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Tennessee Taking Lead In Protecting Civil Rights And Free Enterprise—And Stopping Political Debanking

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Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By ERIC BLEDSOE

 

Last week, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R.) signed into law a first-of-its-kind ban on politicized debanking. Sponsored by Rep. Jason Zachary (R.) and Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R.), HB 2100 will prohibit the nation’s largest banks from discriminating against individuals, businesses, and non-profits for their political and religious views.

The new law is a landmark reform to stop large banks from imposing political litmus tests on Americans.

This legislation (HB 2100) is, of course, a reaction to the trend of the largest financial institutions creating partisan barriers to Americans’ access to financial services. Last year, Bank of America closed the deposit and credit card accounts of Memphis-based non-profit Indigenous Advance Ministries. The organization works with Ugandan widows and orphans to provide for their basic needs through Christian charity. Bank of America refused to give Indigenous Advance a reason why they closed the accounts—just that they no longer wanted to work with their “business type.”

Indigenous Advance’s experience is like what the National Committee for Religious Freedom (NCRF) faced when JPMorgan Chase closed their accounts. NCRF promotes religious liberty for Americans of all religious faiths. Chase said it would restore NCRF’s accounts if it disclosed a list of its donors, told the bank which political candidates it intended to support, and sent them the criteria NCRF uses to decide who they want to support politically. NCRF, out of respect for their donors’ right to privacy, declined.

John Eastman, past attorney for former President Donald Trump, was debanked twice at the end of last year by Bank of America and USAA. Again, the banks provided little to no explanation for the sudden closures. Eastman told the Daily Caller that the banks said it was their policy to not provide any further information. Banks stonewalling their customers on why they close their accounts is alarmingly becoming a pattern.

In December 2022, Wells Fargo abruptly closed the personal and business accounts of Brandon Wexler, a Florida-based gun dealer. The bank’s only explanation was a brief mention that it was due to their review of account risk. Wexler had a personal account with Wells Fargo for 25 years and a business account for 14 years. One instance of an account closing might not be worthy of attention, but more and more examples like these are becoming more common. And the only common thread, besides banks refusing to explain their actions, is that the targets of debanking hold political and religious views unpopular on Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. This does not appear to be a policy at one bank, but an unspoken policy across the industry. Commenting on Wells Fargo’s action against him, Wexler said, “I’ve been with them for 25 years,” […] “I’m a professional fireman. I do everything the right way. It’s messed up.”

But large banks debanking individuals and non-profits is not the full extent of politically motivated financial service providers’ discrimination. In September, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti sent a letter sent a letter to financial service providers who are signatories to the Net Zero Financial Service Providers Alliance (NZFSPA) warning them that their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategies may be in violation of antitrust and consumer protection laws. Both state and federal laws prohibit coordinated or collaborative efforts between corporations to restrict trade or commerce. All members of NZFSPA agree to “(a)lign all relevant services and products to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or sooner, scaling and mainstreaming Paris Agreement-alignment into the core of our business.” Though the 27 members of NZFSPA are supposed competitors in the financial services market, their joint commitment to restrict sectors of the economy like fossil fuel is clearly a coordinated effort.

Large financial institutions’ boycott of fossil fuel and discriminatory actions against individuals and non-profits for their religious or political views may seem disconnected at first. But those following the ESG movement won’t be surprised to see these politically motivated efforts across multiple sectors. Last month, Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen sounded the alarm over these radical policies to Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf with the support of 15 other state attorneys general. A member of the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), Wells Fargo has committed, alongside 143 other banks, to implement ESG policies. In the letter, the attorneys general noted that Wells Fargo has a record of debanking Republican candidates and the firearms industry, imposing race- and gender-based quotas on credit customers, and publicly committing to implement radical climate standards on the energy industry.

Leftist activists realize they cannot accomplish such a radical agenda of eroding individual rights and a free economy through the ballot box. ESG is a political tool that enables the far left to bypass the democratic process to will their worldview onto Americans’ lives. In response, policymakers and other stakeholders must strengthen and enforce civil liberties protections, consumer rights, and antitrust laws, so that political activists cease willing their agenda on citizens.

Fortunately, states like Tennessee are taking the lead in protecting civil rights and free enterprise.

Eric Bledsoe is a Senior Policy Fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Dan McTeague

Ottawa’s intentional destruction of western wealth

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From Canadians for Affordable Energy

Dan McTeague

Written By Dan McTeague

Even if it fails to hit its emissions targets (which it will,) the economic consequences of enacting this plan are very serious. It would make Canada the only country in the world which willingly and purposefully stifles its single largest revenue stream. 

At this point, everyone in Canada has heard about the Carbon Tax and had a chance to experience its negative effects. But less has been said about another harmful policy dreamed up by the Trudeau government — the Emissions Cap on the oil and gas sector. Just like the Carbon Tax, the Emissions Cap is part of Trudeau’s larger program to try and achieve “Net Zero” greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050, which will have no positive impact on the environment, but which will be ruinous to Canada’s natural resource sector and to the national economy.

In their 2021 platform, the Liberals made a commitment to “cap and cut emissions from the oil and gas sector” and proclaimed that that industry must reduce emissions “at a pace and scale needed to achieve net-zero by 2050.” As promised, in December 2023 the Trudeau government proposed an Emissions Cap to reduce GHG emissions in the oil and gas sector by 42 percent by 2030. Keep in mind Canada contributes only 1.5% of global emissions, so this plan, even if accomplished, would reduce global emissions by less than one half of one percent.

Even if it fails to hit its emissions targets (which it will,) the economic consequences of enacting this plan are very serious. It would make Canada the only country in the world which willingly and purposefully stifles its single largest revenue stream. After all, the oil and gas industry generates $45 billion per year in annual economic activity, and contributes $170 billion per year to the GDP.

But don’t take my word for it. According to a Deloitte report commissioned by the Government of Alberta, an Emissions Cap would lead to a 10% decrease in Alberta’s oil production and a 16% decrease in conventional natural gas production. Fossil fuel production would decrease in B.C., Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland as well. Other industries connected to the oil and gas sector such as the mining, refinery products, and utilities are also expected to be impacted and will experience a decrease in output in Alberta and the rest of Canada.

The report goes on to state that in 2040 “Alberta’s GDP is estimated to be lower by 4.5% and Canada’s GDP by 1.0% compared to the baseline.”

It notes that because it is assumed that “the Cap is a permanent measure, the shift in the output of the oil and gas sector and associated losses are permanent and accumulate over time. Cumulatively, over the 2030 to 2040 period, we estimate that real GDP in Alberta is $191 billion lower and real GDP in the Rest of Canada is $91 billion lower, compared to the baseline scenario ($2017 dollars).”

Of course, the environmentalists will crow that the oil and gas industry is dying anyway and the demand for oil and gas around the world is slowly decreasing, but this is simply not true.

Global demand for oil and gas is only growing and will continue to do so. According to the report, “Based on current policy and before the impact of the Cap, we expect: Oil production in Canada to increase by 27% by 2030 and 32% by 2040 from 2021 levels; and Gas production in Canada to increase by 10% by 2030 and 16% by 2040 from 2021 levels.”

And this isn’t the only study which projects negative outcomes from this policy. The Montreal Economic Institute (MEI) released a study which describes how the Trudeau government’s proposed Emissions Cap for the energy sector would “cost the Canadian economy between $44.8 billion and $79.3 billion a year” and would “cause substantial losses, without achieving any net reduction in global emission.”

You can read the study here.

Plus it is worth noting that this emissions cap will result in “substantial losses without achieving any net reduction in global emissions.”

Why? Because of the increase in global demands for oil and gas, we can either produce those resources here or get them from another country that has no environmental, much less labour standards, such as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran.

To add insult to injury for the oil and gas producing provinces, and as I’ve pointed out in the past, this cap on emissions would apply only to the oil and gas sector. This emissions cap would not apply to the concrete industry, the automotive industry, or the mining industry. And — surprise surprise — it certainly won’t apply to Montreal’s lucrative jet-building industry.

But take heed: this isn’t simply an Alberta issue. This is a Canadian issue and one that everyone in Canada should be concerned about.

The umbrella of Net Zero by 2050 is large and far reaching, and an emissions cap is simply one part of a multi-layered attack on our economy and way of life. Carbon taxes, layered on top of a Clean Fuel Standard, layered on top of pipeline blockages, layered on top of Bills C-48 and C-69, preventing oil from being shipped from other parts of the world — will run counter to our national interests, and endanger the Canadian way of life for generations to come.

If Canadians are now vehemently opposed to carbon taxes, as we suggested would be the case half a dozen years ago, wait for this unnecessary burden to befall them.

In the words made famous by the Canadian rock legend BTO, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”

Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.

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CBDC Central Bank Digital Currency

Ursula von der Leyen Consolidates Power. What this teaches us about the push for single global government

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Suppose you want to glimpse the political future that the globalist movement seeks to impose on the Western world. In that case, you should pay attention to current developments in the European Union, particularly the European Council- the appointed body that administratively manages the EU. Most think the European Union is an alliance between independent Westphalian nation-states that have banded together to form a trade partnership sharing a common currency. This certainly was the original justification (or marketing) for this political structure. But not the current reality.

The fact is that the organizational, administrative and political structure of the EU has evolved to yield a privileged political caste, based in Brussels, Belgium, which exerts unilateral political and financial authority over the formerly autonomous member nation-states. Of course, this process has developed under the careful guidance and watchful hidden influence of the United States and NATO.

As currently structured, Western Europe under the EU is more akin to the federal structure of the United States, but with a weaker central constitution and body of law (routinely disregarded) and less autonomy for each member state. Yes, there is the election of Members of Parliament of the European Union by the citizens of each state, but those MEPs have little of no actual power. Power is concentrated entirely in the European Council’s central authority and its President, Ursula Von der Leyen- all of whom are appointed rather than elected. And, as recently covered by both Politico and Unherd, although the center-right populist movements of Europe, including France, Italy, Germany and other countries have made great gains in the recent EU parliamentary elections, their growing power was not sufficient to disrupt the reappointment of Ursula Von der Leyen as President of the EU.

Unsurprisingly, upon reappointment, Von der Leyen swiftly moved to consolidate power by controlling the appointments to the European Council, which is the structure that actually makes EU policy and has the power to override any local decisions by the formerly sovereign legislatures of member states. To the surprise of virtually no one paying attention to what has been happening in the EU.

Key references for further reading include the following:


Politico: From queen to empress: Inside Ursula von der Leyen’s power grab

After unveiling her new team, the European Commission president holds more influence than ever.

BRUSSELS — When Ursula von der Leyen unveiled her team for the next European Commission, she simultaneously silenced the doubters about who was really in charge in Brussels.

As she revealed the 26 commissioners and their roles to the public, one point was immediately clear: she would have unfettered control over European Union politics. In a matter of minutes, she introduced a big title with little responsibility for one of the most powerful countries in the European Union, she propped up her buddies, and she diluted powerful portfolios by dividing them among multiple people.

The power grab was complete.

“She will be even more in control of everything,” said one EU official who, like others quoted in this piece, was granted anonymity to speak freely. “Who thought that was even possible?”

It was the culmination of months of public and private strategy to remove the dissenting voices of her first term as European Commission president. From the first team, none of the naysayers remain. Big personalities such as France’s Thierry Breton and the Netherlands’ Frans Timmermans are now gone.

During her first term — in which she faced a global pandemic and a war on the EU’s doorstep — she developed a reputation for making unilateral decisions, overstepping her job description, cutting other EU leaders out of the decision-making, and speaking only to a handful of advisers. As a result, she gained the nickname Queen Ursula in Brussels.

The morning of von der Leyen’s announcement of her second top team, she refused to tell the European Parliament, her partners in the process of approving commissioners,  who she was assigning to which job. Instead, she left a meeting with the Parliament’s top leaders and went straight into a press conference in which she revealed all the details. She was later accused of “contempt” for the Parliament.

Hours before, she convinced the French she would give their commissioner nominee an exceptionally important job if they swapped out Breton. On Tuesday, as she revealed job descriptions, they realized they’d been bamboozled into a watered-down position.

“Anyone who thought that she could have changed her style, her will to keep tight control, was at the very least naive,” said an EU diplomat.


Unherd: Von der Leyen’s authoritarian plot

National democracies will be subordinate to her Commission

The European Union is about to enter what could prove to be the most ominous phase in its troubled history. In a few weeks, Ursula von der Leyen’s new European Commission will officially take office, at which point she will have almost unfettered control over the bloc’s politics.

When von der Leyen introduced the new Commission’s lineup and organizational structure last month, even the typically Brussels-friendly mainstream media was forced to admit that what she had pulled off was nothing short of a coup. By placing loyalists in strategic roles, marginalizing her critics, and establishing a complicated web of dependencies and overlapping duties that prevent any individual from gaining excessive influence, the Commission President has set the stage for an unprecedented supranational “power grab” that will further centralize authority in Brussels — specifically in the hands of von der Leyen herself.

She is busy transforming the Commission “from a collegial body into a presidential office”,  noted Alberto Alemanno, EU law professor at HEC Paris. But this is the culmination of a longstanding process. The Commission has been stealthily expanding its powers for a long time, evolving from technical body into full-blooded political actor, resulting in a major transfer of sovereignty from the national to the supranational level at the expense of democratic control and accountability. But this “Commissionisation” is now being taken to a whole new level.

Consider the bloc’s foreign policy, and its defence and security policy in particular. It has gone relatively unnoticed that von der Leyen has used the Ukraine crisis to push for an expansion of the Commission’s top-down executive powers, leading to a de facto  supranationalization of the EU’s foreign policy (despite the fact that the Commission has no formal competence over such matters), while ensuring the bloc’s alignment with (or, rather, subordination to) the US-Nato strategy.

“The Commission is evolving from technical body into full-blooded political actor.”

A signal aspect of this move has been the appointment to key defence and foreign policy roles of representatives from the Baltic States (total population: a bit more than 6 million), which have now been bumped up the political food chain because they share von der Leyen’s über-hawkish stance toward Russia. One particularly important figure is Andrius Kubilius, former Prime Minister of Lithuania, who, if confirmed, will take on the role of the EU’s first Commissioner for Defence. Kubilius, known for his close ties to US-funded NGOs and think tanks, will be responsible for the European defence industry and is expected to push for greater integration of military-industrial production. Furthermore, Kubilius served on the advisory board of the International Republican Institute and is a former member of the Atlantic Council’s EuroGrowth Initiative — two Atlanticist organizations whose primary objective is to promote US corporate and geopolitical interests around the world.


For those Western nation citizens left pondering why they should care about the political machinations of Angela Merkle’s protege Ursula Von der Leyen, they should consider the broader context. The structure of the EU is basically a test bed for ‘New World Order” political structure being incrementally advanced for the (literally) unholy alliance of the Socialist United Nations with the Corporatist World Economic Forum, both of which are allied as the proudly self-proclaimed new global government structure.

Quoting from our book “PsyWar Enforcing the New World Order”:

By globally synchronizing the public health response across the United Nations member states, new powers were granted to the UN and its organizations at the cost of national sovereignty. These universally applied regulations and multilateral agreements have given birth to an enlarged, globalized administrative state. Although this power grab has percolated for many decades, the COVID crisis acted as an accelerant to synergize international agreements that advance the UN as a world government.

The United Nations has morphed into a leviathan. Its various agreements and goals seek to centrally dictate the world’s economy, migration, “reproductive health,” monetary systems, digital IDs, environment, agriculture, wages, climate modifications, one world health, and other related globalist programs. To be clear, these are the goals of an organization seeking a globalized command economy, not an organization focused on world peace, ending wars or human rights!

This UN aims to regulate every dimension of our personal and national lives. It is working to reduce and eliminate national sovereignty across the world, and thereby to decrease our diversity, our traditions, our religions and our national identities.

The UN has partnerships and strategic agreements with member nations, as well as other globalist organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, CEPI, The World Trade Organization, The European Union and the World Economic Forum, known as the WEF.

An Example of How the United Nations Operates

The WEF and the UN signed a strategic agreement and partnership in 2019. Remember that the WEF has a commitment to “stakeholder capitalism,” by which private-partnerships work to control governments. The WEF developed a plan in 2020 to use the COVID-crisis to reorganize global governance around social issues, including climate change—this plan was called the Great Reset.

The WEF is a trade organization representing the world’s largest corporations. It repeatedly exploits disruptive technologies to enhance economic growth opportunities for its corporate members. The WEF is specifically designed to advance the economic power of its global elite members, otherwise known as the “billionaire class.”

As the WEF feeds money into the United Nations through their 2019 strategic agreement, who is managing the conflicts of interests that come with this partnership? Where is the transparency?

The UN has fourteen specialized organizations under its leadership, all involved in global governance, including the World Health Organization or WHO.

None of these organizations is related to the scope of the original UN charter, which was focused on ending wars, promoting world peace, and protecting human rights. The UN had been quietly building power for years prior to the pandemic through various agreements and treaties.

For instance, the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” is a recent example of such an agreement.

Agenda 2030 has seventeen goals and 169 targets, which vary widely in scope and topic, but almost all of these goals directly affect world governance. Here are just a few examples from the Agenda 2030 treaty. Is this what the United Nations should be concerned with, or are these issues more properly addressed by the policies of sovereign nations?

‘We are determined to protect the planet from degradation, including through sustainable consumption and production, sustainably managing its natural resources and taking urgent action on climate change.

Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men.

Eliminate discriminatory laws, policies and practices.

Adopt policies, especially fiscal, wage and social protection policies, and progressively achieve greater equality.

Facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people.

By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration.

This is an Agenda of unprecedented scope and significance. It is accepted by all countries and is applicable to all . . .”

Agenda 2030 is essentially a totalitarian socialist manifesto. This United Nations Treaty contains many more forceful statements regarding the reduction of national rights. The UN has signed strategic agreements with the largest organizations, corporations, and world powers to fulfill its utopian vision for the world.

This is a new world order—with unelected officials in control. That means that we all will be ruled by a nondemocratic UN administrative bureaucracy. This is a form of inverse totalitarianism. A world order based on a command economy; one that is at its core both socialist and totalitarian.

Now, these goals and targets may be fine for any single nation to undertake but this is a restructuring of the United Nations beyond its charter.

Early in the pandemic, the UN—through its surrogate the WHO, declared that a global vaccine passport was needed, and provided extensive guidance to member nations to standardize vaccine passports worldwide. In response, the leaders of the G20 issued a declaration in 2022 supporting development of a global standard of vaccination for international travel and the establishment of “global digital health networks” to be built on existing digital COVID-19 vaccine passports.

In June 2023, a new initiative between the EU and the WHO for strategic cooperation on global health issues was announced. This agreement seeks to “bolster a robust multilateral system with the World Health Organization at its core, powered by a strong European Union.”

The pandemic has allowed world leaders to coalesce global administrative power under the guise of public health through the administrative bureaucracy of the UN. Public health has been weaponized to gain control of passports, travel, banking, the environment and the international economy. This is a gross violation of the individual’s right to privacy, national sovereignty and the UN charter.

It is just a matter of time before these vaccine passports will be coupled with central bank digital currencies. Then, the passports can be used to deny the unvaccinated or other political dissenters access to travel and use of their own money.

Once international passports, central bank digital currencies, command economy aspects of the UN’s Agenda 2030, and the WHO amendments to the IHRs are implemented, the groundwork for a new world order will be complete. A global administrative state, whose core power resides with the UN. The US deep state views its relationship with the UN as one where it has kept some degree of organizational control. This new world order will become a spiderweb of rules, regulations, agreements, and treaties within which individuals and nations will be trapped like flies. This new global governance will be virtually unbreakable. From there, it is only a matter of time before national sovereignty becomes obsolete. This is a reality unless we fight to stop this madness.

For this reason, the power of the United Nations must be exposed and curtailed. Globalists seeking to advance their agendas are using the model of the European Union, whereby rules and regulations stymie national sovereignty, to build a worldwide system of control. All must fight this takeover at the local, national, and international level. We must use the courts, our legislatures, media, public protests, and the power vested in our national and state sovereignty to fight this. If all else fails, individual nations may need to withdraw from the UN’s New World Order in order to remain free.

“True Believers” like Corporatist EU President Ursula Von der Leyen or Socialist UN Secretary-General António Guterres always resort to heavy-handed totalitarian responses when threatened by alternative opinions or political movements. What can be observed with Von der Leyen’s response to the populist center-right political surge in Europe is precisely what will happen as the Socialist/Globalist agenda of the UN and its leader António Guterres is threatened by populist movements in the United States, Argentina, and across the world.

Let’s work together to keep our personal and national sovereignty safe for future generations. A New World Order is not needed, is not acceptable, and we the people and our sovereign governments should unequivocally reject this globalized takeover.


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