Category: Economy

Energy Corporation Says Up to 30 Percent of Its Wind Turbines Could Be Malfunctioning

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Siemens Energy announced Thursday that it will be undergoing a technical review after it was found that up to 30% of its wind turbines could have faulty components, according to statements made by the company.

Siemens Energy, an international energy company that seeks to “decarbonize global energy systems,” announced that it is withdrawing its profit guidance for the year after subsidiary Siemens Gamesa found that there was a “substantial increase in failure rates of wind turbine components.” The company believes that between 15% and 30% of its installed fleets are suffering from component failures, Jochen Eickholt, CEO of Siemens Gamesa, said during a Friday morning analyst call.

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BlackRock Recruiter Says $10k ‘Can Buy a Senator,’ Calls Ukraine War ‘Good for Business’: Video

Just the News

A recruiter for BlackRock said that the asset management firm is able to “buy a senator” for $10,000 and that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is “good for business,” according to a video recorded by an undercover journalist.

“You could buy your candidates. First, there is the senators. These guys are f***ing cheap. Got 10 grand? You can buy a senator. I’ll give you 500k right now. It doesn’t matter who wins, they’re in my pocket,” BlackRock Recruiter Serge Varlay said in a video published Tuesday by the O’Keefe Media Group, which was founded by guerilla journalist James O’Keefe.

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Remote Workers Leaving Democratic Cities in Droves

Florida Capital Star Staff

A new study shows that employees who are still working remotely are actively fleeing Democrat-run cities in the thousands.

As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, the data from American Community Survey showed that a number of the largest cities in the country, all controlled by Democrats, continue to be the hardest-hit by an ongoing exodus of remote workers. The most severe net migration loss was in New York City, which lost approximately 116,000 remote employees. Los Angeles lost 53,000, while San Francisco saw an exodus of 32,000, and at least 29,000 left Chicago.

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Mayo Clinic Professor Michael Joyner Suspended after Saying Testosterone Improves Athletic Performance

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A Mayo Clinic College of Medicine professor was recently suspended — and remains under the threat of termination — after he told a news outlet his stance on trans-athletes in women’s sports and plasma treatments for COVID-19.

Administrators suspended Professor Michael Joyner without pay for a week, citing his “use of idiomatic language” and comments he made in a June 2022 New York Times article as justification for the disciplinary actions, according to a March 5 disciplinary letter that recently came to light.

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Commentary: Energy Companies Are Finally Backtracking on Their Absurd Green Goals

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Is the public finally waking up to the inherent absurdities taking place in the energy space in the U.S. and across the Western world in recent years? Recent votes taken on ESG and climate change-related shareholder initiatives at major oil company annual board meetings indicate that may well be the case.

Though it has received scant attention across the legacy news media in general, the Financial Times reported recently that such shareholder initiatives were overwhelmingly rejected by shareholders of both ExxonMobil and Chevron, with most receiving less than 10 percent support. Similar initiatives in the previous few years would typically generate support in the 30-40 percent range, with a handful even gaining majority support.

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Commentary: Recent Headlines Claiming Sucralose ‘Damages DNA’ Are Scary, But What Does the Study Really Say?

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When I went back to the U.S. for the first time in several years last year, I made an incredible discovery. It’s called Sparkling Ice and is sold separately or in 12-packs of 17 ounces (curious size) and has a ton of flavors that mostly taste alike but taste very good. Sparkling ice contains the artificial sweetener sucralose and is also lightly carbonated (low carbon footprint!) so that I didn’t drink it like water; I essentially drank it instead of water.

But lo! Newsweek headline: “America’s Most Popular Artificial Sweetener Damages Our DNA, Scientists Say.” You know, like atomic bomb victims. The alleged result is a leaky gut, and you don’t have to know exactly what that means to know it’s probably not good. Except it may not even be real; but we’ll get to that.

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Commentary: California’s War Against Prosperity

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According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy, generating 44 percent of all business activity. Take them out of the equation, and the economy collapses. But that is exactly what’s happening. The cards are stacked against small businesses in America today, and nowhere is it worse than in the state of California. 

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Florida’s DeSantis Signs State Record $117 Billion Budget

The Center Square

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the state’s record-setting budget on Thursday which will increase state employee salaries, spend $1.6 billion on restoring the Everglades ecosystem and speed up infrastructure projects across the Sunshine State.

House Bill 2500 is the General Appropriations Act and the state budget for fiscal year 2023-24. Dubbed the “Framework For Freedom Budget” by the DeSantis administration, the bill provides $117 billion in state funding for projects across the state, including increases in education funding, teacher salaries and recruitment bonuses to attract more law enforcement officers.

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UPS Unionized Workers Vote to Authorize a Strike

Just the News

As contract negotiations continue, UPS workers who are part of the Teamsters union voted overwhelmingly to organize a strike that could start as soon as the beginning of August. 

The union wants better pay, elimination of surveillance cameras in the trucks and more full time jobs, according to CBS News. To bolster their case, the Teamsters point to record profits for UPS in 2022, saying the company paid out more that $8 billion in shareholder dividends. 

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Watchdog: Feds Wasted $683 Million Per Day in Improper Payments in 2022

The Center Square

The federal government wasted over a half a trillion dollars in improper payments during the first two years of the Biden administration, a new analysis from a spending watchdog group found.

The analysis comes from Open The Books, which reports that 82 programs across 17 agencies made improper payments in fiscal year 2022 alone, averaging $20.5 billion per month, or $683 million per day.

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USDA to Crack Down on False Labeling in Meat and Poultry Industry

The Center Square

The U.S. Department of Agriculture will be cracking down on false claims on labeling of meat claiming it is “grass-fed,” “free-range,” “raised without antibiotics,” or “no antibiotics ever.”

The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service has received petitions, comments and letters asking the agency to boost oversight of marketing claims made by the meat and poultry industry, the agency said Wednesday in a news release. The agency will then determine if it needs to do more rulemaking on the industry’s claims.

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Florida Tax Revenue Continues to Exceed Expectations

The Center Square

Tax revenue in the Sunshine State is exceeding projections, according to a recent report from the Office of Economic and Demographic Research.

General revenue collections for April showed a gain of $384.8 million, 7.9% higher than what was forecast by the General Revenue Estimating Conference held in March with 72% of that revenue from corporate income tax.

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Inflation Rises Slightly in May

The Center Square

The latest federal data released Tuesday showed that inflation rose slightly last month.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its Consumer Price Index for May, a federal marker of inflation that rose 0.1% last month, part of a 4% increase in the previous 12 months. Most economists say 2% to 3% inflation is healthy for the economy.

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America’s Biggest Public Pension Has No Plans to Pull Investments from China as Others Flee

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The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) has no plans to divest from Chinese assets despite other large pensions pulling funds due to geopolitical risks, according to a statement given to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

CalPERS, which is the largest U.S. public pension and covers California’s public employees, has “no [sic] new initiatives to announce at this time,” a spokesperson told the DCNF when asked if CalPERS would divest from Chinese assets. The DCNF calculated over $3.6 billion in Chinese investments across numerous Chinese companies in the pension’s portfolio from its 2022 fiscal year report.

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Commentary: Credit Card ‘Processing Fee’ Legislation Only Benefits the Woke Corporations

Florida Capital Star Staff

Woke retailers like Target are lining up in support of what last year I called ‘smash and grab’ legislation worth billions of dollars by mandating changes to how credit cards are processed. Senator Dick Durbin succeeded in getting language put into the 2010 Dodd-Frank bill that imposed massive new regulations on the banking industry which changed the processing of debit card transactions.  Guess who got and kept the windfall in lower processing fees?  If you answered the big box retailers, you are right.

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Jobless Claims Soar to Highest Levels Since 2021

Florida Capital Star Staff

The number of Americans who filed new unemployment claims increased more than expected to 261,000 in the week ending June 3, the Department of Labor (DOL) reported Thursday.

Claims rose 28,000 compared to the previous week’s revised level, the highest number since October 2021, when it was 264,000, according to the DOL. This substantially exceeded the median forecast, which was 236,000, according to MarketWatch.

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Bud Light Sponsoring ‘All Ages’ Drag Queen Pride Party

Florida Capital Star Staff

Bud Light is sponsoring an all-ages Pride event and after-party featuring drag queens in Flagstaff, Arizona, according to advertisements.

The June 17 after-party features several famous drag queens and will take place after Flagstaff’s 27th annual Pride in the Pines, and both events list Bud Light as a sponsor. The after-party is open to “all ages,” and participants under 16 years old require a guardian to attend, according to an online flyer.

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Biden Moves to Shift Power over Defense Contracts to Climate Activist ‘Cabal’ Bent on Curtailing Economic Growth

Florida Capital Star Staff

The Biden White House is pushing to give veto power over major Pentagon contracts to a group of climate activist groups that advocate for establishing “guardrails” on economic growth, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation.

The White House proposed a rule in November that requires major contractors for the Department of Defense (DOD), NASA, and Government Services Agency (GSA) to submit climate-related goals to a consortium of activist organizations, called the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), for validation. If the SBTi rejects the contractor’s plan to reduce emissions, the company would no longer be eligible to compete.

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Federal Judge Recuses Himself in Disney Lawsuit Against DeSantis

The Center Square

New details have emerged about the legal battle between the state of Florida and the Walt Disney Company after the presiding judge recused himself from the case.

U.S. Judge Allen Winsor (appointed by former President Donald Trump) will take over the case after U.S. Judge Mark Walker (a former President Barack Obama appointee) recused himself on Thursday. On Friday, Winsor issued an order setting a deadline for June 26 for the state of Florida to file a motion to dismiss the case and gave a deadline of July 26 for Disney to file a counter filing.

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DOD ‘Bait and Switch’ with Emergency and Licensed COVID Vaccines Killed Student, Lawsuit Alleges

Just the News

The Pentagon conducted “human experimentation without consent” by falsely advertising a COVID-19 vaccine under emergency use authorization as fully licensed, a “bait and switch” that killed a college student, according to a new lawsuit against Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin by the student’s estate.

George Watts was waiting for FDA approval of Pfizer’s Comirnaty to fulfill the COVID vaccine mandate at New York’s Corning Community College, which provided a 35-day grace period for compliance following Comirnaty’s Aug. 23, 2021, approval, the filing states.

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Texas Governor Aims to Eliminate Property Taxes

The Center Square

Gov. Greg Abbott says his goal is to eliminate homeowners’ property taxes in the state of Texas. He says it’s possible to achieve over time because of the significant economic growth of the state.

All three Republican leaders, Abbott, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and Speaker Dade Phelan, have pledged to reduce property taxes and made it a legislative priority.

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California Senate Passes $25 Minimum Wage for Healthcare Workers

The Center Square

A $25 minimum wage bill for healthcare workers was passed on Wednesday in the California Senate. The partisan bill did not receive a single Republican vote in its 21-11 passage. Authored by Senator Maria Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles), and championed by the Service Employees International Union, the bill proposes to increase the state’s minimum wage for healthcare workers.

Healthcare workers at general acute care hospitals, acute psychiatric hospitals, medical offices and clinics, behavioral health centers, dialysis clinics and residential care centers as well as as certified nursing assistants, patient aides, technicians, and food service workers, among many others can all expect a wage increase, if the bill becomes law. All paid work performed on the premises of any covered health care facility, regardless of the identity of the employer qualifies for the increase.

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Commentary: Green Energy Has a Dirty Secret

Florida Capital Star Staff

As with most things espoused in the name of social progress, the left’s aggressive push for EV technology conveniently forgets the lives of those affected by it the most.

“On my watch, the great American road trip is going to be fully electrified…you can get up to $7,500 on a new electric vehicle,” Biden exclaimed during a photo-op in a shiny electric Hummer. I bet that tax credit will come in handy when the average American is forced to buy a $60,000 EV after gas-powered cars are banned outright.

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Small Businesses Struggle to Fill Job Openings, Report Finds

The Center Square

A newly released survey of small businesses shows that nearly half are having trouble filling job openings.

The National Federation of Independent Businesses released the survey, which found that 44% of small business owners report being unable to fill current job openings, a full 20 points higher than the average reading over the last 49 years.

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Economy Added 339K Jobs in May, Nearly Double Wall Street Expectations

Just the News

U.S. employers have added roughly 339,000 jobs in May, and the monthly unemployment rate rose to 3.7%, from a five-decade low of 3.4% in April, according to a Labor Department report released Friday.

Average hourly earnings rose 0.3% for the month while on an annual basis, wages increased 4.3%, which was a 0.1 percentage point under the estimate.

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Commentary: Don’t Believe The Jobs Day Hype — Americans Are Still Getting Poorer

Florida Capital Star Staff

Friday’s jobs report shows 339,000 jobs were created in May, beating expectations again. While Democrats and the media celebrate, the labor market condition is not as strong as this topline number suggests.

The report shows that real wages continue to decline. For the 26th consecutive month, average wages grew slower than inflation. The Biden presidency will forever be marked as one where Americans got poorer and saw their living standards decline.

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Commentary: The Real Cost of the Debt-Ceiling Deal

Florida Capital Star Staff

President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy spent weeks of negotiating to authorize $4 trillion in new deficit spending over the next two years. This means that our national debt will be $35 trillion in 2025. The interest cost will be up to $1.4 trillion annually, only a small amount less than the current cost of national defense and Social Security combined. This staggering debt undermines the future prosperity of every American.

Federal spending contributes to a sense of entitlement, including for every person receiving federal largesse. Think of the adverse impact of federal student loans. President Barack Obama promised that government-granted student college loans would be more efficient, but these loans have, in fact, ballooned the cost of college. Concurrently, colleges have reduced quality outcomes and propagandized students, undermining our society because many students are hopelessly in debt. Now, progressives in Congress want to terminate the provision requiring repayment of student loans. For many of our young workforce, the burden of high student loans precludes marriage and buying a house.

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Bud Light Shells Out $200,000 to LGBT Business Organization amid Dylan Mulvaney Backlash, Cratering Sales

Florida Capital Star Staff

Bud Light is making a $200,000 donation to the National LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) to support “economic opportunities and advancements for LGBTQ+ Americans,” according to a press release from its parent company Anheuser-Busch.

The company suffered significant losses after many Americans began a boycott of Bud Light earlier this month, after the brand created a special beer can for transgender TikTok influencer Dylan Mulvaney. In the wake of the fallout, Anheuser-Busch released a statement Monday, saying that it was “extending [its] partnership” with NGLCC by donating $200,000 to the Communities of Color Initiative (CoCi) and the CoCi Biz Pitch program.

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Despite Inflationary Pressures, Record Numbers of Tourists Visited Florida

The Center Square
People on the beach during daytime

Florida is one of the top destinations for vacationers and the state’s economy has experienced a boost as other states continue to feel the effects of shutting down during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Florida experienced record tourism numbers in the first quarter of 2023. Around 37.9 million visitors poured into the Sunshine State between January and March, the largest number of visitors ever recorded in a single quarter, according to Visit Florida estimates.

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DeSantis Blasts McCarthy Over Budget Deal for ‘Careening Towards Bankruptcy’

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by Harold Hutchison   Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida ripped House Speaker Kevin McCarthy early Monday over the debt ceiling deal, calling it “totally inadequate” when it came to addressing spending. “Prior to this deal, Kayleigh, our country was careening toward bankruptcy and after this deal, our country will…

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Nuclear Energy Renaissance Emerges as Counterbalance to Democrats’ ‘Green New Deal’

Just the News

by Addison Smith   Alternative clean energy plans to the Democrats’ Green New Deal are getting a boost from a new generation of nuclear energy technology, which can produce zero-carbon emission electricity with a much smaller footprint than earlier reactors. The innovations and advances of the nuclear power industry are…

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McCarthy-Biden Debt Deal Eliminates Unspent COVID Funds, Blocks IRS Expansion and Reforms Permitting

Just the News

The debt limit deal struck late Saturday between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden rolls back some of Washington’s massive spending while delivering other conservative priorities like blocking new taxes and requiring some welfare recipients to work, according to a summary obtained by Just the News.

McCarthy described the deal as an “agreement in principle,” and it rolls back domestic spending to fiscal year 2022 levels while limiting “top line federal spending to 1% growth for the next 6 years.”

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States See Chinese Purchase of Farmland as a Threat to National Security

The Center Square

Several states have already banned or are considering banning foreign ownership of farmland from U.S. adversaries such as China, a trend that has its recent roots in North Dakota.

Chinese food manufacturer Fufeng Group purchased 370 acres of land for a corn milling plant in Grand Forks in November 2021.

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Tax Documents Show Black Lives Matter Lost Millions in 2022

Florida Capital Star Staff

The official Black Lives Matter organization lost millions of dollars in 2022, according to recently unearthed tax returns.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Black Lives Matter Global Foundation Network saw a deficit of $8.5 million in 2022, and also lost $10 million from its investment accounts. In addition, the group recorded a loss of $961,000 on a securities sale of $172,000, amounting to a roughly 85 percent loss as a result of the transaction.

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House Follows Senate in Voting for Resolution to Halt Tougher EPA Vehicle Emission Standards

Florida Capital Star Staff

The GOP-led House on Tuesday voted in favor of a resolution to strike down the Environmental Protection Agency’s  emissions restrictions for heavy-duty trucks. 

The joint-chamber resolution, which passed the House by a 221-203 vote, was introduced by Republican lawmakers in February via the Congressional Review Act (CRA) – a law that allows Congress to reverse rules made by a federal agency.

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Fraud Report: $38 Million in Pandemic Relief Aid Sent to Dead People

The Center Square

Data scientists from the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee identified nearly $38 million in potentially improper or fraudulent pandemic loans were obtained using Social Security Numbers of dead people.

The loans were made through both the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan program and Paycheck Protection Program.

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GOP Lawmakers Raise Concerns About WHO’s Pandemic Preparedness Treaty, US Involvement in Agency

Just the News

The World Health Organization, widely considered the most powerful health authority in the world, is pursuing a Pandemic Preparedness Treaty that critics say could make the organization even more powerful and jeopardize U.S. sovereignty.

The United Nations-affiliated WHO says the draft treaty – or “zero draft” – is designed to protect the world from future pandemics and last December announced that member states “agreed to develop the first draft of such as a legally binding agreement.”

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Commentary: Any Debt ‘Default’ Will Be Biden’s Choice

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There’s enough revenue to pay interest on the debt even if the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling is reached.

Meaning, if the U.S. defaults on the debt on June 1, it will be because President Joe Biden chose not to make principal and interest payments on U.S. Treasuries out of existing revenue, for which there is more than ample revenues to service and refinance up to the current debt ceiling limit, $31.4 trillion.

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Americans’ Inflation Pain Hits a New High

The Center Square

Regardless of a slowdown in the rise of inflation, Americans report that higher prices are causing financial hardship, a new poll indicates.

Gallup released the poll data Thursday, which found that 61% of those surveyed say price hikes have caused financial hardship, up from 49% in January of last year. That 61% figure is a high point for Americans since Gallup began tracking the data in 2021, when inflation was growing faster.

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