ATTORNEY GENERAL ASHLEY MOODY
AG Will Serve on New National Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force
This week, state Attorney General Ashley Moody announced a new Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force that will investigate scammers operating outside of the United States.
Florida serves on the executive committee of the task force that consists of 50 attorneys general focusing on telecommunications companies that are responsible for bringing the majority of foreign robocalls into the United States. The new task force has one goal: to cut down on illegal robocalls.
“My office is working with states across the nation to stop the influx of illegal robocalls originating overseas. These calls are often used to execute devious scams and steal from Americans—so it’s important that we work together to investigate these foreign phone calls and find ways to stop them from harming our citizens,” Moody said.
Ahead of the announcement, the task force issued 20 investigative demands to 20 gateway providers and other entities that are allegedly responsible for a majority of foreign robocall traffic. Gateway providers that bring foreign traffic into the U.S. telephone network are responsible for ensuring the traffic is legal, but the task force believes these providers are not taking sufficient action to stop illegal robocall traffic. The task force will focus on the bad actors in the telecom industry to reduce the number of robocalls that consumers receive and to incentivize companies to follow the rules.
According to the National Consumer Law Center and Electronic Privacy Information Center, more than 33 million scam robocalls are made to Americans every day. These calls include government imposters posing as the Social Security Administration or the Internal Revenue Service, fraud against seniors, online shopping scams and many other schemes. In 2021, scam calls resulted in an estimated loss of $29.8 billion to consumers, with most of the calls originating overseas. The task force is focused on shutting down the telephone service providers that profit from this illegal traffic and who refuse to take steps to otherwise mitigate these calls.
Moody offered the following tips for Floridians to avoid scams and unwanted calls:
- Be wary of callers claiming to represent government agencies or other organizations who specifically request payment by gift card, wire transfer or cryptocurrency. For example, the IRS does not accept iTunes gift cards.
- Look out for prerecorded calls from imposters posing as government agencies. Typically, the SSA does not make phone calls to individuals.
- If the call seems to be fraudulent activity, immediately hang up and do not provide any personal information. If unsure whether a call is from a business or imposter, hang up and call the company’s public customer service phone number.
SENATOR MARCO RUBIO
Rubio Pushes Bill to Establish Loan Program for Energy Grid Product Manufacturing
This week, Sen. Marco Rubio, is showcasing a bill “to establish an energy grid product manufacturing loan program at the U.S. Department of Energy to expand domestic production.”
“Due to international supply chain backlogs, electric utilities in the U.S. are struggling to receive ordered electric grid products in a timely manner, especially transformers. These delays are resulting in dangerously low stockpiles for new developments and replacement equipment, which threaten preparedness throughout the country, but especially in a state like Florida where hurricanes can severely disrupt the electric grid,” Rubio’s office noted.
“Right now, Florida is uniquely vulnerable to storms and other natural disasters due to shortages of key energy grid components, like transformers. It is yet another example of the danger in our overreliance on foreign supply chains,” Rubio said.
“We need to prioritize production of these critical components at home, which will decrease our dependence on foreign nations and protect Floridians.”
The senator’s office insisted the bill would not impact the current budget.
“The new loan program would be fully paid for by the rescission of unused appropriations, as recommended by the Government Accountability Office. This program would finance $8 billion in loan guarantees for the re-equipping, expansion, or establishment of domestic energy grid product and component manufacturing facilities in the United States,” Rubio’s office noted.
The bill was sent to the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last week.
Rubio Introduces Lifting Local Communities Act
Sen. Rubio, introduced the “Lifting Local Communities Act” to codify and clarify that faith-based groups can receive federal funds “ensuring that these protections are clearly stated and enshrined in federal law rather than subject to the back and forth of rulemaking.”
“Churches and other faith-based organizations play a vital role in lifting up their communities,” Rubio said. “These organizations should not be discriminated against because of their faith or held back by bureaucratic red tape. This bill would ensure that faith-based organizations do not have to compromise their beliefs to provide critical social services to those in need.”
The bill is aimed at removing uncertainty for religious groups who would like to apply for grant funding to help with services like job training, drug abuse and recovery, anti-poverty measures and more.
Notably, the bill would ensure “religious providers will not be prohibited from providing religious services and using religious language at the same time and location as federally-funded services.”
For example, a religious group would now be allowed to offer a prayer or spiritual encouragement as they feed the homeless, something that was previously not allowed. Also, groups like Alcoholics Anonymous would not be limited from some federal funding because of their focus on the need for a “higher power” in their program.
The bill comes after the Supreme Court ruled in Carson v. Makin earlier this year, a case that kicked off when the state of Maine started a tuition assistance program for rural areas that did not have public schools. The program in question, however, said outright that state funds could not be used at religious private schools.
A Maine family sued the state arguing religious schools should not be discriminated against and that they should be able to use the funding for religious schooling if they preferred. They argued that the program violates the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution.
The Supreme Court ruled in their favor, saying that states could not prohibit schools from partaking in the taxpayer-funded programs simply because of their religious affiliation. The high court referred to Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer, a 2016 ruling in favor of a religiously affiliated school that had been denied state grant funding for a playground improvement.
These cases have added clarity to previously murky waters and broadened the legal footing for these groups to apply for grants, and the new legislation would codify it if passed.
“Religious organizations should be allowed to serve their communities without being punished on account of their convictions,” said U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. “This bill will shield organizations helping the most vulnerable from left-wing activists seeking to drive them out of the public square.”
Proponents of the bill argued that it is about defending religious liberties and protecting them from discrimination, a topic that has been front and center in several high-profile court cases in recent years.
The bill has received endorsements from several related groups such as Family Research Council, Faith & Freedom Coalition, and First Liberty Institute, who argue helping people should trump politics.
Based on The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy - What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny by William Strauss and Neil Howe (1997)
"This will change the way you see the world—and your place in it. With blazing originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future. Most remarkably, it offers an utterly persuasive prophecy about how America’s past will predict its future."
August 2, 2022
“These are the times that try men’s souls.”
So, Thomas Paine wrote in 1775 in his publication of “The American Crisis.” Not so well-remembered today are the words that followed that famous quote:
“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
At that time, Colonial America was passing through the early stages of a “Fourth Turning,” an historical time of crisis that occurs roughly every eighty years.
As a point of reference, a First Turning is a period of renewal; one in which a historical crisis has ended. The populace has risen to the occasion, thrown off tyranny and conquered social, political and economic tribulation. Having done so, they now create a renewal, based on hard work, personal responsibility and moral integrity.
A Second Turning occurs a generation later, when the rewards of a First Turning have resulted in prosperity and stability. Those new adults who have grown up during a First Turning will be well-off and will seek to pursue high-mindedness and social concerns. Along the way, they will also pursue self-indulgence. (A deterioration begins.)
In a Third Turning, again a generation later, complacency sets in. Politically, those individuals who are sociopathic (a clinical aberration, estimated at about 4% of any society at any given time) tend to rise in political spheres, replacing the older generation of responsible people. They tend to raise taxes, increase social welfare programs and increase government spending in every way – really, any excuse to seize increased power over the populace.
Then, in a Fourth Turning, again a generation later, power having been seized, the sociopaths seek total power – the elimination of all freedoms, to be replaced by totalitarian rule.
Historically, in a Third Turning, a complacent people make it possible for sociopaths to take power. In a Fourth Turning, the sociopaths exert that power.
It matters little whether the excuses put forward by political leaders are climate control, racial equity, CBDCs, cancel culture, owning nothing, digital IDs, transhumanism, vaccine mandates or a Green New Deal, the objective is singular: total dominance of the ruling class over the subservient class. Any excuse will do, if it has totalitarian rule as its outcome.
In any Fourth Turning, those who are more thoughtful and forward-thinking will begin to make sense of the ruse but find themselves being heavily criticized by all and sundry. The media will do all within their power to slap down those who denounce the ruling class. But more to the point, the greater proportion of the populace will remain in their slumber and resist the awakening strenuously.
It is at such a time that the few who have figured out the ruse experience their greatest challenge – whether to speak out or whether to just go along.
This group must struggle in the darkness to a great degree, as the majority of the population fight against an awakening, as it disturbs their complacency and is too horrendous to contemplate.
The latter half of a Fourth Turning becomes a chaotic and confusing period – one in which many people desperately hope to just get along, whilst those who are more visionary become increasingly aware that their freedoms are being flushed away on a wholesale basis.
And, whilst it is the smaller, more visionary group that creates the spark of change, it is, historically, a different and unlikely group that actually creates substantive change in the latter half.
The group that turns the tide is the group that I often (unflatteringly) refer to as the hoi polloi – the average guy.
At some point, the average guy, who simply wanted to be allowed to get on with his life – go to work, mow the lawn, sit on the couch with a six-pack and watch the game – has had his life so disrupted by the ruling sociopaths and their increasingly manic oppression that he accepts that he must turn off the TV and do “something.”
He is not a leader, but he is a joiner.
When, in Ottawa, Canada, a few truckers staged a small demonstration, and the average guy saw it on the news, he got in his truck and joined. He may have had no real idea of how events might develop; he simply added what weight he had to the effort.
But the very fact that he is the average guy – that the bulk of the population is made up of average guys, makes their collective weight greater than those who may have been more inspired thinkers, and – more importantly – greater than the weight of the oppressors.
As simplistic as a convoy of Canadian truckers may be, their numbers become their strength. More to the point, they carry with them the sympathies of other average people, who come out to cheer them on, bring them food and donate money.
Not surprisingly, their achievement is brief, as it’s so simplistic, but they do succeed in bringing about temporary change, setting Government back on its heels.
Then, a few farmers in the Netherlands hear about the Canadians and decide to drive their tractors into the city, and it happens again.
And it keeps happening.
Throughout history, it’s been the same. In 1775, when Paul Revere rode into Lexington and Concord, it’s quite unlikely that he shouted courageously, “To arms! To arms!” That would have been treason and treason was one of only three capital offenses at that time.
More likely, he went to a few back doors and spread the word quietly. After all, the people of America were at that time British. The hoi polloi of the day – especially those of middle age or older – were relatively successful and had a lot to lose. They did not approve of revolt and were willing to pay the small stamp tax that had triggered it. They argued vociferously in the House of Burgesses to “just get along.”
But a few firebrands kept up their challenge and, eventually, they were joined by farmers and shopkeepers who, like the truckers, had had enough and decided to do “something.”
For those of us who saw the warning signs early – decades ago – the first half of the Fourth Turning has been extraordinarily distressing. The Globalists have been thorough in their planning and have successfully executed the removal of freedoms with great stealth that we assumed any “thinking” person should have seen coming.
But most people are not thinkers. Most people “go along.” They continue to go along, right until the moment that…. they don’t.
Thomas Paine was correct. “These are the times that try men’s souls.” Paine was a visionary who, through his writing, attempted to bring about an awakening.
An awakening happens only gradually, but the point arrives when the common man has had about enough. He may not be intellectually inspired, but his collective weight is, and throughout history, has been the turning point.
We are now on that cusp.
