Business
‘There Are No Sacred Cows’: Charles Payne Predicts DOGE Will Take Bite Out Of Military Industrial Complex

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Harold Hutchison
Fox Business host Charles Payne predicted Monday that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will likely cause a short-term hit to the stock market as companies that sell the Pentagon a “$500 hammer” will “take a hit.”
President-elect Donald Trump named Tesla CEO Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy as co-chairs of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Nov. 12. Payne said that the committee had “no sacred cows” after discussing the committee’s plan to target federal spending and policies military and health care industries with former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and “America’s Newsroom” co-hosts Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino.
“Here is the way I look at the next Trump 2.0. I look at Trump 2.0 as not necessarily, we’re gonna get everything in the next four years, but we’re gonna put things into place to create prosperity for America that I think could last at least three decades and the key part of this is, look where they’re going – there are no sacred cows,” Payne said. “Look at what they are going after.”
WATCH:
“On Friday, you had legislation to go after the pharmacy benefit managers, right? CVS stock is cratering. Eisenhower warned us about the industrial-military complex. Well, now we’ve got a health insurance industrial complex, we got a healthcare industrial complex, we got a military industrial complex now,” Payne continued. “There are hundreds of billions of dollars floating around and guess what? It’s not necessarily good news for the stock market initially. You know, because, some of these companies that get all of this money and charge us $500 for a hammer and $1,000 for a toilet seat, they may take a hit, but ultimately, it’s better for the country and that means it’s ultimately better for the stock market.”
Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa sent Musk and Ramaswamy a seven-page letter in November with suggestions ranging from addressing unused space in buildings owned or leased by the federal government to halting uncommitted spending for COVID relief, with the proposed cuts totaling over $2 trillion.
In April, Republican Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida confronted Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall about the Air Force paying $90,000 for a bag of bushings. The Pentagon also paid $14,000 for a 3D-printed toilet seat and $1,280 for cups, according to a release from Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa.
Ernst released a 60-page report on Dec. 5 that covered findings from Ernst’s investigations into telework since she sent an August 2023 letter to 24 government agencies seeking a review of the issues involved with telecommuting.
Trump reportedly is planning on privatizing the United States Postal Service, which lost $9.5 billion in fiscal year 2024, according to the Washington Post.
Business
Is Government Inflation Reporting Accurate?

David Clinton
Who ya gonna believe: official CPI figures or your lyin’ eyes?
Great news! We’ve brought inflation back under control and stuff is now only costing you 2.4 percent more than it did last year!
That’s more or less the message we’ve been hearing from governments over the past couple of years. And in fact, the official Statistics Canada consumer price index (CPI) numbers do show us that the “all-items” index in 2024 was only 2.4 percent higher than in 2023. Fantastic.
So why doesn’t it feel fantastic?
Well statistics are funny that way. When you’ve got lots of numbers, there are all kinds of ways to dress ‘em up before presenting them as an index (or chart). And there really is no one combination of adjustments and corrections that’s definitively “right”. So I’m sure Statistics Canada isn’t trying to misrepresent things.
But I’m also curious to test whether the CPI is truly representative of Canadians’ real financial experiences. My first attempt to create my own alternative “consumer price index”, involved Statistics Canada’s “Detailed household final consumption expenditure”. That table contains actual dollar figures for nation-wide spending on a wide range of consumer items. To represent the costs Canadian’s face when shopping for basics, I selected these nine categories:
- Food and non-alcoholic beverages
- Clothing and footwear
- Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels
- Major household appliances
- Pharmaceutical products and other medical products (except cannabis)
- Transport
- Communications
- University education
- Property insurance
I then took the fourth quarter (Q4) numbers for each of those categories for all the years between 2013 and 2024 and divided them by the total population of the country for each year. That gave me an accurate picture of per capita spending on core cost-of-living items.
Overall, living and breathing through Q4 2013 would have cost the average Canadian $4,356.38 (or $17,425.52 for a full year). Spending for those same categories in Q4 2024, however, cost us $6,266.48 – a 43.85 percent increase.
By contrast, the official CPI over those years rose only 31.03 percent. That’s quite the difference. Here’s how the year-over-year changes in CPI inflation vs actual spending inflation compare:
As you can see, with the exception of 2020 (when COVID left us with nothing to buy), the official inflation number was consistently and significantly lower than actual spending. And, in the case of 2021, it was more than double.
Since 2023, the items with the largest price growth were university education (57.46 percent), major household appliances (52.67 percent), and housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuels (50.79).
Having said all that, you could justifiably argue that the true cost of living hasn’t really gone up that much, but that at least part of the increase in spending is due to a growing taste for luxury items and high volume consumption. I can’t put a precise number on that influence, but I suspect it’s not trivial.
Since data on spending doesn’t seem to be the best measure of inflation, perhaps I could build my own basket of costs and compare those numbers to the official CPI. To do that, I collected average monthly costs for gasoline, home rentals, a selection of 14 core grocery items, and taxes paid by the average Canadian homeowner.¹ I calculated the tax burden (federal, provincial, property, and consumption) using the average of the estimates of two AI models.
How did the inflation represented by my custom basket compare with the official CPI? Well between 2017 and 2024, the Statistics Canada’s CPI grew by 23.39 percent. Over that same time, the monthly cost of my basket grew from $4,514.74 to $5,665.18; a difference of 25.48 percent. That’s not nearly as dramatic a difference as we saw when we measured spending, but it’s not negligible either.
The very fact that the government makes all this data freely available to us is evidence that they’re not out to hide the truth. But it can’t hurt to keep an active and independent eye on them, too.
Subscribe to The Audit.
For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
2025 Federal Election
Carney’s Hidden Climate Finance Agenda

From Energy Now
By Tammy Nemeth and Ron Wallace
It is high time that Canadians discuss and understand Mark Carney’s avowed plan to re-align capital with global Net Zero goals.
Mark Carney’s economic vision for Canada, one that spans energy, housing and defence, rests on an unspoken, largely undisclosed, linchpin: Climate Finance – one that promises a Net Zero future for Canada but which masks a radical economic overhaul.
Regrettably, Carney’s potential approach to a Net Zero future remains largely unexamined in this election. As the former chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), Carney has proposed new policies, offices, agencies, and bureaus required to achieve these goals.. Pieced together from his presentations, discussions, testimonies and book, Carney’s approach to climate finance appears to have four pillars: mandatory climate disclosures, mandatory transition plans, centralized data sharing via the United Nations’ Net Zero Data Public Utility (NZDPU) and compliance with voluntary carbon markets (VCMs). There are serious issues for Canada’s economy if these principles were to form the core values for policies under a potential Liberal government.
About the first pillar Carney has been unequivocal: “Achieving net zero requires a whole economy transition.” This would require a restructuring energy and financial systems to shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energy with Carney insisting repeatedly in his book that “every financial [and business] decision takes climate change into account.” Climate finance, unlike broader sustainable finance with its Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) focus would channel capital into sectors aligned with a 2050 Net Zero trajectory. Carney states: “Companies, and those who invest in them…who are part of the solution, will be rewarded. Those lagging behind…will be punished.” In other words, capital would flow to compliant firms but be withheld from so-called “high emitters”.
How will investors, banks and insurers distinguish solution from problem? Mandatory climate disclosures, aligned with the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), would compel firms to report emissions and outline their Net Zero strategies. Canada’s Sustainability Standards Board has adopted these methodologies, despite concerns they would disadvantage Canadian businesses. Here, Carney repeatedly emphasizes disclosures as the cornerstone to track emissions data required to shift capital away from “high emitters”. Without this, he claims, large institutional investors lack the data on supply chains to make informed decisions to shift capital to businesses that are Net Zero compliant.
The second pillar, Mandatory Transition Plans would require companies to map a 2050 Net Zero trajectory for emission reduction targets. Failure to meet those targets would invite pressure from investors, banks, or activists, who may pursue litigation for non-compliance. The UK’s Transition Plan Task Force, now part of ISSB, provides this standardized framework. Carney, while at GFANZ, advocated using transition plans for a “managed phase-out” of high-emitting assets like coal, oil and gas, not just through divestment but by financing emissions reductions. “As part of their transition planning, [GFANZ] members should establish and apply financing policies to phase out and align carbon-intensive sectors and activities, such as thermal coal, oil and gas and deforestation, not only through asset divestment but also through transition finance that reduces real world emissions. To assist with these efforts GFANZ will continue to develop and implement a framework for the Managed Phase-out of high-emitting assets.” Clearly, the purpose of this is to ensure companies either decarbonize or face capital withdrawal.
The third pillar is the United Nations’ Net Zero Data Public Utility (NZDPU), a centralized platform for emissions and transition data. Carney insists these data be freely accessible, enabling investors, banks and insurers to judge companies’ progress to Net Zero. As Carney noted in 2021: “Private finance is judging…banks, pension funds and asset managers have to show where they are in the transition to Net Zero.” Hence, compliant firms would receive investment; laggards would face divestment.
Finally, voluntary carbon markets (VCMs) allow companies to offset emissions by purchasing credits from projects like reforestation. Carney, who launched the Taskforce on Scaling VCMs in 2020, has insisted on monitoring, verification and lifecycle tracking. At a 2024 Beijing conference, he suggested major jurisdictions could establish VCMs by COP 30 (planned for 2025 in Brazil) to create a global market. If Canada mandates VCMs, businesses especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) would face much higher compliance costs with credits available only to those that demonstrate progress with transition plans.
These potential mandatory disclosures and transition plans would burden Canadian businesses with material costs and legal risks that constitute an economic gamble which few may recognize but all should weigh. Do Canadians truly want a government that has an undisclosed climate finance agenda that would be subservient to an opaque globalized Net Zero agenda?
Tammy Nemeth is a U.K.-based strategic energy analyst. Ron Wallace is an executive fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and the Canada West Foundation.
-
2025 Federal Election9 hours ago
Study links B.C.’s drug policies to more overdoses, but researchers urge caution
-
Business1 day ago
Chinese firm unveils palm-based biometric ID payments, sparking fresh privacy concerns
-
2025 Federal Election2 days ago
Mark Carney Wants You to Forget He Clearly Opposes the Development and Export of Canada’s Natural Resources
-
2025 Federal Election1 day ago
Police Associations Endorse Conservatives. Poilievre Will Shut Down Tent Cities
-
Alberta1 day ago
Red Deer Justice Centre Grand Opening: Building access to justice for Albertans
-
conflict1 day ago
Marco Rubio says US could soon ‘move on’ from Ukraine conflict: ‘This is not our war’
-
2025 Federal Election1 day ago
Former WEF insider accuses Mark Carney of using fear tactics to usher globalism into Canada
-
2025 Federal Election1 day ago
Canada’s press tries to turn the gender debate into a non-issue, pretend it’s not happening