90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, May 5, 2021

Biden Transportation Czar Invested In Firm Flagged As ‘Tool’ Of Chinese Communist Party By State Dept.

President Biden’s Deputy Administrator of the Federal Transit Administration – recently nominated for Senate confirmation – is invested in a Chinese tech firm flagged as a “tool” of the Chinese Communist Party by the U.S. State Department.

Amidst the Biden White House’s push for massive transportation and infrastructure plans, one of the effort’s key engineers – Nuria Fernandez – has a financial stake in a company linked directly to the Chinese Communist Party: Tencent. Fernandez’s recent financial disclosure reveals she owns stock in the company worth $1,001 – $15,000.

The State Department’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation has described Tencent as a “tool of the Chinese government,” noting the company has “no meaningful ability to tell the Chinese Communist Party ‘no’ if officials decide to ask for their assistance.” Even the progressive group Amnesty International rated Tencent’s data encryption capabilities zero out of 100, noting it hadn’t “stated publicly that they will not grant government requests to backdoor.”

It provides “a foundation of technology-facilitated surveillance and social control” as part of the CCP’s broader crusade “to shape the world consistent with its authoritarian model,” the State Department report added.

Tencent’s CEO is also known to have direct links to the Chinese Communist Party, currently serving as a...

Tucker Carlson Calls CIA The ‘Cisgender Intersectional Agency’

Fox News host Tucker Carlson ridiculed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as the “Cisgender Intersectional Agency” on Tuesday after the agency’s newest recruitment ad went viral.

“The CIA is the most heavily armed and supposedly the most sophisticated intelligence gathering operation on the planet,” Carlson, co-founder of the Daily Caller, said during his show. “And yet, somehow, they produced this and then put it on social media.”

“I am a woman of color. I am a mom,” the advertisement begins. “I am a cisgender millennial who has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. I am intersectional, but my existence is not a box-checking exercise,” a woman in the advertisement says. (RELATED: ‘I Am A Cisgender Millennial’: CIA Recruitment Video Draws Big Rebukes For Being ‘Woke’)

The video was part of a “Humans of CIA” recruitment initiative meant to attract more diverse applicants, according to Business Insider.

As for diversity hires in the intelligence community (IC) workforce, there was a slight increase in the number of minority professionals — from 26.2% to 26.5% in 2019, according to an annual demographics report compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The minority group with the largest representation in the IC were...

FL Rep, Combat Vet Slams Biden Admin for Ending 30-Year Veterans' Memorial Day Motorcycle Tradition

Veterans and their advocates, including a Republican congressman, reacted with anger over the Biden administration’s decision to rescind a parking lot permit for a veterans group to host a popular Memorial Day event in Washington, D.C.

AMVETS hosts the “Rolling to Remember” motorcycle rally to honor prisoners of war and those missing in action and to raise awareness about the veteran suicide crisis, the organization’s website says.

The Pentagon’s special events department originally approved the permit to use the building’s parking lot but cited coronavirus concerns as grounds to take it back.

Republican Florida Rep. Brian Mast, a combat veteran who lost both legs to an insurgent bomb while fighting in the Army in Afghanistan, told Fox News that he is furious over the move.

“Memorial Day traditions like Rolling to Remember have been granted permits by every administration, Democrat and Republican, for the past 30 years. The Biden Administration’s decision to end this Memorial Day tradition flies in...

Executives with the U.S. Steel Corp. announced days ago that they are canceling a $1.5 billion project in western Pennsylvania that was set to bring thousands of middle-class union jobs to the region, a move that many are now blaming on Democrats and environmental groups.

On April 30, U.S. Steel President David Burritt announced that a $1.5 billion project to majorly improve its Mon Valley Works operation with state-of-the-art steel casting, rolling technology, and a cogeneration plant is being canceled.

The project’s cancelation means that about 1,000 union construction jobs will be lost for the region. Likely thousands more U.S. jobs in supporting industries will be lost as a result.

Also, U.S. Steel is idling Batties 1, 2, and 3 at its Clairton Plant by 2023, which accounts for about 17 percent of coke production. The decision is intended to improve “environmental performance.” That decision, U.S. Steel executives said, is unlikely to lead to layoffs for its 130 full-time employees at Batties 1, 2, and 3.

The cancelation of the Mon Valley Works investment came after U.S. Steel’s permitting process with the Allegheny County Health Department was delayed due to the Chinese coronavirus crisis.

Burritt mentioned in his announcement:

We commissioned the manufacturing of the equipment and began site preparations. However, with over $170 million invested and equipment being stored in Pittsburgh-area warehouses, we’re still only at the beginning stages of project execution. By contrast, during this same time period, a competing steel manufacturer in another state announced a new steel mill and will be ready to make steel this year.

A lot has changed in those two years. At the onset of the pandemic, U. S. Steel agreed with the need for the County Health Department to temporarily delay its permitting process for the Mon Valley Works, but this delay allowed for a consequential window of time during which we expanded our understanding of steelmaking’s future in a rapidly decarbonizing world. The world is changing rapidly and we’re on the ten-yard line with 90 yards ahead of us.

Republicans and others in Pennsylvania are now placing blame on Democrats and their allies in the environmental lobby for creating a hostile business environment that helped kill off the job-creating project.

State Sen. Kim Ward (R-PA) wrote in a series of posts that Allegheny County officials had kowtowed “to the extreme environmental groups without actually looking at the facts or consider the fall out.”

“What happened today is the result of local government leaders letting radical environmental groups like PennFuture, GASP and Breathe PA, funded in part by elitist Pittsburgh Foundations, bully them into...