Military Draft Returns? Is the U.S. Experiencing a "Rolling Recession"?, RFK Jr. Denied Secret Service Protection Despite the Law Being Based on His Own Father's Death, (The Five for 08/01/23)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
Lots of news today, so let’s get into it.,
[one]
A prominent national journalist just took a plea deal surrounding horrific child porn charges.
Disgraced former ABC News reporter James Gordon Meek is facing at least five years in prison after pleading guilty to child pornography in a Virginia federal court Friday.
Meek, 53, admitted to transporting and possessing child sexual abuse material, which carries jail time ranging from 5-20 years.
Under federal sentencing guidelines that come with his guilty plea, Meek is likely to face far less than the max at his Sept. 29 sentencing.
Meek, a once-acclaimed national security journalist, was hit with the federal charges in February roughly 10 months after the FBI raided his Arlington, Va., home April 27, 2022, seizing his electronics.
Meek resigned from ABC News and went off the grid immediately after the raid.
On his phone, the feds say they found three conversations in which Meek allegedly expressed a desire to sexually abuse children — and they found he had both received and sent photos and videos of child pornography.
In one troubling message, Meek allegedly asked someone on a chat app, “Have you ever raped a toddler girl? It’s amazing.” And in another message he shared a perverted fantasy of “abducting, drugging, and raping” a 12-year-old girl.
The shamed journalist also kept child porn images and videos on his other devices that showed he’d chatted with minors on the internet, prosecutors allege.
The probe was launched after Dropbox alerted officials that Meek had child porn on his account.
Meeks had previously used his journalistic platform to decry child sex rings as “conspiracy theories.” We now know…he was covering for himself and his fellow predators.
From Evie Magazine:
It's possible other individuals in the government are just as guilty as Meek. In June, a bill was introduced to broaden the definition of "sexual orientation" to add "sexually attracted," which those in opposition argued could be seen as supporting pedophilia. The concerning measure was passed through the Democrat-controlled House and Senate. It states that the term "sexual orientation" will broaden to mean "a person's identity in relation to the gender or genders to which they are romantically, emotionally, or sexually attracted, including any identity that a person may have previously expressed or is perceived by another person to hold." Republican representatives who oppose this bill have a point. In recent years, questionable people have labeled "pedophilia" as "minor-attracted persons," a term that seemingly sympathizes with pedophiles.
This week, Meek went viral on social media after Twitter users alleged that he "debunked" Pizzagate. While the journalist never wrote in-depth articles about Pizzagate, he did reference it in a 2017 article discussing "Russian propaganda." In it, he criticizes Mike Cernovich and labels him "one of the leading voices in the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory." Considering Meek worked with the government, and with the news of the new bill to conceivably broaden the definition of "sexual orientation," it's possible Pizzagate isn't far-fetched at all.
[two]
The question of whether or not the U.S. is in recession is…complicated.
Despite more than a year of widespread warnings that a recession was near, America’s economy is, if anything, accelerating.
Even as the Federal Reserve has sent borrowing costs sharply higher, the economy’s resilience has been on plain display: Consumers keep spending, and employers keep hiring. Inflation has reached its lowest level in two years, helping Americans stretch their paychecks.
The government estimated Thursday that the economy expanded at a solid 2.4% annual rate in the April-June quarter, an unexpected pickup from the 2% pace in the first quarter. Businesses helped drive the growth, with robust investment in equipment, software and buildings.
The latest snapshot of the economy coincides with rising sentiment that it may achieve an elusive “soft landing,” in which growth slows and inflation falls without igniting a full-blown recession.
Analysts point to two trends that might help stave off an economic contraction.
Some say the economy is experiencing a “rolling recession,” a circumstance in which only some industries shrink while the overall economy manages to stay above water.
Others think the nation might have experienced what they call a “richcession”: Major job cuts, they note, have been concentrated in higher-paying industries like technology and finance, heavy with professional workers who generally have the financial cushions to withstand layoffs. Job cuts in those fields, as a result, are less likely to sink the overall economy.
[three]
Long shot Democratic candidate RFK Jr. will not enjoy secret service protection, despite the fact that both his father (RFK) and uncle (JFK) were assassinated under questionable circumstances.
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Friday that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) denied his request for Secret Service protection.
“Since the assassination of my father in 1968, candidates for president are provided Secret Service protection. But not me,” Kennedy said on X, the platform previously known as Twitter.
“Our campaign’s request included a 67-page report from the world’s leading protection firm, detailing unique and well established security and safety risks aside from commonplace death threats,” he added.
The Secret Service is authorized to protect major presidential and vice presidential candidates and their spouses within 120 days of a general presidential election. The Homeland Security secretary, in consultation with an advisory committee of House and Senate leadership, determines which candidates are in that “major” category.
The 2024 election, in which Kennedy is a candidate, is more than 460 days away.
RFK Jr. visited his father’s convicted killer, Sirhan Sirhan, and joined two of his siblings issuing a statement that they believe Sirhan, who fired shots, did not strike their father, according to an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle:
For many years, I accepted the orthodoxy that Sirhan was responsible. After all, dozens of eyewitnesses in the Ambassador Hotel pantry saw him fire his gun from just a few feet in front of my father. But in 2016, my father’s close friend, Paul Schrade, persuaded me to read Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi’s autopsy report and to listen to audio recordings and review other evidence indicating that Sirhan could not have been the murderer.
Sirhan fired only two shots directly at my dad. One of them struck Schrade in the head. The other likely lodged in a door jamb behind my father. Five men then tackled and pinned Sirhan to a steam table and diverted his gun away from my father. From beneath that dogpile, Sirhan squeezed off six more shots, emptying his chamber as five of the six shots hit bystanders. This accounts for seven of the eight rounds in Sirhan’s gun. The only audio recording of the shooting, however, suggests that at least 13 shots may have been fired. The Los Angeles Police Department had the audiotape at the time of Sirhan’s trial, but illegally concealed it from his lawyers and the public for 20 years. Meanwhile, according to Tim Tate and Brad Johnson’s 2018 book “The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy,” FBI agents found several additional bullet holes in the pantry, further indicating more than eight shots were fired.
According to the autopsy, all four shots that struck my father (one shot passed harmlessly through his suit) were fired from behind at a steep upward angle toward the ceiling. All shots were from within a few inches, with two leaving gun powder residue in the wounds, suggesting that the assassin was standing close behind my father, shielding his weapon with his body while all attention focused on Sirhan.
RFK Jr. has been open with controversial beliefs, including declaring that vaccines cause autism…and forces within the U.S. government killed his father and uncle.
Some people may think he’s off his rocker here…but if you had buried two members of your family who were killed over their political beliefs, I bet you’d want the formal protection as well.
[four]
The confusingly named Yellow Trucking (featuring orange trucks, because why?!) is shutting down a year shy of their centennial.
Yellow Corp., a 99-year-old trucking company that was once a dominant player in its field, halted operations Sunday and will lay off all 30,000 of its workers.
The unionized company has been in a battle with the Teamsters union, which represents about 22,000 drivers and dock workers at the company. Just a week ago the union canceled a threatened strike that had been prompted by the company failing to contribute to its pension and health insurance plans. The union granted the company an extra month to make the required payments.
But by midweek last week, the company had stopped picking up freight from its customers and was making deliveries only of freight already in its system, according to both the union and Satish Jindel, a trucking industry consultant.
While the union agreed not to go on strike against Yellow, it could not reach an agreement on a new contract with the trucking company, according to a memo sent to local unions Thursday by the Teamsters’ negotiating committee. The union said early Monday that it had been notified of the shutdown.
Some commentators online have speculated that companies are willing to do anything they can to break union solidarity before the arrival of self-driving trucks.
Whether or not that’s a conspiracy…or early insights into a major change in the labor force…remains to be seen.
[five]
Finally, prominent voices in the Military are now calling for the return of a draft for the first time since the end of the Vietnam War.
Since 1775, our nation has used a combination of volunteers and draftees to meet our national defense personnel needs, especially in times of crisis.
Today, the military needs only about 160,000 youth from an eligible population of 30 million to meet its recruitment needs. But after two decades of war -- both of which ended unsuccessfully -- and low unemployment, many experts believe the all-volunteer force has reached a breaking point. And American confidence in its military is at a low.
The fastest and most effective way to resolve this recruiting crisis is to change how we recruit.
Instead of an "either an all-volunteer force or a fully conscripted force" model, I propose a both-and solution.
We should have our military recruiters sign up new troops for 11 months out of the year, and then have the Selective Service draft the delta between the military's needs and the total number recruited.
This model would alleviate the incredible pressure on our recruiters, lower the cost of finding new troops, and significantly reduce the much decried civilian-military gap by subjecting all of America's youth -- rich and poor -- to the possibility of military service via the draft
Until the next one,
-sth