Category Archives: Industry Jobs Oil Economics

Are you a Victim of Quiet Quitting?

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Customer service, support and quality across the country regardless of the industry is collapsing. Whether it be healthcare, retail, government, manufacturing, professionnal sports or education, employees just do maybe the bare minimum in their job performance to get by. No, they don’t want to quit their job, they want the paycheck, but they are part of a trend and it is hurting the economic stability of the whole country.

Customer service is collapsing, I can personally name at least 7 companies just in the last week I am dealing with beginning with T-Mobile and more from there.

Quiet quitting festers on TikTok.

Le Quiet Quitting, une “tendance” qui a deux siècles
www.radiofrance.fr

The Wall Street Journal describes the employment scandal as follows:

Not taking your job too seriously has a new name: quiet quitting.

The phrase is generating millions of views on TikTok as some young professionals reject the idea of going above and beyond in their careers, labeling their lesser enthusiasm a form of “quitting.” It isn’t about getting off the company payroll, these employees say. In fact, the idea is to stay on it—but focus your time on the things you do outside of the office.

The videos range from sincere ruminations on work-life balance to snarky jokes. Some set firm boundaries against overtime in favor of family. Others advocate coasting from 9-to-5, doing just enough to get by. Many want to untether their careers from their identities.

Of course, every generation enters the workforce and quickly realizes that having a job isn’t all fun and games. Navigating contemptible bosses and the petty indignities that have always been inflicted on the ranks of working stiffs has never been easy. And many people who say, when they’re young, that they don’t care about climbing the corporate ladder end up changing their minds.

The difference now is that this group has TikTok and hashtags to emote. And these 20-somethings joined the working world during the Covid-19 pandemic, with all of its dislocating effects, including blurred boundaries between work and life. Many workers say they feel they have power to push back in the current strong labor market. Recent data from Gallup shows employee engagement is declining.

Clayton Farris, 41 years old, said that when he recently heard about the new term circulating on social media he realized he’d already been doing it by refusing to let work worries rule over him the way they used to.

“The most interesting part about it is nothing’s changed,” he said in his TikTok video. “I still work just as hard. I still get just as much accomplished. I just don’t stress and internally rip myself to shreds.”

Across generations, U.S. employee engagement is falling, according to survey data from Gallup, but Gen Z and younger millennials, born in 1989 and after, reported the lowest engagement of all during the first quarter at 31%.

Jim Harter, chief scientist for Gallup’s workplace and well-being research, said workers’ descriptions of “quiet quitting” align with a large group of survey respondents that he classifies as “not engaged”—those who will show up to work and do the minimum required but not much else. More than half of workers surveyed by Gallup who were born after 1989—54%—fall into this category.

One factor Gallup uses to measure engagement is whether people feel their work has purpose. Younger employees report that they don’t feel that way, the data show. These are the people who are more likely to work passively and look out for themselves over their employers, Dr. Harter said.

Paige West, 24, said she stopped overextending herself at a former position as a transportation analyst in Washington, D.C., less than a year into the job. Work stress had gotten so intense that, she said, her hair was falling out and she couldn’t sleep. While looking for a new role, she no longer worked beyond 40 hours each week, didn’t sign up for extra training and stopped trying to socialize with colleagues.

“I took a step back and said, ‘I’m just going to work the hours I’m supposed to work, that I’m really getting paid to work,’” she said. “Besides that, I’m not going to go extra.”

Ms. West said that she found herself more engaged during meetings once she stopped trying so hard, and she received more positive feedback. She left the job last year and is now a full-time freelance virtual assistant making about 75% of her previous salary. She adjusted by moving back to her home state of Florida.

Zaid Khan, a 24-year-old engineer in New York, posted a quiet quitting video that has racked up three million views in two weeks. In his viral TikTok, Mr. Khan explained the concept this way: “You’re quitting the idea of going above and beyond.”

“You’re no longer subscribing to the hustle-culture mentality that work has to be your life,” he said.

Mr. Khan says he and many of his peers reject the idea that productivity trumps all; they don’t see the payoff.

Some online commenters pledged to relax on social media when they had downtime at work. Others say they will follow their job descriptions to the letter, instead of asking for additional assignments.

A new crop of quiet-quitting videos is starting to pop up, denouncing the move as a cop-out, not a cure-all for burnout or discontentment at work.

People who coast have been fixtures of the office for decades, but many of today’s less-invested employees have been able to skate by thanks to remote work, said Elise Freedman, a senior client partner at consulting firm Korn Ferry.

If the economy sours, Ms. Freedman said, less-engaged workers may be more at risk of layoffs. “It’s perfectly appropriate that we expect our employees to give their all,” she said.

Josh Bittinger, a 32-year-old market-research director at a management-consulting company, said people who stumble on the phrase “quiet quitting” may assume it encourages people to be lazy, when it actually reminds them to not work to the point of burnout.

After years of saying “yes” to everything, in hopes of standing out, Mr. Bittinger said he’s learned to say no more, reserves evenings for himself and avoids checking email on vacation.

“I get my job done, my projects done. I’m performing well and I get good feedback,” he said. “And I’m able to still take time to just step away from everything.”

The United States Submission to China

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Scott Pelly of 60 Minutes aired an interview with President Biden and National Review noted this in part:

PELLEY: It’s the highest inflation rate, Mr. President, in 40 years.

BIDEN: I got that. But guess what we are. We’re in a position where for the last several months it hasn’t spiked. It has just barely, it’s been basically even, and in the meantime, we’ve created all these jobs, and prices have gone up, but they’ve been down for energy. The fact is that we’ve created 10 million new jobs, we’re in, since we came to office, we’re in a situation where we, the unemployment rate is up at 3.7 percent, one of the lowest in history, we’re in a situation where manufacturing is coming back to the United States in a big way, and look down the road, we have massive investments being made in computer chips and employment, so I, look, this is a process, this is a process.

Inflation is the top political concern for voters right now, and according to a recent poll, 59 percent of voters who name inflation as their top concern plan to vote Republican in November. “This is a process” is not likely to persuade them out of that choice.

***

Is it a process to allow China to have access to limitless investment in the United States in the form of real estate, technology, education and social media to list a few? Seems so –>

***

What's Pushing China's Tech Sector So Far Ahead? - Knowledge at Wharton citation

Wharton summarizes it much the same way. In part:

Knowledge at Wharton: How has the tech sector in China been able to develop so quickly?

Fannin: Some of it has to do with venture capital investment. And some of that venture capital investment has come from Sand Hill Road [Silicon Valley], funded by our pension funds, our universities, our endowments, our family offices. But I also think a lot of it has to do with China’s own entrepreneurial culture. It’s innovating very fast. It’s moving very swiftly. They are working nonstop. China’s entrepreneurs and the tech sector are just very ambitious. It’s unstoppable.

Knowledge at Wharton: “Social” seems to be a key word when talking about the Chinese economy. Are e-commerce and social media playing big roles in China’s becoming such an influential global player?

Fannin: Social commerce is all about online shopping and sharing and prizes and games. It’s a business model that we really don’t have in the U.S. Social commerce has come on very strong. There is a [group-buying platform] called Pinduoduo, which went public in New York last year and has gone on to become one of these tech giants in just three years’ time. They are already China’s second-largest e-commerce player, and they’ve developed this whole new business model around social commerce.

WSJ: Chinese investment in U.S. venture-capital funds is flowing, demonstrating that economic ties between Silicon Valley and China remain deep despite political and national security risks, according to investors, government officials and a new report.

Chinese investment is on pace to reach about $880 million this year, the second-highest level in at least a dozen years, according to the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The report, a novel effort to quantify the opaque flow of money from China to U.S. venture-capital firms, shows Chinese government entities, funds, private individuals and corporations have invested at least $4 billion into U.S. venture firms since 2010, with at least another $3.5 billion going to U.S. private-equity firms.

Silicon Valley investors and national security analysts say Chinese capital continues to back U.S. venture-capital firms large and small, sometimes accounting for a fraction of a venture fund and at times much more. U.S. government officials say their primary concerns have less to do with the amount invested, but are more about the investors’ personal and business relationships in Beijing, ability to access technical information and influence at the venture-capital firm.

The issue, said government officials, is that the Chinese can use their roles as investors to gain know-how for launching a startup or scaling a technology company. Such insights can inform how Beijing funds and develops technology in areas strategically important to the U.S., such as semiconductors and artificial intelligence, according to the think tank report.

Chinese capital is found in large global funds Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, and smaller Silicon Valley firms including Playground Global, GSR Ventures, Foothill Ventures and 11.2 Capital, according to the report and investors at those firms.

“I think the Chinese are as aggressive as ever” in targeting U.S. startups, said Michael Brown, outgoing director of the Defense Department’s Silicon Valley Defense Innovation Unit and author of a 2017 report that drew national attention to the role of Chinese capital in U.S. startups.

Foothill Ventures said Chinese investors contributed 1.59% of its current assets under management, and GSR Ventures said less than 5% of its U.S. fund came from China. Chinese investors are contributors to Lightspeed’s China fund only, and Sequoia’s China unit operates independently, spokeswomen for the firms said. The other firms declined to comment.

The think tank report’s findings highlight an area of resilience in the U.S.-China relationship as the two countries decouple their economies and U.S. policies aim to limit Chinese investment in U.S. technology sectors. According to the report, Chinese investment this year is set to be around nine times greater than a decade ago and come in below only 2020, when more than $1.2 billion flowed to American venture-capital funds.

Tracking Chinese investment in the U.S. is challenging because the limited partners who fund venture-capital firms often don’t make public disclosures, sometimes use labyrinthine structures to shroud investments and frequently ask firms in which they have invested to keep their identities secret. The report’s authors said the dollar figures undercount the actual total.

“Limited partner capital flows are grossly underestimated for their strategic value and effect,” said Nathan Picarsic, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who co-wrote the report, called “The Weaponization of Capital,” along with his colleague Emily de La Bruyère. “Their influence shapes how the venture capitalist thinks, because the limited partners are the venture capitalist’s customers.”

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies is a Washington-based nonprofit with conservative leanings; its work advocates an aggressive U.S. response to challenges posed by China.

“China is always opposed to the U.S. generalizing the concept of national security and strengthening unreasonable investment review,” said Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington. He said the U.S. has used national security arguments to “put obstacles in the way of normal investment.”

nvolvement by Chinese investors varies. Many are seeking a financial return and don’t have or want access to nonpublic information about individual startups, venture investors said. Other limited partners request introductions to startup founders or presentations from them, and get quarterly updates on startups’ progress and insights into technology sector trends, they said.

In a 2020 lawsuit, former partners at Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Hone Capital allege that the firm’s Chinese investor, China Science and Merchants Investment Management Group Co., Ltd., directed them to bring around 20 startups each quarter to China to pursue partnerships, joint ventures and additional investment. The lawsuit, which is ongoing, alleges the demands were problematic because of “legal issues regarding sharing sensitive technology with China.”

“They leveraged the system in the U.S. to gain access to more than 300 companies,” said Purvi Gandhi, a former Hone Capital partner.

The Border Czar is Cass Sunstein NOT Kamala

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Stop blaming Kamala, blame Biden himself. The president has filled his administration with militants and radicals. There is no denial. It was 14 years ago that Glenn Beck did they work and declared on this point that Cass Sunstein was the most dangerous man in government.

“There is a reason that I have called Cass Sunstein the most dangerous man in America,” Glenn said on radio this morning.

ProgressivesToday.com, the website co-founded by Kyle Olsen, the co-author of Glenn’s latest book Conform: Exposing the Truth About Common Core and Public Education, was the first to draw attention to the spooky article from the Nudge author.

Sunstein begins the article wondering what would happen if a government began a program with the explicit goal of indoctrination students:

Suppose that an authoritarian government decides to embark on a program of curricular reform, with the explicit goal of indoctrinating the nation’s high school students. Suppose that it wants to change the curriculum to teach students that their government is good and trustworthy, that their system is democratic and committed to the rule of law, and that free markets are a big problem.

Will such a government succeed? Or will high school students simply roll their eyes?

Questions of this kind have long been debated, but without the benefit of reliable evidence. New research, from Davide Cantoni of the University of Munich and several co-authors, shows that recent curricular reforms in China, explicitly designed to transform students’ political views, have mostly worked. The findings offer remarkable evidence about the potential influence of the high school curriculum on what students end up thinking — and they give us some important insights into contemporary China as well.

He goes on to explain that the indoctrination program began in 2001 when the country made “significant changes in the textbooks used by students in grades 10, 11 and 12.” Ultimately, Sunstein questions whether such a program could produce similar outcomes in a non-authoritarian country.

At the time, Sunstein was the regulatory czar…now….today he is at DHS and in charge of destroying the sovereignty of the United States as the real border czar. Obviously more dangerous today for reasons too long to list but certainly Biden has accepted the Sunstein doctrine to collapse control of immigration.

It was in 2021 that the following was published by Bloomberg:

Harvard’s Sunstein Joins Biden’s DHS to Shape Immigration Rules

  • Progressive groups had raised concern about Sunstein’s record
  • His wife is Biden nominee for international development agency

In part:

Former Obama administration official Cass Sunstein on Monday joined the Department of Homeland Security, where President Joe Biden is moving rapidly to roll back Donald Trump’s immigration policy priorities.

Sunstein is a senior counselor who will be responsible for making sure that the rules put forward by the department and its agencies are based on evidence and consistent with the law, an administration official said.

In 2018, Sunstein received the Holberg Prize, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for law and the humanities, from Norway’s government. He also worked in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during the Carter and Reagan administrations.

Sunstein’s wife, Samantha Power, is Biden’s nominee for administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Power’s financial disclosures showed Sunstein earning consulting fees from Apple Inc. and Global Asset Capital LLC, as well as advisory fees and stock options from Humu Inc. He also reported royalties from dozens of book publications. More here.

***

This past January, Bloomberg also reported:

The impasse over President Joe Biden’s immigration wish list on Capitol Hill has increased pressure on a Department of Homeland Security official working to overhaul the system through regulation.

The administration last year tapped Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein to advise on DHS regulations. The legal scholar is best known for his role as the Obama White House’s rulemaking czar and his writings on behavioral economics and regulation — not the finer points of homeland security.

Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas wanted someone equipped for the regulatory challenges the agency faces on immigration, as well as disaster response, aviation security, and other DHS matters, Sunstein said in an interview.

“The first obligation is to do it right,” he said.

The immigration proposals in the works at DHS are critical to meeting at least part of Biden’s ambitious campaign pledge to create a path to citizenship for millions, end long-term detention, and revamp the legal immigration system. The congressional stalemate has made DHS-led efforts more urgent.

DHS first unwound several of former President Donald Trump’s policies, from restricting entry to the U.S. and expanding enforcement. Next, the agency is focused on reducing backlogs in the asylum system and reinforcing protections for immigrants brought to the U.S. as children without authorization.

Photo: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
Cass Sunstein speaks at an event at AOL Studios on May 31, 2016, in New York City.

Sunstein is shepherding those efforts. Officially, he is senior counselor to the secretary and co-chair of the agency’s climate change action group. Unofficially, he’s the wonk tasked with restoring order in a department battered by public criticism and leadership gaps during the Trump administration.

“I sensed that there was a real appetite for, let’s say, good order,” Sunstein said of the DHS regulatory team’s attitude when he joined the agency almost a year ago.

Sunstein is working on regulations and internal processes across the department’s portfolio, but immigration has taken center stage.

The agency is attempting to cement protections in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which launched via an Obama-era memorandum and has never been reinforced in an official rulemaking. The proposed rule already faces headwinds after a federal court questioned the department’s authority to offer such status.

Another proposal would revamp the asylum process for border crossers, letting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers adjudicate claims instead of funneling them to backlogged immigration courts.

The approach would streamline the process “so that people who don’t deserve asylum can get that answer in short order and they won’t live in Dante’s purgatory,” Sunstein said. “People who deserve asylum will get that answer in shorter order,” he added.

DHS is also working on a rule that would clarify who’s eligible for asylum. The department will likely release a draft this year, Sunstein said.

“Neither of these is on the backburner,” he said of the asylum measures. The Biden administration on Thursday finalized an increase in visas for temporary nonagricultural workers.

“With Congress not making any major changes in the immigration space right now, regulations are often the best way to make lasting change in the way the laws are interpreted within the department,” American Immigration Council policy counsel Aaron Reichlin-Melnick said.

Bolstering Rules

At the same time, Republicans have taken up border security as a cudgel against Democrats in the lead-up to the midterm elections, and GOP-led states are taking the fight to federal courts — with frequent success so far.

That gives Sunstein the critical job of anticipating possible critiques and making sure the agency’s actions can withstand them. His placement in DHS shows the Biden administration recognizes the legal hazards that lie ahead, former agency official Theresa Cardinal Brown said.

Sunstein “knows the process probably better than just about anybody else you could find right now,” said Brown, now managing director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “He literally has written books on this.” Read more here.

I'd consider a White House job offer in a heartbeat' - Dublin-born former advisor to Barack Obama - Independent.ie source and adjacent article here

At the very least, czars should be defunded and let the FOIA requests begin.

 

The FDA Dispatched US Marshals to Shutdown an Amish Rancher

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Perhaps the Federal government needs to spend time in the classroom understanding religion and the culture of the Amish for starters. We all know about chemicals and additives in our food, beverages, medicines and water. We have come to understand all things GMO and for that reason, organic food products have been all over the grocery shelves for many years. No one understands GMO and organic farming more than the Amish. So why is the Federal government aggressively working to terminate Amos Miller’s farm operation in Pennsylvania? Simply put…POWER

In full disclosure, I personally have spent time on Amish farms and they are extraordinary well run operation.

“Amos Miller Organic Farm is our century-old Amish family farm in Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania – serving its Private Member Association. The farm raises its animals and other pure foods the way nature intended and we are proud to be entirely chemical, cruelty and GMO-free. The animals are born and raised without antibiotics or hormones and they spend their entire lives naturally and stress-free out on pasture. All of the farm’s food is traceable, pure and grown on nutrient dense soil, under traditional time-honored methods.
The farm is now under attack by the USDA about non-conforming practices, the practices which pre-date the USDA. They are suing the farm to comply with USDA laws, concerning the way the farm animals are processed and how our food is labeled. The farm and its members believe that we have the right of free assembly and the right to choose how our food is processed and consumed without the USDA dictating to the farm. (hat tip Andrew Torba)

But read on.

In part from Rebel News:

Miller’s Organic Farm is located in the remote Amish village of Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania. The farm supplies everything from grass-fed beef and cheese, to raw milk and organic eggs, to dairy from grass-fed water buffalo and all types of produce, all to roughly 4,000 private food club members who pay top dollar for high quality whole food.

The private food club members appreciate their freedom to get food from an independent farmer that isn’t processing his meat and dairy at U.S. Department of Agriculture facilities, which mandates that food be prepared in ways that Miller’s Organic Farm believe make it less nutritious.

Amos Miller, the farm’s owner, contends that he’s preparing food the way God intended — but the U.S. government doesn’t see things that way. They recently sent armed federal agents to the farm and demanded he cease operations. The government is also looking to issue more than $300,000 in fines — a request so steep, it would put the farm out of business.

An Amish dairy farmer sweeps his barn on Sept. 13, 2017 in Lancaster, Pa. Local dairy farmers allege that cooperatives are encouraging more milk production to make more money at the expense of dairy farmers who suffer as prices drop during a glut. (Dan Marschka /LNP via AP)

An Amish dairy farmer sweeps his barn on Sept. 13, 2017 in Lancaster, Pa. Local dairy farmers allege that cooperatives are encouraging more milk production to make more money at the expense of dairy farmers who suffer as prices drop during a glut. (Dan Marschka /LNP via AP)

For a deeper dive here is a report from Lancaster:

Case Update

Miller’s case has been making its way through the court system since 2016 when the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), represented by the U.S. Department of Justice, filed a civil action requiring Miller and Miller’s Organic Farm to comply with federal meat and poultry food safety statutes.

The USDA wants Miller to operate under the “Federal Grant of Inspection” before slaughtering, preparing, processing or selling for distribution certain meat and poultry products.

Miller had been slaughtering animals like cattle, chickens and pigs without federal inspections of his operation for several years. He argued that his business model of selling private club memberships to his Miller’s Organic Farm exempted him from federal regulations.

The DOJ won permanent injunctions against Miller in civil actions closed out in March 2017 and November 2019, while the FSIS later found Miller again out of compliance.

Another case was opened in 2021, and Miller was working on the compliance issues. He was eventually forced to stop selling most meat and poultry products earlier this year.

Late in 2021, Miller asked to remove his lawyer, Dallas-based attorney Steven Lafuente, from the case. Judge Edward G. Smith did not accept the motion to withdraw Lafuente.

Miller filed an “interlocutory appeal” with the Eastern District Court on May 10, which was assigned to the Third Circuit Court. In the appeal, Miller challenges Judge Smith’s decision to retain Lafuente as his lawyer.

The appeal charges that Judge Smith determined “that Amos Miller does not have the right to choose his own attorney” and that the decision was made in “error” and that the “judge was acting irrationally and beyond the confines of public policy.”

Miller and his wife, Rebecca, were originally set to appear before Judge Smith on Sept. 26 in the U.S. Courthouse in Easton for a show cause hearing to consider adding Rebecca as a defendant in the case, to examine compliance of paying $305,065 in fines and the possible incarceration of Amos “for his continuing civil contempt, until defendants make such payments.”

On Friday, the show cause hearing was ordered stayed as the Third Circuit Court case makes its way through the system, with Judge Smith “finding that good cause exists” for the delay.

In his motion for a stay of proceedings, Miller argues that the DOJ and Judge Smith violated his rights by threatening in the show cause order to “incarcerate not only Amos Miller but his spouse (an un-named party) to this action.”

“Defendant believes these actions are unconscionable actions that shock the conscience, and if RPII (real party in interest) were not Amish and being restrained by the Amish Elders, greater fear of man’s newspapers than God’s words in the Holy Bible would be actionable sounding in tort,” the motion stated.

Pete Kennedy, a Florida-based attorney who works with the Weston A. Price Foundation, a nonprofit organization promoting food freedom issues, said the Miller case stands as an important benchmark that could have widespread impacts on small farming operations.

“The meat regulations in this country favor the meat packers,” Kennedy said. “In the meantime, many people Amos’s size have gone out of business because of the regulations. People might not agree with the way he’s approaching things, but it’s an important fight. At the least you’d like to come out of this with a more favorable interpretation of the law by the USDA.”

Miller said that it’s the growing regulations that are causing some of the problems in the food supply that have appeared this year.

“One reason the food supply is getting low is because of the regulations that the government is forcing upon us,” Miller said. “They don’t allow farmers to be farmers, and it could run our country into a nightmare or chaos.” More here.

U.S. Appeals Court Agrees to Hear Amish Farmer Amos Miller’s Food Freedom Case

details

 

Hillary Sold our Uranium, Is Biden Selling our Lithium?

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As a reminder about the U.S. uranium, click here to refresh your memory about Uranium One and Hillary Clinton. Disgustingly, it appears Hillary finessed this scandal too.

Now we have yet another very similar scandal and it involves the Biden administration and lithium which is used for batteries…for those electronic vehicles. Lithium is not only used for batteries but also for amour plating, special glasses, air conditioning and often in drugs for manic depression. Chile and Brazil are large producers of lithium, yet the United States does have deposits and is way behind China in ownership and uses.

That condition is getting worse it seems due to the constant deference of the Biden administration to China.

The BBC reported earlier this month that the FBI Director Christopher Wary met with the head of MI5 to mutually discuss the epic threats of China. Wray stated in part:

Wray warned the audience – which included chief executives of businesses and senior figures from universities – that the Chinese government was “set on stealing your technology” using a range of tools.

He said it posed “an even more serious threat to western businesses than even many sophisticated businesspeople realised”. He cited cases in which people linked to Chinese companies out in rural America had been digging up genetically modified seeds which would have cost them billions of dollars and nearly a decade to develop themselves.

He also said China deployed cyber espionage to “cheat and steal on a massive scale”, with a hacking programme larger than that of every other major country combined.

One has to wonder if Wray did this in public fashion because the Bureau’s cases and intelligence are being ignored in the Presidential Daily Briefings at the White House.

Anyway, back to the lithium.

Steve Miller authored a piece at Real Clear Investigation that reads in part:

A Chinese-dominated mining company has procured millions of dollars in American subsidies to extract lithium in the United States – but, given a dearth of U.S. processing capacity, the mineral is likely to be sent to China with no guarantee that the end product would return as batteries to power President Biden’s envisioned green economy.

Critics say the scenario would increase U.S. energy dependence on a hostile power – one accused of using forced labor in the manufacture of both lithium batteries and solar panels – and undercuts the Biden administration’s emphasis on domestic sourcing of green energy.

Lithium has taken the spotlight in Biden’s energy plan, since it is a key element needed to produce batteries for electric vehicles and solar panel storage. The administration acknowledges the lithium processing challenge – tacitly – in a June 2021 report produced by the U.S. Department of Energy. “The nation would benefit greatly from development and growth of cost-competitive domestic materials processing for lithium-battery materials,” the report reads.

The White House in March issued an order invoking the Defense Production Act, a 1950’s-era law meant to prioritize production of materials in the name of national security. The action allows the federal government to direct taxpayer funds to private companies to extract more lithium in the U.S. – including foreign-based interests.

Prominent in the initiative is Canadian-based Lithium Americas, a publicly traded group whose largest shareholder is Chinese-owned lithium mining giant Ganfeng Lithium, which is currently under investigation in China for alleged insider trading.

Lithium Americas is seeking to mine lithium from Thacker Pass, an 18,000-acre wilderness area on the Nevada-Oregon border. If the mining is approved, Thacker Pass would join a mine at Silver Peak outside of Tonopah, Nevada, as one of the only active lithium mines in the U.S. The company projects it will yield 80,000 tons of lithium a year, which would make it one of the largest lithium mines in the world, producing a quarter of the world’s demand.

Lithium Americas’ local company, Lithium Nevada, has been approved to receive Nevada tax abatements worth $8.5 million. And the parent company has applied for a loan through the Department of Energy. Read the full summary here.

photo from Nevada Division of Environmental Protection website

Seems the Federal government is approving all kinds of sell off deals for China including oil from our emergency reserves, much less real estate. Exactly who is ultimately approving all this as members of the Committee for Foreign Investment in the United States and why is the president not using his pen to veto/forbid the transactions? (rhetorical)