INSIGHT Issue 17 (2022)

PANDEMIC CHEATING Academic Fraud Surged 13-Fold As COVID-19 Upended Learning

By Jackson Elliott

APRIL 29–MAY 5, 2022 | $6.95

NO. 17

Editor’s Note

Academic Cheating Goes Remote the response to the covid-19 pandemic resulted in many unusual situations. One effect that hasn’t received much attention is the sharp rise in academic cheating as a result of remote learning.

Between 2019 and 2021, academic cheating increased by a staggering 13 times, according to an analysis of 3 million online tests.

“It’s the largest jump by a very wide margin,” Jarrod Morgan, founder of test supervision company Meazure Learning, told Insight.

One reason the sudden jump in cheating has largely gone unnoticed is that the academic institutions themselves prefer to keep the problem hidden, Morgan said.

With their reputation at stake, schools prefer to “bury their heads in the sand.”

The larger issue at hand is the reduced quality of learning as a result of online schooling and a lack of ability for teachers to monitor what their students are doing.

Even after in-person classes returned, students appeared more passive, Alan Reifman, a professor of human development at Texas Tech University, told Insight.

Read this week’s cover story to learn all about the rise in academic cheating and what can be done about it.

Jasper Fakkert Editor-in-chief

2 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

JASPER FAKKERT EDITOR-IN-CHIEF CHANNALY PHILIPP LIFE & TRADITION, TRAVEL EDITOR

ON THE COVER With classes moved online, remote academic cheating surged during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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CHRISY TRUDEAU MIND & BODY EDITOR CRYSTAL SHI HOME, FOOD EDITOR SHARON KILARSKI ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR BILL LINDSEY LUXURY EDITOR BIBA KAJEVICH ILLUSTRATORS SHANSHAN HU PRODUCTION CONTACT US THE EPOCH TIMES ASSOCIATION INC. 229 W.28TH ST., FL.7 NEW YORK, NY 10001 ADVERTISING ADVERTISENOW@EPOCHTIMES.COM SUBSCRIPTIONS, GENERAL INQUIRIES, LETTERS TO THE EDITOR HELP.THEEPOCHTIMES.COM (USPS21-800)IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY THE EPOCH MEDIA GROUP, 9550 FLAIR DR. SUITE 411, EL MONTE, CA 91731-2922.

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vol. 2 | no. 17 | april 29–may 5, 2022

26 | Money Woes

49 | China’s

28 | Travelflation

50 | Grit & Gumption

36 | Government

52 | Secrecy at the NIH

Business Crackdown Beijing tightens the noose around Jack Ma and his empire.

The Fed’s paying of banks not to lend has cost $1.5 billion in four weeks.

Americans rethink vacation plans as travel costs jump.

Life is full of challenges; how we handle them shapes our character.

Loopholes The patent office has improperly given access to valuable information for years.

40 | Beijing’s Strategy China succeeds in recruiting American elites.

44 | New Cold War

The CCP is waging a “Cowed War” against the free world.

Following the money on Fauci and other government employees.

56 | Tuscan Dreams

Features

12 | Domestic Terrorism Researchers say AG Merrick Garland should reopen the Oklahoma City bombing case that he helped prosecute.

45 | Israel and China

THE LEAD 16 | Academic Cheating Expert finds incidents of provable wrongdoing among students taking remote exams is “obscenely high.”

46 | Housing Market

20 | National Security U.S. dependence on Russian uranium worries Congress, nuclear experts say.

Does Israel plan to downgrade the U.S. dollar and introduce the Chinese yuan?

The market may be approaching a downturn.

47 | US Inflation

Small businesses are fighting to stay afloat amid rising costs.

48 | Chinese Economic

Meltdown China’s downturn is more about structural problems than COVID.

30 | Midterm Woes The Democratic Party is alienating its base and heading for trouble in November, analysts say.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks at a new Tesla electric car manufacturing plant near Gruenheide, Germany, on March 22. After purchasing Twitter for $44 billion, Musk said that the social media platform must remain “politically neutral.”

CHRISTIAN MARQUARDT - POOL/GETTY IMAGES

A no-expenses-spared developer’s estate in California is now available.

58 | Beautiful

Barrier Islands A virtual tour of North Carolina’s breathtaking Outer Banks.

60 | Stay Safe

How to be your own bodyguard.

63 | Drive Time Fun A collection of sophisticated car accessories to make the drive more fun.

66 | Cajun Cuisine

Louisiana native Chef Isaac Toups infuses his meals with 300 years of Cajun tradition.

67 | Enjoy the Meal

A few tips on restaurant manners.

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 3

T H G IL T O P S Windflowers SYRIAN CHILDREN PLAY IN A FIELD of poppy anemone as it blooms near Jisr al-Shughur in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib, by the border with Turkey, on April 25. Anemone coronaria ranges in color from white, to purple, to magenta and red.

PHOTO BY OMAR HAJ KADOUR/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

4 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 5

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NAT ION • WOR L D • W H AT H A P P E N E D T H I S W E E K

The Week

No.17

President Joe Biden speaks about the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act at the Port of Baltimore on Nov. 10, 2021.

PHOTO BY DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

Signs Point to Midterm Troubles for Democrats

30

Researchers: Garland Should Reopen OKC Bombing Case

Dangerous Reliance on Russian Uranium

US Patent Office Loopholes

Questions remain 27 years after Merrick Garland helped prosecute the case. 12

U.S. national security is threatened by our overreliance on Russian nuclear materials. 20

Office has improperly given contractors access to valuable patent information for years. 36

INSIDE I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 7

The Week in Short US

$10

s e i l m a f g n i k r o w d fTan a s r e y a p x rof elbisnopser b t on dluohs s iht ht iw det a icos a st oc b .t nemy aper f o noisnepsu

MILLION

eh t raeb o t g n i u n i t noc — Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), on President Joe Biden’s actions to cancel student debt.

“[Florida is] creating for the first time ever, in state government, an office of election crimes and security to be able to prosecute voter fraud.”

— Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

Three out of every four children in the United States have had COVID-19, along with more than 6 in 10 young adults, according to new estimates.

$1

BILLION

Amazon.com has announced the launch of its “Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund,” a $1 billion venture investment program that will back companies working on technology to increase e-commerce delivery speeds and improve the work experience, it says.

$10,000 FINE

Former President Donald Trump has appealed an order that found him in contempt of a subpoena and imposed on him a $10,000 per day fine.

6 MILLION – Southern California’s water supplier has asked about 6 million people to limit their outdoor watering to one day a week amid a water shortage emergency owing to the ongoing drought.

8 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

THIS PAGE FROM TOP: TASOS KATOPODIS/GETTY IMAGES, EVA MARIE UZCATEGUI/GETTY IMAGES, SHUTTERSTOCK; RIGHT PAGE: STEPHEN CHERNIN/GETTY IMAGES

75 PERCENT

The State Department is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information on a group of Russian cybercriminals who were allegedly involved in a conspiracy to deploy malware to critical U.S. infrastructure in 2017.

The Week in Short US BORDER CRISIS

Biden Admin Releases Plan to Deal With Illegal Immigration Surge HOMELAND SECURITY Secretary

Aspirin is an anti-inflammatory drug.

HEALTH

New Task Force Alert Issued About Daily Aspirin Use FOR YEARS, doctors and health agencies have recommended taking aspirin on a

regular basis to prevent heart attack or stroke. However, an influential physician task force has issued a major update on the protocol.

The U.S. Preventive Service Task Force said that it finalized its latest recommendation on daily doses of aspirin, saying that individuals aged 60 and older should not begin to take one aspirin per day to prevent heart problems in most cases.

They cited possible health risks, including aspirin’s blood-thinning ability.

It noted that while daily aspirin usage has been associated with a lower chance of suffering a first heart attack or stroke, it runs the risk of “bleeding in the stomach, intestines, and brain,” the Task Force said. “The chance of bleeding increases with age and can be life-threatening.”

ELECTION INTEGRITY

Wisconsin County Leads in Banning Private Funding of Elections WISCONSIN’S WALWORTH County has become the first local government

in the state to ban the acceptance of private monies or grants for use in the administration of elections.

Approval of the measure came after 16 states enacted legislation to ban or regulate the acceptance and use of private funds by public election officials.

Good-government advocates have been incensed that a Mark Zuckerberg-funded activist group, the left-wing Center for Technology and Civic Life, flooded election offices in Democratic Party strongholds with millions of dollars in an apparent effort to drive up voter turnout for that party in 2020.

The Walworth County Board of Supervisors has adopted Ordinance 1271, banning the private funding of elections. Walworth County is located in the southeastern part of the state, bordering Illinois.

Alejandro Mayorkas has released a plan to deal with the expected surge in illegal immigration across the U.S.– Mexico border once the emergency Title 42 policy is terminated in May. In addition to deploying more resources such as agents to the border, the Department of Homeland Security is working to process illegal immigrants more quickly and expel those who aren't allowed to stay under federal law, according to the memo.

The government is also “bolstering the capacity” of nongovernmental groups to receive illegal immigrants after they’re released by federal agents, and disrupting criminal groups and smugglers who seek to smuggle people and/or drugs into the United States, it says.

KANSAS

Kansas State Senate Overrides Gov’s Veto on Transgender Sports Ban Bill THE KANSAS STATE SENATE has

voted to override Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto on The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, a bill that would ban biological male athletes from competing in women’s school sports across the state.

Also known as SB 160, the legislation “requires interscholastic, intercollegiate, intramural, or club athletic teams or sports that are sponsored by public educational institutions” to ban male students from joining teams or sports “designated for females.”

It does not ban female athletes or girls from participating in men’s or boys’ sports.

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 9

The Week in Short World ENERGY

Russia’s Gas Threat in Europe Rattles Energy Markets

EUROPEAN GAS PRICES soared

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in the capital city of Tehran on June 21, 2021.

IRAN–CHINA

Iran Wants to Expand Military Cooperation With China IRANIAN PRESIDENT EBRAHIM Raisi said his government wants to expand

VACCINE

Denmark to Suspend COVID-19 Vaccination Program DE N M A R K H AS BECOME the

first country to suspend its COVID-19 vaccination program, citing a drop in new infections and high immunity among the population.

Musicians perform while people receive a The country—which in February lift- COVID-19 vaccine in Frederikshavn, Denmark, ed all pandemic-related restrictions— on April 12, 2021. announced the decision, with officials stating that it was in a “good position” to scrap the program.

The Danish Health Authority pointed to high vaccination rates across the nation, noting that over 4.8 million Danes have been vaccinated since December 2020, as well as a drop in new infections, high immunity among the population, and stabilized hospitalization rates as reasons for the decision.

Beginning May 15, the government will no longer issue vaccination invitations or reminders, officials said.

10 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

RUSSIA

Russia Releases Jailed Ex-Marine in Exchange for Russian National THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT

has released jailed former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed in exchange for a Russian pilot, according to the White House and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Reed had been imprisoned in Russia since 2019 and was serving a nine-year term after he was charged for allegedly assaulting two officers in Moscow who were driving him to a police station.

The former Marine was exchanged for Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was serving a 20-year prison term in the United States after being convicted on drug charges, the Russian foreign ministry told state-run media.

THIS PAGE FROM TOP: ATTA KENARE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES, HENNING BAGGER/RITZAU SCANPIX/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES; RIGHT PAGE FROM TOP: VLADIMIR ASTAPKOVICH/SPUTNIK/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES, SAEED KHAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES, JOSEP LAGO/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES, LUKAS SCHULZE/GETTY IMAGES FOR INVICTUS GAMES THE HAGUE 2020

cooperation with China, its largest trading partner, state media IRNA reported.

The remarks were made in Tehran during a visit from China’s defense minister, Wei Fenghe, who said the visit was aimed at “improving the strategic defense cooperation” between the two countries.

Iran and China have increased their military ties in recent years, with their navies visiting each other’s ports and holding joint naval drills in the Indian Ocean.

Raisi described the ties between the two countries as “strategic.” He said that closer cooperation between Tehran and Beijing can confront what he describes as U.S. unilateralism.

more than 10 percent after Russia announced that it would suspend gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria for refusing to pay in rubles for Russian gas.

Both countries, which are heavily reliant on Russian natural gas, declined to open a special bank account with Gazprombank to allow payment to Gazprom. According to a report

by ING Bank, Poland maintains an annual supply deal with Gazprom totaling 10.2 billion cubic meters.

Nearly 53 percent of Poland’s gas imports come from Russia.

Poland said that it wasn’t interested in renewing the agreement.

However, Bulgaria looks to be more vulnerable. While the country is a small gas consumer (about 3 billion cubic meters per year), Russia meets more than 90 percent of its gas needs, according to the report.

World in Photos

1.

1. Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the Kremlin in Moscow on April 26.

2. Members of the public and armed forces personnel attend the annual ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) Day dawn service on Coogee Beach in Sydney on April 25.

3. A visitor walks past a poster depicting a salmon fillet, during the Seafood Expo Global/Seafood Processing Global, the world's largest seafood trade fair, in Barcelona, Spain, on April 28. 4. A player of Team Netherlands celebrates with his dog after winning the semifinal during the wheelchair basketball match of the Invictus Games The Hague 2020 in the Netherlands on April 22.

2.

3.

4.

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 11

DOMESTIC TERRORISM

Researchers:

GARLAND SHOULD REOPEN OKC BOMBING CASE

Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks at the Department of Justice in Washington on Jan. 5.

PHOTO BY CAROLYN KASTER-POOL/GETTY IMAGES

12 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

Questions remain 27 years after AG Garland helped prosecute the case

BY K E N S ILVA

Nation Oklahoma City

D

URING THE TENURE OF

Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Department of Justice launched an investigation into threats of violence against school board members, pushed for severe sentences against Jan. 6 defendants, and created a new domestic counterterrorism office—all with the stated aim of combating white supremacy and domestic extremism.

But if Garland really wants to combat violent racists, according to researchers of the subject, then he should reopen the case he worked on 27 years ago and find the accomplices of Oklahoma City bomber and avowed white supremacist Timothy McVeigh.

“Garland can kick off any effort to curtail white supremacists by finishing his work on the OKC bombing case,” OKC researcher Richard Booth wrote last year when Garland took the helm at the DOJ. “And he can finish by apologizing to the American people for letting dangerous still-unidentified white supremacists get away with being accessories to murder for the last 25 years.”

Booth provided records to Insight for this story—which marks the 27th anniversary of the April 19, 1995, domestic terrorism attack—and he’s far from alone in arguing that the case should be reexamined. Others include Kathy Sanders, who spent decades looking for answers after her two grandchildren died in the attack; Utah attorney Jesse Trentadue, who’s procured thousands of FBI records via lawsuits against the U.S. government; historian Wendy Painting, who wrote her doctoral thesis on McVeigh; and the late investigator Roger Charles.

These researchers have spent untold thousands of hours documenting the connections between McVeigh, the criminal underground of the white supremacist movement, and undercover federal informants—making the case that this tangled web has shielded some of those culpable for murdering 168 people, including 19 children, in the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in this country’s history. They have also chronicled the dozens of witnesses who reportedly saw one or more unidentified co-conspirators in the days and hours leading up to the attack.

And the researchers aren’t alone in call-

ing for another investigation. Retired FBI agents Danny Coulson and Danny Defenbaugh, who both worked on the case, have publicly supported reopening the matter.

Garland should be aware of these matters, having discussed McVeigh’s enigmatic accomplice, “John Doe 2,” court transcripts show.

Additionally, Insight received previously unpublished White House visitor logs showing the attorney general’s apparent visit to “FLOTUS” the day before he led the prosecution at McVeigh’s preliminary hearing—raising questions about why he’d met with then-First Lady Hillary Clinton before jetting 1,300 miles west to Oklahoma.

The researchers and former law enforcement officials have offered varying opinions about Garland. However, they mostly share doubt in his assertion that the DOJ and FBI “did everything we could possibly do to find every person who was involved” with the attack.

Garland and the DOJ didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Garland’s Role When President Barack Obama nominated him to the Supreme Court in 2016, the president heaped praise on Garland’s role in prosecuting the perpetrator of the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history.

“In the wake of the bombing, he traveled to Oklahoma to oversee the case, and in the ensuing months coordinated every aspect of the government’s response, working with federal agents, rescue workers, local officials, and others to bring the perpetrators to justice,” Obama said.

Some of Garland’s public comments about the case also resurfaced when he was nominated to be attorney general last year.

“It’s the issue about conspiracy theories, about ‘Maybe somebody else did it’ or ‘You hadn’t done everything,’” Garland reportedly said in a 2013 oral history about the case. “I wanted to be sure we had done everything we could possibly do to find every person who was involved.”

However, some top former FBI officials who investigated the attack have raised eyebrows at Obama’s description of Garland, as well as the attorney general’s own words.

“The people who ran the case at the DOJ, that wasn’t him,” said Coulson, who was in charge of the crime scene. “Merrick Garland was mainly there for his resume, I think.”

Coulson’s colleague, former FBI agent Bob Ricks—who led the bureau’s investigation—said he got along well with Garland, but that “his role was a limited one.”

“He [Garland] was sent, in my understanding, primarily to be of assistance, and as the representative of the DOJ during that time period,” he told Insight.

“A difficulty we had was that our United States Attorney had resigned, and the acting U.S. Attorney had very limited experience.

“So we had a vacuum there that did exist. DOJ sent out two attorneys. One was Garland,” said Ricks, who disagrees with the researchers and his former colleague Coulson, taking the position that the Oklahoma City bombing case was solved and needn’t be reopened.

Sanders, the grandmother of two of the victims, has little recollection of Garland from that era. But as one of the “Oklahoma City Dissidents”—a term coined by British writer Ambrose Evans-Pritchard to describe a group of bombing survivors and victim family members who have been critical of the FBI’s investigation—her research has raised numerous questions that still linger.

“First of all, I have a problem that the FBI never identified the people seen coming and going from the Dreamland Hotel, where McVeigh stayed the week before the bombing,” she said, referring to multiple witnesses who saw numerous people coming and going from McVeigh’s hotel room. “He drove right from the Dreamland to the Murrah Building to blow it up. I think it’s important to know who those people were.”

Other questions Sanders still wants to be answered include: Where is the “John Doe 2,” the man seen with McVeigh by at least 24 witnesses on the morning of the attack? And what happened to the surveillance footage of the bombing referenced in Secret Service records and FBI memos?

Sanders has more unanswered questions about McVeigh’s connection to Elohim City, a private compound in Oklahoma that was home to neo-Nazi criminals, Klansmen, and white supremacists of every other stripe. Elohim City was I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 13

Nation Oklahoma City

also crawling with multiple undercover informants, including a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) informant who warned the ATF in 1994 and 1995 that people living there were planning to bomb federal buildings in Oklahoma, according to court testimony from the informant’s handler.

“I don’t have all the pieces to the puzzle, but I have enough to know that everyone involved in that crime was not arrested,” Sanders said.

But when asked about Garland’s comment about finding “every person who was involved” in the murder of her grandchildren, she gave him the benefit of the doubt. The author of a book on forgiveness, Sanders is concentrated more on her charity work for victims of the war in Ukraine these days than she is on criticizing Garland.

“He could be very sincere, but he might not know everything,” she said of the attorney general.

Garland at the Preliminary Hearing

14 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

The north side of the Albert P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, after a bombing attack by Timothy McVeigh that killed 168 people and injured more than 500, on April 19, 1995.

The White House visitor logs show that Garland was there, meeting with thenFirst Lady Hiliary Clinton, the night before McVeigh’s preliminary hearing.

Coyle asked, referencing John Doe 2.

Garland objected to this question, telling the presiding judge that “unsub 2 is not before the court.”

The judge sustained the objection.

But later during the cross-examination, Hersley referenced “occupants” of the Ryder Truck—leading Coyle to ask about John Doe 2 again, and for Garland to object once more.

“Did you tell me [the witness] saw occupants of a Ryder Truck and there was more than one?” Coyle asked the FBI agent.

“Objection,” Garland interjected. “The only person on trial at this hearing is Mr. McVeigh. It doesn’t matter whether there were two or 100 people in that truck as long as there was somebody representing Mr. McVeigh there. It is discovery and totally outside of the scope of this hearing.”

Coyle urged the judge to overrule the objection.

“May I respond? I think it is important to see if we distinguish it as the same truck or not. I think it is very important to the credibility of the witness and credibility of the evidence and what they saw as to whether or not the person saw three or five or six,” Coyle argued.

This time, the judge agreed with Coyle, overruling Garland.

After Coyle repeated his question, the FBI agent said: “This witness advised that there were two individuals in the truck.

FROM L: BOB DAEMMRICH/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES, GETTY IMAGES

However, records show that Garland is at least familiar with some of the questions that still linger with Sanders and others. Court transcripts chronicle Garland’s discussions about John Doe 2 during McVeigh’s April 27, 1995, preliminary hearing.

Garland started the hearing with his witness, FBI agent Jon Hersley, who outlined the government’s case against McVeigh. Hersley said first responders recovered an axle from the Ryder Truck that exploded outside the Murrah Building, using the serial number on the part to trace where the truck came from, eventually leading investigators to McVeigh.

Defense attorney John Coyle, who was representing McVeigh at the time, then cross-examined Hersley. When Coyle attempted to inquire into John Doe 2, Garland objected.

“Did this particular witness indicate to agents of the FBI how many persons were in the speeding yellow Mercury?”

Coyle asked Hersley, referencing a witness who saw McVeigh leaving the scene with another man.

“Two,” Hersley responded.

“Did this witness also identify the person that we know as number 2, ‘unsub [unidentified subject] 2’ at the scene?”

Nation Oklahoma City

Garland’s White House Visit

The individual resembling Mr. McVeigh was the driver.”

Despite the revelation from Hersley, Coyle didn’t pursue the matter further and stepped down as McVeigh’s attorney shortly after the hearing. He didn’t respond to an interview request for this story.

Trentadue and Charles both said they thought Coyle performed remarkably well during the hearing, considering he had been thrown into the case immediately before the hearing.

“He was really thrown into the thick of it,” Charles said.

Trentadue and Charles chastised Garland for what he didn’t examine as much as they did his objections.

“I would have questioned Hersley about that videotape,” said Trentadue, who has been suing the FBI for decades in pursuit of surveillance footage showing the bombing.

To Trentadue’s point, the court transcript indeed also shows Garland objecting when Coyle asked the name of the FBI agent who handled the “film footage”—another matter left unexamined by both parties.

If Garland’s performance at the preliminary hearing raises questions with the researchers, then a document they found a few years ago left them even more baffled. The record in question is an entry in the White House visitor logs that indicates that Garland was there the night before McVeigh’s preliminary hearing.

According to the 230,644th entry in the 1995 White House visitors logs, Garland signed in at 5:30 p.m. to visit “FLOTUS” in room 450 on April 26. The logs state that Garland’s “visitor access type” was “VA,” but don’t explain the designation.

Garland’s visit to the White House was discovered by Booth and Charles, the latter of whom worked a brief stint on McVeigh’s defense team. Insight interviewed Charles, also the co-author of “Oklahoma City: What the Investigation Missed, and Why It Still Matters,” about a week before he died in February.

“Garland goes to Oklahoma April 21, and I thought he stayed until the 12th or 13th of May; I hadn’t seen anything indicating that he went to DC,” Charles told this reporter. “But I asked Richard [Booth] to get the White House visitor logs from the Clinton Library—and there’s Merrick Garland meeting with Hillary [Clinton].”

Trentadue, who has procured volumes of new information about the OKC bombing investigation via his lawsuits against the FBI, said he was astonished at the finding.

“That would have been the most important hearing in [Garland’s] life. He would have been there for days going through all the evidence,” Trentadue said.

Former FBI agents Coulson and Ricks both said they were less surprised at the finding.

“It was the most significant thing that was going on in the United States at the time, so it wouldn’t surprise me that the political side of the administration would want to be appraised of what was going on,” Ricks said.

“Like I said, he was kind of the point man for the Department of Justice, so I didn’t realize he was back there the day before the preliminary hearing, but it wouldn’t surprise me. You know, he was

in and out ... He really wasn’t trying to direct the investigation. He was there to monitor and follow where it was going.”

But Trentadue wonders what was so important that it couldn’t be discussed over the phone.

“If Garland were briefing someone [about the case], wouldn’t it be done by phone?” Trentadue asked.

Booth—who provided this reporter with the visitor logs and Clinton Library receipts to show their authenticity—said he believes Garland’s White House visit must have been related to the McVeigh case due to its monumental importance.

The researcher said he hasn’t found further details about the meeting.

But regardless of what Garland did 27 years ago, he should reopen the investigation, Booth said.

For her part, Sanders still has hope that all those responsible for her grandchildren’s murders will be brought to justice—though maybe not in her lifetime.

“I’ve watched my late husband die, [Oklahoma City bombing investigator and journalist] J.D. [Cash] die, now Roger Charles, and [fellow Oklahoma City Dissident] Jannie Coverdale,” she said.

“Jesse Trentadue and I are about the only two left.”

Despite the lack of answers after 27 years, Sanders still counts her blessings.

“I was downtown in the bombing with my daughter, and both my grandchildren died. But when the Ukrainian war began, I saw the buildings being bombed and it brought it all back to me,” she said. “I thought, ‘Man, I get to go home at night.

After our babies were killed, I did get to go home and sleep in my own bed.’”

A police mug shot of Timothy McVeigh.

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 15

EDUCATION

Academic

‘OBSCENE

Incidents of wrongdoing among students taking remote exams surged 13-fold during pandemic, study shows

To combat the rising incidence of cheating, schools need to learn the scale of the problem and encourage a culture of integrity, an expert says.

PHOTO BY MICHAEL M. SANTIAGO/GETTY IMAGES

16 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

Cheating

ELY HIGH’

By Jackson Elliott

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 17

The Lead Academics

T

he COVID-19 pandemic resulted in academic cheating’s biggest increase in 16 years, according to Jarrod Morgan, founder of test supervision company Meazure Learning.

A new study by Meazure shows that from 2019 to 2021, confirmed cases of academic cheating during online monitored tests increased by about 13 times.

“We’re catching them definitely trying to break the rules of the exam at a much higher rate than they were pre-pandemic,” Morgan said.

The study analyzed 3 million supervised online tests for more than 1,000 universities and credentialing providers.

“The level of confirmable violations of test rules that we’re seeing, incidents of what we would call provable cheating, is obscenely high—exponentially higher than anything we’d seen before the pandemic,” Meazure Learning’s chief compliance officer, Ashley Norris, said.

“When we see that more than 1 in every 15 students taking a remote exam is engaging in conduct that can be considered cheating, that’s a significant problem.”

The study found that cheating is more common in higher education tests than in professional tests such as bar exams or pharmacy licensing tests.

Meazure’s survey backs the results of many smaller surveys and anecdotal evidence that have pointed out a rising wave of cheating.

Caught on Laptop Camera

18 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

“More than 1 in every 15 students taking a remote exam is engaging in conduct that can be considered cheating.”

Ashley Norris, chief compliance office, Meazure Learning

But these events can often still be suspicious.

During the pandemic, the rate of unpermitted resources discovered by proctors before exams rose from 60.3 percent in 2019 to 68.8 percent in 2020.

In 2021, that rate remained fairly steady at 68.7 percent.

Active interventions tripled from happening in about 10 percent of exams shortly before the pandemic to happening in about 28 percent of exams in 2020.

But the biggest increase in cheating was in confirmed breach cheating cases. Confirmed cheating has a very high evidence threshold, Morgan said. Two proctors must independently verify that someone cheated, and the school administering the test also has to confirm the incident.

“That person is dead to rights,” Morgan said of cheaters in confirmed breach cases. “They had their phone, they had their papers. Clearly they were doing something they were not supposed to do.”

This high bar makes it even more significant that confirmed breaches rose from happening in less than 1 percent of

COURTESY OF MEAZURE LEARNING

Meazure’s survey examined three categories of student cheating or potential cheating behavior.

These included unpermitted resources removed before exams began, active interventions by proctors, and confirmed cheating.

If a student has a non-allowed resource, or if a test proctor actively intervenes, it doesn’t confirm that the student was cheating, the survey stated.

The student could have forgotten to put their books away, gotten a phone call at a bad time, or even had a cat jump onto the computer’s keyboard.

“An active intervention is not necessarily an indication of misconduct,” the survey results read.

Proctors at Meazure Learning as they monitor online tests. Proper supervision of exams helps fight cheating, an expert says.

The Lead Academics

Colleges Hide Cheating Institutions should always expect some amount of cheating, Morgan said. But a sudden, large increase should make institutions wonder whether something has gotten out of control.

“As long as humans have existed, there’s always some subset of the group that will try to take a shortcut,” he said.

But academic institutions often prefer to keep cheating problems hidden, Morgan said. They see public knowledge of cheating as reputational damage.

Sometimes Meazure catches massive international cheating conspiracies, only for schools to prohibit the company from mentioning them publicly.

“The schools that bury their heads in the sand and allow themselves to get cheated on have a better reputation than the schools that actually tackle it,” Morgan said.

This willingness to ignore or hide cheating often makes it difficult to fix the real problems, he said.

“Is it acceptable that most schools can’t answer the question, ‘How many people did you catch cheating this term?’” Morgan asked. “And is it acceptable that if they answer that with any number larger than zero, it’s a shameful thing?”

Pandemic Stress and Cheating

Jarrod Morgan, the founder and chief strategy officer of test supervision company Meazure Learning. tests to happening in 6.6 percent of tests in 2021, Morgan said.

“I’ve been in the online academic integrity space for 16 years, and it’s the largest jump by a very wide margin,” he said. “Previous jumps were half a percentile.”

It’s also important that this massive increase in cheating happened in exams when students knew they were being monitored, Morgan said.

“How bad is this problem in situations where this isn’t being measured?”

According to Alan Reifman, a professor of human development at Texas Tech University, his students say they cheat most when they feel overwhelmed.

“It may very well be that they just became very desperate,” he said. “They may have had negative events going on in their life outside of school. Plus, they were feeling school-related pressure and time was running out.”

Reifman said there’s a difference between cheating from an impulsive glance and deliberate cheating by copying a paper.

When exams went online during COVID-19, it seemed to Reifman that students using internet resources was inevitable, he said. It was impossible to monitor everything students did, and proctoring every exam sounded too complicated.

Instead, he chose a novel solution.

“There’s no way I can monitor what you’re doing. So just open any resource,” Reifman told his students. “My thinking was that you still have to know the

68.8%

THE RATE OF unpermitted resources discovered by proctors before exams rose from 60.3 percent in 2019 to 68.8 percent in 2020. In 2021, that rate remained fairly steady, at 68.7 percent. material in order to do well because it’s a timed exam.”

Students also seem to participate less in class after having experienced online schooling, Reifman said. Although his online class comment sections still feel energetic, in-person classes have become quiet after COVID-19.

“Maybe students were put in more of a passive mode with online classes for a year or two during COVID,” he said.

Better Answers Needed To combat the rising incidence of cheating, schools need to learn the scale of the problem, Morgan said.

“It starts with the people in charge of a program making this a priority and making the proof of the probability of the validity of a program a priority,” he said.

Proper supervision of exams also helps fight cheating, he said.

Every generation of cheaters finds new ways to deceive schools. In many ways, the fight against cheating is a constant arms race. Sometimes the schemes used to cheat seem far more difficult than studying the material would have been.

“You want to ask the student, ‘Wouldn’t it have been less effort to just study for the test than it would have to do this elaborate ‘Rube Goldberg’ cheating thing you’ve got going on here?’” he said.

The most important part of punishing cheaters is making sure they don’t get the grade they cheated for, Morgan said.

Students don’t have to be expelled for cheating, he added.

Finally, schools need to encourage a culture of integrity.

“If you make students read the honor code at the beginning of every course, [cheating] becomes harder for them to justify in their mind,” he said.

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 19

Uranyl nitrate (R) and uranium ore. After topping out at 43.7 million pounds in 1980, domestic uranium production in the United States had fallen to just 170,000 pounds by 2019.

PHOTO BY RHJPHTOTOS/SHUTTERSTOCK

NATIONAL SECURITY

DANGEROUS RELIANCE ON

RUSSIAN URANIUM US national security is threatened by overreliance on Russian nuclear materials

By Nathan Worcester 20 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

THIS PAGE: COURTESY OF GREENMET

In Focus Nuclear Threat

s the russia–ukraine war continues, the United States’ and the wider world’s dependence on uranium from Russia and its allies is raising serious questions, all the more so because of rising worldwide interest in nuclear power.

According to the Energy Information Administration, 47 percent of the uranium used by civilian reactors originates in Russia or two countries with close ties to Russia: Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Kazakhstan is by far the top global uranium producer, according to statistics from the World Nuclear Association (WNA). It relies heavily on Russia’s Black Sea ports to export those resources.

Yet, Australia and Canada are also top uranium producers internationally and major sources of U.S. uranium in their own right. The U.S. allies may be poised to expand their uranium production.

Australia’s Boss Energy is working to restart its Honeymoon uranium mine, citing the ongoing conflict as a partial justification for the move.

“Since the invasion of Ukraine, there has been more activity, on- and off-market, as utilities try to diversify away from Russian-influenced supply. This has created an opportunity for existing and new producers in politically stable and uranium friendly jurisdictions,” Boss Energy wrote in its March 2022 quarterly report.

Concern about climate change among many policymakers has led to renewed attention to nuclear power, which combines low carbon emissions with higher productivity and a smaller physical footprint than either solar or wind.

In one notable sign of shifting priorities, the European Union released an act in February that placed natural gas and nuclear power in the EU Taxonomy, which identifies whether certain investments can be considered environmentally sustainable by the bloc.

Meanwhile, in the United States, domestic uranium mining has dwindled to a tiny percentage of what it was in past decades.

After topping out at 43.7 million pounds in 1980, production had fallen to just 170,000 pounds by 2019.

Russia also leads in uranium enrichment—it’s the source of roughly 35 per-

cent of the planet’s enriched uranium, and its total enrichment capacity places it first in the world, ahead of China.

WNA statistics show the United States’ enrichment capacity has consistently fallen short of Russia, China, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom in recent years.

Unsurprisingly, then, the high-assay, low enriched uranium (HALEU) that the United States uses in its most advanced reactors comes primarily from Russia.

“It’s not, in my opinion, a smart idea to have sanctions applied that don’t think through the consequences of what that might do to U.S. industry.”

Drew Horn, founder, GreenMet

“Unless U.S. policymakers take bold steps to establish domestic production capacity sufficient to replace Russia as the main supplier of HALEU fuel, U.S. reactor developers will struggle to find an immediate market for their products and services,” the Breakthrough Institute (BI), an ecomodernist nonprofit, warned in a March report.

Mike Conley, a writer on nuclear power who belongs to the pro-nuclear Thorium Energy Alliance, told Insight that Russia dominates the area because “there’s a bunch of hippies who are afraid of nuclear energy over here.”

Russia’s strength in enrichment even extends to highly enriched uranium, which can be used to make weapons.

“Russia currently operates more highly enriched uranium facilities than the

rest of the world combined, creating substantial nuclear security risks,” B. Rose Kelly wrote in a summary of a 2017 report on Russia’s uranium enrichment activities from the International Panel on Fissile Materials.

The same analysis concluded that Russia’s highly enriched uranium stockpile is the biggest on the planet.

‘Incredible Overreliance’ “We have an incredible overreliance on nuclear materials—uranium, thorium, etc.—from Russia and Eastern and Central Europe in a way that is a major national security and economic threat,” Drew Horn, founder of the energy supply chain company GreenMet, said in an interview with Insight.

Before he founded GreenMet, Horn worked on energy during the Trump administration, including in a role with then-Vice President Mike Pence.

“When I worked for the vice president, I was a representative on the nuclear fuels working group where we tried to address a lot of this. The reality is, we didn’t really have as much time as we might have wanted to actually see some of the policy initiatives translate into productive results that would actually enable the industry,” he told Insight.

One recent focus has been the establishment of a strategic uranium reserve, much like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve that already exists.

During his presidency, Donald Trump sought to establish such a reserve, in a move that was met with opposition from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and other environmental groups.

While the Trump administration included uranium on its critical mineral list, the Biden administration has removed it from that document, citing the fact that it’s a “fuel mineral” and thus was excluded from the definition of “critical mineral” in the 2020 Energy Act. “I think it’s important that we incorporate nuclear fuel elements of the periodic table into the overall game plan,” Horn said.

“If we want reduced emissions, if we want increased clean energy, we need to look at nuclear as an option to augment the other forms, be it solar, wind, and more traditional fossils, and we need to have our own feedstock.”

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 21

In Focus Nuclear Threat

47%

OF THE URANIUM USED BY U.S.

civilian reactors originated in Russia or two countries with close ties to Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, in 2020.

22 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

Proliferation a Potential Concern As Russia detaches from the West and aligns more closely with China, its uranium production and enrichment capabilities may also give rise to worries over proliferation.

On its webpage summarizing global uranium enrichment, the WNA explains the risk presented by such facilities.

“The relatively small increment of effort needed to achieve the increase from normal levels is the reason why enrichment plants are considered a sensitive technology in relation to preventing weapons proliferation, and are very tightly supervised under international agreements. Where this safeguards supervision is compromised or obstructed, as in Iran, concerns arise.”

Horn told Insight that “there’s always a risk” of proliferation, particularly with a “knee-jerk reaction” such as sanctions.

“I don’t think this is a proliferation issue,” said Bunn.

“The much bigger proliferation issue has nothing to do with nuclear fuel supply—it has to do with the fact that

a country that received security assurances in return for giving up the nuclear weapons on its soil is now being dismembered by one of the countries that provided the security assurances.”

“That is potentially going to make a lot of countries rethink, ‘Is this really a good idea, to rely for our security on such assurances?’” Bunn added.

In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine agreed to become a non-nuclear-weapon state after Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom offered it security assurances.

Other commentators have argued that the United States provoked Russia through its expansion of NATO since the 1990s, drawing attention to newly declassified documents from George Washington University’s National Security Archive that show then-President Bill Clinton promising Boris Yeltsin that NATO would be built in “partnership” with Russia.

In a 2018 paper, “Nuclear Security in Russia: Can Progress be Sustained?”

Bunn pointed out that Russia’s nuclear policies include “aggressive exports to countries with questionable nuclear

FROM TOP: ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES, GEORGE FREY/GETTY IMAGES

Horn says the United States needs strategic reserves of not just uranium, but also thorium, cobalt, rare earths, and other key elements and minerals needed for electric vehicles, solar panels, and a range of other advanced technologies.

Last month, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and other Republican senators from western states introduced a bill that would allow the Department of Energy to establish a uranium reserve.

The legislation was proposed soon after the same groups of senators introduced a bill that would ban uranium imports from Russia, a move also supported by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), as reported by Cowboy State Daily.

Matthew Bunn, a professor of the practice of energy, national security, and foreign policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, told Insight that a ban on Russian uranium would be a symbolic gesture of little concrete importance.

“In terms of actually affecting Russia’s policy on the Ukraine war one way or another, this, I would argue, is a minor issue. The amount of money that goes to Russia for enrichment services and uranium in a typical year is tiny by comparison to the amount of money that goes to Russia for oil and gas,” said Bunn, who served as an adviser to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Clinton administration.

In a similar vein, sanctions on Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy firm, have also been floated.

An unnamed Biden official said the administration was considering the punitive move, according to reporting from Reuters in March.

Horn voiced concern about the potential downstream effects of such policies.

“It’s not, in my opinion, a smart idea to have sanctions applied that don’t think through the consequences of what that might do to U.S. industry—where those alternative sources might come from,” Horn said.

In Focus Nuclear Threat

The northern Russian port city of Murmansk on May 18, 2018. Russia is the source of roughly 35 percent of the world’s enriched uranium, and its total enrichment capacity places it first in the world.

security—although these export contracts typically include support for developing nuclear-security infrastructure in the recipient country.”

At the time, he predicted that Russia’s nuclear security would likely remain static or slowly erode over the next five to 10 years.

He told Insight he feels more optimistic about Russia’s nuclear security arrangements now than he did then.

“One of my close Russian colleagues, really as an expert on their nuclear security arrangement, likes to say that Russia is now a normal country with respect to nuclear security, meaning that like every other country, there are some problems—every other country including the United States.”

‘We Sacrificed the Entire Mining Industry’ Some experts who spoke with Insight traced the rise of Russian and Russian-influenced uranium production to U.S. policy failures.

Jim Kennedy, a mining entrepreneur who leads the firm Three Consulting and

who has worked with Horn, cited Rosatom’s controversial acquisition of Uranium One during the Obama administration.

He also noted the Megatons to Megawatts Program, which saw the United States purchase low-enriched uranium from Russia that had been converted from highly enriched uranium.

“Our generous deal with Russia to pull all of that fissile material out of a weapons platform and into an energy consumption platform was probably the right decision, but it decimated the uranium mining industry,” he said.

“We sacrificed the entire mining industry.

“Another indirect factor was the privatization of the uranium enrichment facilities. Who cares who mines the stuff if you cannot enrich it—like rare earths, the mined material has no direct application value. All value comes from downstream value adding,” Kennedy told Insight in an email.

Bunn has a different perspective.

“Our uranium mining industry was not competitive with various other sources of supply, and so, private companies made rational economic decisions, and we ended up with much less uranium mining in the United States than we used to have,” he said.

While the United States initiated antidumping investigations on uranium from Russia, Kazakhstan, and other former Soviet republics during the 1990s, those investigations were soon suspended.

Bunn also noted that uranium mining was cheaper in Canada, Australia, and other countries than in the United States.

Kennedy also cited the Obama administration’s secret transfer of thorium molten salt reactor technology to China, after the United States did little with the technology for decades.

“The most concerning part, to me, is we realize[d] this years ago, but our Department of Energy gave this technology to China,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said while questioning Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of the U.S. Africa Command, during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

While the United States isn’t a leader

in uranium mining, some see potential in sea power—more specifically, in the extraction of uranium from seawater, a concept outlined at length by scientist James Conca in Forbes.

“That just renders all this garbage moot about Russia or whoever,” Conley said.

One of Conley’s Thorium Energy Alliance colleagues, John Kutsch, was more equivocal.

“I think it is technically possible to do it, especially if we start sucking billions of gallons of seawater out of the oceans to desalinate it and turned it into hydrogen for a hydrogen economy, we may as well grab the uranium while we’re at it,” he told Insight.

Bunn and Conley offered cautious support to the Biden administration’s $6 billion plan to fund nuclear plants that are at risk of being shuttered.

“There are public policy reasons to do that. These reactors provide the largest source of low carbon power that exists in the United States, and they provide firm power,” Bunn said.

“On the other hand, these are old reactors,” he added.

“I have a feeling he [Biden] will be mildly approving of nuclear,” Conley told Insight.

For his part, he believes the continued opposition to nuclear power among many environmental groups is driven by “Boomers, who were influenced by the anti-war movement and the equating of nuclear weapons and war.”

Representatives of the Department of Energy didn’t respond by press time to a request by Insight for comment.

A radioactive warning sign at the Anfield’s Shootaring Canyon Uranium Mill outside Ticaboo, Utah, on Oct. 27, 2017.

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 23

T H G IL T O P S Toxic Foam

A MAN AND A WOMAN STAND NEAR pungent foam that formed in a polluted river and invaded the Los Puentes neighborhood of Mosquera, west of Bogotá, Colombia, on April 26.

PHOTO BY JUAN BARRETO/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

24 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 25

Economy Finance

F E D E R A L R E S E RV E

Fed Paid Banks $1.5 Billion in 4 Weeks Interest rate hikes cost Federal Reserve more to pay banks not to lend

By Petr Svab THE FEDERAL RESERVE paying interest on bank reserves and selling treasuries to banks overnight, which in practice means paying banks so that they lend less, is becoming more expensive with The Federal Reserve could end up paying between $5 billion and $8 billion a month the Fed’s recently initiated series of to the banks by the end of the year. interest rate hikes. Over the past four weeks, the central bank has dished out reserves grew dramatically, from less 0.3 percent, multiplying by six. nearly $1.5 billion to financial institu- than $1.7 trillion in early 2020 to more In the four weeks since the rate hike, tions that keep their cash stockpiles than $4.2 trillion in September 2021. the Fed dished out nearly $1.2 billion in with the Fed and buy its bonds over- Even at the minuscule interest rate of reserve interest and more than $300 night. That number could multiply in 0.15 percent, the Fed was already paying million in reverse repo interest. the coming months. almost $250 million every two weeks.

The Fed has foreshadowed plans to With the gargantuan federal spendThe reserves started to taper then, let the rates go up to about 2 percent ing that took place during the COVID-19 but largely because of another Fed trick by the end of the year. Depending on pandemic, banks have amassed an un- called “Overnight Reverse Repurchase how high the banks’ reserves are by precedented hoard of cash Agreement,” or “reverse then, the Fed could end up paying $5 reserves—money deposited repo.” It means that the billion or perhaps $8 billion per month by their customers. NormalFed sells the federal obliga- to the banks. ly, such reserves would be a tions it owns to banks one “The cost of paying interest on exdead weight on the banks’ day, only to buy them back cess reserves is not really relevant to balance sheets, not put to any BILLION at a slightly higher price Fed officials because in a worst-case productive use. Banks would the next day. The price dif- scenario they just send the bill to the in interest was collected by the thus try to lend against it and ference only added up to a U.S. Treasury,” Mark Thornton, an econFed last year. invest it, making it circulate 0.05 percent annualized in- omist with the classical liberal Mises in the economy. terest rate, but the banks still Institute, said via email. “I think they In 2008, however, Congress authorized jumped at the opportunity, as it allowed are walking themselves into a corner, the Fed to start paying interest on the them to make an immediate profit with but they have been adept at wiggling out reserves, making it worthwhile for the essentially no risk and very little work. of such problems without much damage banks to leave the cash idle. The interest By the end of September 2021, the Fed to themselves in the recent past.” was initially tiny, settling on 0.25 percent was paying about $2 million per day in Thus far, the Fed has no issue payannually, but every time the Fed raises reverse repo interest. ing the interest. Because of its massive rates, this rate goes up as well. By 2019, As the inflation kept going up, in portfolio, which includes $2.7 trillion in the Fed was paying the banks $1.5 billion March, the Fed finally started to raise mortgage-backed securities, it collected every two weeks. the rates in a bid to tighten the cred- more than $100 billion in interest last With the onset of the pandemic in it spigots. The rates target elevated year, according to Robert Murphy, a se2020, the Fed dropped the rates to nearly from a zero- to 0.25-percent range to nior fellow with the Mises Institute and zero, encouraging banks to invest and a 0.25- to 0.5-percent range. The move expert on monetary policy. lend more. The interest on reserves appears tiny, but the effect on the in“Of course, the money isn’t free,” Murdropped to about $110 million every terest payments was dramatic. The phy told Insight via email. “You could two weeks. Yet as the government kept interest rate on reserves more than say that, in a sense, U.S. taxpayers would piling up trillions of dollars in debt, the doubled to 0.4 percent from 0.15 per- be footing the bill for the extra interest Fed kept printing more dollars and the cent. The reverse repo rate jumped to paid to the banks by the Fed.”

100

$

THIS PAGE: STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES; RIGHT PAGE: JOHN FREDRICKS/THE EPOCH TIMES

26 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

California Postal Service

S A N TA M O N I CA

USPS Suspends Delivery After Attack on Driver Residents concerned about safety as crime rises in Santa Monica

By Jamie Joseph SANTA MONICA, Calif.—Some Santa Monica residents say they fear that their neighborhoods are becoming more prone to crime amid a recent trend of attacks on U.S. Postal Service (USPS) mail carriers and the release of a new study that identifies their city among a list of the least safe cities in the nation.

“I’VE SEEN A huge shift in the crime [and]

in the way that the city is being led, and the way that we are responding to this crisis in Santa Monica,” 20-year resident and teacher Chie Lunn told Insight.

According to Lunn, her purse was stolen twice in one week in the city.

“It’s tough because we have this small city that is world-renowned, known as a great destination. So to feel unsafe there, to see that there’s crimes that are being committed that are not being handled in the best way, these types of situations are becoming more normal,” she said.

USPS suspended delivery to the 1300 block of 14th Street on April 7, alerting residents that “multiple carriers have been subjected to assaults and threats of assault from an individual who has not been located or apprehended,” according to a postal letter sent out to residents alerting them of the change.

Only one incident of assault was reported to the Santa Monica Police Department. The victim didn’t press charges, and information about the suspect wasn’t immediately released.

Santa Monica Police Lt. Erika R. Aklufi said a mail carrier was attacked with a deadly weapon—a broomstick—in the same neighborhood on Jan. 19.

“I have never heard of the Postal Service suspending service for all residents in a neighborhood,” Aklufi said.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement branch of the USPS, told Insight in an emailed statement that it’s

A homeless encampment on the beach in Santa Monica, Calif., on Jan. 27, 2021. A report found that 54 percent of Californians said they were highly concerned about violent crime.

“aware of the recent reports of suspicious activity towards postal carriers in Santa Monica, California,” but couldn’t comment further because of an ongoing investigation.

It’s unclear when delivery will resume, but the suspension has rattled neighbors who said they feel like their cries haven’t been heard by officials.

“I do not feel safe living here in Santa Monica,” Robyn L. wrote on the Nextdoor app. “I live right at Lincoln and Colorado in one of the newer apartment buildings and we have no security patrolling. ... We are always having issues with our mail and packages being stolen, we have had a few apartment break-ins and cars in a gated garage being broken into. Even residents being assaulted within the gated property.”

ANOTHER USER POSTED a home security

video of a man trespassing in residential carports.

“We are just going to keep complaining here on this app until we are all blue in the face and potentially robbed,” Daye S. posted on April 14.

The city, a tourist destination with an amusement park on its often-photographed pier, is within Los Angeles County. Crime in the county has increased as a whole, according to Los Angeles Sheriff Alex Villanueva.

According to a March report by Safewise, an online home-safety resource for residents, that analyzed violent crime and property data, 54 percent of Californians said they’re highly concerned about violent crime—13 percent higher than the national average.

Over the past two years, homicides in Los Angeles County have increased by 94 percent and grand theft by 59 percent.

For residents like Lunn, the shift in safety can be seen every day. She also said there was a man who was stabbed recently in the school parking lot, also in Santa Monica, where she works.

“People in Santa Monica that I speak with, lots of family and friends are concerned about the direction of safety,” she said.

Lunn said people tell her they don’t even want to take their families to nearby Third Street Promenade anymore, a high-end open-air mall, “because of the randomness of the crimes.”

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 27

T R AV E L F L AT I O N

Vacations Shrink as Travel Costs Rise

Airlines, hotels, and rental vehicles all jumped in price, causing Americans to rethink plans

I

By Andrew Moran

28 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

“Consumers have seen online prices mained strong this year as bookings and for physical goods rise now for 22 con- revenues have increased. The airline also secutive months, per the Adobe Digital reported that approximately 2 million Price Index, and inflapeople on average board tion is becoming more U.S. planes per day. prominent for services If consumers choose to as well,” Vivek Pandya, “[Hotel] rooms travel by automobile or lead analyst for Adobe are being cleaned truck instead, that will Digital Insights, said in less often and, in also be costly. a statement.

In addition to $4-per“The unleash of pent- many cases, only gallon gasoline prices, up demand has been a on request.” the cost to rent a car has major driving factor, as Gene Marks, founder, been surging in recent the desire for air travel The Marks Group months. is coming back more Rental-car businesses aggressively than anticipated.” have warned about shortages of vehicles It’s been a balancing act for many air- to rent. From supply-chain constraints lines trying to keep a lid on costs while to increasing demand for these cars, remaining competitive. travelers should prepare to pay higher Delta Air Lines lost $940 million in the prices, especially in the more popular first quarter, driven by soaring jet fuel vacation hot spots, such as Florida or prices and labor costs, its first-quarter Hawaii. earnings report highlighted. However, Current conditions in the car rental the company said travel demand has re- market have many consumers employ-

FROM L: MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES, ROBYN BECK/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

t’s getting more expensive to travel in today’s economy, with inflationary pressures affecting airlines, hotels, and the tourism sector.

A recent survey from market research firm Destination Analysts found that 93 percent of U.S. travelers intended to take at least one leisure trip in the next 12 months. But will costs affect the quality of their vacation?

The same survey found that inflation and gas prices continue to be an issue for travelers. Close to one quarter (24.7 percent) reported that the recent inflation trend prompted them to cancel an upcoming trip, while more than half (55.8 percent) said higher consumer prices would cause them to rethink budgets for upcoming travel.

In March, airline fares surged at an annualized rate of 23.6 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The cost of rooms in hotels and motels advanced by 29 percent year-over-year last month. Car and truck rentals soared by 23.4 percent.

Consumers are feeling the effects of rising gasoline prices and strengthening travel demand. But the developments haven’t deterred people from enjoying foreign destinations.

Last month, bookings climbed by 12 percent, and online spending on airfare increased by 28 percent, new data from Adobe show.

But inflation is still adding to ticket prices, eroding consumers’ purchasing power.

Tourism Higher Costs

The cost of rooms in hotels and motels advanced 29 percent year-over-year in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. ing several cost-saving measures, such as taking advantage of travel credit cards, using car-sharing services, and calling companies directly.

Finding a place to rest during these leisure adventures could be ultra-expensive, or perhaps not as comfortable as travelers had been accustomed to before the pandemic.

The average nightly price of U.S. hotel rooms is $119, according to the Census Bureau. This is up from $93.75 at the end of 2020.

But shrinkflation may be a new trend forming in the industry.

In an opinion piece published on The Hill, Gene Marks, founder of The Marks Group, a small-business consulting firm, spotlighted shrinkflation changes he

has experienced at hotel chains.

“Rooms are being cleaned less often and, in many cases, only on request.

There are fewer towels in the bathrooms. Oh, and I’m noticing that more and more hotels are replacing those individualized bottles of shampoo and body wash with industrial sized ones that other guests are sharing,” he wrote.

“If you forget your toothbrush, you may be able to get a free one at the lobby desk ... or, depending on the hotel, you’ll have to pay for it at the shop.”

Still, even with these expensive developments being ubiquitous in the travel and hospitality industry, a majority of U.S. adults say they plan to travel this summer, according to a new report from the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA), the national trade association for the entire out-of-home (OOH) media ecosystem.

In the study titled “OOH Consumer Insights and Intent–Q1 2022,” 85 percent are expecting to travel this summer.

What’s more, respondents revealed that they would take more vacation time than they did in 2021, and nearly half (48 percent) plan to take two weeks or more in vacation time.

The survey’s findings also highlighted that Americans are comfortable taking all forms of public transportation, such as flying, driving, and ride-sharing.

“These findings confirm the good news that Americans are ready to get

out and about,” John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll, said in a statement.

“Whether they are on-the-road, on public transit or flying, all modes of transportation will be seeing an uptick.”

Did the accumulation of pent-up pandemic-era savings allow consumers to cushion the blows from price pressures in travel? Or are people seeking to leave the COVID-19 public health crisis behind?

93%

OF AMERICAN TRAVELERS intend to take at least one leisure trip in the next 12 months, a survery says. However, around 80 percent of them said that the recent inflation trend has either prompted them to cancel an upcoming trip or will cause them to rethink budgets for upcoming travel.

“Despite concerns about inflation and gas prices potentially impacting trip volume, Americans’ strong excitement for travel sustains. While today’s traveler is still trending towards shorter, closer to home and more carefully planned trips than before the pandemic, they are more motivated to travel than ever,” Destination Analysts stated in its latest insights study.

In March, airline fares surged at an annualized rate of 23.6 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 29

MIDTERMS

The Democratic Party is alienating its base, hamstrung by intraparty disunity, paving the way for an uphill battle in November, analysts say

BY MICHAEL WASHBURN

Signs Point to MIDTERM TROUBLES for Democrats 30 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

President Joe Biden speaks during a visit to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, N.C., on April 14.

PHOTO BY ALLISON JOYCE/GETTY IMAGES

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 31

Election Democratic Party

D

ISMAL POLL NUMBERS suggesting that a low number of Americans think highly of the job that President Joe Biden is doing—a mere 33 percent of respondents in a Quinnipiac poll last week said they approved—have helped prompt a pivot on Biden’s part toward a greater focus on domestic issues, even as the Ukraine crisis continues to consume much of his attention.

Biden hopes to bolster his party’s image in time for the midterm elections in November. But experts say that an enhanced focus on domestic issues—or the appearance of one—is unlikely to salvage the prospects of the Democratic Party. The party, they say, continues to allow its most radical left-wing elements to shape its policies and stances on the issues of concern to voters, particularly Hispanic voters and others who have long been crucial to the electoral prospects of a party that promotes itself as a champion for working people and diversity.

Alienating the Base The same Quinnipiac poll found that within the category of Hispanic voters, Biden’s approval rating is a mere 26 percent. The party depends to a great extent on the Latino vote, and at this juncture,

Jeronimo Cortina, professor, University of Houston 32 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

Officers investigate a shooting at the 36th Street subway station in Brooklyn, N.Y., on April 12. After New York pledged to slash the police budget by $1 billion in 2020, the city’s crime rate saw a large jump in 2021.

between its more conservative and more centrist wings, Cortina sees the Democrats’ internecine feuds as problematic for a ruling party trying to enact massive domestic spending programs.

A case in point is the failure of Biden’s Build Back Better Act, which was effectively killed in December 2021 when Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) voted against it in the evenly divided Senate, arguing that he couldn’t support a $2 trillion spending project as inflation reached a

FROM L: COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON, ENRICO TRIGOSO/THE EPOCH TIMES

“If you want to have a campaign based on immigration, it’s only going to get you so far.”

no other demographic gives the current president a lower rating of approval.

Experts say that the Democratic Party’s missteps on immigration, crime, and the economy have eroded its support among the working people that it depends on, and the disenchantment is particularly acute among Hispanic voters.

In the view of Jeronimo Cortina, a professor of political science at the University of Houston, the administration suffers from a perception among Hispanic voters that it hasn’t kept promises and that, in general, it isn’t very good at getting things done.

“Things are not going very well for President Biden, domestically speaking.

One of the issues that we have to identify is the current pandemic. A lot of people have been hurt, and Latinos and African Americans have had to look at how it has affected them. And then there are other issues that affect the Latino community, such as the economy, jobs, child care, and education,” Cortina said.

Inflation, fueled by the pandemic and, according to experts, driven partly by the Federal Reserve’s expansionary monetary policy, has had noticeable effects on gas costs and prices at the supermarket. The 8.5 percent jump in the Consumer Price Index over the past year—and particularly the rise in gas prices—hasn’t been lost on Hispanic voters who don’t work remotely and have to divert a certain amount of their income to get to work, Cortina noted.

“Gas prices are pretty high, and you feel [the effects of inflation] at the supermarket as well,” he said. “It’s a global market, it reacts to supply and demand.

Biden has done some things to alleviate the price of gas, for example by opening the national reserves and trying to pump more oil, but private companies are ultimately going to decide if it’s in the best interest.”

The lack of speed and efficiency in bringing Biden’s far-reaching domestic spending programs to fruition doesn’t alleviate the frustration that many voters within this ostensible core Democratic constituency are feeling, he said.

The party suffers from a perception that it’s riven with tensions between its moderate elements and its more radical camp. While he acknowledged that there are also tensions in the Republican Party

four-decade high. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) also wasn’t fully on board with the legislation.

“I think that domestically speaking, the Biden agenda has not been able to move very fast. With the Build Back Better plan, nothing happened. All the investments of billions of dollars that were part of his domestic agenda were stalled in the Senate and didn’t go anywhere,” Cortina said.

Although a pivot toward domestic issues may be a wise move, the Democratic Party may continue to lose ground through a mistaken assumption that Hispanic voters are essentially a monolithic category whose interests are defined by one issue—immigration—

33%

OF AMERICANS THINK highly of the job that President Joe Biden is doing, a poll shows.

26%

OF AMERICANS HISPANIC voters think highly of the job that President Joe Biden is doing, a poll shows.

and that the party that says the correct things on that issue has the Latino vote locked up.

“A lot of people make that mistake, and it is completely untrue. Immigration is an issue for Latino voters. However, it is not the most important issue. If you want to have a campaign based on immigration, it’s only going to get you so far,” Cortina said.

In his view, a party with a successful electoral strategy is one with a balanced approach and one that avoids signaling its virtue on immigration policy at the expense of other issues of concern to voters in their day-to-day lives.

Gallup polls tend to find that roughly a third of respondents favor more I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 33

Election Democratic Party

“If Hispanics vote just 40 percent for the GOP, or stay at home, Democrats don’t stand a chance in Florida, Texas, Arizona, or Georgia races.”

Keith Naughton, principal, Silent Majority Strategies

immigration, a third favor less, and a third are fine with maintaining current levels, Cortina said. He described Latinos as no different when it comes to the breakdown of opinion on the issue.

He characterized Latinos as sophisticated voters unlikely to be swayed by a one-sided pro-immigration platform when they see that their economic situation isn’t improving.

Failing to Keep the Public Safe

Gas prices of more than $7 per gallon are posted at a downtown Los Angeles gas station on March 9.

34 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

sive policies under the banner of “defund the police,” and the resulting pullback by law enforcement.

The horrific shooting on a Brooklyn subway on the morning of April 12, allegedly committed by Frank R. James, a man with an extensive criminal record, is only the latest in a series of high-profile incidents that have fed the perception that crime is out of control in Democrat-run cities and that progressive policies and “defund the police” rhetoric are endangering lives, according to Michael Alcazar, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former New York Police Department (NYPD) officer.

For instance, in New York, then-Democratic Mayor Bill DeBlasio, in response to the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, pledged to slash the police budget by $1 billion. In 2021, the city’s crime rate saw a large jump, with the total tally for major crimes exceeding 100,000 incidents for the first time since 2016, according to NYPD data. Felony assaults that year exceeded 22,000 incidents for the first time since 2001.

New York isn’t much different from other cities in this regard, Alcazar said, noting that the surge in crime has put

current Democratic Mayor Eric Adams in a difficult position.

“Around the nation, a lot of Democratic-run cities are experiencing a spike in crime, shootings, and homicides. New York City is run by a Democratic mayor who is trying to alleviate the disaster that the previous administration left. It’s come under heavy criticism now because crime has gotten progressively worse,” he said.

Alcazar thinks it’s highly likely that the rhetoric and policies around law enforcement that have found champions in the Democratic Party will come back to haunt the party when voters render their judgment in November.

Ominous Signs While the Democratic Party doesn’t really try to reach out to Trump supporters and some of its leading figures are openly contemptuous of that segment of the electorate, the party is in trouble, even with a voter demographic long considered safely in its camp. This doesn’t bode well for the fall, according to political consultants and strategists.

“For Biden to be underwater with Hispanics, a traditionally Democratic constituency, is disastrous. If Hispan-

CLOCKWISE FRO TOP L: SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES, CHARLOTTE CUTHBERTSON/THE EPOCH TIMES, FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Americans’ perceptions that they’re less safe may also impact the incumbent party’s prospects in the midterms, according to experts, pointing to the uptick in violent crime across big cities since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. While some researchers attribute the rise in crime to factors caused by the pandemic, others believe that the rise in violent crime was directly linked to the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, progres-

Experts say that the Democratic Party’s missteps on immigration, crime, and the economy have eroded its support among the working people it depends on.

Election Democratic Party

ics vote just 40 percent for the GOP or stay at home, Democrats don’t stand a chance in Florida, Texas, Arizona, or Georgia races,” said Keith Naughton, principal of Silent Majority Strategies, a Maryland-based consulting firm.

Naughton faults Democratic leadership for making bold pronouncements in public, but lacking the resolve and ideological unity to back them up with effective policies. He identified the internal tensions alluded to by Cortina above as a persistent problem for the party.

“The Democratic Party has become a collection of squabbling interest groups, each of whom has a laundry list of uncrossable red lines. The only thing holding the Democrats together is hating Donald Trump. Biden did not run on an affirmative policy, he just ran as ‘not Trump,’” Naughton said.

This lack of coherence and negative campaigning have benefited Republicans, he said.

“Trump and the Republicans became much more appealing to working-class voters and discovered that the issue of securing the border was not toxic for Hispanics. Like most working-class voters, they see mass, uncontrolled immigration as a threat to their livelihoods,” Naughton said.

He said he doubts that the Democrats can pull out of their tailspin and get their numbers up in advance of the midterms. The issues of top concern to voters may be beyond Biden’s power to resolve.

“The Ukraine–Russia war will continue to affect energy and food supplies, causing instability and making inflation worse,” he said. “Biden is stuck.”

Biden faces the imperative of keeping Ukrainian resistance to Russia going strong while trying to deal with inflation at home, even as his own base pushes for ever-higher levels of government spending, according to Naughton.

“Around the nation, a lot of Democraticrun cities are experiencing a spike in crime, shootings, and homicides.”

Michael Alcazar, professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

“Only Trump can save the Democrats.

Democratic voters hate Trump more than anything, and Biden and the Democrats are going to use fear of Trump as a motivator for turnout,” he said.

A group of Hondurans cross the Rio Grande toward Eagle Pass, Texas, from Piedras Negras, Mexico, on April 21. Immigration isn’t the most important issue for Latino voters, an expert says.

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 35

INVENTIONS

US PATENT OFFICE

LOOPHOLES Office has improperly given contractors access to valuable patent information for years

F

By Jackson Elliott

36 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

In 2020, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had at least 120 people who weren’t SPEs designated online as SPEs on its employee locator.

All SPEs must be an examiner on a patent, but an examination of patent office records shows that these people have never done so, Hoyle said. In all, more than 100 of them are federal contractors.

According to Burke, the USPTO has designated non-SPEs as SPEs for a long time. In 1995, when she first joined the office, work was regularly being assigned by a patent examiner rather than an SPE in some technology centers, she said.

Labeling people who aren’t SPEs as SPES also creates problems when inventors, patent attorneys, and patent agents call the patent office for help.

“You go into a court of law and the gal sitting behind the bench is the judge,” Burke said. “What if she’s really just the

paralegal of the week who they said, ‘Oh, you go up there and act as a judge, and we’ll call you a judge.’”

At one point, Burke was listed as an SPE, although she was a quality assurance specialist. In 2011, Burke asked patent office management to change her status on the USPTO’s website, but they didn’t act. When she left the office in 2015, she was still an SPE on the website.

“I also saw other quality assurance specialists given this wrong title, and I saw contract employees that are not even federal workers with the title,” Burke said.

SPE Status To become an SPE, someone must be a federal employee with at least a year of spe-

PAUL J.RICHARDS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

or years, united states Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) leaders have given contractors titles that grant them access to a computer system that holds valuable information, former patent office employees say.

Unlike USPTO personnel, it’s not clear whether federal contractors go through the same background checks that federal employees go through, according to inventor David Hoyle, who has researched the subject extensively.

“We don’t know anything about them,” Hoyle said of the contractors. “Government employees automatically have security backgrounds. For contractors, we don’t know anything.”

Even so, the patent office often gives these contractors access to the Patent Application Locating and Monitoring Database (PALM), a computer system that plays a crucial role in tracking inventions.

According to former patent office quality assurance specialist Julie Burke, USPTO’s databases, including PALM, are loaded with sensitive information. Patents under review are potentially worth millions of dollars.

One key for accessing the system is the job title of supervisory patent examiner (SPE). In 2020, the USPTO had at least 120 people who weren’t SPEs designated online as SPEs on its employee locator.

cialized experience at the second-highest level of the federal pay scale, according to a USPTO spokesman. The person must also pass background checks.

Burke said this process usually takes about five years.

An SPE must understand the meaning behind a technical-term-riddled patent application and perform the proper actions with it, she said. Each SPE leads and supervises a group of patent examiners, who evaluate patent applications and decide when to give inventors a patent.

SPEs assign work, hire, fire, and promote employees, and give end-of-theyear evaluations to patent examiners, according to Burke. SPEs in the Licensing and Review Department work with

“The system as it is laid out in the MPEP clearly opens the door to abuse and inequity.”

Eric Pines, federal employment lawyer

the Department of Defense to ensure patents valuable to national security remain secret.

Patent office employees in the technology centers who have access to both published and nonpublished patents must file financial disclosure ethics forms, she said. For instance, when she worked on biotechnology patents, she wasn’t allowed to buy stocks in biotech companies.

The USPTO’s rulebook provides a loophole that allows SPEs to make virtually any employee into an SPE without ever earning these qualifications.

“The titles ‘supervisory patent examiner’ and ‘primary examiner’ ... include in their definition any person designated by them to act on their behalf. It’s I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 37

Nation Trademarks and Patents

recognized that the authority to accept or refuse the transfer of an application may be delegated when such authority is deserved,” section 903.08 of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure reads.

According to experts, this loophole bypasses federal rules.

SPE can’t be a mere administrative title, Burke said. According to the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the designation of “supervisor” holds significant weight in the federal employment code. Only supervisors or acting supervisors should do supervisory work. Acting supervisors are formally appointed by group directors until a replacement supervisor is formally hired.

A supervisor is a “position or employee that accomplishes work through the direction of other people and meets at least the minimum requirements for coverage under this Guide,” according to the OPM. According to Eric Pines, a federal employment attorney, the USPTO rulebook bypasses federal laws about how government employment works. The Federal Labor Relations Authority is supposed to determine whether someone can be designated as a supervisor based on what they do. Someone can’t just be relabeled as a supervisor.

“The USPTO’s allowing supervisors to create supervisors without first following the Merit System Principles that Congress has put in place to protect

“What if she’s really just the paralegal of the week who they said, ‘Oh, you go up there and act as a judge, and we’ll call you a judge.’”

Julie Burke, former patent office quality assurance specialist

the integrity of the federal labor force could lead to great inequities as it relates to promotion, selection and seniority rights,” Pines told Insight in an email.

If the USPTO calls an unqualified person an SPE, it’s a misuse of an official federal title, he wrote. Simply designating people as SPEs bypasses a system designed to make sure that only qualified people get supervisor privileges.

Who Are They?

It’s not clear whether federal contractors go through the same background checks that federal employees go through, an inventer says.

38 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

Some of the 120 people listed as SPEs on the USPTO website but who may not actually

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP L: COURTESY OF JULIE BURKE, PUBLIC DOMAIN, DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

“This appears to be an end run around proper federal employee checks and balances that are put in place to avoid the exact thing that is occurring in this case.

The system as it is laid out in the MPEP [Manual of Patent Examining Procedure] clearly opens the door to abuse and inequity,” Pines wrote.

Moreover, the USPTO might not have the same restraints on federal contractors with questionable SPE titles, Burke said.

The important information that SPEs see and the decisions the patent examiners make are inside the USPTO’s electronic databases, she said.

When the USPTO receives a patent application, it usually keeps the details of the invention secret from the public for 18 months, according to Burke. But those details still exist on its internal databases.

Anyone with an SPE title can see them, she said. If a high-level database access is a treasure chest, the title of ‘SPE’ is the key that opens it.

“If you have that SPE beside your name in PALM, you’re able to do things in patent applications that other people at the office are not allowed to do. It’s like a governor or a control switch. It’s hardbaked into the way they’ve got this all set up,” she said.

PALM works based on a user’s status in the system. If someone is identified to PALM as an SPE, the system will give them at least some SPE-level access.

This designation could cause problems, said Lorraine Spector, a former SPE who left the USPTO in 2019.

“If it gave them the ability to change records and things like that, it might cause issues,” she said.

Spector said she didn’t know just what an SPE designation allowed people to do inside the PALM system. It’s possible the USPTO’s title only gave contractors partial access.

However, it’s unlikely contractors could use an SPE designation for insider trading, according to Spector. Although doing so would be theoretically possible, they would have to know what patent they were looking for.

“Imagine you’re a contractor,” she said.

“You have no way of knowing it exists.”

Nation Trademarks and Patents

be SPEs are long-term patent office employees.

Several members of this group told Insight that they weren’t currently SPEs. Some were former SPEs. But they all said they didn’t know exactly why they were marked as SPEs. “It’s done that way, I guess, for administrative purposes,” said Bennett Celsa, a current USPTO employee who works as a patent examiner.

According to a USPTO spokesman, non-SPEs are listed as SPEs in directories for administrative reasons.

“Occasionally, non-SPEs are identified as SPEs in an agency directory,” the spokesman said. “That’s intentional, because the jobs of those employees require access to certain data in systems that employ role-based access protocols. Only those whose job duties require access are granted access to the necessary data.”

A person would have to have at least three years of employment with the U.S. government to reach the qualification for the SPE title, yet all of the questionable SPEs are contractors for Akima, a company that supplies the federal government with office managers. The USPTO told Insight that contractors aren’t eligible to be SPEs. Mahlet Diriba, one of the contractors labeled as an SPE, worked as a cashier and got a degree in accounting before starting his career at the patent office. In 2020, he was designated as an SPE. But he was never an employee of the patent office. Instead, he was a federal contractor who worked for Akima.

Another person listed as an SPE was NiaBari Maeba. She was also an Akima office manager who was contracted to work at the patent office. According to her LinkedIn page, she never actually worked directly for the USPTO. Insight reached out to both Maeba and Diriba on LinkedIn, but neither agreed to an interview. Other contractors listed as SPEs didn’t reply to requests for comment.

Some of the questionable SPEs are in parts of the patent office that don’t nor-

A time sheet for a USPTO patent examiner. According to Julie Burke, the USPTO keeps close track of the way its employees use their time. mally need SPEs. The USPTO’s Office of General Law has nine attorneys listed as SPEs. Deputy general counsel David Shewchuk, attorney Josh Hildreth, and senior counsel for labor and information Kathryn Siehndel are all listed as SPEs. Shewchuk, Hildreth, and Siehndel didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The Computer Employee But the strangest SPE at the USPTO might not even be a human being. Screenshots Burke provided show that a computer program called “Central Docket” has an SPE title on the USPTO website.

Central Docket has 281,712 cases on its list to review, she said. But the average patent examiner usually has fewer than 200 cases on his list.

Central Docket appears to be a digital creation, not a person employed by the USPTO, according to Burke.

At least one patent case suggests a purpose for Central Docket, she said.

On June 6, 2017, someone filed a patent claim titled “Torques Tubes and Manufacturing Methods Thereof.”

Central Docket assigned the case to a patent examiner two days later.

But the case wasn’t examined. Instead, Central Docket assigned the case to an

examiner again on Nov. 18, 2017. it reassigned the case again on March 8, 2018. The same action happened in November 2019, January 2020, twice in August 2020, September 2020, and December 2020.

As of today, Torques Tubes and Manufacturing Methods Thereof has waited five years without being processed by a patent examiner. But anyone looking at the computer system between 2018 and 2020 would see that the case had been assigned to an examiner named Central Docket recently, Burke said.

“By repeatedly re-docketing this case to themselves, it looks like it is a fresh new case which is going to be examined soon,” she said. “And when USPTO actually examines this case, the reports they run will have it look like there has been no delay, since it will probably be picked up for examination within a couple months of its last docket date.”

Several other cases have a similar pattern.

Reshuffling Cases?

An email chain provided by Hoyle shows that in 2014, several USPTO employees agreed to change files so that 200 cases didn’t appear to go beyond an official limit.

“As per our conversation, you have indicated that you can help us to adjust/ reset the Hyatt cases workflow so that they will not appear as ceiling exceeded cases. Attached is a list of the ceiling exceeded Hyatt cases as per your request,” USPTO employee Jason Chan wrote.

In effect, this change would hide the fact that the USPTO was behind on processing cases by removing the cases from lists.

“If we remove from ceiling list and do not start a clock the cases will be stuck in nowhere land not on any docket,” USPTO employee Roy Elkins wrote.

USPTO employee Marc Springer responded, “I think that was the idea Roy.” Chan, Elkins, and Springer didn’t respond to requests for comment.

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 39

S O F T P OW E R

Beijing’s ‘Elite Capture’ Strategy China’s plan to recruit American elites has succeeded, Peter Schweizer says

T

By Masooma Haq & Roman Balmakov

40 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

Big Tech Working With the CCP He said the leaders of some of the big tech companies, such as Tesla, Google, and Facebook, have been taken in by the dictatorial regime’s “efficiency” and gaining market shares in the world’s most populous country.

“Elon Musk has said this, that the Chinese dictatorial regime is so efficient, they’re so quickly responsive to the needs of the Chinese people— which of course, if you have a dictatorship, you don’t have to worry about civil rights, property rights, an independent judiciary,” Schweizer said.

“I mean, if you’re Bill Gates and you’re worth $100 billion, still, being able to access the Chinese market is important for the continued growth of your company.”

Profit Over National Security In the past, Elon Musk criticized the Chinese regime, but he’s changed his position since striking a deal with the CCP, Schweizer said.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is applauded after posing for a photo with a group of CEOs and other executives at the main campus of Microsoft Corp. in Redmond, Wash., Sept. 23, 2015.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP L: TED S. WARREN-POOL/GETTY IMAGES, NTD, JOHANNES EISELE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

he chinese communist party’s (CCP) entry into the World Trade Organization changed the global economic structure in large part because it unleashed the regime’s strategy of gaining control of America’s elite class so it would do Beijing’s bidding, according to Peter Schweizer, author of the book “Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China.”

Schweizer calls this strategy “elite capture,” and the CCP’s plan was to target the top levels of Big Tech, entertainment, education, Wall Street, and politics.

“It’s going to give [the CCP] leverage over them [the elites] because once [the CCP has] sort of touched them and made them rich, or as some CCP officials have said, they’ve tasted the honey that they’ve been offered, they will not want to give it back, they will not want to give it up,” Schweizer said.

“So that gives enormous leverage to Beijing over elements of our leadership class.”

U.S. foreign policy and the conventional wisdom of the elite class was that if the West engaged with the CCP, it would become more liberal and less repressive of its own people, and it was that thinking that allowed the CCP to join the WTO at the end of 2001.

Schweizer said the strategy not only failed but has been disastrous for the world.

“The CCP has become more repressive, more aggressive on the global stage. So I think that our political and corporate elites have a lot of accounting to do for their failure. Of course they made a lot of money by pushing this position.”

He likened the elite capture strategy to decapitating U.S. leadership.

“But, in fact, the head has effectively been cut off, it’s been co-opted, it’s been bought, and then so the rest of the body, which is the United States and the average citizen, suffers.”

China Regime’s Leverage

“It’s going to give [the CCP] leverage over them [the elites] because once [the CCP has] sort of touched them and made them rich ... they will not want to give it up.”

Peter Schweizer, author

Google subsidizes research laboratories that are linked to the Chinese military.

Meanwhile, its employees have filed a petition saying they don't want to work on U.S. military research contracts.

“So the question is, what’s changed? And what’s changed is he became business partners with the Chinese Communist Party. They built him a large factory, a Tesla factory in China, which is now churning out a large number of vehicles. He’s already said he’s going to take the design studios out of California and move them to China,” he said.

Musk doing business in China also poses a security risk, he said, because some of the technologies that Tesla uses in its cars are the same that are being used in his Starlink satellites.

“Anyone who gets entangled in doing business with China that requires their good graces for their business to continue to operate is going to end up basically doing what Beijing wants, because if they don’t, Beijing is going to destroy their business.”

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an important area of tech development, and it’s been said that whoever dominates there will have a global economic and military advantage, Schweizer said.

“Our biggest and brightest companies, like Google and Microsoft, are actually subsidizing research laboratories in China that are linked to the Chinese military, so they’re helping them in the competition against us.” He called this “extraordinary” and “troubling.”

“Google has plowed ahead, happy to do so. At the same time, Google employees submitted a petition to an executive saying they did not want to work on any Pentagon, that is U.S. military research, contracts, at the same time. It’s really a stunning development.”

U.S. laws have allowed these tech companies to become successful and profitable, “and yet, they don’t recognize the role that our system of governance has played, and they’re actually subsidizing our enemy,” Schweizer said.

He believes that Google’s work with AI in China will help the CCP’s military to attack our own country.

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China Regime’s Leverage

to go to jail for a very long time—you’re required to take any civilian technology or capability you Wall Street Profits have and find application to Chinese military,” said Schweizer said Goldman Sachs was instrumental Schweizer. In addition, “if you are a business oper- in helping the CCP access and profit from U.S. ating in China, anything that you have, that you markets. own—whether it’s intellectual property, whether “You don’t have to go very far at all on Wall it’s data on citizens in China or overseas—that Street to find a major firm that has contributed information is available to the Chinese state when- to where China is today in terms of its economic ever they asked for it.” growth,” he said.

U.S. big tech companies only care about their “But at the end of the day, when push comes profitability and power instead of treating to shove, it’s the CCP that maintains control. the CCP for what it is: a repressive, dictatoGoldman Sachs started it; other big firms rial regime that brutalizes its own people, have perfected it. Blackstone and BlackRock Schweizer said. Facebook has attempted to invest regularly in Chinese companies. link China with the United States via underWhen the Chinese government was prisea cables a number of times, although the vatizing companies and giving away ownprojects were halted after the U.S. Departership stakes to either political families in ment of Justice (DOJ) recommended against Beijing or to favor Wall Street clients, these the projects because of national security big firms benefited enormously.” concerns.

Political Influence Facebook’s Hong Kong–America project was first proposed in 2018 by a group that Schweizer said he knows of about two dozincluded Facebook and a number of Chinese en former U.S. lawmakers who now lobby companies, including China Telecom. The on behalf of Chinese intelligence and milplan was for the fiber-optic cable to link up itary-linked firms.

Hong Kong and a site in Taiwan with two “I’m just talking about military- and sites in California. intelligence-linked firms, and they are Another joint Facebook–Google underpetitioning our government, they want sea cable venture called the Pacific Light favors, they want to get off of restricted Cable Network (PLCN) was withdrawn in lists they might be on, they try to change Some of September 2020 due to national security the big tech the perception—Huawei is trying to concompaconcerns from Trump’s DOJ. vince people that no, we don’t have any nies have “Did somehow Facebook or Google not links to, you know, the Chinese intelligence know that Chinese intelligence was going been taken apparatus, which is absurd. in by the to use this as a massive gateway to spy on “This is a huge problem. dictatorial Americans? I want to believe and I think it’s “Elite capture has worked for a minimal regime’s pretty obvious that Facebook and Google investment.

They’ve enriched members seemknew that that opportunity existed. They of our leadership class, and that leadering “efficertainly have more technical knowledge ship class has, in turn, done their bidding, ciency,” than the Department of Justice. But the effectively doing their lobbying, in the an expert says. bottom line is they didn’t care.”

United States.”

Google’s work with AI in China will help the CCP’s military to attack our own country, Schweizer said.

42 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

THIS PAGE FROM TOP: COURTESY OF GOOGLE, COURTESY OF FACEBOOK, COURTESY OF MICROSOFT, COURTESY OF TESLA, XIAOLU CHU/GETTY IMAGES

Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory in Shanghai on March 29, 2021. The factory is reportedly producing vehicles at a rate of about 450,000 per year.

P OL I T IC S • E C ONOM Y • OPI N ION T H AT M AT T E R S

Perspectives

No.17

Construction workers weld a gate at the construction site of a new stadium project being built in Beijing on Dec. 15, 2021. China faces the worst slowdown since the coronavirus outbreak in 2020, according to a financial services company.

PHOTO BY KEVIN FRAYER/GETTY IMAGES

LOSING THE ‘COWED WAR’

THE WORST TAX ON BUSINESSES

How the CCP corrupts and destroys our free society from the inside. 44

Smaller firms have a greater earnings squeeze than larger companies. 47

CHINESE SLOWDOWN, MUCH MORE THAN COVID The problems will be a drag on real growth and jobs for a long time to come. 48

INSIDE I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 43

THOMAS MCARDLE was a White House speechwriter for President George W. Bush and writes for IssuesInsights.com.

Thomas McArdle

Losing the ‘Cowed War’

The CCP is corrupt and destroying our free society from within

I

know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side,” Soviet spy-turned-anti-communist hero Whittaker Chambers famously declared, “but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under communism.”

The kind of communism to which Chambers was referring isn’t quite what threatens the free world today.

The Soviet Union was defeated in the Cold War, but the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is proving to be a more sophisticated adversary, in what might best be called a “Cowed War” against us, corrupting and destroying free society from the inside, often by intimidation.

An apropos symbol for mainland China’s society isn’t, as in Soviet Russia, an endless line of people extending across Red Square to buy inferior consumer goods at Moscow’s infamous GUM Store; it could instead be any typical American store with shelves filled with Chinese-made junk, or a simpering Hollywood studio flunky looking over the shoulder of an editor in the cutting room so as to remove or doctor all allusions to even the subtlest offenses against the CCP in new American movies.

A new Trafalgar Group survey just found that over 50 percent of Americans think it “very likely” the president of the United States is “conflicted/compromised when dealing with China due to the Biden family’s personal business dealings in China.”

That the millions of dollars Hunter Biden took in from dubious Chinese enterprises wasn’t an issue during the 2020 presidential election, which could easily have turned the outcome against his father, demonstrates that America’s establishment media consider the CCP far less an enemy than the Republican Party; they suppressed coverage of the future First Addict.

44 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

As the National Bureau of Asian Research’s Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property found nearly a decade ago, China is the world’s largest commercial intellectual property thief. “National industrial policy goals in China encourage IP theft, and an extraordinary number of Chinese in business and government entities are engaged in this practice,” the report pointed out.

Before the West won the Cold War, it was only pacifists and spies who had to be contended with.

The U.S. National Counterintelligence Executive at that time found that “Chinese actors are the world’s most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage.” The U.S. Trade Representative presented evidence that entities “affiliated with the Chinese military and Chinese Government” procured “all forms of trade secrets.” Meanwhile, according to the NBAR report, “central, provincial, and local level Chinese agencies inappropriately require or pressure rights holders to transfer IPR from foreign to domestic entities.”

That was observed about a decade ago, but the report also noted that Beijing had enlisted the support of the U.N. Development Program all the way back in 1978 for technical assistance and financial resources, not long after which communist China became the World Bank’s largest recipient of booty.

Then came access to foreign technologies and management expertise.

Congressional research “documented successful efforts between the late 1970s and mid-1990s by a range of Chinese actors to obtain very advanced technologies,” the report noted.

In 2020, Rush Doshi, a Yale fellow and founding director of the Brookings Institution’s China Strategy Initiative, testified to Congress that “China is pursuing a robust, state-backed effort to displace the United States from global technology leadership.

This effort is not driven entirely by commercial considerations but geopolitical ones as well. Beijing believes that the competition over technology is about more than whose companies will dominate particular markets. It is also about which country will be best positioned to lead the world.”

Beijing’s political weaponization of technology, according to Doshi, “appears to be rooted in the Party’s Leninist and mercantilist traditions as well as in its nationalist history. ...

Technological advancement has long been seen as a means to achieving ‘wealth and power,’ whether during China’s pursuit of strategic weapons during Mao Zedong’s leadership or its push to achieve what his successor Deng Xiaoping labeled as the ‘fourth modernization’ of science and technology progress—both of which were self-consciously styled as efforts to boost China’s power.” It’s all part of a grand plan conceived in the early years of the Chinese communist state.

Before the West won the Cold War, it was only pacifists and spies who had to be contended with. In today’s Cowed War, the challenges include economic dependence, cultural disarmament, and now even a president personally tainted by financial entanglement with the communists in China who have found capitalism to be an effective weapon that was never discovered

by Moscow.

Chambers would undoubtedly have been pleasantly surprised at the Soviet Union’s collapse. But he would be far more surprised at the ease with which, three decades later, the CCP uses our own freedoms against us.

ANDERS CORR is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk. He is an expert in political science and government.

Anders Corr

Israel Is Mistaken About China

An American ally assists Beijing’s illiberal goal to displace the dollar

I

srael is a longtime u.s. friend and ally. We’ve been through a lot together. Israel is a rare democracy in the Middle East. So when Israel’s central bank recently made plans to downgrade the U.S. dollar in its reserves and introduce the Chinese yuan, it really hurt.

Friends shouldn’t do this to each other. Countries that believe in protecting democracy shouldn’t undermine the international monetary foundation of liberty.

Israel is by no means alone among America’s friends to start turning their backs on the dollar and toward the yuan, also known as the renminbi. In addition to the usual suspects, the UK, Australia, Japan, Germany, Canada, South Korea, Taiwan, and Switzerland have all collaborated with China’s regime in its attempts to internationalize the yuan. The United States is also responsible, not least for failing to make a bigger stink about the yuan’s increased utilization globally.

Other hard currencies—the euro, Japan’s yen, and the British pound—don’t pose a threat. These are all from democracies.

But Beijing is the greatest threat to democracy and peace globally.

Just look at the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) support for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his bloody wars. None of us should want that future.

Enabling the CCP by introducing its currency into Israel’s reserves, or any country’s reserves, furthers its goal of displacing all other currencies globally. Beijing seeks global hegemony, and the yuan serves as its vehicle, one country at a time.

Russia and China have attempted to preempt sanctions against

their future transgressions by denominating their trade in their own currencies, side-stepping the dollar and euro entirely. In March, China’s trade with Russia increased by 12.8 percent from a year earlier to $11.7 billion.

Without the global dominance of democratic currencies, Beijing, Moscow, Pyongyang, and Tehran need not concern themselves about the threat of economic sanctions for their terrorism, human rights abuses, and territorial expansion.

Enabling the CCP by introducing its currency into Israel’s reserves, or any country’s reserves, furthers its goal of displacing all other currencies globally.

Beijing seeks global hegemony, and the yuan serves as its vehicle.

Even the Saudis, also longtime U.S. allies, are now cozying up to Beijing. The Middle East is less safe today because of Beijing and its support for Iran, yet Israel now supports this terroristic regime mediately through its monetary policy.

When Israel decided this year to decrease the U.S. dollar and euro in its $206 billion worth of reserves, it did so because of a change in its “whole investment guidelines and philosophy,” according to a recent Bloomberg interview with a deputy governor of its central bank.

“We look at the need to earn a return on the reserves that will cover the costs of liability,” he said.

Apparently, Israel’s top bankers

aren’t factoring in the political risk of enabling the regime in Beijing, nor the negative externalities to other countries worldwide that value their sovereignty and freedom.

In 2021, Israel’s reserves consisted mostly of dollars, with 30 percent in euros and over 2 percent in pounds.

In 2022, “following discussions held by the monetary committee last year,” according to Bloomberg, Israel’s reserves will include the yen and pound at 5 percent each, Australian and Canadian dollars at 3.5 percent each, and China’s yuan at 2 percent.

To Israel’s credit, it increased the British pound, Japanese yen, and Canadian dollar in its basket. These are all democracies and so should be supported. Diversifying currency reserves is a good idea. The only mistake is its planned allocation of reserves to the yuan.

Washington and Brussels should already have delivered formal objections to Israel’s central bank, foreign minister, defense minister, and prime minister. Enabling the CCP threatens all of their portfolios.

They should make these objections public to educate the world, including U.S. citizens, and pressure countries such as Israel and themselves at risk of straying too close to China’s monetary orbit.

The consequences to the international system of unmitigated expansion of CCP monetary power are unfathomable to most people. It could decrease the effect of sanctions and, thus, lead to an increase in war, terrorism, and genocide globally.

If committed democratic allies can’t convince themselves and their closest friends to close ranks against the CCP in their own defense, then the United States, Europe, Israel—and democracy in general—will fail.

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 45

MILTON EZRATI is chief economist for Vested, a contributing editor at The National Interest, and author of "Thirty Tomorrows" and "Bite-Sized Investing.”

Milton Ezrati

Housing: Poised for Trouble

Some strength is left, but negative forces will predominate

F

or the moment, residential real estate seems to be vibrating between powerful positive and negative forces.

Their interplay will likely produce an uneven picture for the next few months. But in the fullness of time—say, late this year and certainly by 2023—the negative influences will predominate.

The sector will suffer a correction, nothing like 2008 and 2009, but a correction nonetheless.

Statistics thus far paint a mixed picture. Residential construction activity remains strong. The Commerce Department reported that after a 6.8 percent jump in February, the construction of new residences rose by another 0.3 percent in March. Construction is almost 4 percent higher than in March 2021.

Strength showed in every region of the country.

By contrast, the Commerce Department has also reported that sales of private dwellings in February, the most recent month for which data are available, declined by 2 percent from January and were 6 percent lower than a year ago.

Construction can’t continue to rise for long while sales decline.

The only reason this state of affairs is continuing at the moment is that builders were slow off the mark when sales surged post-pandemic and are now playing catch-up.

Undoubtedly, construction also reflects a measure of speculation on a continued rapid rise in housing prices, which, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), have risen by roughly 15 percent nationally over the past year. In time, however, the downturn in sales will set the tone for the whole sector.

That turn will likely occur in slow

46 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

motion. Whatever develops, inflation and fears of inflation will sustain buyer interest in real estate.

Homeownership is one of the few ways that the average American can protect his or her assets from the ravages of rising living costs.

That certainly was the case during the last great inflation in the 1970s and early 1980s. With general price pressures continuing to build as they are, people will continue to focus on real estate to the extent that they can.

Homeownership is one of the few ways that the average American can protect his or her assets from the ravages of rising living costs.

Otherwise, the forces for the decline are marshaling. One of them is the rising price of housing itself. Another is the ongoing rise in mortgage rates. Together these trends make homebuying unaffordable for an increasing portion of the population. Consider that the 15 percent rise in the median price of a home nationally far outstrips the 3.5 percent rise in median family income.

Rising mortgage rates add to the pressure. The Federal Housing Finance Agency noted that the average mortgage rate has risen from 2.86 percent a year ago to 3.83 percent last February, the most recent period for which such data are available. According to The Wall Street Journal, the average 30-year mortgage rate has risen to more than 5 percent. These moves constitute a 75 percent rise in the cost of financing.

Combined, the jump in financing costs and the price of new and existing homes has increased the relative burden of supporting a mortgage on the median home by about 30 percent.

Even considering the rise in family incomes, the NAR calculates that the burden of supporting a mortgage on the median house has risen from less than 15 percent of median family income a year ago to almost 20 percent presently, making the relative burden of homeownership on balance more than 25 percent higher than it was at this time last year.

This deterioration in affordability has occurred in every region of the country. Although some areas have suffered more than others, with the greatest drop in affordability in the south and the least in the west, all show significant affordability declines. People will stretch, of course, for the sake of someone’s dream and to secure an inflation hedge. But as costs rise, an increasing number will give up on the idea of purchasing, at least for the time being.

Since the Federal Reserve is determined to continue raising interest rates, including mortgage rates, and since home prices show no sign of slowing under the influence of this country’s general inflation, housing seems set to become less and less affordable for the average American, whatever his or her desires.

A downturn becomes unavoidable. When it occurs, it will likely look mild next to the last correction, in 2008 and 2009. The nation suffers none of the extreme excesses that existed back then. As already indicated, it could occur in slow motion. But a correction is clearly in the cards.

EMEL AKAN is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times in Washington, D.C. Previously she worked in the financial sector as an investment banker at JPMorgan.

Emel Akan

The Worst Tax on Businesses

Smaller firms have a greater earnings squeeze than larger companies

SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES

I

nflation has reached levels not seen in 40 years, placing a strain on household budgets as well as small businesses across the country.

According to a new poll of more than 500 small businesses, 6 out of 10 company owners in the United States fear that inflation will force them out of business. The survey also found that nearly 75 percent of respondents had raised their prices over the past year to keep up with the rising costs.

While many company owners have passed on price hikes to consumers, they’re concerned that this may cost them customers at a time when the economy is extremely unstable.

According to the poll, small firms increased their prices by 27 percent on average, far greater than the annual inflation rate of 8.5 percent recorded in March. However, more than half of respondents believe they’ve lost customers as a result of boosting prices.

Compared to their larger competitors, small businesses find it more difficult to handle the costs and operational challenges caused by inflation, says Wayne Winegarden, senior fellow at Pacific Research Institute, a California-based free-market think tank.

“Small businesses will typically have less negotiation leverage with suppliers and less ability to pass along higher operational costs to customers,” he told Insight. “They are exposed to a more pronounced profit squeeze compared to larger businesses, consequently.”

Smaller businesses will also have fewer choices for mitigating the costs of inflation, Winegarden said, creating extra financial vulnerabilities for them.

Similar problems were echoed by the survey of small-business owners conducted by the National Association of Independent Business, which showed that hopes for a better

Six out of 10 company owners in the United States fear that inflation will force them out of business. business climate in the next six months had dropped to an all-time low. Inflation has surpassed “labor quality” as the top issue facing small firms, according to the survey.

“We’ve seen a significant decrease in sales compared to last year and the previous year,” says Jeff Neal, founder of The Critter Depot, a small business that sells composting worms and grubs for lawn and garden.

“It has us concerned, and we’ve spoken with other farms, and it sounds to be rampant in our industry,” he told Insight.

Neal believes that because inflation is so high, people are conserving what they can for food and shelter and eliminating all other expenses.

Annual inflation in the United States accelerated to 8.5 percent in March, the highest level since 1981. The food index climbed 8.8 percent year-overyear, while the energy index was up 32 percent. And the cost of shelter advanced by 5 percent, which is one of

the areas expected to keep rising in the coming months.

The producer price index, which tracks the average changes in selling prices from domestic production over time, also rose by an annual 11.2 percent rate last month, shattering hopes that inflation would subside in the coming months.

John Frigo, an e-commerce manager at BestPriceNutrition.com a small business in the dietary supplement industry says inflation and supply chain issues have harmed his company.

“For the past year across some brands we’ve seen four to six price hikes,” he told Insight.

“The thing that’s been the most obvious is creatine, which has always been a popular cheap supplement,” he said, adding that the price of creatine has risen by 250 to 350 percent in just a few months.

Economist Arthur Laffer, who was a top adviser to President Ronald Reagan, criticizes economists who claim that high inflation is a result of strong economic growth.

Inflation is a “big killer” of prosperity, Laffer told Fox Business on April 22.

It harms economic growth over time as it’s “anti-production,” he said.

“And in fact, it can bring the economy to its knees in no time,” he warned, unless politicians and the central bank take immediate action.

Nouriel Roubini, one of few economists who correctly predicted the global financial crisis and the U.S. housing bubble meltdown of 2008, warned that “the medium-term outlook is darkening.”

“There are many reasons to worry that today’s stagflationary conditions will continue to characterize the global economy, producing higher inflation, lower growth, and possibly recessions in many economies,” he wrote in a recent report.

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 47

DANIEL LACALLE is chief economist at hedge fund Tressis and author of “Freedom or Equality,” “Escape from the Central Bank Trap,” and “Life in the Financial Markets.”

Daniel Lacalle

Chinese Slowdown, Much More Than COVID

The problems will be a drag on real growth and jobs for a long time

T

48 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

China is going through a severe slowdown caused by the burst of the enormous real estate bubble and the regime’s crackdown on the private sector. the private sector, called a “crackdown,” makes it even more difficult to boost growth in other industries and businesses. The fear of constant political intervention is leading to a massive slowdown in foreign direct investment growth as well as a fear of deploying capital and taking risks in the Chinese economy only to suffer grave penalties from the authorities when profits arrive.

The extent of the deterioration of the Chinese economy is evident in the recent leading indicators. The Caixin China General Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) slumped to a 25-month low of 48.1 in March 2022, signaling contraction.

The Caixin Services PMI plummeted to 42.0 in March from 50.2 in February, dropping below the level that separates growth from contraction.

This reading indicates the sharpest activity decline since February 2020.

The political intervention in the technology sector, which is one of the leading job creators in China, has sparked fears of frozen headcounts and layoffs, according to various media reports. Additionally, the decision of the central bank to cut reserve requirements for banks has not avoided a significant decline in credit growth, as reported by JPMorgan.

To all this, we must add a currency, the yuan, which is used in less than 3 percent of global transactions, according to Reuters, due to the extreme capital controls and the exchange rate fixing imposed by the central bank. Confidence in the local currency is low due to extreme intervention on the currency market, which is preventing China from having a truly international means of payment.

China’s high debt is also a problem. Total debt stands above 300 percent of GDP, according to the Institute of International Finance.

The European Central Bank (ECB) points out that China’s debt-toGDP ratio for the entire private sector now stands at more than 250 percent, and the corporate component of this debt is the highest in the world. The ECB also points to the risk created because a “significant proportion of funding is supplied to the corporate sector by non-bank financial institutions,” leading to higher risk-taking and a shadow banking system that leads to large inefficiencies and solvency challenges.

The aggressive and misguided lockdowns are affecting supply chains and activity, but the structural problems of rising intervention in the currency and industries as well as a heavily indebted economic model are likely to drag on real growth and jobs for a long time.

KEVIN FRAYER/GETTY IMAGES

he most recent macroeconomic figures show that the Chinese slowdown is much more severe than expected and is attributable not only to the COVID-19 lockdowns.

China is going through a severe slowdown caused by the burst of the enormous real estate bubble and the regime’s crackdown on the private sector, which has led to a cut in investment growth.

According to Nomura Holdings, China faces the worst slowdown since the coronavirus outbreak in 2020, and the world should be worried about a further slide, as the challenges persist. Official gross domestic product (GDP) figures may be massaged to deliver the state’s target, but all other macro figures point to a much weaker growth.

We must remember that there are two ways by which the Chinese regime “boosts” real GDP: by publishing a low inflation and GDP deflator figure and by massively increasing credit and infrastructure spending.

However, those two can’t disguise the importance of the weakening of the Chinese economy, because it’s now structural.

The collapse of the real estate bubble is the biggest problem. A research paper by Kenneth Rogoff and Yuanchen Yang estimates that the real estate sector constitutes 29 percent of China’s GDP. It’s impossible for the Chinese regime to offset the impact of such a massive part of the economy with other high-growth sectors. Furthermore, real estate’s impact on the job market is hard to substitute. Economist George Magnus warned that the impact of the real estate collapse would last for years.

To add to a difficult real estate problem, the state intervention in

Fan Yu

FAN YU is an expert in finance and economics and has contributed analyses on China’s economy since 2015.

Beijing Tightens Grip on Jack Ma’s Empire The group has been under regulatory scrutiny dating back 2 years

LINTAO ZHANG/GETTY IMAGES

T

he future of ant group, the Chinese fintech giant affiliated with Jack Ma and partially owned by e-commerce giant Alibaba, grows cloudier by the month.

The Chinese regime’s top anti-graft watchdog—the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI)—was directly involved in a recent inquiry into Ant’s relationship with stateowned enterprises, a Bloomberg report said, citing people familiar with the proceedings.

The involvement of the CCDI, a muchfeared Chinese Communist Party (CCP) organ that typically oversees corruption investigations of senior CCP officials, could escalate the risks surrounding Ant, its billionaire founder Jack Ma, and its biggest shareholder, Alibaba Group. Specifically, the CCDI was looking into transactions between Ant and state-controlled entities, including banks and government agencies.

Ant, Alibaba, and Jack Ma have been under CCP regulatory scrutiny dating back two years. In late 2020, Ant, which runs the popular Alipay mobile payments application, was forced to abandon a potentially record-setting IPO in Hong Kong and Shanghai. The CCP then ordered Ant to restructure its business practices and went on to revamp the regulatory standards governing the entire fintech sector.

In January, following almost a year of inquiries, the CCP expelled former Hangzhou Party Secretary Zhou Jiangyong for corruption. Both Ant and Alibaba are headquartered in Hangzhou, the capital of China’s Zhejiang Province. Zhou was believed to be a huge proponent of Ma’s business empire, although Ant denied any improper business dealings.

By early 2022, a fresh round of investigations into Ant began, which at the time, Bloomberg described

The involvement of the Chinese regime’s top anti-graft watchdog could escalate the risks surrounding Ant, its billionaire founder Jack Ma, and its biggest shareholder, Alibaba Group. as “by far the most thorough and wide-ranging” to date. In April, it was revealed that the CCDI was involved in the probe.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be a huge surprise, given the message from a January CCDI plenum meeting that suggested that the regulator was focused on reining in the so-called “disorderly expansion of capital and platform monopolies” and “the link between power and capital.” This has been the CCP’s trendy slogan for combating systemic corruption lately, although it should be mentioned that such means of business building had been the modus operandi of Chinese entrepreneurs for decades.

Alibaba, Ant’s parent company, isn’t faring much better. China’s regulatory environment continues to hamper

the internet giant. Last year, Beijing gave Alibaba’s e-commerce business a record $2.8 billion fine for violating anti-monopoly rules.

The company’s cloud computing arm, Aliyun (Ali Cloud), continues to miss sales expectations as the CCP has begun promoting government-sponsored cloud computing networks to establish greater control over information and data. Alibaba’s cloud computing platform had the potential to be a huge profit center—akin to the role Amazon Web Services has at Amazon—until the CCP’s recent crackdown on the industry.

This all potentially bodes ill for Jack Ma, his business empire, and his lieutenants, such as Alibaba Chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang and Vice Chairman Joseph Tsai.

Tsai, in particular, was coincidentally the subject of a long April expose by sports media giant ESPN, which called Tsai “the face of NBA’s uneasy China relationship.” Since 2019, Tsai has been the principal owner of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets basketball franchise.

While Alibaba is facing scrutiny in China for potentially running afoul of the CCP’s political whims, the ESPN story in the United States puts one of Alibaba’s most visible leaders in a similarly uncomfortable light.

“Tsai has publicly defended some of China’s most controversial policies,” the article reads.

“He described the government’s brutal crackdown on dissent as necessary to promote economic growth; defended a law used to imprison scores of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong as necessary to squelch separatism; and, when questioned about human rights, asserted that most of China’s 1.4 billion citizens are ‘happy about where they are.’”

The company and its executives are clearly walking a tightrope. One that may be getting thinner by the month.

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 49

JEFF MINICK lives and writes in Front Royal, Va. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust on Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning as I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.”

Jeff Minick

Facing Life Head-On, Courageously When life throws you a curve ball, aim for the bleachers!

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or nearly 30 years, a woman has worked in a laundromat here in town, helping customers with the machines and washing and folding loads of drop-off laundry. Julia moves and talks slowly, her eyes have that weary, half-lost look often found in people her age, and her face is worn with care and wrinkles.

When you’re 87 years old, pardon the pun, you’ve gone through the wringer.

About nine months ago, a new owner took over the business. He fired all the employees and replaced them with new staff. Most people in Julia’s shoes would have decided the time had come to call it quits.

Not Julia.

Foreseeing her termination, she gave her phone number to her customers and told them to call her when they needed a load of wash done. The result? Today, she schedules an appointment, meets clients at the laundromat, does their washing and drying, and even charges less than the business.

(Her rates are ridiculously low, so we need to work with her on that.)

Grit is endurance and resolve. Gumption is spirit and initiative. Julia has these attributes in spades.

When we look around the world, we see others like Julia: men, women, boys, and girls, who, when faced with mountains to climb, grab their ropes, picks and axes, helmets and crampons and set out. They see obstacles as hurdles and impediments to be overcome.

They recognize the truth of the first paragraph of “The Road Less Traveled,” where M. Scott Peck wrote, “Life is difficult.” But they also know that difficult isn’t a synonym for impossible.

Human history abounds with examples of stamina and courage that allowed the bold to hit home runs when life hurled curve balls at them.

Thomas Edison experienced a myriad

50 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

Her circumstances may be modest, but she’s always upbeat, full of conversation of failures before he finally invented a working light bulb. Abraham Lincoln, with his poor education and political setbacks, became president of the United States. Because Bessie Coleman (1892–1926) was black, no U.S. aviation school would admit her.

She learned French and got her pilot training in France. Before her death in a crash, she barnstormed around the United States, with the press dubbing her “Queen Bess.”

Closer to home, we see friends and family members with a gutsy cando attitude. When I used to haul my daughter’s children to school, one morning I asked a granddaughter if she was ready.

“Grandpa,” she said, “I was born ready.”

A woman here who earns her living by traveling around town and cutting clients’ hair in their homes, including mine, has never once come to my

house in a sour or defeated mood. Her circumstances may be modest, but she’s always upbeat, full of conversation and laughter. She has refused, in short, to be defeated.

In the movie “Rocky Balboa,” the Italian Stallion shares this advice with his son: “Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place, and I don’t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently, if you let it. You, me, or nobody is going to hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!”

When I look at Julia at the laundromat, I don’t see a failure. I see a tough, old female Rocky Balboa.

We’re all going to take those hits, at some time or another. Hardships and setbacks are part of the human condition. But if we dig within ourselves, if we can mine out those gems of grit and gumption that lie within us, we can keep moving forward.

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Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of the government watchdog organization Open the Books.

THOUGHT LEADERS

Secrecy at the National Institutes of Health Open the Books follows the money on Fauci, other government employees

In a recent episode of “American Thought Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek sits down with Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of the government watchdog organization OpenTheBooks.com, to discuss government spending. In particular, they look at Dr. Anthony Fauci’s contract and financials—he earns more than the president of

the United States—including Fauci’s hidden contract with the government and the reluctance of his employer, the National Institutes of Health, to disclose the earnings of its scientists, who receive royalties from third parties, such as pharmaceutical companies, for co-inventions.

JAN JEKIELEK: Recently,

you made some headlines after being removed as a Forbes columnist when you published a report about Dr. Anthony Fauci’s personal finances. Before we go there, I want to talk about OpenTheBooks.com and the amazing work you do.

have a simple mission. It’s Every Dime, Online, in Real Time. Our vision is to post online every dime taxed and spent at every level of government across the country. Last year, we filed 47,000 Freedom of Information Act requests, the most in American history.

We successfully captured $12 trillion worth of government spending. And we do this so people can follow the money and hold their elected officials accountable for tax and spending decisions.

MR . JEKIELEK: Did you

just say that last year you filed 47,000 requests?

ADAM ANDRZEJEWSKI:

MR . ANDRZEJEWSKI:

At OpenTheBooks.com, we

Yes, 47,000 FOIA requests.

52 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

For the first time in our nation’s history, we’ve captured virtually every single public employee’s salary and pension record at every level. In school districts, for example, we have the salary payroll file displayed online. You can search those salaries for free from our website.

MR . JEKIELEK: Why is

this important?

MR . ANDRZEJEWSKI:

The American experiment is premised on the individual.

We instituted a government to secure our rights, and our Founders knew the power of transparency and wrote it into the Constitution. Article 1, Section 9 states that an account of the receipts and expenditures of all public

COURTESY OF THE CONSERVATIVE PARTNERSHIP INSTITUTE

t OpenTheBooks.com, we have a simple mission,” Adam Andrzejewski said.

“It’s Every Dime, Online, in Real Time. Our vision is to post online every dime taxed and spent at every level of government across the country.”

money shall be published from time to time. With the internet and the age of big data, we have the capacity to open the books and post every dime online. People should be able to hold their elected officials accountable for tax-and-spend decisions.

At OpenTheBooks.com we’re empowering people to hold their officials accountable.

istan withdrawal was a successful extraction of a military force, we showed the staggering cost of the abandoned military gear: 600,000 weapons, 75,000 military vehicles, and up to 16,000 night-vision devices left behind.

MR . JEKIELEK: Tell me a

MR . ANDRZEJEWSKI: The Freedom of Infor-

few of your other unusual finds.

MR . ANDRZEJEWSKI:

I’ve got a great team of auditors, and we realized in 2019 that the human waste reports in San Francisco came with latitude and longitude coordinates. So we did what any good watchdog organization would do and took that file. Over a nine-year period, there were 130,000 cases of human waste publicly reported. We put that file on an interactive map, and the whole city was brown. That map trended on Twitter. I’m proud to say we reframed the homeless debate. It was a health catastrophe, and a picture tells a thousand words.

And when President Joe Biden claimed the Afghan-

MR . JEKIELEK: Tell the

audience, what is FOIA?

mation Act is the statutory process that citizens use to capture information they already own as citizens.

MR . JEKIELEK: What got

you thinking about Dr. Anthony Fauci’s finances?

MR . ANDRZEJEWSKI:

I was training a new hire, and our federal payrolls were posted for 2019, the latest year available. I was looking at this in January 2021 and noticed Dr. Anthony Fauci was the top paid federal employee, out-earning everybody else, including the president. And I said to the trainee, “That’s your first piece. Ghost draft a thousand words. Let’s build it out from every angle. And let’s put it up at Forbes.” That’s what

“For the first time in our nation’s history, we’ve captured virtually every single public employee’s salary and pension record at every level.” kicked off the investigation.

So we filed the FOIA request for information on his contract with all its amendments, modifications, and changes; his job description; his conflict of interest documents; his royalties, if any; and his ethics statements.

The National Institutes of Health, Fauci’s employer, produced virtually nothing subject to that request. We sued them in federal court in October. They’ve still produced almost nothing, but they’ve admitted they’re holding 1,200 pages subject to that request.

So they’re engaging in expensive wvlitigation paid for by taxpayers to keep those same taxpayers from learning how their tax dollars are being spent.

MR . JEKIELEK: Given

your knowledge, what, in general, are you expecting to see in these 1,200 pages?

MR . ANDRZEJEWSKI: On

Dr. Fauci’s contract, we expect waivers for conflict of interest. One of the waivers may be with him and his wife, Christine Grady. Many people don’t know that Christine Grady is head of the Department of Bioethics at the NIH. Dr. Grady has stated that her team has issued COVID-19 studies from a bioethics standpoint, like the intersection between mask mandates and a loss of personal freedom.

There may be a conflict of interest here. They’re sitting at the bioethics table, but they’re also sitting

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 53

Nation Profile

“People should be able to hold their elected officials accountable for tax-and-spend decisions.” at the same breakfast table at home. While Tony Fauci was running America’s response to COVID-19 from a health standpoint, his wife was setting the foundation on the bioethics studies.

That lends itself to a lot of questions.

And here again, we advocate transparency. All those studies need to be published online for the American people. All of Dr. Fauci’s finances, which are public documents, should be immediately released by NIH. We shouldn’t have to engage in expensive litigation to open the books on Dr. Anthony Fauci or to call for the ethical studies from Christine Grady.

MR . JEKIELEK: It almost

sounds like a kind of a conspiracy? Where do you see that?

MR . ANDRZEJEWSKI:

I brought you a physical example. Roughly 1,000 scientists are either currently employed or retired from the NIH. They can receive royalties of up to $150,000 per year from third parties, say pharmaceutical companies for co-inventions, and it’s perfectly legal. The NIH admit they owe us 3,000 pages worth of line-by-line royalties. Now, every single line could be a potential conflict of interest, especially during a pandemic. So we want to see that database.

And on Feb. 1, NIH started producing, subject to our lawsuit, 300 pages a month of those royalties. Now I want to show everybody what they’ve produced.

Here’s the first production, it’s 3,000 pages, and the only thing you can see on it is the scientist’s name, the NIH employee or retiree.

All the payments to the scientists are redacted.

They’re blacked out. All the names of the companies paying the royalty are also blacked out. So basically you have 3,000 pages that are worthless for oversight.

That’s terrible precedent, and we need to sue on that basis.

MR . JEKIELEK: You’ve

started a substack because you no longer have a Forbes column. Is this where your future reports will be posted?

MR . ANDRZEJEWSKI:

When Forbes canceled my column, I opened the substack column. Our first piece describes how fact-finding Fauci led to my cancellation at Forbes. It’s gotten more than a hundred thousand views, and nearly 6,000 people have subscribed to it. You can see it at substack. com, Open The Books.

MR . JEKIELEK: How did

MR . ANDRZEJEWSKI:

White House chief medical adviser and Director of the NIAID Dr. Anthony Fauci at a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 11.

54 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

The information I published was so sensitive to the NIH, Fauci’s employer, that two directors, two bureau chiefs, and two public relations officers took time out from protecting the

MR . JEKIELEK: But all

sorts of other officials in the government require the same kind of oversight, right?

MR . ANDRZEJEWSKI:

There needs to be a lot of oversight at every level.

And Congress isn’t doing its job. At OpenTheBooks. com, we’re taking on the responsibility to give that oversight to government spending.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

THIS PAGE: GREG NASH-POOL/GETTY IMAGES

this situation cause your column to be canceled?

You’ve published quite a few hard-hitting pieces in the past.

nation during a pandemic to write a letter to Forbes, an organization that’s been around for 100 years, and basically said, “We don’t like Andrzejewski’s reporting.” They delivered a subliminal message, and Forbes got the message.

Within 24 hours, I was told I couldn’t write about Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The NIH needs to open the books on the Fauci family finances. They’ve admitted they’re holding 1,200 pages related to our Freedom of Information Act request from 15 months ago. These are public documents, and they need to come clean with the American people.

And here’s what we found. Dr. Anthony Fauci is the top paid federal employee and makes $456,000 a year. Christine Grady makes $238,000. If you add together their salaries, then tack on 30 percent for federal benefits, the two Faucis annually clean off more than $900,000 a year. His pension will likely be the largest in federal history. If it was up to NIH, we wouldn’t even know what the Faucis are making.

T R AV E L • F O O D • L U X U R Y L I V I N G

Unwind

No.17

When most people think of North Carolina, images of quaint towns set in the Smoky Mountains spring to mind. However, we suggest you direct your gaze to the east to discover the visually and culturally astounding Barrier Islands.

PHOTO BY FRED J. ECKERT

North Carolina’s Magnificent Outer Banks THE RESIDENCE OF ONE of California’s top real estate developers, this estate is a slice of Tuscany with a view of the Santa Monica Mountains. 56

WE’VE COLLECTED A selection of of great items that just might make your daily commute a bit more fun, and much safer, too. (You’ll really like the heads-up system!) 63

58

CHEF ISSAC TOUPS DRAWS on 300 years of family tradition to create Cajun gastronomical masterpieces from locally sourced seafood and meat. 66

INSIDE I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 55

A Distinctive

CALIFORNIA ESTATE

With the Santa Monica Mountains as a backdrop, this Tuscan-style estate is an entertainer's dream home

By Phil Butler Here you see the meticulous stonework and the trellised loggia that leads to styled glass doors at the entry of

the home. As you can see, the home conveys a sense of grandeur, as well as a warm welcoming.

56 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

Lifestyle Real Estate

D

esigned by wor l d -r enow ned architect John Reed AIA, this Calabasas, California estate exudes captivating charm and uncompromising style. From the moment you enter the property’s courtyard, you’re transported to a Tuscan dreamscape. Fronted with a wonderful beamtrellised loggia, the house envisioned by the owner, real estate developer and builder James Ring, is anything but typical.

Created as a primary residence within the exclusive Estates of the Oaks community, this fantastic Venetian-style farmhouse sports 11,488 square feet of meticulous craftsmanship, charm, and functionality. From the exquisite stonework and fine plaster to the Eden-like grounds, the designers created a liveable masterpiece inside and out. The home’s entry courtyard leads to sparkling glass entry doors. Inside, a flawless Versailles-pattern limestone floor leads to opulent yet comfortable living spaces.

This exquisite home has 6 bedrooms, 10 full baths, as well as a family room, a living room, formal and casual dining rooms, a library, and much more. At the center of the residence, a spacious country kitchen features a pizza oven, premium appliances, and two islands, all accented by a traditional brick ceiling.

The home has two master suites, one of which features a private open-air terrace with a fireplace, offering unmatched views of the meticulously maintained grounds and the Santa Monica Mountains. This suite also has hisand-her spa baths, walk-in closets, and access to an upper-level office cleverly hidden behind a bookshelf. The second suite has a gym with a dry sauna and a bath with a steam shower.

Four more en-suite amenity bedrooms each feature unique tile and glass touches, fireplaces, and personalized amenities that open onto the courtyard outside.

With 1.42 acres of vibrant Italian gardens, the property is one of the finest examples of countryside architecture in California. The grounds also include a small orchard of olive trees, a waterfall, a pond, and a cutting rose garden.

The property features a separate guest house with pool, an outdoor kitchen and bar, a six-car garage, plus a two-car attached garage. Other notable features include a 500-gallon saltwater aquarium, a 15-seat home theater, and an 800-bottle wine cellar with a tasting room.

Phil Butler is a publisher, editor, author, and analyst who is a widely cited expert on subjects ranging from digital and social media to travel technology.

25304 PRADO DE LA FELICIDAD CALABASAS, CALIFORNIA $20.5 MILLION

• 6 Bedrooms • 10 Full Baths • 11,488 Square Feet • 1.42 Acres KEY FEATURES

• Exclusive Santa Monica Mountains location • Artisan-level craftsmanship • Lush private gardens and exteriors • Pool and spa features • Wine cellar and tasting room AGENT

Jade Mills Estates Stephanie Zebik, managing director 310-285-7508

JADE MILLS

The pool and spa, together with the pool/guest house, provide countless entertaining and family activity possibilities.

The home’s living spaces were designed with comfort and accessibility to the lush exterior views in mind. The generous use of glass, combined with quality natural materials and furnishings, creates an atmosphere of oneness, warmth, and calm.

Outside is a veritable paradise in a California landscape. Here you see the pond, some of the terraces, shade trees, and the beautifully landscaped grounds.

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 57

Travel Barrier Islands

Dawn at Bodie Island lighthouse along North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

The Outer Banks North Carolina’s playground by the sea

58 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

VIRGINIA Corolla

NORTH CAROLINA

Nags Head

OC

EA

N

Ocracoke

C

isitors have been exclaiming for a very long time about the area where northeastern North Carolina meets the Atlantic Ocean.

In fact, what we today call the Outer Banks received its first known rave reviews more than 400 years ago, in 1584.

That’s when Sir Walter Raleigh sent two explorers to check out the sounds and estuaries alongside what is today North Carolina’s playground by the sea. The reports they brought back to England about the wonders of the New World caused Queen Elizabeth I to commission Raleigh to establish in this area in 1587 the first English settlement in America, two decades before Jamestown and three decades before Plymouth.

It was a disaster that to this day remains a mystery. Every one of the roughly 120 men, women, and children whom Raleigh sent—he

himself never set foot in North America—vanished without a trace. Their deserted settlement site showed no signs of any trouble. Conflicting theories about what happened still abound.

Nowadays, one of the many interesting and fun things to do during a visit to North Carolina’s Outer Banks area is to take in a well-done stage production about this 4-century-old unsolved mystery of the disappearance of that first English settlement in the New World. “The Lost Colony” is written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paul Green.

This may well have been an unlucky place for those Englishmen who attempted to establish a colony here, but nowadays, most of the visitors who come here each year probably consider themselves lucky to have discovered such a splendid vacation spot.

What we call the Outer Banks is a string of sandy barrier islands that stretches for more than 130 miles along the Atlantic coastline of North Carolina.

TI

By Fred J. Eckert

AT

LA

N

The water frontage surrounding the Outer Banks exceeds 900 miles.

FROM TOP L: ANTHONY HEFLIN/SHUTTERSTOCK, THE EPOCH TIMES, RICK MENAPACE/SHUTTERSTOCK, WAYFARERLIFE/SHUTTERSTOCK

Travel Barrier Islands

In Nags Head, at 400-acre Jockey’s Ridge State Park, the site of the highest natural sand dune on the Atlantic Coast, visitors can go hang gliding and sandboarding, fly kites, hike through nature trails, and picnic in an area that in some places looks like a big desert.

It was precisely this combination of tall dunes, good winds, and soft sand that led two Dayton, Ohio, bicycle shop owners, the Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville, to come here to try out their invention. They selected for their most important experiments a spot just south of Kitty Hawk called Big Kill Devil Hill, from which they made more than 1,000 glides.

Fishing, both saltwater and freshwater, is truly outstanding, and you can fish from along the ocean shore, from piers, in the many sounds, and aboard offshore charter boats.

This is also one of the best places in the country for birdwatching, home of the 5,834-acre Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, great during the warm months but even better during the cold season when more than 400 species of waterfowl winter here. You can go on either guided or independent nature trail tours.

Along the coast, you’ll see some of America’s best-known lighthouses, including Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, the tallest in America and a symbol of North Carolina.

At least 1,500 known shipwrecks lie off the coast, a delight for divers. A few shipwrecks are visible from shore at low tide. It was Founding Father Alexander Hamilton who dubbed the area offshore “the Graveyard of the Atlantic.”

There’s a museum by that name that you can visit as well as other maritime-related sites,

including Chicamacomico on Pea Island, where you can learn about the U.S. Life Saving Service, the forerunner of the U.S. Coast Guard, and the North Carolina Maritime Museum in the town of Manteo.

Manteo on Roanoke Island (pop. 6,000) is sort of the main gathering point of the Outer Banks.

It’s a pleasant place with nice shops and good restaurants.

You can stroll from “downtown” Manteo across a bridge to Roanoke Island Festival Park, a living history museum with an interactive museum and a film theater. Visitors can climb aboard the Elizabeth II, a sailing ship reflecting the type of vessel on which those first settlers crossed the Atlantic. “Settlers” decked out in the costumes of the late 1500s perform woodworking and blacksmithing chores and show you the sort of accommodations settlers inhabited.

It was at this living history museum that I learned about something that certainly must have amazed and delighted those first Englishmen who settled in the New World here in North Carolina’s Outer Banks area.

The natives, I learned, were very happy to acquire low-value items from the settlers in exchange for something they called a “Roanoke.”

It was their word for a pearl. Probably made the settlers happy they came here.

Of course, you won’t be able to trade your unwanted items for pearls, but, like me and most other people, you’ll probably be very pleased if you come here for a visit.

The wild horses in the Outer Banks are descended from Spanish mustangs.

The sculpture at the Wright Brothers National Memorial depicts Orville Wright at the controls of the machine he and his brother Wilbur built, as it lifts off the ground.

Fred J. Eckert is a retired U.S. ambassador and former member of Congress.

ON DEC. 17,

1903

the Wright brothers’ machine lifted off the ground.

If You Go Best Time to Visit: Any time from spring through summer and into early fall, but late in the season be alert as hurricane season approaches.

This is an extremely popular summer destination, so it’s wise to plan well ahead to ensure good accommodations.

Dining: Fine restaurants abound in the Outer Banks. Seafood is unusually good here.

Travel Guides: “Fodor’s The Carolinas and Georgia” is a good choice for this area of the United States.

For More Information: See OuterBanks.org

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 59

PERSONAL SAFETY

Stay Well The best way to stay safe is to learn to pay attention to your surroundings

By Bill Lindsey

60 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

Lifestyle Personal Safety

Practicing situational awareness is not being paranoid, it’s about avoiding potential problems.

LEFT PAGE: MARCEL EBERLE/UNSPLASH; THIS PAGE: PHOTOGRAPHEE.EU/SHUTTERSTOCK

W

hen discussing personal security, the overriding message taught by security experts is to develop and then practice situational awareness. Simply put, situational awareness is paying attention to your surroundings and nearby activity in order to be aware of and thus avoid potential danger.

Imagine you’re having a meal at a restaurant.

If a fire were to break out, do you know where the nearest exit is located? Situational awareness calls for you to locate the closest exit as you choose your seat and then mentally plot the fastest route to it from your seat. Or imagine you’re walking down the street late at night, when you see a group of rambunctious teenagers coming in your direction, kicking garbage cans and yelling at passing cars. Is there someplace, such as a store, where you can duck inside while they pass?

Can you safely cross the street to avoid coming into close proximity? If the answer to these is no, you might consider turning around and retracing your steps. Avoiding questionable scenarios is the most effective way to remain safe.

There are several items that can be useful in an unwelcome situation, with a cellphone at the top of the list. Keeping it ready for use with a toppedoff charge is easier when you keep a charging cable in your car or briefcase and perhaps a portable power source to charge it when an outlet isn’t available. If you’re driving in an unfamiliar

area, use the phone’s GPS app to provide the fastest route to your destination. While driving, keep the doors locked and the windows closed to prevent anyone from reaching in while you’re stopped at a red light. If you’re in the driver’s seat, practice releasing your seat belt using your left hand, lifting it away from you as you allow it to retract; this prevents the usual tangle if you use your right hand and lets you exit the car fast in case of an emergency.

A flashlight is a useful tool that is rarely routinely carried. Small “tactical” flashlights such as Streamlight’s ProTac, powered by two AA batteries, can be tucked into a pocket or purse, largely forgotten until needed. They have practical applications such as finding car keys that fell and rolled under the car (of course) but could also be useful to find your way down a stairwell after a power outage. Many tactical lights feature multiple modes, including a pulsating strobe. In the event you find yourself being accosted, this strobe can be used to disorient the attackers, providing you a chance to get to safety.

Loud sounds can be useful. Bad guys avoid attention like vampires avoid sunlight. A device such as a Byrna Banshee personal safety alarm tucked in a pocket could be useful if you need to attract attention. A press of the button unleashes a 130dB shriek, which according to the manufacturer is equivalent to the sound of a fighter jet taking off 50 feet away. That’s sure to attract the attention of everyone within earshot, thus

Simply put, situational awareness is paying attention to your surroundings and nearby activity.

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 61

Lifestyle Personal Safety

LIFESTYLE

EYES WIDE OPEN

A few easy steps to improving your safety

When using an ATM or paying for gas at the pump, be wary of unwanted attention and look for signs the card reader may have been tampered with.

62 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

using an ATM, and especially so at night and if it’s located outside. As you approach the ATM, scan the area to see if anyone seems to be loitering nearby.

If you see anything suspicious and you’re alone, consider coming back in the daylight. If you’re with a companion, have them keep an eye out for anything untoward, being prepared to leave quickly. If someone approaches, loudly request that they keep their distance until you’re done. Leave quickly when your transaction is complete.

This is an example of a situation where the Byrna Banshee could be useful.

Lastly, be discreet on social media; don’t announce upcoming vacations or post while out of town. That could signal that your home is empty and leave it vulnerable in your absence.

Be Aware Practice heightened awareness until it becomes second nature.

Know the nearest exit at work; don’t ignore strangers paying too much attention as you purchase high-end items at the mall.

2 A Bright Idea Tuck a compact, powerful flashlight and spare batteries in your briefcase; if the lights go out or you need to find an item dropped on a dark sidewalk, it will be invaluable.

3 Be Discrete A small flashlight can be a lifesaver if you need to get down a dark staircase after the power goes out. Look for one that offers a strobe mode that can disorient potential attackers.

Resist putting “stick figure” decals on your vehicle that advertise the size and makeup of your family.

Wait until returning home to post vacation photos on social media.

THIS PAGE FROM TOP: MIKAEL DAMKIER/ SHUTTERSTOCK, REALIIA/SHUTTERSTOCK

discouraging the bad guy from sticking around or summoning assistance.

Another innovative personal security device is ADT’s InvisaWear jewelry. A double-click on the back of what looks like an ordinary charm on a necklace, bracelet, or keychain sends a text message and your location to up to five preselected emergency contacts. It can also be configured to connect with ADT personnel to call 911.

Credit card skimmers are another tool bad guys use to separate you from your money. These devices capture your credit card information when you make a payment, such as at a fuel pump. Skimmers are difficult to spot, so look for indications the card reader seems overly large or is attached loosely. If in doubt, instead of paying at the pump, either pay inside or simply leave and make the purchase at another gas station. On a related note, look for cameras that may be positioned to capture your PIN number. If possible, use a credit card instead of a debit card, which can allow access to a bank account.

As much as possible, frequent retail stores and restaurants where you can watch them swipe the card, rather than allow it to be taken out of your sight. While it’s unlikely your card will be compromised, this scenario is often what happens when the server or cashier is dishonest. Another time to practice situational awareness is while

1

Luxury Living Notable Auto Accessories

A COLLECTION OF DEVICES TO IMPROVE THE DRIVE We spend an enormous amount of time driving from here to there and then back, so it makes sense to outfit your car with some fun and very practical accessories

By Bill Lindsey

Keep Your Eyes on the Road!

It’s Only Flat on the Bottom

$59.95

$59.98 (PLUS BATTERY & CHARGER)

HUDWAY GLASS

RYOBI TIRE INFLATOR

The National Highway Transportation Safety Agency says a major cause of accidents is drivers looking away from the road. This projects GPS directions from your smartphone onto the windshield, just like a fighter jet’s “heads up” display, so you can safely see the display and the road ahead.

Low air pressure in a tire usually happens in the middle of nowhere, far from a service station, which is why a portable inflator needs to be in the vehicle. This unit, powered by rechargeable batteries, quickly inflates tires as well as pool toys and air mattresses.

A Silent Witness

SCOSCHE NEXC2 DASH CAM

COURTESY OF HUDWAY, RYOBI, SCHOSE, WEEGO, WEATHERTECH

$199.95

No More ‘Uh Ohs’

WEEGO JUMP START BATTERY $185.99

All it takes to have a dead battery on your hands is forgetting to turn off the headlights. This compact yet powerful unit makes it safe and easy to get going again. It can also be used to charge phones and other portable USB devices or to run 12V equipment.

In the event of a fender-bender, it’s your word against that of the other driver, unless you have a dashcam. This unit has a 128 GB internal card for hours of HD footage, and even provides evidence should someone hit your parked car and leave without a note, or if a parking valet takes it for a joyride.

Wipe Your Feet!

WEATHERTECH FLOOR MATS CONTACT FOR PRICE

The floor mats that come with a car are not always great at capturing mud or snow from shoes or spilled soda or coffee. These, however, are laser-cut for a perfect fit, able to hold an amazing amount of dirt, debris, and liquids, and are easy to clean.

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 63

Epoch Booklist RECOMMENDED READING HUMOR

‘The Complete Peanuts’

By Charles Schulz

A Stroll Down Memory Lane There are 26 volumes of the “Peanuts” cartoons.

This set features some strips dating back to 1950 and previously unpublished. This is a great way to keep these memorable characters around forever, including Charlie, Linus, Lucy, and, of course, Snoopy. Great for laughs.

This week’s selection features biographies of George Washington and J.R.R. Tolkien, and a classic about healing through a child’s love.

himself struggling to save his family, his friends, and the town itself in the ensuing horror and chaos. They run out of medicines, nearly starve, and find themselves fighting for their lives against a band of marauders intent on killing or enslaving them all.

FORGE BOOKS, 2011, 528 PAGES

HISTORY

CANONGATE BOOKS, 2007, VOL. 1: 320 PAGES

‘After the Romanovs’

FICTION

By Helen Rappaport

Exiled From the Bolsheviks

‘One Second After’

By William Forstchen

Into the Abyss America is thrown back into the 19th century when an electromagnetic-pulse attack knocks out cars, computers, phones, and electricity. John Matherson, an Army veteran and now a college professor in a small mountain town of North Carolina, finds

Paris was a second home to Russia’s nobility from the late 19th century until World War I. Some, in fact, visited year-round. Following the Russian Revolution, many fled to France for safety. This book follows these Russians in France before and as expatriates after the Revolution. It shows how princes who had lived in luxury were reduced to driving taxis and how their wives had to work at fashion houses. As they carved out new lives in a strange land, they also had an impact on their new home.

ST. MARTIN’S PRESS, 2022, 336 PAGES

64 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

Are there books you’d recommend?

We’d love to hear from you. Let us know at features@epochtimes.com

BIOGRAPHY

‘The Real J.R.R. Tolkien’

By Jesse Xander

An Ordinary and Extraordinary Man J.R.R. Tolkien may be the most beloved 20th-century author with the most diverse reader base, as he appealed to readers across the spectrum.

This book offers a fresh look at Tolkien’s life.

Xander reveals Tolkien as simultaneously archetypically ordinary and extraordinarily remarkable, an obscure professor who wrote momentous fiction. It offers a fascinating look at the author and the influence Tolkien has on modern letters.

WHITE OWL, 2021, 176 PAGES

‘Washington: A Life’

By Ron Chernow

A Great Single Volume on Washington Here is an incredible single volume on the

life of the great and the good man George Washington. Ron Chernow has produced a great work for those hoping to receive a fair, detailed, and beautiful glimpse into the man’s life as a youth, soldier, farmer, general, and president. It’s a worthy addition to works on our first president.

PENGUIN BOOKS, 2011, 928 PAGES

CLASSICS

‘Silas Marner’

FOR KIDS

‘Whittington’

By Alan Armstrong

Cats, Kids, and Learning to Read A stray cat makes his way to a barn full of rescued animals, where he tells them and two children, Ben and Abby, stories about his ancestor who had helped Dick Whittington.

Meanwhile, with their help, Ben becomes a better reader.

YEARLING REISSUE EDITION, 2006, 208 PAGES

By George Eliot

A Soul Redeemed Falsely accused of stealing money from his church, weaver Silas Marner departs town for Raveloe, where he’s a stranger. He keeps to himself, turns his back on God, and hoards the money he earns. When his gold coins are stolen, he is crushed, but then one night he finds a golden-haired toddler asleep on his hearth.

Her mother has died, and so Silas raises the child, naming her Eppie.

This sweet girl becomes the tool of his salvation, bringing him back into the company of others and allowing him to learn to trust again.

SEAWOLF PRESS, 2021, 232 PAGES

‘The Monster at the End of This Book’

By Jon Stone, Illustrated by Michael Smollin

Modern Childhood Classic Introduced in 1971, featuring the “lovable, furry old Grover,” this book has become a childhood staple and will have readers laughing as Grover boisterously laments each turning page, getting ever closer to the so-called monster.

GOLDEN BOOKS, 2015, 26 PAGES

Ian Kane is a U.S. Army veteran, filmmaker, and author.

He enjoys the great outdoors and volunteering.

MOVIE REVIEWS

Epoch Watchlist

This week, we look at a classic Disney fairytale and an uplifting comedic drama about a Syrian refugee family who are transplanted to Canada.

NEW RELEASE

FAMILY PICK

‘Wonder’ (2017)

‘Peace by Chocolate’ (2022) Tareq (Ayham Abou Ammar) moves from Syria to Antigonish, Nova Scotia, after his family’s chocolate factory is bombed. He had dreamed of becoming a doctor, but his father, Issam (Hatem Ali), urges him to focus on the more direct necessity of survival: rebuilding the chocolate business. This sets up a conflict between old traditions and modern ambitions.

With its beautiful scenery, a brilliant cast, and peppy script, the film shows how a young and enterprising refugee struggles to secure a better future for himself and his family.

COMEDY | DR AMA

Release Date: April 29, 2022 Director: Jonathan Keijser Starring: Hatem Ali, Ayham Abou Ammar, Yara Sabri Running Time: 1 hour, 36 minutes MPAA Rating: Not Rated Where to Watch: Theaters

mances by the adults and children alike.

Ultimately, it’s an inspiring movie with enriching life lessons.

DRAMA | FAMILY

Release Date: Nov. 17, 2017 Directors: Stephen Chbosky Starring: Jacob Tremblay, Owen Wilson, Julia Roberts Running Time: 1 hour, 53 minutes MPAA Rating: PG Where to Watch: Redbox, DirecTV, Vudu

AN ACTION COMEDY

‘Miss Congeniality’ (2000)

CLASSIC FAIRYTALE beautifully rendered songs. This film is a charming classic.

ANIMATION | FAMILY | FANTASY

‘Cinderella’ (1950) When good-hearted, lovely Cinderella’s mother dies, her father marries a woman who treats her cruelly. Misfortunes heap upon Cinderella, but her animal friends

August Pullman’s (Jacob Tremblay) facial deformities (Treacher Collins syndrome) have prevented him from attending mainstream schools in the past. Now he and his family brace themselves as he sets off for fifth grade at the local school.

Based on a bestselling book, this film has some deeply moving scenes as Auggie navigates the tumultuous waters of both bullying and acceptance. The acting is superb, with believable perfor-

and benevolent Fairy Godmother might be able to help.

Walt Disney’s animated take on the original fairytale imbues it with hilarious humor and delightful,

Release Date: March 4, 1950 Director: Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske Starring: Voices of Ilene Woods, James MacDonald, Eleanor Audley Running Time: 1 hour, 14 minutes MPAA Rating: G Where to Watch: Redbox, DirecTV, AMC

Capable FBI Agent Gracie Hart (Sandra Bullock) messes up a case she was assigned to, but tries to redeem herself by entering an upcoming beauty pageant that has been targeted by a terrorist plot. There’s just one problem—she’s a total tomboy.

This movie has some pretty good comedy scenes that mainly have to do with Hart trying to submerge her tomboyish nature and learn how to be more feminine and alluring

(she’s never even worn a dress). However, this gimmick sags some by the film’s third act.

ACTION | COMEDY | CRIME

Release Date: Dec. 22, 2000 Director: Donald Petrie Starring: Sandra Bullock, Michael Caine, Benjamin Bratt Running Time: 1 hour, 49 minutes MPAA Rating: PG-13 Where to Watch: HBO Max, Amazon, Redbox

I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022 65

Food Chefs

COOKING CAJUN: AT TOUPS’ MEATERY, A CELEBRATION OF THE LAND OF BAYOUS, BOUCHERIES, AND ROWDY FAMILY FEASTS Raised deep in Cajun country, chef Isaac Toups draws inspiration from his family’s 300-year-old ties to the region—and its rich, pork- and seafood-laden cuisine

By Crystal Shi

Isaac Toups, Louisiana “born and braised’ chef and owner of Toups’ Meatery in New Orleans.

I

TOUPS’ MEATERY

66 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022

was declared by Lagasse to be the best he had ever had. Another best-seller is Toups’s own creation: double-cut pork chops glossed with cane syrup gastrique, served with caramelized meat-streaked dirty rice.

“I’m super proud of my heritage, what my parents and my family and my culture have brought,” Toups said. “I see a lot of dilution in culture nowadays; I see a lot of things get lost.”

He’s working to keep it alive, both in and out of the restaurant. Take boucheries, traditional whole-hog roasts, which are experiencing a small revival. Toups didn’t grow up with them, but later made them a twice-annual family tradition,

feeding anywhere from 20 to 100 people at a time. He has a picture of one of his daughters, Poppy, when she was 3 or 4 years old, handing out cracklins at her first one.

They’re not much like the practical rituals of yore, which were community efforts to share the labor and use every scrap of the pig. Now it’s “more of a party, a get-together”—with plenty of whiskey to go around.

But it’s also “a remembrance,” Toups said, something that brings you closer to the land and the past.

It’s a reminder to “have a little more respect for your ancestry, and the things you have now.”

“This is what we used to do, and we should remember that,” he said.

DENNY CULBERT; COURTESY OF TOUPS' MEATERY

saac toups has deep roots A perennial best-seller: in Cajun country. He grew up the double on the outskirts of the south cut pork Louisiana town of Rayne, popchop with ulation 8,000, in Acadia Parish; cane syrup gastrique. his ancestors first settled there in the Atchafalaya Basin in the 1700s.

Toups’s mother grew up a PraiToups’s gulf rie Cajun on flat plains where seafood rice, corn, and sugarcane grew in couvillion is abundance and people bred pigs based on his and hunted wild game. His father grandmother’s— Maw Maw came from a family of Coastal Cajuns, raised by the bayou on Toups's—famed recipe. a bounty of fish, crab, shrimp, and oysters. He reaped the best of both worlds.

Cracklins, Cooking Cajun means eating a boucherie from the land, Toups said, and staple, are Cajuns are a resourceful bunch. another “We started cooking what we restaurant do out of necessity. But then we favorite. decided we liked it, and traditions were born,” he said.

Toups’s whole family grew up learning to hunt, fish, and cook.

“You get into it so early that you don’t actually have a first memory of it; you’re just always into it,” he said, before referencing when he began cooking professionally Location: at age 21. “I had a leg up because I 845 North could shuck oysters better than a Carrollton lot of chefs.”

Ave., New After a decade of cooking un- Orleans der Emeril Lagasse in New OrleWhat to ans, sharpening his fine dining Order: experience, Toups opened Toups’ Double cut Meatery with his wife, Amanda, pork chop, in 2012. The food takes a sophis- Couvillion, ticated approach to rustic Cajun cracklins, cooking—a tribute to his family meatery board recipes and deep-rooted heritage. Phone: The charcuterie is housemade; 504-252the cracklins are legendary. 4999 The Couvillion, a stew of local Gulf Website: seafood served with a gleaming ToupsMeatery. mound of crab-fat rice, is based com on his grandmother’s recipe—and

Restaurant Dining Etiquette Make the waiters love you Whether grabbing a fast lunch at the local sandwich shop or savoring many courses of fine cuisine at an elegant restaurant, keep two goals in mind: Enjoy a great meal, and make sure you and your party are welcome to come back.

By Bill Lindsey

1 Be the Happy Table

4 Be Understanding

While the goal of dining out is to have a great time, be respectful of other diners by muting your phone and keeping the conversation level down. The other diners are also there to enjoy a pleasant meal, so keep your wild friends or family in check; raucous laughter and tossing napkins might seem like fun, but it won’t amuse other diners or the staff. If a meal isn’t what you expected, politely ask your server to replace it, preferably before you’ve consumed 98 percent of it.

CSA IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES

2 Be the Table With the Well-Behaved Kids Dining out as a family is a great bonding opportunity, but you need to keep in mind that overly active or loud children can be disruptive to the other diners and spoil their experience.

Crying babies need to be taken outside. Rambunctious children need to learn to be well-mannered when dining out, but yelling at them probably isn’t the ideal reaction and will disrupt the entire dining area.

Quietly take misbehaving children (or adults) outside and explain how you expect them to behave.

Occasionally a restaurant will run out of items; if you notice a pattern of this every time you dine there, find a new favorite restaurant.

Otherwise, don’t take get upset at your server or let it ruin the experience for you or your party. Take a breath and find something else on the menu. If you arrive shortly before closing time, be respectful to the staff by not ordering complex meals or demanding that they remain open to suit your schedule.

3 Tipping 101 A 15 percent tip is the minimum for good service. The only times tipping for a meal is optional is when ordering fast food and when the meal or service is truly bad with no effort to correct it on the part of your server. In that case, tell the manager why you’re displeased as you leave. On a related note, despite the trend of fast food and food court vendors including an option for a tip, unless the server provided monumental assistance, a tip isn’t warranted.

5 Give the Waiter a Heads Up If anyone in your party has food allergies or requires any type of special accommodations, advise the waiter or waitress before ordering so they can provide appropriate alternative suggestions. Similarly, if you plan to split the tab, advise the server when they first arrive at your table; waiting until the bill is presented makes extra work for them and will result in a delay while they work out the math. In this case, be sure everyone tips—don’t assume the others will handle it.

I N S I G H T April. 29–May 5 , 2022 67

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