation Norman Mineta, Secretary of the Department of Transportation Hank Queen, Vice President of Boeing’s Engineering and Product Integrity division Timestamps and Transcripts {54:15} Kenneth Mead: Given the scope and complexity of the security challenge as we know it now, coupled with the long-standing history of problems with the aviation security program, I think the time’s come to revisit the option of vesting governance of the program and responsibility for the provision of security in one federal organization or not-for-profit federal corporation. This doesn’t mean that everybody has to be a federal employee, but it does mean a much more robust federal presence and control. That entity would have security as its primary and central focus, profession, and mission. Under our current system, we’ve asked FAA to oversee and regulate aviation security, and those charged with providing the security—the airlines and the airports—themselves face other priorities, missions, and indeed, in some cases, competing economic pressures. And I think a centralized, consolidated approach with a security mission would require passenger and baggage screeners to have uniform, more rigorous training, and performance standards applicable nationwide, and I think that would result in more consistent security across this country and have higher quality also. {1:22:46} Harold Rogers: Now, I want to ask you about Dulles. Did you check on the employees of the screening operation at Dulles Airport?Kenneth Mead: Yes. We’re checking on the citizens— Harold Rogers: Tell us the makeup of the staff there, in terms of their citizenship in the U.S., for example. Kenneth Mead: Yes. A substantial percentage of them are not U.S. citizens. Harold Rogers: What percent? Kenneth Mead: I think it’s about 80%. It may be somewhat more. {1:26:40} Harold Rogers: What about the turnover rate, Mr. Dillingham? I’ve been reading the GAO’s report on aviation security, issued June of 2000. I think you’re the principal author, are you not?Gerald Dillingham: Yes, sir. Harold Rogers: Tell us about the type of personnel that’s screening companies you’re hiring around the country at the airports to screen for terrorists. Gerald Dillingham: Let me go back just a little bit to the point you raised before. Screeners don’t have to be U.S. citizens. They can have a resident alien card as well. The other point you raised with regard to Argenbright, I think Argenbright is also a foreign-owned company as well. And with regard to the types of personnel that are being hired, one of the requirements is that you have a high school diploma or a GED. We have not checked the records of individual companies, but in the course of doing our work, we clearly got the idea that this was not a job where you would find the most skilled workers. Harold Rogers: They’re minimum-wage jobs, are they not? Gerald Dillingham: Yes, sir. Harold Rogers: And the turnover rate is exorbitantly high, is it not? Gerald Dillingham: Yes, sir. Harold Rogers: In one airport the turnover rate is 400% a year, correct? Gerald Dillingham: Yes, sir. Harold Rogers: In Atlanta it’s 375% a year. At Baltimore-Washington, 155; Boston Logan, 207; Chicago O’Hare, 200; and Houston, 237% a year; at St. Louis, 416% a year. Is that correct? Gerald Dillingham: Yes, sir. Harold Rogers: So these are untrained, inexperienced, the lowest-paid personnel, many of them certainly noncitizens, and by a company that got the contract by the lowest bid. Gerald Dillingham: Yes, sir. Harold Rogers: Now, what’s wrong with this picture? Gerald Dillingham: I think the picture is clear to everyone. {2:28:58} Carolyn Kilpatrick: This company that’s in 46 airports, that had the low-bid contract, that’s noncitizens, that handles securities, and has criminal convictions, who hired them?Norman Mineta: The airline is the one that contracts with each… Carolyn Kilpatrick: An airline. One airline. So did they all go together and hire them, or each airline hires them on its own? Norman Mineta: The airline hires the company and then the airlines—well, let me have Ken maybe go into that because he’s maybe got the list of airports with the contractors. Kenneth Mead: Yeah. The different airlines can hire the same security company, and that does happen. Carolyn Kilpatrick: Obviously. Low bids, so they’re going for cheapness. Kenneth Mead: Right. And some airports, Dulles, for example, you have the airlines get together there, and they hire one vendor, and in the case of Dulles, it’s Argenbright. In the case of other airports, where you have an airline, say, that has a dedicated concourse, and you have two or three concourses at that airport, you may have, in fact, three different firms providing the security— Carolyn Kilpatrick: Okay, thank you. Kenneth Mead: —each hired by a separate airline. Hearing: Review of ATC Reform Proposals, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, February 10, 2016. Transcript Witnesses: Mr. Paul Rinaldi, President, National Air Traffic Controllers Association Written Testimony Mr. Nicholas E. Calio, President and Chief Executive Officer, Airlines for America Written Testimony Mr. Ed Bolen, President and CEO, National Business Aviation Association Written Testimony Mr. Robert Poole, Director of Transportation Policy, Reason Foundation Written Testimony Timestamps and Transcripts {13:00} Bill Shuster: A key reform in this bill takes the ATC out of the Federal Government, and establishes a federally chartered, independent, not-for-profit corporation to provide that service. This corporation will be governed by a board representing the system’s users. {17:55} Bill Shuster: But I just want to say that August of this year, Canadians will launch their first satellites into space, and by the end of 2017, they will have over 70 satellites launched. They will have their GPS system up in space. Currently, today, we can only see 30 percent of the airspace on our current technology. When they deploy those 70 or so satellites, they will be able to see 100 percent of the airspace in the globe, the Canadians. I am told there’s already 15 or 16 countries that have signed up for their services. So Canadians, the NAV CAN, and their partners, they’re developing this system. I believe they are going to become the dominant controller of airspace in the world. They’re going to be able to fly planes over the North Atlantic and over the Pacific, straighter lines, closer together, more efficiently; and that’s when we’re going to really see our loss in leadership in the world, when it comes to controlling airspace and being the gold standard. {19:10} Bill Shuster: Again, this corporation we’re setting up is completely independent of the Federal Government. This is not a government corporation, a quasi-governmental entity, or a GSE. It is not that. The Federal Government will not back the obligations, the financial obligations, for this corporation. The corporation will simply provide a service. {27:27} Pete DeFazio: We’re talking about an asset—no one’s valued it—worth between $30 billion and $50 billion that will be given to the private corporation free of charge. That’s unprecedented. There have been two privatizations: one privatization in Canada—they paid $1.4 billion; it was later found that it was undervalued by about $1 billion. I believe in Britain they paid a little over $1 billion for it. We’re going to take a much larger entity, controlling a lot of real estate, some in some very expensive areas like New York City, and we are going to give it to a private corporation, and the day after they establish, they can do with those assets whatever they wish. They can sell them, and we have no say. {30:11} Pete DeFazio: If someone controls the routes, and they control the conditions under which you access those routes, and they control the investment in the system itself, which means maybe we don’t want to invest in things that serve medium and small cities—they aren’t profit centers; why should we be putting investment there—you know, we are keeping control of the airspace? I guess there’s some technical way we’re keeping control of it, but none of that will be subject to any elected representative. {1:00:05} Ed Bolen: Our nation’s air traffic control system is a monopoly, and it will stay a monopoly, going forward. The airlines, for 30 years, have been lobbying Congress so that they can seize control of that natural monopoly and exert their authority over it. We think that is a fatally flawed concept. The public airspace belongs to the public, and it should be run for the public’s benefit. Do we really think that, given control of this monopoly, the airlines would run it for every American’s benefit? Reading the headlines over the past year would suggest that’s probably not the case. ‘‘Airline Consolidation Hits Small Cities the Hardest,’’ wrote the Wall Street Journal; ‘‘Justice Department Investigating Potential Airline Price Collusion,’’ wrote the Washington Post; ‘‘Airline Complaints on the Rise’’ was a headline in the Hill; ‘‘Airlines Reap Record Profits and Passengers Get Peanuts.’’ That appeared in the New York Times this past weekend. {1:02:30} Ed Bolen: We’re talking about giving them unbridled authority to make decisions about access, about rates, charges, about infrastructure. This is a sweeping transfer of authority. {1:31:12} Don Young: Will the gentleman yield? Let’s talk about the board.Bill Shuster: Certainly. Don Young: You got four big airlines board members. Bill Shuster: Right. Don Young: NATCA now is supporting it. And I question that, by the way. I fought for you every inch of the way, and we want to find out what is behind that. General aviation has one. Unknown: Two. Don Young: Two? Unknown: General aviation has two. Don Young: OK, two. Where’s the other one? Bill Shuster: Two to the government. Don Young: Two—and who are they going to be? Do we have any input on that? No. We do not. The president has—— Bill Shuster: The Department of Transportation will have it. Don Young: The president. And we’re the Congress of the United States. I’d feel a lot better if we were to appoint them. Why should we let a president appoint them? This is our job as legislators. If we’re going to change the system, let us change it with us having some control over it, financially. And the board members should be appointed from the Congress. I am not going to give any president any more authority. That is the wrong—we have done this over and over again. We give the president—we might as well have a king. I don’t want a king. Hearing: Airport Security Wait Times, House Homeland Security Committee, May 25, 2016. Witness: Peter Neffenger, Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Timestamps and Transcripts {09:20} Bennie Thompson: In fiscal year 2011, there were approximately 45,000 TSOs screening 642 million passengers. In FY 2016, TSA had 3,000 fewer TSOs screening roughly 740 million anticipated passengers, almost 100 million more passengers and 3,000 fewer screeners. {11:11} Bennie Thompson: TSA should have access to all of the aviation security fees collected by the flying public to bolster security. Yet, the passage of the Budget Act of 2013, TSA is required to divert $13 billion collected in security fees toward the deficit reduction for the next 10 years. This year alone, 1.25 billion has been diverted. {29:40} Michael McCaul: And finally, do you support—well, I can’t say—do you support the concept of expanding TSA’s pre-check program, which, I think, would move a lot of people in the long lines into the pre-check lines, which, I think, would solve many of these problems as well.Pete Neffenger: Absolutely. In fact, that’s one of my fundamental priorities is to dramatically expand the pre-check population and dramatically expand the capability to enroll people in pre-check. {48:30} Pete Neffenger: Right now we do not seem to have trouble meeting our recruiting targets. We have a large pool of people that have been pre-vetted. That’s why we were able to rapidly begin to hire that 768 because we had a large pool of available applicants that had been screened that were looking for work. I still want to work on bringing more of that back in house than is currently done. As you know, we work through a private contractor to do our hiring and recruiting right now. {49:53} Mike Rogers: I plan to introduce legislation to transform TSA from an HR nightmare to a security-focused organization by reforming and greatly expanding the Screening Partnership Program. Having worked on these issues for more than a decade, I’ve seen that TSA can do a mission when it’s given a clear, succinct mission. My bill is going to allow more airports to hire qualified private contractors, capable of managing day-to-day operations, and make TSA the driving force to oversee intelligence-based security strategies. {1:41:30} Buddy Carter: You and I have spoken before about privatization, and as you know, in full disclosure, I’m really big on privatization. Atlanta and the bigger airports are indicating to us, or at least to me, that it’s beyond the scope of a bureaucracy to be able to do this, and I just don’t get a warm and fuzzy feeling that you’re embracing privatization here. Congress passed the Screening Partnership Program. Tell me what you’re doing to implement that? We need to get to a point where you’re on the other side of the table; you’re asking the questions and overseeing this as opposed to being here answering the questions from us.Pete Neffenger: We’ve made a lot of changes to streamline that process. I was concerned that it takes a long time because it has to go out on bid, it has to go out on contract and the like. I have said repeatedly that the law allows for this. I will work with any airport that’s interested. In fact, I have directed airports like Atlanta to go out and talk to San Francisco because that’s the only large category x airport that has a contracted screening force, and we’ll continue to work with them. I think that there are things that we can do. We are somewhat hampered by the way the federal acquisition rules work. Remember, that’s a workforce that’s contracted to the Federal Government, not through the— Buddy Carter: Hold on. I don’t mean to interrupt you, but I want to know. You say you’re hampered. I want to know how I can help you to become unhampered, if that’s a word. Pete Neffenger: Well, as I said, we follow the contracting rules under the Federal Government contracting requirements. It’s a contract to the Federal Government, so I want to make sure that it’s fair and is open competition and you have to give people the opportunity to participate in that. We’ll work with anybody who wants to do that. Buddy Carter: Well, understand that I want to work with you so that we can streamline that process. I still don’t get the feeling that you’re embracing it, and I want to know what you’re doing to encourage it, to the privatization of it. Pete Neffenger: Well, again, it’s up to the airport to determine whether they want to do it. We advertise its availability, we make available information about it. There’s a screening private partnership office that manages that. Additional Sound Clips Video: People Lay on the Floor at JFK Airport as Police Team Search, Daily Mail, August 21, 2016. Video: JFK Airport Shooting Evacuation After Shots Fired JFK Terminal, YouTube, August 15, 2016. Television News Clip: JFK Airport Scare, CBS New York, August 14, 2016. Television News Clip: Nightmarish Lines Continue At Airport Security Checkpoints, CBS Chicago, May 16, 2016. Television News Clip: Passengers Stranded at O'Hare Airport Due to Long TSA Lines By John Garcia and Laura Podesta, ABC News Chicago, May 16, 2016. Television News Clip: Drones Interfere With Wildfire Battle in California, CBS This Morning, July 20, 2015. Television News Clip: American Airlines Passengers Stuck on Tarmac for Several Hours, ABC News, March 2, 2015. Additional Reading Article: Scenes From the Terrifying, Already Forgotten JFK Airport Shooting That Wasn’t By David Wallace-Wells, New York Magazine, August 15, 2016. Article: FAA Reauthorization Protects Weather Observer Program, Spokane International Airport, Aviation Pros, July 14, 2016. Article: Senate Overwhelmingly Passes Bipartisan FAA Bill Without Air-Traffic Control Privatization By Andy Pasztor, The Wall Street Journal, April 19, 2016. Article: FAA Seeks To Cut Airport Weather Observers By Elaine Kauh, AVWeb, February 5, 2016. Article: Republican House Measure Seeks Independent Air-Traffic Control Board By Andy Pasztor, The Wall Street Journal, February 3, 2016. Article When Retirement Becomes a Crisis By Joseph Coughlin and Luke Yoquinto, Slate, February 2, 2016. Article: The Disturbing Truth About How Airplanes Are Maintained Today By James B. Steele, Vanity Fair, December 2015. Article: Union: Chronic Shortage of Air Traffic Controllers a Crisis By Joan Lowy, PBS Newshour, October 14, 2015. Article: TSA Body Scanner Lobbyist Now Overseeing Spending on TSA Security By Lee Fang, The Intercept, May 27, 2015. Press Release: Appropriations Committee Releases Fiscal Year 2015 Homeland Security Bill, The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, May 27, 2014. Article: ‘Naked Scanner’ Maker OSI Falls After Losing TSA Order By Jeff Plungis. Bloomberg, December 6, 2013. Article: FAA Plan to Terminate Airport Weather Observers Raises Travel Safety Concerns By Jason Samenow, The Washington Post, May 1, 2013. Article: Airlines Reluctant to Pay $6.6B for NextGen Air Transportation System By Jill R. Aitoro, Washington Business Journal, April 9, 2013. Article: Efforts Grow To Convince Airlines Of NextGen Worth By John Croft, Aviation Daily, October 5, 2012. Article: This Week in History: Ronald Reagan Fires 11,345 Air Traffic Controllers By Cody Carlson, Deseret News, August 5, 2012. Article: Obama Signs Bill Ending Partial FAA Shutdown By The CNN Wire Staff, CNN, August 5, 2011. Article: Everything You Need To Know About the FAA Shutdown In One Post By Dylan Matthews, The Washington Post, August 3, 2011. Article Congress Heads Home Without Extending FAA Funding By Ashley Halsey III, The Washington Post, August 2, 2011. Article: Partial FAA Shutdown Cripples Operations for Third Day By Ashley Halsey III, The Washington Post, July 25, 2011. Article: New Air Traffic Control System At Crossroads By Joan Lowy, Yahoo News, July 5, 2011. Article: Fear Pays: Chertoff, Ex-Security Officials Slammed For Cashing In On Government Experience By Marcus Baram, The Huffington Post, November 23, 2010. Article: The Airport Scanner Scam By James Ridgeway, Mother Jones, January 4, 2010. Article: DHS and TSA Have Researched, Developed, and Begun Deploying Passenger Checkpoint Screening Technologies, but Continue to Face Challenges, U.S. Government Accountability Office, October 7, 2009. Additional Information Open Secrets: Representative Bill Shuster Career Profile 9-11 Commission Report, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, July 22, 2004. Chapter 1: "We Have Some Planes" Reports FAA Continues To Face Challenges in Ensuring Enough Fully Trained Controllers at Critical Facilities, Federal Aviation Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, January 11, 2016. Federal Civil Aviation Programs: In Brief By Bart Elias, Congressional Research Service, December 16, 2013. Music Presented in This Episode Intro & Exit: Tired of Being Lied To by David Ippolito (found on Music Alley by mevio) Cover Art Design by Only Child Imaginations

In today's podcast we discuss Internet-of-things threats, not only botnets assembled from compromised security cameras, but also medical device hacking (with Conficker) as a way of stealing patient information. More insurance sector breaches appear to be in progress, too. The Sprashivai social network is compromised. The Infy espionage infrastructure is taken down (but may return—they often do). NERC standards for power grid cyber security take effect today. John Leisebeor from Quintessence Labs explains key management within a security framework, and we learn about DevOps from Cybric's Mike Kail and eGlobalTech's Branko Primetica.

After turning around and sustaining the success at ICICI, KV Kamath has been asked to steer Infosys. With Shibulal as the new CEO and Kris Gopalakrishnan as his team mate, Infy steps into an era sans Murthy. Mitu Jayashankar, the Associate Editor at Forbes India joins us to talk about her cover story on the new man and what it means to Infy.

After turning around and sustaining the success at ICICI, KV Kamath has been asked to steer Infosys. With Shibulal as the new CEO and Kris Gopalakrishnan as his team mate, Infy steps into an era sans Murthy. Mitu Jayashankar, the Associate Editor at Forbes India joins us to talk about her cover story on the new man and what it means to Infy.

K V Kamath has been appointed as the Chairman of Infosys Inc while Mohandas Pai, the HR director of Infy quits. In this podcast, we also cover a bit about the business impact of the royal wedding. In other news, Air India has multiplied its self inflicted problems with more than 1000 pilots going on strike. This episode is unexpectedly all over the place. Hope you like it nevertheless. Ritika is back in this one.

K V Kamath has been appointed as the Chairman of Infosys Inc while Mohandas Pai, the HR director of Infy quits. In this podcast, we also cover a bit about the business impact of the royal wedding. In other news, Air India has multiplied its self inflicted problems with more than 1000 pilots going on strike. This episode is unexpectedly all over the place. Hope you like it nevertheless. Ritika is back in this one.

In which INFY and I try to avoid the sophomore slump.Subscribe in iTunes | Direct mp3 linkShow notesR.I.P. SparksColt 45 / Billy Dee WilliamsLos LakersKogi BBQ on TwitterEmpire of the SonWelcome to RealityCurbed Cup Neighborhood of the YearCulver CityKoreatownNew Hot Track: La Roux, "Quicksand"IKIWY: MTA / Mayor Tony respondsMuto