Epoch Insight 39 (2022)

A Book That Has Inspired The World

What made Falun Gong stand out from other qigong exercises and meditation practices was a moral system—compassion, truthfulness, and forbearance—unmistakably Buddhist in origin.

zhuan Falun is the main text of Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa). The book expounds upon profound principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance. It addresses the longforgotten term “cultivation,” the origins of illnesses, karma, the role of moral character on a path to spiritual perfection, and more.

The book was a national bestseller in China in the 1990s, and has been translated into over 40 languages. Find out why it has captured the hearts and minds of tens of millions of people in over 100 countries worldwide!

Being a musician, my surroundings were not the healthiest. But when I started practicing Falun Gong, in one month, I just snapped out of all those environmental hazards, alcohol and drugs.

Falun Gong has taught me how to be considerate of others and how to improve my relationships by handling conflicts constructively. [...] It has given me incredible relaxation, mental clarity, and freedom from stress.

I have indeed experienced all the miracles. No matter what your experience or what background you have or what country you are born in, you will benefit from Falun Dafa.

Decision

2022

dear reader, This November, Americans will head to the polls in a high-stakes election.

Democrats are trying to retain control of Congress, while Republicans are seeking to change the balance of power.

In this Epoch Insight special report, we look at all the relevant facts so you can be up to date on the 2022 midterms—including which Senate and House races to watch and the key issues up for referendums.

We also look at the role of the Latino vote in this year’s midterms, and the influence of Biden and Trump endorsements.

And have you ever wondered how to identify the tell-tale signs that someone is lying to you? On page 34, learn how to tell when a politician is likely lying as well as what types of persuasive techniques are used in political advertising.

While traditionally polls have played an important role in predicting election outcomes, observers are increasingly using big data to make predictions.

ON THE COVER

Ahead of this year’s midterm elections, stay up to date on all the relevant facts.

CHRISY TRUDEAU MIND & BODY EDITOR

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10 |  Latino Power

Latino voters will be vital in deciding the outcome of the 2022 midterms.

18 | The Big Flips

These five Senate seats might flip in November.

22 |  House Battlegrounds

These eight House seats might flip in November.

28 |  New Ads, Old Tricks

Campaign gurus tap into fear and emotion to sway voters.

34 |  Pants on Fire

Body language experts reveal their tricks for telling when a politician lies.

42 |  Crystal Ball

Forecasters see Republicans retaking the House, but the Senate is too close to call.

46 |  Pluses and Minuses

Campaigns try to assess the impact of Trump and Biden on likely voters.

52 |  Veterans Campaign

Both parties turn to military veterans to run for Congress.

54 |  Ad Age

Campaign managers grasp for new advertising tools to reach young voters.

58 |  On the Ballot

Voters will see referendums on abortion, marijuana, slavery, and more.

62  |  Gerrymandering Pains

Can states develop fair processes that can’t be manipulated by politicians?

72 | Energy Policy

Oil drilling can actually contribute to a greener planet.

73 | China Threat

Chinese logistics platform Logink poses a growing risk to the United States.

74 | Government Spending

It’s unclear whether the CHIPS Act will boost U.S. semiconductor manufacturing.

75 | Inflation

The ever-increasing cost of driving limits personal mobility.

76 | Economic Policies

Households and small firms are feeling the brunt of the financial squeeze.

77 | Stock Investment

Is the stock market about to enter a new lost decade?

78 | Mind Virus

Gad Saad on “parasitic” ideas and why rational people fall for them.

82 | Promise Yourself

Being the one everyone relies on is good, until you overdo it.

A Fantastic French Estate

Set on 75 acres above Cannes, this home is ideal for huge families.

The Ultimate Pizza Challenge

An exploration of Naples, the birthplace of the much-loved dish.

Dinner With Hetty

Author Hetty McKinnon explains the importance of family meals.

Travel Light

A few hints on how savvy travelers bring only what they need.

Good Connections

The latest tech for connecting with those far away as if they are next to you.

Group Dining Etiquette

Several examples of proper manners for casual dining with friends.

The Report

2022 Midterm Elections

Campaign signs outside the Silver Spring Civic Building at Veterans Plaza in Silver Spring, Md., on July 7.

SENATE FORECAST

THE RISE OF

LATINO VOTE

HISPANIC VOTERS WILL BE KEY TO THE OUTCOME OF DOZENS OF MIDTERM RACES

How 32 million eligible latinos will vote in dozens of pivotal House, Senate, and gubernatorial elections across the country in November will be vital in determining which party controls Congress after this year’s midterm elections.

Latinos make up the second-largest voting bloc in the United States, constituting 18.7 percent of the nation’s total population.

That’s no secret, of course, with candidates of all persuasions aggressively soliciting the Latino vote with Spanish-language political ads in tight races in Texas, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Oregon, and Florida.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) an nounced on Sept. 8 that it had hosted more than 5,000 separate events this year appealing to mi nority voters at 38 voter outreach centers in 19 states, including dozens labeled as “Hispanic com munity centers.” The campaign is meant to sustain the momentum Republicans gained among Latino voters during the Trump presidency.

Democratic heavyweights are directly appealing to Latino voters to seal erosion in what had been a solid, reliable bank of support. Critics within and outside the party say Democrats may have taken the Hispanic vote for granted and are only now belatedly focusing on it.

President Joe Biden addressed the 45th Congres sional Hispanic Caucus Institute Gala on Sept. 15. He used the occasion to tout how the American Rescue Plan benefits Latinos by providing access to vac cines, better health care, and keeping schools open.

On Sept. 25, former President Barak Obama, a Democrat, addressed the 5th annual L’ATTITUDE Conference, the nation’s “premier Latino business event,” in San Diego.

Both parties are trying to tailor their candidates’ campaigns to appeal to Latino voters with tactics and strategies based on data and polls collected and analyzed since June by research firms, media groups, and campaigns.

Regardless of how the data is interpreted, there’s ample opportunity for candidates of both parties to gain favor with a Latino “voting bloc” that’s hardly monolithic but—despite distinct ethnic and region al variations—appears predominately concerned with jobs, cost of living, and the economy.

In 2020, when Latinos cast one-tenth of the bal lots in the presidential election, Biden received an estimated 61 percent of that vote, down from the more than 70 percent Obama received in his two elections.

Latino voters nationwide identified jobs, the

economy, health care, schools, and public safety as top priorities in a survey of Latino voters con ducted in July by UnidosUS, the nation’s largest Hispanic advocacy group. A Siena College poll of Hispanic voters published on Sept. 16 reaffirmed the findings.

Both surveys indicate that Latinos are amena ble to Republican messaging on jobs and the economy, but a significant majority of them want progress on gun control and immigration policies. An overwhelming number favor legal access to abortion.

The emergence of abortion access as an issue among Latino voters may spell trouble for some Republican hopefuls. For the first time since it conducted Latino voter surveys this century, UnidosUS reported that access to abortion was cited by Latino voters as a top five issue, with more than 70 percent of respondents saying it should remain legal.

Latino voters at a polling station at El Gallo Restaurant in the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles on Nov. 8, 2016.

This emerging trend in the wake of June’s U.S. Supreme Court repeal of Roe v. Wade could stem the eroding Latino support for their party, Dem ocrats say.

That claim may have some validation in the Siena College survey of 522 Hispanic voters con ducted Sept. 6 through Sept. 14 within a broader poll of 1,399 registered voters nationwide. That survey found that Latinos are more likely to agree with Democrats on more issues than Republicans but will support Republican candidates strong on crime and policing.

Worryingly for Democratic candidates, 40 per cent of Latino respondents in the Siena poll ex pressed reservations about the Democratic Party’s progressive wing’s focus on race and gender.

Most Latino survey respondents ultimately said their vote would come down to which candidates best address their economic concerns. According to the Sienna poll, Latino voters are evenly split

LATINOS MAKE UP the secondlargest voting bloc in the United States, constituting 18.7 percent of the nation’s total population.

5,000 EVENTS

THE RNC SAYS it has hosted more than 5,000 separate events appealing for minority votes, at 38 voter outreach centers in 19 states, this year.

on which party they think can best deliver jobs and lower the cost of living.

Overall, 56 percent of the Sienna poll respon dents said they would vote blue and 32 percent said they would vote red in November.

While that may sound like good news for Dem ocrats, it may not be enough good news for the party to thwart the forecast that Republicans will retake the House and Senate.

According to the Siena survey, young Latino voters, especially men in Texas and Florida, are increasingly registering as Republicans. That trend is confirmed in a Sept. 2 through Sept. 11 nationwide survey of 400 registered Latino voters published on Sept. 14 by BSP Research.

All the data, polls, and analyses add to uncer tainty for Nov. 8 candidates in dozens of U.S. House races where Latinos make up 20 percent or more of the constituency.

The “Latino vote” is also expected to be a key determinant in several close gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races, such as those in Arizona and Nevada, where Spanish speakers make up 25 per cent of eligible voters.

Latinos are projected to sway outcomes even in districts or states without a large presence in overall voter numbers. In Pennsylvania, Latinos account for less than 10 percent of total voters but have proven to be key in determining winners and losers in close races.

Arizona

Latinos constitute one-third of Arizona’s residents and one-quarter of the state’s registered voters, ac cording to a July analysis by the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute. By some estimates, Latinos will make up half the state’s population by 2050.

Approximately 840,000 Latinos voted in the 2020 election in Arizona, which saw a record 3.4 million voter turnout. Biden edged Trump by 10,457 votes.

Approximately 644,600 Latinos will cast ballots on Nov. 8, according to one forecast. That would amount to a record Latino turnout for an Arizona midterm election and four times the number that voted in the 2002 primary.

56%

OF U.S. LATINO respondents said they will vote blue and 32 percent said they will vote red in November, according to a poll.

According to the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, 45 percent of the approximately 1 million Latinos registered to vote in the state are enrolled as Democrats, 15 percent are registered as Republi cans, and nearly 40 percent aren’t affiliated with a party, reflecting a national trend among all voters in registering as independents or “NAs,” meaning “nonaffiliated” with a party.

How Latinos within that unaffiliated contin

“Latinos in Pennsylvania will play a decisive role in the 2022 election cycle.”

Irving Zavaleta, program manager, Mi Familia Vota 18.7%

gent will vote could determine if incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) defeats Trump-endorsed Re publican challenger Blake Masters as he’s favored to do and if Trump-endorsed Republican Kari Lake beats Democrat Katie Hobbes, Arizona’s current secretary of state, in the “tossup” gubernatorial race.

Lake has made border security an integral com ponent of her campaign, posting on Twitter after her primary win that on “Day 1, I take my hand off the Bible, give the Oath of Office and we Declare an Invasion on our Southern Border.”

But Arizona Latinos, while identifying immi gration policy as a concern and being opposed to “open borders,” don’t rate “border security” as a high priority, making it uncertain how the state’s Latino voters will receive Lake’s campaign.

In one survey, Arizona Latinos said they favor keeping abortion legal by 30 percentage points, which hasn’t caused Lake to change her campaign messaging but has prompted Masters to remove his anti-abortion stance from his campaign website.

Pennsylvania

Latinos make up only 7.6 percent of the Key stone State’s residents and 5.3 percent of its registered voters, according to an analysis by Pew Research. But they’re regarded as one of the difference-making constituencies in several con gressional district races.

While cities such as Philadelphia and Pitts burgh include long-established Latino neigh borhoods that traditionally vote Democrat, demographic shifts indicate pockets of Repub lican-registered Latino voters in cities such as Reading and Allentown.

Therefore, Pennsylvania Latino voters are targeted as potential lynchpins in the battle ground race for governor between Trump-en dorsed Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano

and Democrat Josh Shapiro. The same is true for the U.S. Senate race between Trump-endorsed TV celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz and Democrat Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.

Latinos made up 4 percent of the total turnout in Pennsylvania’s 2020 election, up from 3 percent in the 2018 midterms, according to Pew Research.

Latino voters backed Biden by at least a 3–1 mar gin in Pennsylvania in 2020, according to UCLA. That proved pivotal in his narrowly winning the battleground state.

“Latinos in Pennsylvania will play a decisive role in the 2022 election cycle,” Mi Familia Vota National Programs Manager Irving Zavaleta said during an Aug. 25 media call.

According to the NALEO’s National Latino Voter Tracking Poll, Pennsylvania Latino respondents generally favored Democrats over Republicans by a 32 percentage-point margin; 21 percent said they were undecided.

A total of 73 percent of respondents said abortion should remain legal, with 41 percent saying that it was a “deal-breaker” for them; 83 percent said it was important for Pennsylvania’s elected officials to speak out against white nationalism and white supremacy.

Only 61 percent of NALEO survey respondents in Pennsylvania were sure they would vote in November. Zavaleta said that’s a relatively low percentage. He noted that the large percentage of undecideds among those who say they’ll vote indicates that there has been little outreach to Latino voters in the state by candidates.

Colorado

According to Univision’s Hispanic Vote, Latinos make up 21 percent of Colorado’s residents and will cast 11 percent of the state’s votes in 2020.

NALEO projects that 8.9 percent more Latinos

will vote in this year’s midterm election com pared to 2018.

According to a May study from Emerson College’s nationwide initiative on Latinos, nonregistered Colorado Latino voters were split over whether their vote would make a difference, with 41 percent believing that their votes don’t matter, 40 percent saying that they could be swayed to vote “if ... more informed,” and 39 percent saying that they have no intention of voting.

According to the study, nonregistered Colorado Latino voters expressed frustration with the Demo cratic Party’s focus on immigration reform instead of the economy. The same study said rhetoric from some Republican candidates over border integrity

is alienating, meaning that both parties can tailor messages to assuage these issues and garner votes.

Libre Initiative Action, a Hispanic outreach group backed by Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, maintains that concerns over inflation and the cost of living among Latinos are giving Republicans an opportunity to win the U.S. Senate race between Republican challenger and underdog Joe O’Dea and incumbent Sen. Michael Bennett (D-Colo.). Both are running Spanish-language campaign ads.

One of seven new U.S. House districts created nationwide following post-2020 Census redistrict ing, Colorado’s 8th Congressional District has the largest concentration of Hispanic residents of any Colorado congressional district at 38 percent.

The district’s inaugural election in November pits state Rep. Yadira Caraveo, a pediatrician who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary, against state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Republican.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) opened a “Hispanic Community Center” in Thorn ton earlier this year to appeal to 8th Congressional District voters. At the same time, Libre Initiative Action has been very active on behalf of Kirkmey er’s platform, claiming that it has knocked on more than 4,000 doors in the district since August.

Nevada

Latinos make up more than 28 percent of Neva da’s total population and 18 percent of the state’s registered voters.

An estimated 165,000 Latinos will vote in No

Latino voters at a polling station in El Gallo Restaurant in the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles on Nov. 8, 2016.

vember, casting one of every six ballots in Neva da. That would be an increase of 5.8 percent in Latino voter participation from the 2018 midterm elections and a 70.2 percent boost from 2014.

Latino voters will influence Nevada’s “tossup” election for governor between incumbent Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, and Republican chal lenger Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, as well as the state’s election for U.S. Senate between Ne vada Attorney General Adam Laxalt and incum bent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.).

Cortez Masto is seeking a second term after her 2016 election made her the first Latina ever elect ed to the U.S. Senate. Laxalt is trying to counter that advantage with Spanish-language radio ads and events sponsored by his campaign’s Latinos for Laxalt group. The RNC, National Republican Senatorial Committee, and state Republican Party have collectively pledged more than $1 million to an Operación Vamos outreach to Latino voters.

Latino voters are also the dominant voting con stituency in at least four state assembly districts.

These three Las Vegas-area congressional dis tricts primarily span Clark County, where threefourths of the state’s residents live and where three Democratic incumbents are projected to face stiff tests by Republican challengers.

According to the Las Vegas Latin Chamber of Commerce, inflation, jobs, and the economy are priorities for Nevada’s Latino voters, who were furious over COVID-19 pandemic school closures.

About 80 percent of the three districts’ residents who identify as “Latino” have a Mexican American background and work in hospitality, service industries, and construction, which are rebounding after pandemic-fostered

Latino voters nationwide identified jobs, the economy, health care, schools, and public safety as top priorities, a survey shows.

upheaval, according to NALEO.

All three southern Nevada congressional dis tricts were remapped during post-2020 Census reapportionment, with changes adopted by the Democrat-controlled state assembly inadvertent ly assisting Republican candidates.

With the 1st Congressional District’s new boundaries stretching east and south of Las Ve gas and its reconfigured demographics doubling the district’s number of registered Republicans, a 2–1 Democratic voter bulge has been scaled back to single-percentage points.

Rep. Dana Titus (D-Nev.), a five-term incum bent, fended off a scrappy challenge by Social ist Democrat Amy Vilela in their May primary, flooding Las Vegas with Spanish-language TV ads. She’s doing the same against her Republican chal lenger, retired U.S. Army Col. Mark Robertson.

In the 4th Congressional District, two-term in cumbent Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nevada) faces retired U.S. Air Force major and insurance firm owner Sam Peters in another battleground elec tion where Latino voters make up more than 30 percent of the constituency.

Texas

The U.S. Census Bureau confirmed in September that in July 2021, an estimated 40 percent of Texans identified as Latino, eclipsing non-Hispanic white Texans by 0.8 percent and becoming the state’s largest demographic group for the first time.

The Texas Demographic Center reported in 2020 that roughly 83 percent of the state’s Latino

Rep. Mayra Flores (R-Texas) is interviewed by a reporter outside the U.S. Capitol, after being sworn in, on June 21.

population claim Mexican descent.

In 2020, Texas Latino votes made up 23 percent of the ballots cast, up from 21 percent in 2018.

An estimated 1.8 million Texas Latinos will vote in November, according to a NALEO estimate. More than one of every five Texas voters is ex pected to be Latino in November.

Texans don’t register to vote by party. Hence, it’s hard to gauge by analyzing registration rolls which party is gaining the most voters and how Latino voters in the Lone Star State are leaning until actual results from primary and general elections are counted.

Republicans point to trends in three work ing-class Rio Grande Valley congressional districts spanning four border counties where tradition ally politically liberal but culturally conservative Latinos make up 93 percent of the population and have traditionally voted Democrat.

In 2020, Trump flipped one of the four counties, Zapata County, and narrowed the Democratic margins of victories across the three districts. In a June special election to serve the remainder of retiring Rep. Filemon Vela’s (D-Texas) term in the 34th Congressional District, conservative Re publican Mayra Flores, born in Mexico, defeated Democrat Dan Sanchez by nearly eight percentage points, becoming only the second Republican to ever win in a Rio Grande Valley congressional dis trict and the first Latina Republican ever elected to Congress from Texas.

Flores is among three pro-Trump Mexican American Texas Latinas presenting what the RNC calls a “triple threat” to Democrat dominance in the Rio Grande Valley, espousing conservative positions on abortion, immigration, and election security and finding success, proof that Latino voters are increasingly shifting to the right, Re publicans say.

In the newly redistricted 34th Congressio nal District, Flores—now the incumbent in the majority-Hispanic district that includes the border city of Brownsville—faces another incumbent, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas), who’s opting to run in this district rather than the 15th Congressional District, where he had

Most Latino survey respondents ultimately said their vote will come down to which candidates best address their economic concerns.

won three elections since 2016.

Flores, the wife of a Border Patrol officer and an evangelical Christian who has called for Biden’s impeachment and claims that the Democratic Party is the “greatest threat America faces,” is a pronounced underdog in the redrawn district, which Cook Political Reports says “leans” to Dem ocrats by 9 percentage points.

In the 28th Congressional District, Republican challenger Cassy Garcia, a former staffer for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), is campaigning on religious liberty, school choice, and abortion bans against nine-term incumbent Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), the last Democrat who opposes abortion and a long time advocate for the area’s oil and gas industries.

In what most regard as the most competitive of the three Rio Grande congressional district races, Trump-endorsed conservative Republican Monica De La Cruz is running for the 15th Con gressional District seat.

De La Cruz faces progressive Democrat Michelle Vallejo in November, with race forecast within the margin of error.

Florida

Latinos make up 26 percent of the Sunshine State’s population and 17 percent of the state’s registered voters.

In 2020, Trump won Florida convincingly, securing 56 percent of the state’s Cuban American

vote, which has traditionally favored the Republican Party, but also 50 percent of the nonCuban Hispanic vote, which, in Florida, traditionally skews to Democrats.

More than 1.4 million Florida Latinos are projected to cast ballots in November, one of about every five votes in the state, similar to the 2018 midterm elections and up by nearly 60 percent from 2014’s midterm election turnout.

Latino voters, especially young men, have been part of the growth of the Republican Party in Florida, which now has more than a 200,000-voter advantage in a state where Democrats had a 600,000-voter advantage in 2016.

The conservative shift among Florida Latinos is expected to benefit two-term incumbent Republican Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in his race against his Democratic challenger, Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.). The same goes for a dozen Republican candidates and incumbents across the state’s 28 congressional districts and for incumbent Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in his reelection bid against former Republican governor and nowDemocratic Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.).

The Florida Democratic Party has hired a statewide Hispanic voter contact director and increased bilingual staff, hoping to reach more Latino voters to reverse the trend and capitalize on a survey that says 70 percent of Florida respondents support legal access to abortion.

Both the Republican and Democratic parties are trying to tailor their candidates’ campaigns to appeal to Latino voters.

THESE 5 SENATE SEATS MIGHT FLIP IN NOVEMBER

OCTOBER REPRESENTS

the final full month of campaigning until the Nov. 8 general election that will determine whether Democrats retain a majority in the House and Senate, or if Republicans can gain con trol of one or both chambers.

A lot can change in that time, campaign teams and political strategists agree.

Earlier in the summer, Republicans seemed to have a significant advantage with record-high inflation and gas prices and President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in July appeared to energize Democrats.

The FBI’s raid on former President Don ald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Flor ida in August has fired up conservative Republicans.

The economy, many political pundits believe, will play a significant role in the midterm elections, and Democrats are pointing to gas prices that have eased since hitting a record high in June, Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, and stu dent loan forgiveness plan as examples that brighter days are ahead for Ameri cans’ bank accounts.

While multiple forecasts project that Republicans will regain control of the House, even GOP leaders are split about

the future of the Senate. Nationwide, 14 seats held by Democrats and 21 filled by Republicans are on the ballot.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McCon nell (R-Ky.) told reporters in August that he believes Republicans have a better chance of winning the House than the Senate. The quality of the GOP’s Senate candidates could hinder the party’s ability to regain control of the Senate, he added.

“I think there’s probably a greater like lihood the House flips than the Senate. Senate races are just different—they’re statewide [and] candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” McConnell said.

McConnell didn’t mention candidates by name, but Herschel Walker in Georgia and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania haven’t performed as well as originally expected in the polls.

Additionally, in the race to succeed re tiring Republican Sen. Rob Portman in Ohio, 10-term Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan has gained more traction than anticipat ed against first-time candidate J.D. Vance, who was endorsed by Trump.

McConnell’s comments drew criticism from Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Rick Scott.

“Senator McConnell and I clearly have a strategic disagreement here,” Scott told Politico. “We have great candidates. He wants to do the same thing I want to do:

I want to get a majority. And I think it’s important that we’re all cheerleaders for our candidates.”

Scott wrote in an op-ed published by the Washington Examiner: “Many of the very people responsible for losing the Senate last cycle are now trying to stop us from winning the majority, this time by trashtalking our Republican candidates.

“It’s an amazing act of cowardice, and, ultimately, it’s treasonous to the conser vative cause.

“Giving anonymous quotes to help The Washington Post or The New York Times write stories trashing Republicans is the same as working with the Democrat ic National Committee.”

With early voting starting in some states, and less than two months until Election Day, here are five Senate seats that could flip:

Pennsylvania

While John Fetterman, the Democratic lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, decisively won his party’s primary, Oz defeated David McCormick by fewer than 1,000 votes after a recount in a tense Republican primary.

Fetterman suffered a stroke days before the primary, cast his vote remotely from a hospital bed, and is still recovering. The candidates are vying to succeed

retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.

Until September, Fetterman had gar nered sympathy for his health condition while trolling Oz on social media with memes depicting the celebrity surgeon as a wealthy carpetbagger from neigh boring New Jersey.

Oz has responded by pointing to Fetter man’s absence from the campaign trail, questioning his cognitive abilities in the aftermath of the candidate’s stroke, and admonishing him for agreeing to only one debate.

Editorials in The Washington Post, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and The Phila delphia Inquirer also have expressed con cern about Fetterman’s health and have criticized him for hesitating to debate Oz.

While the first absentee ballots were mailed to Pennsylvania voters on Sept. 19, Fetterman has agreed to only one debate— on Oct. 25, two weeks before Election Day.

Oz wanted the first debate to occur on Sept. 6, but Fetterman declined. Instead, Oz held a press conference in the Phila delphia area with Toomey.

At the press conference, Oz and Toomey criticized Fetterman for refusing to de bate and questioned his ability to serve in the Senate, if elected, because of his health issues.

After suffering the stroke on May 13, Fetterman had surgery to implant a pacemaker. It was revealed that he has a serious heart condition. Fetterman, who hasn’t provided access to his medical re cords, has said that he almost died.

Since the stroke, he has conducted just a few interviews with reporters, hasn’t held a press conference, and has incorporated closed-captioning in video interviews with media members.

Fetterman had a double-digit lead in the polls over the summer, but the race has tightened as both parties’ Senate campaign arms pour millions of dollars into advertisements.

A Franklin & Marshall College survey published on Sept. 29 indicated that Fet terman led Oz, 42 percent to 37 percent. In August, the gap from the same orga nization’s poll was 13 points.

The new poll also revealed that 13 per cent of likely voters questioned are un decided about whom they will support.

Nevada

Senate Democrats consider Nevada a must-win state to hold their narrow majority in the chamber.

In one of the nation’s most-watched Senate races, Trump-endorsed Adam Laxalt, Nevada’s former attorney general, leads incumbent Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto in the most recent polls.

Data for Progress, a Democratic think tank, conducted a survey from Sept. 14 to Sept. 19 that showed Laxalt ahead of Cortez Masto, 47 percent to 46 percent.

Laxalt held a wider edge, 47 percent to 43 percent, in a poll conducted from Sept. 17 to Sept. 20 by The Trafalgar Group.

Democrats are hopeful that momen tum will carry over from Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020. Biden secured 50.06 percent of the vote compared to 47.67 percent for Trump.

A former federal prosecutor and state attorney general, Cortez Masto started her first term in the Senate in 2017 as former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s hand-picked successor for the seat.

Laxalt lost the Nevada governor’s race in 2018, but his surname has recognition in the state. His grandfather, Paul Laxalt, was a Republican governor of Nevada from 1967 to 1971 and a senator from 1975 to 1987. Laxalt’s father was late New Mexico GOP Sen. Pete Domenici.

Laxalt “is not a superstar Republi can recruit,” Kyle Kondik wrote in a Sabato’s Crystal Ball analysis on Aug. 4, although “he does at least stand out for being a prior officeholder and someone who has been through tough races in the past.”

“Democrats are hoping to use Laxalt’s anti-abortion rights stance as a weap on against him in a fairly pro-abortion rights state,” he added.

Polls have flip-flopped in the Laxalt–Cortez Masto race. Laxalt held an edge in April, but after Roe v. Wade was over turned, there was a 10-point shift that saw Cortez Masto gain a 7-point advan tage, according to a statewide Aug. 14–17 Suffolk University/Reno Gazette-Journal survey of 500 likely Nevada voters. Now, Laxalt has regained the lead.

Wisconsin

Incumbent Republican Sen. Ron John son has seen a surge in the polls against his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. Man dela Barnes.

In August, Johnson trailed Barnes by 7 points in a Marquette Law School poll. On Sept. 14, Marquette released a new survey showing that Johnson has taken a 49 per cent to 48 percent lead over Barnes.

AARP released a poll on Sept. 29 that was commissioned by Fabrizio Ward & Impact Research. That survey reported that Johnson has a 5-point lead—51 per cent to 46 percent—among likely voters.

Among voters 50 and older, Johnson carries a 7-point cushion.

The GOP is peppering the Wisconsin airwaves with negative ads about Barnes, tying him to the “squad” of House pro gressive Democrats.

Barnes is “not just a Democrat, but a dan gerous Democrat,” the National Senate Re publican Committee said in one such spot.

While Barnes “supports defunding the police,” the pro-Johnson Wisconsin Truth PAC said in its ad, he has countered with an ad denying that claim.

“To the extent there has been a shift, Wisconsinites are finally beginning to understand who Mandela is and what he truly believes,” Johnson told the Milwau kee Journal Sentinel. “Not that he’s telling them. He’s hiding from the press.

Around 29 percent of undecided voters reported they are leaning toward Oz while 18 percent listed Fetterman.

Democrats and Republicans acknowl edge that abortion, and not solely the economy, will be a hot-button issue in the race.

20 EPOCH INSIGHT Week 39, 2022 “I hope the mainstream media in Wisconsin starts demanding that he start answering their questions and be honest with them, which I don’t think he’s been,” Johnson added.

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“He’s been running away from his past positions, which he realizes are out of the mainstream thought of Wisconsinites, incredibly unpopular.”

Candidates will rise and fall in the polls, Barnes campaign spokeswoman Maddy McDaniel said in a statement, “but our campaign remains focused on reaching every voter we need to win, and [Barnes] will continue to bring his message of fighting for the middle class to every corner of Wisconsin.”

Georgia

Incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock has agreed to debate Republi can opponent Herschel Walker on Oct. 14 in Savannah. For several weeks, Walker had needled his opponent for not com mitting to a forum.

“The … big contrast between the two of us, and … you may not have heard this,” Walker told a crowd of supporters on Sept. 8. “The man is scared to debate me. Y’all hear? … No, he don’t want to debate me. I told him to show up on Oct. 14 in Savannah, his hometown, and the man is still running. But he don’t know I can catch him.”

Warnock’s campaign be lieves it is Walker who has dodged debates.

“Today, the Warnock for Geor gia campaign is challenging Herschel Walker to quit the games and show whether he’s really ready to represent Geor gia,” the Warnock campaign said in a statement on Sept. 7.

“After Herschel Walker repeatedly claimed he was ready to debate, even going so far as to say Reverend Warnock should name the time and place, Walker has now done everything he can to avoid being forced to answer questions.”

Walker, who is endorsed by Trump and is beloved in the state for his University of Georgia football stardom, is the target of attack ads reminding voters of a past that includes mental health challenges and domestic violence.

A new spot features footage from Walker and his ex-wife detailing how he pointed a gun at her head. Walker has openly said he has dissociative personal ity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder.

Warnock is averaging 0.7 percentage points ahead of Warnock, according to RealClearPolitics’ average, which rates the race a toss-up.

In a Fox News poll released on Sept. 29, Warnock had a 46 percent to 41 percent edge over Walker.

The margin was 47 percent to 43 per cent when respondents who said they are certain they will vote were included.

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution sur vey published on Sept. 20 showed Walker with a 2-point lead and a CBS News-You Gov poll posted on Sept. 21 indicated that Warnock is ahead by 2 points.

Georgia voters elected two Democratic senators in runoffs last year. Warnock is seeking his first six-year term.

Arizona

Early voting is set to begin in Arizona on Oct. 12. If polls are accurate, Republi can nominee Blake Masters has ground

to gain on incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.

A Sept. 27 survey of likely voters con ducted by The Arizona Republican report ed that Kelly had opened a 7-point edge over Trump-endorsed Masters.

The margin was 49 percent to 42 per cent, with 7 percent undecided.

Masters trailed Kelly by 1 point in a poll released by The Trafalgar Group on Sept. 18, showing how survey results vary de pending on the source and how swiftly public opinion can change.

On Sept. 22, The Cook Political Report shifted its forecast on the race to “leans Democrat.” from “toss-up.”

The Sentinel Action Fund, a super PAC linked to Heritage Action for Ameri ca, recently announced it will spend at least $5 million to support Masters. The breakdown of funds includes $3.5 million for television spots and $1.5 million for voter outreach.

Masters won the GOP primary with $13.5 million in funding from billionaire tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel, who founded PayPal, among other ventures. Thiel hasn’t committed financial support for Masters in the general election.

The Senate Leadership Fund cut its Sep tember ad reservations for Masters and re allocated money to bolster Vance in Ohio.

To date, Democrats have secured $39 million worth of spots between now and Election Day, while Republicans have spent $14 million, AdImpact reports.

Reflecting each party’s nationwide strat egy, in Arizona, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is focused on Mas ters’s pro-life stance on abortion, while the National Republican Senatorial Committee aired an ad reminding voters that Kelly “voted to keep [the] borders open to illegal crimi nals and to let them stay [in the United States] legally. Kelly vot ed to fund teaching … children woke racism and extremism.”

“He even supports extreme last-minute abortions right before a baby’s birth,” the ad states. “This is Mark Kelly’s rad ical, extreme America, but you don’t have to live in it.”

The

midterms elections in dozens of districts could result in new party representation

lthough democrats currently have a majority in the House, Republi cans feel confident that they’ll flip enough seats to regain control of the chamber after the Nov. 8 midterm elections.

Every one of the House’s 435 seats is up for grabs. At least 212 of those seats lean Republican, while 192 of them fa vor Democrats, the Cook Political Report announced on Sept. 21. The organization rates 31 of the House elections as toss-ups.

There are dozens of races that could result in new party representation. Newly drawn maps that now favor one party over another will have an impact on some districts. Some races feature battles between first-time candidates vying to replace longtime representatives who are retiring or seeking another office.

There are also districts where Dem ocrats were elected during President Donald Trump’s term and now face steep reelection challenges at a time when President Joe Biden’s approval rating is low and the economy is plagued with high inflation.

Based on one or more of the aforemen tioned factors, here are eight examples of House seats that could flip and determine which party has control.

Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District

Rep. Cindy Axne (D-Iowa) advanced to the general election without competi tion in Iowa’s June 7 Democratic pri mary, but her tenure in Congress could reach an end in her midterm election against Trump-endorsed Republican Zach Nunn.

The Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball rate Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District race as “lean Republican,” while Inside Elections calls it a toss-up.

Republicans believe they can flip Iowa’s only blue district, which is now rated “R+2” by FiveThirtyEight after redistricting.

In 2018, Axne defeated two-term incum bent David Young (R-Iowa), 49 percent to 47.5 percent. She edged Young again in 2020, 48.9 percent to 47.6 percent.

The new 3rd Congressional District in cludes nine counties that tend to vote Re publican and supported Trump in 2020.

Nunn is a current state senator and a

former state representative who served as a U.S. Air Force combat aviator in Af ghanistan and Iraq and director of cyber security on the National Security Council.

Axne was first elected in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District in 2017. She previ ously worked for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, Iowa Department of Management, and Iowa Department of Ad ministrative Services from 2005 to 2014.

She’s supported by House Speaker Nan cy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who campaigned with Axne on July 9.

Nunn received the Trump endorsement on July 6.

“Zach Nunn is a conservative warrior running to represent Iowa’s 3rd Con gressional District!” Trump wrote in a statement through his Save America PAC. “A combat veteran, Zach knows how to strengthen our military, defend our country, and care for our brave veterans.

year compared to 2020, when Wild defeated Scheller, 51.9 percent to 48.1 percent.

With President Joe Biden’s low ap proval rating, a high inflation rate, and a rising cost of living, Wild has some obstacles to overcome. The Republican Party is reminding voters that she has consistently supported Biden and Pelosi.

The Cook Political Report rates the 7th Congressional District race as “leans Re publican.” FiveThirtyEight calls it “high ly competitive” with a slight Republican lean. Sabato’s Crystal Ball and Inside Elections call it a toss-up.

The Democratic Congressional Cam paign Committee named Wild to its “Frontline” program, which provides extra resources and support to vulner able candidates.

The National Republican Congres sional Committee added Scheller to its “Young Guns” program, which is led by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and provides candidates with “the tools they need” to win.

31

ELECTIONS

HAVE BEEN RATED as toss-ups by the Cook Political Report.

Wild was an attorney and the city solicitor in Allentown, Pennsylvania, before she was elected to fill the remain der of Rep. Charlie Dent’s (R-Pa.) term in Pennsylvania’s 15th Congressional District in a special general election in May 2018.

That same month, she won the Demo cratic primary for the 7th Congressional District and then decisively defeated Re publican Marty Nothstein in the general election in November 2018.

“In Congress, Zach will tirelessly work to support our great farmers, cut taxes, and protect our Second Amendment.”

Congressional voting records show that Axne has voted with Biden and Pelosi 100 percent of the time, a fact that the Nation al Republican Congressional Committee is emphasizing in ads.

Axne is positioning herself as a moder ate and is attacking Nunn for his opposi tion to abortion.

Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional Dis trict general election features a rematch between incumbent Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.) and business owner Lisa Scheller.

The circumstances are different this

In 1945, Scheller’s grandparents found ed Silberline Manufacturing, which makes aluminum-based pigments for paints and coatings.

When her brother died in 1998, Schell er took over running the Tamaqua, Pennsylvania-based company, which is located in Lehigh Valley.

She currently serves as its chairman and president. Scheller is also a former Lehigh County commissioner.

Wild topped Scheller by more than 14,000 votes (195,475 to 181,407) in 2020.

Redistricting is expected to be a factor in the race.

The 7th Congressional District spans Lehigh, Northampton, and Carbon counties along with a small part of Monroe County.

Carbon County, which Trump pre

vailed with 65 percent of the vote in 2020, was added to the congressional district, while most of Monroe County, where Trump received just 44 percent support in 2020, was removed.

Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District

Democrats have held Tennessee’s 5th Con gressional District since 1875, when Ulyss es S. Grant was president. Republicans

believe that Trump-endorsed Andy Ogles can defeat state Sen. Heidi Campbell.

Redistricting split Davidson County through downtown Nashville and shifted portions of the former 5th Congressional District to the mostly rural and historical ly Republican 6th Congressional District and 7th Congressional District.

Incumbent Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) has represented the district since 2003 but announced in February that he wouldn’t seek reelection.

Ogles is the mayor of Maury County and has campaigned as a pro-Trump “America First” conservative. He topped a crowded field on Aug. 4 to win the 5th Congressional District Republican nom ination.

Campbell was mayor of Oak Hill, Ten nessee, before serving as a state senator.

Her campaign released an internal poll in August that claimed she held a threepoint lead over Ogles.

The district is rated as solid Republican by the Cook Political Report, safe Repub lican by Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and likely Republican by Inside Elections.

Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District

In a race that received widespread nation al attention and generated millions of dollars in spending, Trump-endorsed Re publican challenger John Gibbs stunned Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) in Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District primary in August.

Meijer, whose surname is familiar be cause of his family’s national supercenter chain that’s based in Michigan, was the only freshman legislator in the group of 10 House Republicans who chose to impeach the president in the final days of his administration.

Gibbs is the underdog again in the gen eral election against Grand Rapids, Mich igan, attorney Hillary Scholten, who was unopposed in the Democratic primary.

The redrawn 3rd District is now seen as Democratic-leaning.

The Democratic Congressional Cam paign Committee (DCCC) issued a state ment attacking Gibbs as a “far-right ex tremist who was carried over the finish line in his primary only by the most fringe elements of his party.”

A U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) official

during the Trump administration, Gibbs was appointed by Trump to lead the Of fice of Personnel Management but wasn’t confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Gibbs grew up in the Lansing area

and didn’t live in western Michigan until last year.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in com puter science from Stanford University and a master’s degree in public adminis

tration from Harvard University, served as a missionary in Japan, and worked in Silicon Valley as a software engineer be fore his role at HUD.

Meijer defeated Scholten in 2020, 53 percent (213,649) to 47 percent (189,769).

Political analysts can’t agree on the pulse of the race.

The Cook Political Report rates it as “lean Democrat,” Inside Elections calls it “tilt Democrat” and Sabato’s Crystal Ball defines it as a toss-up.

Ohio’s 9th Congressional District

When the calendar turns to January 2023, some residents will be in for a shock in Ohio’s redrawn 9th Congres sional District.

Whether longtime Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) keeps her seat or Republican U.S. Air Force veteran and nuclear energy ex ecutive J.R. Majewski prevails, a segment of the population in northwest Ohio will have a representative whose platform is drastically different.

Kaptur is 76 and is closely aligned with President Joe Biden. She has a lifetime rating of 11.85 by the American Conserva tive Union. Biden was given a 12.57 rating during his tenure in the U.S. Senate.

She was first elected to the U.S. House in 1982, when President Ronald Reagan was midway through his first term.

Kaptur is the longest-serving woman in the history of the House. If she defeats Majewski and takes office for a 20th term, she’ll surpass former Sen. Barbara Mikul ski (D-Md.) as the longest-serving female member in the history of Congress.

The 42-year-old Majewski gained na tional acclaim when he painted a Trump 2020 sign in the yard of his Port Clinton home near the Lake Erie shoreline.

He built a career managing nuclear power plants before mounting a grass roots campaign.

Majewski announced that he was running for the 9th District Republican nomination before the map was redrawn.

The first-time candidate faced long odds running against state Rep. Craig Rie del and state Sen. Theresa Gavarone, who had more money and name recognition.

Yet when the results were announced in the May 3 Republican primary, Ma jewski earned the nomination with 35.7 percent of the vote compared to Riedel’s

31 percent and Gavarone’s 28.5 percent.

For a decade leading to the current elec tion cycle, the 9th District covered 140 miles of Lake Erie’s coastline, including the Democratic strongholds of Toledo in northwest Ohio and Cleveland in the state’s northeast corner.

Kaptur breezed to election victories, consistently securing more than 60 per cent of the vote.

Now, after the most recent redistricting process, the 9th District includes Ohio’s rural northwestern corner, which Kaptur has never represented. Voters there are more conservative, while Democrat ic-leaning Cleveland is no longer in the district.

Political forecasters give Republicans a slight edge in winning the district.

Kaptur was added to the DCCC’s “Frontline” program for vulnerable House members.

Majewski was named one of the Na tional Republican Congressional Com mittee’s (NRCC) “Young Guns,” which identifies the party’s top U.S. House re cruits for 2022.

Recently, The Associated Press re ported that Majewski exaggerated or misrepresented portions of his resume, including a mention that he deployed to Afghanistan.

The NRCC decided to cancel a $960,000 ad buy in the Toledo market that would have supported Majewski.

The New American reported that mil itary documents it received from Ma jewski illustrate that he deployed to a classified location not long after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He was given a secret clearance level, the outlet wrote.

The AP reported that files show Ma jewski “never deployed to Afghanistan but instead completed a six-month stint helping to load planes at an air base in Qatar, a longtime U.S. ally that is a safe distance from the fighting.”

Majewski told The New American that his mission to Afghanistan was classified and records aren’t available through a public records request.

In a press conference on Sept. 23, Ma jewski said he provided his personal military information and photographic proofs to the AP in July. Military absentee ballots are scheduled to be mailed in late September, he noted, limiting his time to respond to the accusations.

In a Facebook video posted on Sept. 24, Majewski said: “Here’s how it works. The AP writes a hit piece about you, slan ders your name, and sits on it for three months. When they release it, you can’t defend yourself because what you need to defend yourself is constrained by time. Rules for radicals are lie, lie, lie, and ac cuse opponents of what you are doing.”

New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District

At 25, Karoline Leavitt barely met the minimum age requirement to serve in the U.S. House. She won a crowded Re publican primary that included 2020 nominee Matt Mowers.

She became the second Generation Z candidate to win a congressional prima ry in 2022. Florida Democrat Maxwell Alejandro Frost was the first.

In a race that Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball rate as a tossup, Leavitt faces incumbent Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.), who called Leavitt “the most extreme, out-of-step nominee that 1st District voters have ever seen.”

Leavitt is a former Trump White House assistant press secretary. She was direc tor of communications for House Repub lican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) after leaving the White House.

Trump didn’t endorse a candidate in the primary but offered praise to Leavitt after her victory.

Texas’s 15th Congressional District

Considered by many political pundits as Texas’s most competitive congressio nal midterm race, progressive Democrat Michelle Vallejo faces Trump-endorsed Monica De La Cruz.

Vallejo is pro-abortion and supports “Medicare for All,” while De La Cruz is a staunch conservative who opposes abortion and touts the “America First” platform.

Vallejo finished second behind Ru ben Ramirez in the Democratic prima ry but then defeated him in the runoff election.

The seat is open because Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) is running in the newly redrawn 34th Congressional Dis trict, which is considered friendlier to Democrats.

Vallejo and De La Cruz are first-time candidates in a redrawn south Texas dis trict that Trump would have won by 2.8 points in 2020.

De La Cruz lost to Gonzalez by less than 3 percentage points in 2020 in a traditionally Democratic district.

The Cook Political Report and Inside Elections call the race “lean Republican,” while Sabato’s Crystal Ball believes it’s “likely Republican.”

“Amazing job by Karoline Leavitt in her great New Hampshire victory,” Trump said in a post to Truth Social. “Against all odds, she did it—and will have an even greater victory on Nov. 8. Wonderful energy and wisdom!”

Pappas served as a member of the New Hampshire Executive Council and was first elected in 2017.

Ohio’s 1st Congressional District

While Republicans are hopeful that Ma jewski will end Kaptur’s 40-year reign in northern Ohio, Democrats believe they can unseat longtime Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) in a redrawn district in south west Ohio that now leans blue.

Chabot is running for a 14th term. He was first elected in 1994 and has served in Congress for so long that he was a House impeachment manager during the impeachment trial of then-President Bill Clinton.

Redistricting now puts Chabot at a dis advantage as the new boundaries cover an area that Biden would have won by about 9 points in 2020. Cincinnati City Councilman Greg Landsman is a former Cincinnati Public Schools teacher who won the Democratic primary.

Political analysts call the race a toss-up.

ADVERTISING

NEW ADS, OLDTRICKS

Turning on the tv these days causes advertising ex pert Tobe Berkovitz to groan in frustration.

When pre-Election Day con tent is especially egregious, Berkovitz admits to lashing out at the screen with critiques that only his wife can hear.

The onslaught of subpar political advertising blaring across the airwaves is what irks him. And it will only get worse between now and Nov. 8, he said.

It’s the cliches. It’s the “rainbow coalition” of people parading across the screen, allowing candidates to suggest that they’re supported by many ethnicities, races, and other “identities.”

“To me, it’s like, ‘Here we go again,’” Berkovitz, now advertising professor emeritus at Boston University, told The Epoch Times. “I was in the business 30 years. Now, my goal is to not watch any of this.

“I start trying to click [away from it] as fast as I can, or I just sit there and moan [about how poorly crafted] all this stuff is.”

But he understands the ad creators’ conundrum.

At this point in election season, there’s no time to craft clever campaigns. With a little more than a month until Election Day, hired consultants scurry to control a candidate’s message.

Their aim is to avoid being forced into reaction mode, triggered by attacks from an opponent or the media.

No More Mr. Nice Guy

In the early days of a campaign, wordsmiths care fully craft compelling messages.

“Campaigns that have resources absolutely message-test the content that goes into their advertising,” Jake Neiheisel, an associate politi cal science professor at the University at Buffalo and a specialist in political communication, told The Epoch Times.

If the response is favorable with paid ad-watch ers, the message moves forward. When ad-watch ers frown, commercials are sent back for more tinkering.

When it’s still early in the campaign season, political consultants roll out “warm and fuzzy” ads, Berkovitz said. Those often include a can didate’s family and, when possible, a pet dog or two.

“You’re telling the voters that you are a family person, and you have a dog or a cat, and you’ve been living the nice family life,” he said.

“The advertising is a little more positive when you’re trying to create a positive image for your candidate.”

Some candidates “take the high road,” focusing on what they’re in favor of rather than mention ing an opponent’s views, according to Berkovitz.

That’s been the early tactic of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who’s running for reelection against former U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.). While Crist rolls out passionate attacks against the incumbent, DeSantis has released ads that criticize no one so far, except the “cor porate media.”

But that’s likely to change in the state gover nor’s race, as well as in races across the country, as Nov. 8 approaches.

It’s about the time when “the gloves come off, and you just start whaling away at your oppo nent,” according to Berkovitz. And that’s been the way of politics “since our country became

(Above) A family watches President John Kennedy on television in 1962. (Right) Then-Presidentelect George H.W. Bush wades through the crowd following his acceptance speech at the Brown Convention Center in Houston on Nov. 8, 1988.

a democracy.”

This time in the cycle, the pace of most cam paigns is “really very frantic,” he said.

Candidates tread carefully, hoping to avoid situations that might force them to react.

“The goal of political advertising, and the goal of politics, is to set the agenda,” Berkovitz said. “And if you set the agenda, you can be proactive; you’re on the offensive. But it doesn’t always work out that way.

“It could be your opponent is attacking you. It could be the media is attacking you. It could be that, all of a sudden, there’s a news story that affects the campaign. All of these things have an impact.

“The political consultants and the candidate and the campaign strategist and campaign man ager all have to be smart and hope that they get [the advertising response] right.”

Shifting Messages

Astute voters may notice candidates suddenly adopting a more moderate position on issues in the last weeks of the campaign.

Some Republican candidates have retooled the way they speak about abortion, backing away from earlier vows to work to outlaw it. Some Democrats have toned down anti-gun rhetoric.

Before the primaries, candidates aimed their message at “hardcore Republicans” and “hard core Democrats,” according to Berkovitz.

“The real battle now is for the independents, especially the suburban voters,” he said. “[It’s for those] who aren’t as ideological and can be swayed by what’s going on. Whether it’s Mar-aLago or whether it’s the border, they get influ enced by what’s going on in the news, especially what is affecting them and their family.”

Candidates are scrambling now to win those voters.

“But the challenge is to break through the clut ter,” Berkovitz said, noting that it’s nearly

“If you can pull [humor] off,

Tobe Berkovitz, ad expert

EPOCH INSIGHT Week 39, 2022 31 Special Report Decision 2022 CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: MPI/GETTY IMAGES, BU.EDU, MIKE SPAGUE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES it gets people.”

impossible now to grab and hold the attention of people being bombarded with campaign mes saging. “Remember, most people care more about their shampoo than, ‘Who’s gonna be my next senator?’ That’s the average person.

“Yes, you have a lot of political junkies who’ve been paying attention for the last six months. But most people are more concerned about, ‘Is my kid going to do OK at school? Are we going to be able to pay the mortgage?’

“So what the political people do is try to push that hot button that’s going to affect the voter emotionally. You do that through visuals. You do it through sound effects. You do it with taking content out of context.

“And by the way, that’s what America has always done in its political advertising and communica tion during campaigns.”

Tricks That Sway Us

One way to move voters emotionally is to copy horror movie techniques.

“I used to call it slasher advertising,” Berkovitz said. “You know, like the old sort of 1980s, 1990s slasher movies, where you’d have creepy music and visuals.”

By using odd, unappealing colors and eerie camera angles in portraying an opponent, the ad sends a worrisome message: “that they are an evil person.”

“And if they are elected, they are going to do very bad things for you and your family and our society,” he said. “Both sides do this. It’s sort of standard operating procedure.”

During his 1988 campaign for president, thenVice President George Bush ran “just brutal ads” against Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, Berkovitz said.

Some of the ads used “slasher” music when questioning Dukakis’s record on crime.

“He just took Mike Dukakis apart,” he said.

Another old ad trick involves showing head lines from “very biased news media or taken out of context,” according to Berkovitz.

Published headlines or video clips from a media outlet give an ad “alleged credibility,” he said. It sends the message: “‘Look! Here’s what the media has been saying about my opponent.’”

Also common is to use the rival candidate’s words against him or her.

“Your opponent said something that might have been several sentences long, and you grab one part of it and pull it out of context,” Berkovitz said. “But you don’t say the next sentence that your opponent said, which sort of clarifies it.”

Using humor to attack or mock an opponent almost always delivers voter loyalty.

“It’s entertaining, and that’s very effective, if

A door-hanger ad left by volunteers at a voter’s home shows Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis with his wife and children.

you can do it,” he said.

One candidate who skillfully wielded humor to his advantage was then-President George W. Bush when he was running for reelection in 2004.

A Bush ad showed footage of John Kerry, then a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, zipping back and forth across the waves on a windsurfing board.

Bush’s ad gurus set the footage to music, the iconic classical piece “On the Beautiful Blue Dan ube, Op. 314.”

As Kerry pilots the board through frequent changes of direction, a narrator points out Kerry’s back-and-forth opinions on issues, switching to match whichever way the wind blows.

“It’s John Kerry being ripped apart by George Bush,” Berkovitz said of the ad. “Just brutal, abso lutely taking him apart. But it’s tough to do that. And remember, not everybody has a sense of humor. But if you can pull that off, it gets people.”

Bush won the election.

DeSantis recently released an ad that was a par ody of the movie “Top Gun,” portraying himself as “Top Gov.” In it, he used humor to take on the corporate media by pointing out their partisan attacks.

“It worked for him,” Berkovitz said. “He got ripped apart for that, which basically tells you they fear the ad.

“If the media is attacking an ad, either it’s be cause it’s so vile that it deserves to be attacked” or they perceive that it’s good for the candidate they don’t favor, he said.

“So I think that’s what happened on that one. DeSantis seems to know how he wants to present himself, and he seems to have consultants who are pretty effective at communicating what he thinks.”

‘Hey, Martha!’

Candidates hit the jackpot when they create an ad people love to watch.

This poster, featuring images from an ad released by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, sells for $25 and is part of a large merchandise collection offered by the campaign.

“I once worked with a political consultant who called them ‘Hey, Martha commercials,’ because someone would be watching TV and go, ‘Hey, Martha, here’s that ad on again!’” Berkovitz said. “If you can have an ad that people actually want to take a look at, that tends to be a pretty big victory.”

This late in election season, “most of this stuff is just nasty video wallpaper that people try to avoid,” he said. “Now that we’re getting toward Election Day, it’s just wall-to-wall political ad vertising.”

That makes it even harder for candidates to catch the attention of the voters they need—the still-undecided crowd.

“So that’s your challenge: ‘How do I get someone

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to pay attention to my ad when they’re just sick and tired of all these political ads that they’re being bombarded with?’” Berkovitz said.

A well-timed Hail Mary could come in the form of an uplifting commercial.

In 1992, when campaigning for his first term as president, Democrat Bill Clinton ran a touch ing one-minute ad describing his humble begin nings and desire to make a difference.

In 1984, incumbent President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, ran an ad titled “It’s Morning in America Again.”

“This is consistently called one of the most emo tionally effective political ads ever made,” the New York Historical Society said in its description of the commercial.

“Studies show that when it comes to political ad vertising, we feel first and think later. So the most impactful campaign ads aim for our hearts—fear, anger, hope, and pride.”

It’s the music and the visuals that grab us, Nei heisel said.

“TV is a medium that appeals to the emotions quite well, so emotional content is common in campaign ads,” he said.

With no budget or time constraints, Berkovitz’s ad strategy would be to “show them that I am a

reasonable person with views that are moderate and are like theirs.”

“And I am not going to be doctrinaire,” he said. “I’m not going to be pulled by one side or the other.”

That’s the kind of messaging that appeals to moderates. And they’re the 10 percent of voters that “will probably decide the election,” Berko vitz said.

But sounding too moderate can irk a candidate’s loyal base.

“You’ve got to motivate your base with the red meat stuff,” he said. “Both sides have their hot buttons.

“But independents care more about who’s going to make it so that I can afford gas, who’s going to make it so I can feed my family, who’s going to make it so that if I’m lucky enough to get my kid into college, I’ll be able to afford it. They tend to be more focused on what’s going to be good for me and my family.”

For now, Berkovitz hopes he won’t spend the remainder of this election cycle channel-surfing in a hapless attempt to avoid deplorable ads.

“I want something that’s sort of clever, some thing that’s a little bit creative. You know, some thing that I can actually almost enjoy watching,” he said. “There’s almost none of that.”

Then-Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton (L) with his running mate Al Gore during the election campaign.

Another old ad trick involves using messages out of context, an expert says.

HOW TO TELL WHEN A POLITICIAN IS LYING

With midterm elections looming, some voters are still undecided about candidate choices.

And when campaign claims conflict, some wonder, who’s being honest?

That doesn’t have to be a mystery anymore, body language experts told The Epoch Times.

But first, voters seeking to root out the truth must forget everything they’ve been told about how to spot a lie. Wrong are the generations-old myths, such as a liar’s inability to look into the eyes of the person he’s trying to deceive.

“Averting eyes is not a clue of deception, and not looking up to the right, and not looking up to the left—all of that science has been de bunked” by at least 22 peer-reviewed studies, says Susan Constantine, an expert on body language.

So what does expose a lie?

There’s no one sign for any person. But there are behaviors all liars have in common, ex perts say.

Blips From the Baseline

When someone tries to deceive, he or she un consciously reveals a burst of behaviors asso ciated with lying, Constantine and two other top truth-detectors say.

And that “cluster” of what experts call “hotspots” or “tells” will stray from the person’s usual way of acting or speaking.

“We have a general way that we behave— that’s our baseline,” said Traci Brown, author of “How to Detect Lies, Fraud, and Identity Theft.”

To spot untruthfulness by a politician or a suspect under investigation, Brown looks for two to five deception-linked clues “off their baseline” in the span of about one sentence.

Constantine coaches her clients to look for at least three signs in seven seconds.

Clue clusters happen fast, and they indicate anxiety. Anxiety accompanies deception, ex perts agreed. It’s the body’s response when un truthfulness is being formulated in the brain.

“That is the science, and there’s research to back that up,” Constantine said.

Blips from the baseline will expose even a polished politician adept at exaggerating the truth, hiding facts, or telling outright whoppers.

Then-President Bill Clinton poses at the White House on Aug. 17, 1998, just before admitting to his inappropriate conduct with Monica Lewinsky.

Most seasoned politicians have “learned how to answer questions and present them in a way where they’re giving you information,” Con stantine said.

“They’re withholding, omitting, and skip ping over pertinent information, which is purposeful.”

By rehearsing their talking points, they practice hiding the delivery of not-so-truthful tidbits.

But it’s almost impossible to completely camouflage their deception, especially when forced off-script by an unexpected question, experts agreed.

That’s when the body gives it away. And that’s the best time for observers to watch closely.

One doesn’t have to be a pro, though. People are wired to naturally pick up on fibs, making all of us an effective “human lie detector,” says body language expert Patti Wood, author of “Snap: Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language, and Charisma.”

Giveaways to Clinton’s Big Lie

In January 1998, when President Bill Clinton denied involvement with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, he didn’t fool experts trained to read body language. They saw the classic clues.

Months later, their observations were proven correct when Clinton admitted the “improper physical relationship.”

In a video clip from the William J. Clinton Presidential Library, the former president’s eyes appear “locked and frozen,” which was a big giveaway, Constantine said.

His eyebrows flick up briefly, another clue. And he uses his pointer finger to point, speaking more “to convince than convey” information, Constantine said.

“All signs of deception” because they happen in a cluster, and stray from his normal way of speaking, his baseline, she said.

During the denial, Clinton punches out the words: “I wanna say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I’m gonna say this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman—Ms. Lewinsky.”

Pounding the podium for emphasis, Clinton says: “I never told anybody to lie. Not a single time. Never. These allegations are false. And I need to go back to work for the American people. Thank you.”

Even his word choices help reveal the lie, Wood said.

When he calls Lewinsky “that woman” before catching himself and using her name, that’s called “depersonalization,” and it’s a clue that law enforcement officers note when interview ing suspects, Wood said.

“When someone depersonalizes, that’s actually a signal that they’re guilty of a crime against that person or with that person.”

Also, Clinton pauses for an unnaturally long time between the words “woman” and “Ms. Lewinsky.”

“Longer than normal, and out of his baseline,” Wood said.

The Key Is the Cluster

In seeking to spot fibs, “it’s really important to understand how the brain works,” Constantine said. “When a person knows they’re going to tell something that’s untrue, there are clues that begin to develop.”

That’s when they veer off their baseline.

“When they’re about to fabricate, or skip over, or bolster and leave out, or out-and-out lie, you’ll start to see these little clusters that happen,” she said.

Like Clinton, the deceiver may pause unnatural ly or lock eyes with the audience or interviewer. Or “one shoulder will pop up just ever so slightly— that’s a sign of deception. But there are so many,” Constantine said.

To spot untruthfulness by a politician, an expert looks for two to five deception-linked clues “off their baseline” in the span of about one sentence.

“Your body almost never lets you get away with [a lie].”

Traci Brown, body language expert

The key, as always, is the cluster.

It might include a giggle, a yawn, raised eye brows, puffing out air, poking the tongue out of the side of the mouth, stammering, shifting weight, tapping feet, moving a hand to the face, pressing lips together, biting the corner of the mouth, a flutter of blinks or not blinking enough, and sudden changes in a person’s tone, tempo, volume, or pitch.

Those behaviors occur, Constantine said, because of “internal anxiety, and that’s what we call cog nitive load, and that’s what happens to the brain when the brain knows you’re going to lie.”

Constantine said Vice President Kamala Harris shows signs of deception when she holds a forced smile, or laughs off what someone else says. It’s a deception clue that experts call “duping delight.”

“When a person says something, and then they feel like they duped you, sometimes will see a smirk come out, or a smile,” or ill-timed, awkward laughter.

“She does that,” Constantine said about Harris. “And she over-faces,” which means holding an

expression, such as a smile or frown, for too long.

Genuine expressions are fleeting, leaving “your face in microseconds,” Constantine said. “So when you hold it, whether it’s a smile or a frown, or it’s an exaggerated expression, those are over-expres sions. Those are ones that are contrived. Those are the ones that are forced.”

That’s a dishonesty alert, she said.

Often, Harris’s over-facing “is really more about that she feels very uncomfortable and insecure.”

Constantine said. “So she thinks that in over-smil ing or over-facing that she will win people over. It does the opposite.”

But, Constantine adds, “I would never trust anybody if they sat there across from me” with a forced, insincere-looking smile.

“You think you’re gonna win me over, be cause you’re trying to be charismatic, and you are over-facing, which, to me, is not authentic,” Constantine said. “It’s contrived. To me, that’s a triple-check no.”

Often asked to analyze debates, Wood also watches the mouth for more clues.

“When they suck in their lips, I call that lip with holding—they’re withholding the truth. So it’s highly probable the next thing out of their mouth is a lie,” Wood said.

It’s the same when candidates “hear a question and their lips press together,” she said. “They have the truth inside them, but they’re keeping it from coming out. So it’s very likely that the next thing out of their mouth is a lie.”

Or, if the subject is upset with an interviewer for asking a tough question, they might stick out their tongue, just barely and very quickly. Wood slows video playback speed to watch for such clues.

“It means they’ve been cornered and found out,” Wood said.

She sees that often in witnesses testifying be fore Congress.

In their cluster of signs, liars may lick their lips, usually from left to right, she said, “like they’re erasing what they just said.”

And in looking for lies, she watches the eyes.

People formulating a lie may hold eyelids closed for longer than normal.

“You’re closing your eyes to what you don’t like, or you’re trying to have a minute to think of the

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“The pausing, hesitation, clearing the throat, looking down after they’ve been looking up, the smirk, the rolling of the eyes, the raise of the eyebrows, the duping delight—Biden does them all.”

Susan Constantine, body language expert

lie,” Wood said. “It lets your brain rest for a second, so that you can go over to your neocortex [area of the brain], where the lies are, and think of the lie.”

Biden’s Bluffs

Brown and Constantine noted what they see as unmistakable signs that President Joe Biden has strayed from the truth.

During his campaign for the presidency, he often spoke smoothly and confidently—his baseline—until he took on one particular topic, Brown said.

“Whenever he would talk about race and ra cial equality,” she said, that’s when he’d begin to stutter or have a “hitch in the middle of a word. That happened frequently on the campaign trail.”

The word that trips up a speaker could be the one at the heart of a lie, she said.

And when a smooth speaker suddenly be gins to stammer, and “the word-error rate is super-high, that’s an indicator of deception,” Brown said.

Her impression: When Biden repeatedly proclaimed racial inequality is a widespread problem in the United States, he didn’t actually believe it.

His eyes told a similar story, she said.

“Anytime anyone’s blink-rate changes, that’s high anxiety,” Brown said. “Super-high stress can be connected to deception. Not always. But it sure can be.”

Constantine suspects dishonesty when Biden suddenly starts coughing or clearing his throat. Those behaviors indicate “super-high anxiety for him, and can be connected to deception, ab solutely,” she said.

You’ll see similar behavior everywhere, even in church, Wood agreed.

When listening to a “sermon from the minister, and he talks about infidelity, listen to the con gregation, to who’s coughing and clearing their throat,” Wood advised. Coughers call their own faithfulness into question, she said.

It’s a tip that she’s shared with friends, with comical results.

“We all went to see this movie, and the charac ters were talking about infidelity in the movie, and people were coughing and clearing their throat suddenly in the theater,” Wood recalled. “All my friends looked at me and laughed.”

But there’s more to Biden’s mannerisms that cause Constantine and Brown to suspect deception.

“The pausing, hesitation, clearing the throat, looking down after they’ve been looking up, the smirk, the rolling of the eyes, the raise of the eye brows, the duping delight—Biden does them all,” Constantine said. “It’s been shocking to me that people would believe him.”

“The smirking!” she said. “And then he would listen to a question and just break into laughter. It’s like he’s shrugging off what somebody says, like, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

“And that’s his way of camouflaging what he’s really feeling by putting on a duping-delight smile, which is very condescending.”

Or when he says, “C’mon, man!”

“That’s the contempt” that signals dishonesty, Constantine said.

Trump

Former President Donald Trump is “an interest ing case for body language experts to study” as well, Constantine said.

“He has his own little gesturing that really is not even in any of our textbooks,” she said. “He is

Former President Donald Trump

“has his own little gesturing that really is not even in any of our textbooks,” an expert says.

like a textbook all on his own with his gestures— his funny little ‘A-OK’ signs, and swiping gestures to the side.”

“But overall, I think he believes in what he’s say ing,” Constantine said.

His “bizarre” gestures appear to reflect truth fulness, including the way he often flashes open palms, she said.

“But he’s got a high level of insecurity, and that’s why he bolsters and fabricates,” she added. “I don’t think he’s trying to deceive. I think it just is part of his narcissism. His personality comes out in his gestures. Everything about him is so much grander and bigger.”

Trump’s finger-pointing during presidential debates suggested to Brown that he hadn’t been coached on body language.

Coached candidates often acknowledge two or three people in the front row when they take the stage, standard behavior for Hillary Clinton.

“That says, ‘I’m so popular, and I’m seeing all my

friends,’” Brown said. “They point and smile, and that’s coached.”

But, unlike Trump, “they’re not pointing with the pointer finger, but bringing the thumb to the pointer finger, and toning down the aggression,” she said.

“To point with your pointer finger, that’s su per-aggressive. Until Trump, we only saw that from Middle Eastern dictators. Generally, Amer icans up to now haven’t wanted that form of ag gressive politician,” she said.

Trump also came out from behind his podium, like “he was stalking Hillary,” Brown said. “It was super-aggressive” body language.

Human Lie Detector

During debates, Brown notes who grasps the side of the podium, a sign of discomfort, and a clue that, when coupled with other “hotspots,” deception is coming.

“Pacifying behaviors” also signal stress that

Candidates take the stage for the first Democratic presidential primary debate for the 2020 election in Miami on June 26, 2019.

“When someone depersonalizes, that’s actually a signal that they’re guilty of a crime against that person or with that person.”

Patti Wood, body language expert

comes from an effort to deceive, Brown said. She looks for knuckle-cracking, self-hugging, tapping, drumming fingers, coughing, swallow ing, clearing the throat, and yawning.

And “anything that’s asymmetrical can show deception,” she said, such as an involuntary lop sided smile or shoulder shrug.

“Your body almost never lets you get away with” a lie without creating evidence, Brown said.

The body also has a way of reacting to lies be fore we consciously recognize them, Wood said.

So don’t fail to listen to that nagging feeling that “your central nervous system, which is your human lie detector, doesn’t feel right,” she said.

If you’re watching a candidate and “something just makes you cringe” and “you want to change the channel,” take note, she said.

It’s because “your central nervous system will alert you to deception, because your body perceives it as danger, saying, ‘Something’s not right! Something’s not right!’” she said.

But there’s one sure way to let a liar escape detection, all three experts agreed.

It’s allowing preconceived bias to cloud thinking.

People “want to believe so desperately in the person that they want to support or vote for,” Constantine said. It’s a difficult feeling to suppress.

“But if they can set aside their own belief sys tem, and just listen and watch for the clues,” she said, “they’re going to have a much cleaner and more precise view of what the candidate is saying, and whether the words that they’re saying are true.”

Candidates participate in the Fox Business Network Republican presidential debate for the 2016 election in North Charleston, S.C., on Jan. 14, 2016.

The word that trips up a speaker could be the one at the heart of a lie, an expert says.

People gather to watch early results during the 2016 presidental election night event at the New York Hilton in New York on Nov. 8, 2016.

THE FORECAST

BIG DATA,

ALGORITHMS, AND BASEBALL

Analysts go beyond opinion polls to make election predictions

WITH FEWER THAN 40 DAYS UNTIL THE NOV. 8 ELECTIONS , the stage has been set with local, state, and national media churning out a blizzard of stretch-run campaign coverage.

In print media, there’s a uniformity in how election articles are structured. Most routinely note how the race fits into the “big picture,” how much money was raised by candidates, and what the polls say.

This century, another element has become standard with the convergence of “Big Data” and algorithmic modeling: electorate ratings and forecasts from analysts mining his torical statistics, crunching voter data, and aggregating polls to make predictive judgments based on an ever-expanding realm of factors and relationships.

Until the late 1970s, predicting the outcome of an election was a parlor game for academics, political scientists, and pundits, on par with Ouija boards, tea leaves, and the “Wash ington Rule,” which said that if the city’s NFL team wins its last home game before Election Day, the president’s party would win. That “rule” correctly predicted every presidential winner between 1940 and 2000, but since then, has been right just once.

The templates for the “modern era of elections forecasting” were set in 1978 by a Yale University professor’s model based on the economy and incumbency, and in 1979 by a University of Kentucky professor’s model that charted relationships be tween presidential approval ratings and subsequent votes.

By the late 1990s, the American Political Science Associa tion’s magazine and International Journal of Forecasting were annually introducing new forecasting models developed by universities, analysts, consultants, nonprofits, media outlets, and the gaming industry, based on “econometrics,” public opinion, incumbency, party unity, scandals, poll aggregation, and historical voting patterns, to provide “fluid intelligence” for voters, media, pundits, candidates, and campaigns.

But it wasn’t until a sports writer used the same tools that had been developed to project baseball players’ performances that election forecasting gained ambient credence.

Nate Silver, a KPMG Chicago consultant and co-author of “Baseball Prospectus,” in late 2007 began writing statistical analyses of election data for Daily Kos. Using this baseball model, he correctly predicted presidential outcomes in 49 states in 2008 and all 50 in 2012.

Silver’s FiveThirtyEight site is among dozens online that provide electorate ratings, such as The Cook Political Report, and race projections, such as Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Inside Elections, Electoral-Vote, Politico, RealClearPolitics, and 270 to Win. Here are four oft-cited sites that claim to be indepen dent and nonpartisan, and which don’t issue endorsements.

FiveThirtyEight

Founded by Silver in 2008 as a polling ag gregator with an interpretative blog, the name reflects the number of U.S. Elector al College electors. In 2010, The New York Times published the site. ESPN acquired it in 2013, before transferring it to fellow Disney network, ABC News, in 2018.

Since 2014, FiveThirtyEight has focused on poll analysis, politics, economics, science, popular culture, and sports blogging. It ranks pollsters, weighing the accuracy of their surveys.

After correctly predicting outcomes in 49 states in the 2008 presidential election and in all states in 2012, FiveThirtyE ight—like most forecasters—got the 2016 election wrong, rating former President Donald Trump’s odds of winning at 28 percent. In 2020, it correctly forecast the results in 48 states but overestimated President Joe Biden’s margins of victory in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

As of Sept. 21, FiveThirtyEight gives Democrats a 71 percent chance to keep control of the Senate, gaining as many as four seats, while Republicans have a 71 percent chance of securing a House majority, adding as many as 33 seats in November.

The Cook Political Report

With Amy Walter

Founded by analyst Charlie Cook in 1984, The Cook Political Report has been an online newsletter analyzing elec torates and campaigns for presidential, House, Senate, and gubernatorial races since 2004.

In 2021, it changed its name to The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter after Walter assumed leadership as editor, publisher, and owner.

The site is known for its Cook Partisan Voting Index (PVI), which rates all 435 congressional districts with a seven-cate gory scale: Solid Democratic, Likely Democratic, Lean Dem ocratic, Toss-Up, Lean Republican, Likely Republican, and Solid Republican.

PVI correctly predicted that Republicans would win control of the Senate in 2014 but incorrectly projected Hillary Clinton to win in 2016. In 2020, it forecast that Biden would win with 290 electoral votes, underestimating his margin of victory.

In 35 Senate races this year, Cook rates four as “tossups” and six others as “competitive.” Nine of 14 Senate seats occupied by Democrats, and 16 of 21 controlled by Republicans, are deemed “safe” or “likely” wins for the incumbent’s party.

Cook’s “tossup” Senate seats are held by Democrats in Ar izona, Georgia, and Nevada, and Republican Sen. Ron John son (R-Wis.). Democratic incumbents in Colorado and New Hampshire are running in “Lean Democratic” races, while Republicans are defending an open seat they won in 2016 in Pennsylvania, which Cook rates as “Lean Democratic.”

Cook rates 162 congressional districts as “Solid Democratic” and 30 as “leaning” or “likely” Democratic. It rates 188 con gressional districts as “Solid Republican” and 24 as “leaning” or “likely” Republican. The GOP will gain a House majority, Cook projects, but the margin will depend on the outcome of 31 “tossup” races, including in 22 districts now occupied by Democrats.

Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball

Created in 2002 by University of Vir ginia Center for Politics Director Larry Sabato, the site focuses on trends in presidential, congressional, and gu bernatorial races, with analyses that include key takeaways for readers.

Senate and House race ratings are outlined in maps and charts showing which candidate won the last presidential election there, among other metrics.

In 2008, Crystal Ball predicted winners in 421 of 435 House races, 34 of 35 Senate races, and all 11 gubernatorial races. Its projection that Barack Obama would win 364 Electoral Col

IMAGES FOR FORTUNE/TIME INC, SAMIRA BOUAOU/THE EPOCH TIMES

FROM TOP L: ANDREW TOTH/GETTY

FOR AWXII, PAUL MORIGI/GETTY

44 EPOCH INSIGHT Week 39, 2022 The templates for the ‘modern era of elections forecasting’ were set in 1978 based on the economy and incumbency and in 1979 based on charting relationships between presidential approval ratings and subsequent votes.

lege votes was one shy of the final result. In 2012, it predicted Obama’s reelection but underestimated his victory margin and was wrong that the Senate would remain unchanged— Democrats gained two seats.

In the 2016 election, Crystal Ball projected that Clinton would win easily with 322 electoral votes, as well as a 50–50 Senate, and that Democrats would gain 13 House seats to eat into the GOP’s majority. That, of course, didn’t happen.

“We blew it,” Sabato would say at the time.

In 2020, Crystal Ball predicted the Biden–Trump winner in 49 states—missing in North Carolina—and winners in all but five congressional districts. It was the only site to forecast that Trump would win Florida, and one of a few to say that Biden would win Georgia.

In a September “seats-in-trouble” analysis of 2022 mid terms, Crystal Ball maintains that Biden’s poor approval

ratings put Democrats in the worst position they’ve been in since 2010. It projects the GOP will win control of both chambers in November, gaining as many as 42 seats in the House and at least one Senate seat.

Inside Elections With Nathan L. Gonzales

Founded by Roll Call columnist Stuart Rothenberg as the newsletter “The Rothenberg Political Report” in 1989, Roll Call and CNN elections analyst Nathan L. Gonzales took it over in 2015 and added his name in 2017. Rothenberg remains senior editor.

The site produces newsletters that analyze and handicap House, Senate, gubernatorial, and presidential elections in 24 annual reports that feature candidate interviews, data, electoral history, and trends, as well as public and private polling on individual races.

In 2016, Inside Elections also predicted a win for Clinton, projecting she’d collect at least 332 electoral votes. It also overestimated Biden’s 2020 win.

In 2022, Inside Elections projects that the GOP will gain 12 to 30 House seats, the Senate will remain split, and Republicans will win 20 of 36 gubernatorial races.

It wasn’t until a sports writer used the same tools developed to project baseball players’ performances that elections forecasting gained ambient credence.

A voter casts her ballot with her child at a polling station during the primary election in Alexandria, Va., on June 21.

CAMPAIGNS

WEIGH IMPACT

Whether the president and his predecessor are an asset or a liability can determine a campaign’s messaging

While campaign teams have been contemplating the impact of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on the midterm election for months, the final stretch toward election day draws new intensity and signifi cance to the question.

Almost two years have passed since the conten tious 2020 presidential election between Biden and Trump that resulted in claims of voter fraud and a breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress gathered to certify Biden as the new president.

Biden and Trump remain front and center as midterm elections near, Democrats strive to stay in control, and Republicans try to re gain a majority in the House and the Senate.

All 435 House seats are up for grabs. Nationwide, 14 Senate seats held by Democrats and 21 filled by Republicans are on the ballot.

There are also pivotal guberna torial races across the country— including in Michigan, where incumbent Democrat Gretchen Whitmer is facing a challenge from Trump-endorsed Tudor Dixon, and in Wisconsin, where incumbent Democrat Tony Evers is being op posed by Trump-endorsed Tim Michels.

Historically, the party that occu pies the White House loses House and Senate seats in midterm elec tions.

Although an Emerson College poll released on Sept. 23 showed that Biden saw his approv al rating increase to 45 percent, a 3-percentage point rise over the previous month, 49 percent disapprove of his performance.

Gas prices are on the rise again, and inflation remains high.

Because of those factors, many Democratic candidates appeared reluctant to join Biden when he visited their states over the summer. The hesitancy increased for some after Biden’s primetime speech on Sept. 1.

At Independence Hall in Philadelphia with U.S. military members in uniform standing around him, the president accused Republicans aligned with Trump of participating in “semi-fascism” and said “MAGA Republicans” have made the Republican Party increasingly “extreme.”

“MAGA forces are determined to take this country backward—backward to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love,” Biden said, noting that they “embrace anger, they thrive on chaos, they live not in light of truth, but in the shadow of lies.”

“Too much in our country is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”

Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) heads the Democratic Senatorial Cam paign Committee, which is the official campaign arm of Senate Democrats. He thinks that Biden’s aggressive stance benefits Demo cratic candidates running in mid term elections.

“It’s a particularly strong issue for our base,” Peters said told The Asso ciated Press. “Folks want us, want people to show that there is a clear contrast in the election between where Demo crats are and Republicans have been.”

Biden’s Impact

Several Republicans believe that Biden’s pres ence will have a negative impact on Democratic candidates’ campaigns.

(Left) Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Michigan’s primary Election Day in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Aug. 2. (Right) Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon speaks at her primary election night party after winning the nomination, in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Aug. 2.

“The environment politically across the country is poisonous, and people I think want some change.”

Rep. Tim Ryan

People watch the primary election results during the watch party for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Matt Dolan at the Tavern of Independence in Independence, Ohio, on May 3.

“I hope Biden keeps going around the country,” Sen. Rick Scott, (R-Fla.) told Fox News. “I hope he goes to every swing state and gives his raving lunatic speech everywhere around the country.”

An online poll of 1,277 voters conducted by I&I/ TIPP from Sept. 7 to Sept. 9 shows that 62 percent of Americans believed that Biden’s comments about Trump and his supporters increased di vision in the country.

Perhaps surprisingly, Democrats—at 73 per cent—were more likely to say that Biden’s MAGA comments increased division than either Re publicans (50 percent) or independents (57 per cent). Blacks and Hispanics (70 percent) exceed ed white respondents (58 percent) in seeing the comments as divisive.

An ABC News-Washington Post poll published on Sept. 25 indicated that only 35 percent of Dem ocrats and Democrat-leaning independents want Biden to seek a second term in 2024.

Produced by Langer Research Associates, the survey determined that 56 percent of Demo crats want the party to find a different presi dential nominee.

“If this were a couple of months ago, I think most Democratic candidates in a lot of these swing states would have been loath to be seen with him,” David Cohen, a political science pro fessor at the University of Akron, told reporters

earlier this month. “Now, he’s not necessarily a huge asset for a lot of these campaigns, but he’s also not a drag on the ticket.

“I don’t think any of these candidates are going to be seen really openly embracing Biden, but I think they will absolutely be at some of these joint events.”

Biden was scheduled to appear in Florida on Sept. 27 to pitch his proposals to lower health care costs and protect Medicare and Social Secu rity at a Fort Lauderdale gathering before head ing to Orlando for a political rally on behalf of Democratic candidates.

With Hurricane Ian churning north through the Gulf of Mexico, the White House postponed Biden’s trip.

Former Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.), the former Republican governor running against incum bent Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, was set to attend the Orlando rally, but several other can didates announced plans to be elsewhere.

Biden’s approval rating among Florida voters is 43 percent, according to a Sept. 8 Insider Ad vantage FOX 35 Orlando poll.

Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), the former Orlando police chief who’s seeking to unseat two-term U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in the Nov. 8 general election, didn’t plan to attend.

Last week, her campaign cited “commitments in Congress” that require her to be in Washington as the reason for her absence.

Reluctant Candidates

Labor Day is generally viewed as the time when November elections escalate in attention.

A few days after his Sept. 1 national address, Biden visited Milwaukee to rally for Democratic candidates.

Evers was there, but Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes was absent. Barnes is running against incum bent Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).

On the same day, Biden traveled to Wil kes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where he heaped praise on Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman, telling the audience that he’s a “hell of a guy” and “a powerful voice for working people.”

Fetterman, who’s running against Trump-en dorsed Mehmet Oz to replace retiring Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), didn’t attend.

A previously scheduled fundraiser was the reason for his absence, his campaign said.

A day later, on Labor Day, Fetterman joined Biden for an event in the Pittsburgh area and talked to the president about decriminalizing marijuana.

In Ohio, 10-term Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) is campaigning as a centrist Democrat in his race against Trump-endorsed Republican J.D.

OF DEMOCRATS and Democratleaning independents want Biden to seek a second term in 2024, a poll indicates.

Vance to replace retiring Republican Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio).

Earlier this year, Ryan didn’t join Biden during two of the president’s visits to Ohio. The con gressman did appear at the Intel semiconductor manufacturing plant groundbreaking ceremo ny in early September when Biden delivered remarks.

A day before he joined Biden at the Intel groundbreaking, Ryan suggested that Biden shouldn’t run for reelection in 2024, saying that it’s time for “generational change” in leadership for both parties.

“The environment politically across the coun try is poisonous, and people, I think, want some change,” Ryan told WFMJ in Youngstown. “It’s important for us, in both parties, these leaders who have been around for a while, I think it’s time for some generational change.”

Ryan challenged Speaker of the House Nan cy Pelosi for the position of minority leader in 2016. When he ran for president in 2020, Ryan said Biden was “declining” and that the party needed a candidate who could be aggressive against Trump.

In TV commercials and campaign stops, Ryan is touting a centrist platform as he tries to get support from moderate Republicans and inde pendents in a state that Trump won by 8 points in 2016 and 2020.

endorsed in primaries, 159 won and 17 lost. Sixty of those candidates were unopposed. Eight of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in January 2021 lost, including Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney.

Trump waited until the final days before the pri mary to endorse some candidates, such as Dixon.

The former president’s backing was especially significant for Vance and Oz.

Trump’s stamp of approval didn’t help David Perdue, who was trounced by incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp in Georgia’s Republican guberna torial primary, or Katie Arrington, who lost to Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) in South Carolina’s Re publican primary.

Whether Trump’s backing in the general elec tion is an asset or a liability is a question of de bate—even among conservative Republicans.

Oz and Vance are involved in tight races. Her schel Walker (Georgia), Blake Masters (Arizona), and Adam Laxalt (Nevada) are in the midst of closely contested Senate campaigns.

Trump-backed gubernatorial candidates, in cluding Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, Kari Lake in Arizona, Michels in Wisconsin, and Dixon in Michigan, face stiff challenges.

OF DEMOCRATS and 50 percent of Republicans said that Biden’s Sept. 1 comments about Trump and his supporters increased division in the country, a poll shows.

Congressional voting records show that Ryan has voted with Biden and Pelosi 100 percent of the time, a point that Vance is emphasizing.

David Carlucci, a former New York state sena tor and a Democratic political strategist, thinks that Biden’s passage of recent legislation and his increasing approval rating will help Democratic candidates.

Republican candidates have reasons for con cern because of Trump’s continued influence on the party, Carlucci said.

“Republicans have strayed so far to the right in their primaries that they now face a long journey to make it back to the center, and that is a challenge because Trump continues to be front and center in headlines for controversial reasons,” he told The Epoch Times.

“Far-right beliefs—like denying the 2020 presidential election was legitimate and not condemning Jan. 6—are causing problems for Republicans. They want to run solely on the economy, and Democrats are doing what they can to right the economy.”

Trump’s Impact

Trump’s positive impact on candidates that he endorsed in primaries was evident.

Of the 176 candidates that the former president

Some Republican candidates are minimizing mentions of Trump’s backing in the general elec tion. The former president recently held Save America rallies in Pennsylvania and Ohio to stump for Oz and Vance.

Aside from those rallies, Oz and Vance have focused their post-primary campaigns on spe cific issues.

In Pennsylvania, Oz is criticizing Fetterman’s absence from the campaign trail and is question ing his opponent’s health in the aftermath of his stroke. Vance frequently reminds voters that Ryan is campaigning as a centrist but has voted with Biden and Pelosi 100 percent of the time.

Trump has said that election fraud is one of the most important issues in the midterms, but multiple polls indicate that voters are more con cerned about the economy.

Democratic Pennsylvania Senate nominee John Fetterman holds a rally in Blue Bell, Pa., on Sept. 11.

Some Republican candidates are taking note.

Oz told reporters in September that he would have voted to certify the 2020 presidential election.

Michels, who defeated Ted Cruz-endorsed Re becca Kleefisch in the Wisconsin Republican gu bernatorial primary, erased mention of Trump’s endorsement from his campaign website home page but then brought it back, saying that the removal was an unintended mistake.

“The optimal scenario for Republicans is for Trump to remain at arm’s length—supportive, but not in ways that overshadow the candidate or the contrast,” Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist and a former top aide at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told The New York Times.

“A big part of the problem is that these nomi nees emerged from messy fields where the party has been slow to unify. But to fix what ails, what these GOP candidates need isn’t a Trump rally, it’s a MAGA money bomb.”

Late last week, some of Trump’s top political advisers announced that they’re introducing a new Super PAC called MAGA Inc. that’s designed to financially support Trump-endorsed candi dates in the Nov. 8 midterm elections.

Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich will head the new committee.

“President Trump is committed to saving America, and Make America Great Again, Inc. will ensure that is achieved at the ballot box in November and beyond,” Budowich said in a state ment. “His rallies, which serve as the most pow erful political weapon in American politics, bring out new voters and invaluable media attention.”

Save America, which is Trump’s organization, can transfer fundraising money to MAGA Inc.

While Save America is limited by federal law with how much it can spend on political races, MAGA Inc. has fewer restrictions.

While Biden’s low approval rating and high inflation and gas prices will affect Democratic candidates in midterm elections, Trump’s con tinued prominent presence at a time when he’s engulfed in investigations will be pivotal for Republican candidates, believes Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

“Odds are, even if the GOP gets the single net seat it needs to take control, Republicans would have done at least two to three seats better with the establishment candidates,” Sabato told reporters.

Republicans and Democrats TAP VETERANS FOR CONGRESS

Over 400 veterans ran for Congress during the 2022 midterm cycle

Since the end of the u.s. military draft in 1973, the num ber of former service members elected to Congress has been steadily dwindling.

Before the mid-‘70s, one out of every four senators and congressional repre sentatives had served in the military. With 93 veterans—17 in the Senate, 76 in the House—seated with the 117th Con gress in 2020, that ratio is now less than 1 in 6, the lowest percentage since at least before World War II.

The trend appears to be reversing, al beit slowly.

In 2018, more than 350 veterans ran in party primaries, with 173 winning. In 2020, about 400 ran, with 182 winning preliminary contests, according to With Honor Action, a “cross-partisan organi zation” that supports veterans.

Aggressive Recruiting

More than 400 military veterans also ran for Congress in House and Senate primaries during the 2022 midterm cycle, with 180 winning to earn berths on November ballots for 162 races, With Honor Action reports.

The National Republican Congressio nal Committee reported this spring that it had recruited 251 veterans to run for federal office during the 2022 midterms, with about half that number running as Democrats.

Both parties aggressively recruit vet erans to run because, as surveys and studies such as a 2016 analysis by Pew Research Center show, Americans be lieve military veterans are more likely

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sam Brown with his wife, Amy Brown, in Gardnerville, Nev., on June 11.

to work together as elected officials to solve problems even when they disagree.

“Having more veterans run and hold office at every level of government is, we believe, the key to getting this country back on track and increasing faith and re spect in our political system,” Al Quaye, president of American Veterans Honor Fund, told The Epoch Times.

The Alexandria, Virginia-based Ameri can Veterans Honor Fund, not to be con fused with North Carolina-based With Honor Action, provides training and re sources for veterans who “want to run for office and resources for citizens to better understand the benefits of electing veter ans in all levels of government,” he said.

Unlike the 2-million-member Amer ican Legion and 1.6-million-member Veterans of Foreign Wars, which don’t endorse individual congressional can didates, Quaye’s organization endorses candidates and campaigns.

American Veterans Honor Fund, SEALS PAC, and Green Beret PAC are among vet eran groups that support conservative candidates, while VoteVets is among those that back progressive veteran candidates.

Veteran Groups

According to an October 2020 Military Times poll, 52.4 percent of veteran re spondents intended to vote for Presi dent Donald Trump, compared to 42.3 percent for President Joe Biden.

As of Sept. 16, American Veterans Honor Fund had raised $3.5 million and spent $3.24 million on campaign contributions and advertising during the midterm election cycle, according to OpenSecrets.

It has also staged Get Out the Vote drives that “activated” 30,000 voters in North Carolina and 60,000 in California.

American Veterans Honor Fund backed three Republican Senate can didates—Sam Brown in Nevada, Eli Bremer in Colorado, and Marjorie East man in North Carolina—who all lost. Two of its three House endorsements were also defeated by party rivals.

Results were “very mixed” for veteran candidates overall in the primaries, Quaye said, but he noted that he’s encouraged to see more veterans running as first-time candidates and more of the nation’s 18 million veterans becoming actively en

gaged as leaders in their communities.

“The primaries have shown us that veterans are being more accepted as can didates at the state and federal levels,” especially in the South, the former U.S. Army officer said. “We believe military experience lends itself well to serving as an elected official—proven loyalty to this country, responsibility, and tested leadership skills.

“Military veterans, especially those with overseas, expeditionary, and com bat experience, are the ideal leaders our country needs to repair its reputation and regain the trust of its citizens.”

Campaign Contributions

Green Beret PAC, founded in May by for mer Green Beret and CIA analyst Jason Bacon, endorsed 11 candidates during the primary, including eight former Green Berets.

Nine advanced, including seven for mer Green Berets. Among them is Repub lican New Hampshire Senate candidate Don Bolduc, Washington congressional hopeful Joe Kent, and incumbent Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.).

(Top) Republican Senate candidate Don Bolduc (C) in Laconia, N.H., on Sept. 10. (Above) Former Green Beret and Republican House candidate for Colorado Tyler Allcorn.

SEAL PAC, which reports that it has spent $900,000 since August in cam paign contributions and ads, endorsed 26 House and three Senate candidates, including Bolduc, with the bulk of its efforts dedicated to helping six former SEALS and three “accomplished veter ans” win in November.

The six include former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke and Marcus

Luttrell running for seats in Montana and Texas, respectively; Ed Thelander in Maine; Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin; Conrad Kress in Hawaii; and Eli Crane in Arizona.

Former Green Beret Tyler Allcorn secured endorsements from both the Green Beret and SEAL PACs in defeating a state senator, a mayor, and a county commissioner in Colorado’s June 28 Re publican primary in the state’s newly created 8th Congressional District.

He’ll face state Rep. Yadira Caraveo, a Democrat, in the Nov. 8 election in a race that FiveThirtyEight and The Cook Partisan Voting Index rate as a “toss-up.”

Partisan Paralysis

Allcorn said his background in the oil and gas industry was an asset during his primary campaign, but when he discussed his experiences as a veter an, that’s when people really responded to him.

“I let people know I am a veteran,” he told The Epoch Times. “People don’t want to see the same people do the same things that got us into the situation we are in today.”

Allcorn said voters are tired of “pro fessional politicians” and partisan pa ralysis.

They’re eager to elect people who will do the people’s business without the ran cor that has become standard, he said, and that’s something veterans have the proven capacity to do.

“We’re mission-oriented, and we have a mission in front of us—getting this country back on track,” he said. “I see a lot of veterans are running now because we have been at war for 20 years. You’ll be hearing from a lot of us.”

Quaye said he, too, expects to see more veterans running and winning elections in the coming years.

“We do expect to see an increase of vet erans elected to Congress, particularly if they are already well-known, but as an organization, we believe that more veterans need to start running in local elections: school boards, city councils, and county levels,” he said.

Al Quaye, president, American Veterans Honor Fund

“We need to build from the ground up, and that is a great way to build under standing of running for elected office, building confidence in the political sphere, and building support.”

“Military veterans, especially those with overseas, expeditionary, and combat experience, are the ideal leaders our country needs to repair its reputation and regain the trust of its citizens.”

Young adults split their attention between watching a televised debate and scanning social media on their smart phones during an election debate in Washington on Oct. 13, 2015.

Politicians Grasp for New Tools to Reach

Young Voters

‘It’s bonkers and getting more and more complicated as the election cycles go on’

As he makes political ads, Heath Garrett may realize a race, like many statewide ones in Geor gia, will come down to college-educated, persuadable, political ly moderate women living somewhere in the Atlanta suburbs.

How will he reach them? The answer used to be simple: television, the big gun in the political ad arsenal. Put your ads there, augment it with drive-time ra dio, throw in some flyers, yard signs, and door-knocking, and voila, you’ve reached people.

Now, it’s more complicated. The big problem? Young people don’t watch television. And the group gets older and bigger every day.

Where Are the Eyeballs?

“Those over the age of 50, we can find on broadcast or cable television,” said Garrett, a partner in Strategic Partners & Media. “Under the age of 50, we have to literally identify each household. What programming they’re watching on Hulu, YouTube, or through Facebook and Google searches. There’s a good chance they’ll never see an ad on the 6 o’clock news or primetime TV show.”

Robert Aho, a partner in the Pitts burgh-based BrabenderCox advertising firm, agrees and takes it further.

“That 65-year-old woman, you can reach her on cable news and broadcast TV primetime news,” Aho said. “But she’s got a device in her hand most evenings, so there’s a good chance I can reach her on Facebook or other social media. Well, probably Facebook at her age. I might be able to get to her on Hulu or Roku if she’s cut the cord (by canceling cable television). But if she’s 65 and female, I’m thinking of linear TV (that’s watched through ma jor channels on a standard television) and a little social media.

“The 35-year-old woman, I’m going to reach her on connected TV—Net flix, streaming, Hulu, Roku. At her age, they’re not subscribing to the cable company like they used to. I’m reaching her through streaming ser vices, through a lot of mobile adver tising. That means mobile videos de livered to her while watching YouTube or Instagram.

“It’s bonkers and getting more and more complicated as the election cycles go on.”

Explosion of Platforms

How to get a candidate’s message out to the voters is growing ever more so phisticated, and how to do it affects how political campaigns will spend a tidal wave of money.

AdImpact, a firm that analyzes ad vertising data, predicts that $9.7 billion will be spent on political advertising in 2022. That’s not only a record for mid term elections; it exceeds the $9 billion spent on the 2020 elections, which in cluded a presidential race. And it’s al most four times what it was as recently as 2016—$2.57 billion.

The marketplace has developed rapid ly in less than two decades.

The 2004 election saw the Howard Dean campaign pioneer the use of tex ting to reach people on their phones. In 2012, social media such as Twitter and Facebook emerged. Now, it’s streaming television and other digital media, like any webpage you might look at or app you use on your smartphone.

Smart politicians must constantly adapt and upgrade what tools they use, said Carl Calabrese, a retired Buffalo-ar ea political consultant, political science professor, and Republican elected offi cial.

They also must figure out what it will take to get them to the 50 percent plus one they need to get elected. Republi cans, despite appealing more to older voters, can’t afford to neglect new media reaching the younger ones, Calabrese said, because this or that group of young voters might represent a piece of a can didate’s winning coalition.

Serious questions will probably be asked as costs skyrocket by those who don’t get the desired results. Like, is this worth it?

“We’ve seen tens of millions of dollars spent this year in Georgia without signif icant movement in the polls,” said Brian Robinson. He was former Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal’s communications direc tor and now heads Robinson Republic, a political consulting firm.

“We have stasis even though the Democrats vastly outspent the Republicans. They have a huge fundraising

advantage, but so far, little to show for it.”

Stacey Abrams had raised $18.5 million by June 30 in her race to displace Brian Kemp from the Georgia governor’s man sion—three times what he had raised. She hasn’t been able to gain on him in the polls, with Kemp’s lead averaging 6.6 percent, beyond the margin of error, over the past month, according to Real Clear Politics.

Democrat Raphael Warnock, trying this year to hold the seat he won in the bitterly contested 2020 Georgia election and run off, had raised $85 million—more money than any other Senatorial candidate in the country and four times what Herschel Walker had raised by June 30. His race is rated a toss-up by Real Clear Politics.

Whether these races’ election strate gies will be borne out will be determined on Nov. 8.

“If you outspend your opponent and lose, there are lessons for the rest of the country,” Robinson said.

Aho thinks the astronomical money spent on recent Georgia elections is an anomaly and not typical of elections nowadays. The November 2020 gener al election and January 2021 runoff that Warnock and Jon Ossoff each won, defeat ing Republican incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, cost almost a half bil lion dollars. They had national attention because the results determined control of the U.S. Senate.

“The stakes were so high for both sides, and the consequences of losing were so high, massive amounts were spent on both sides,” Aho said.

“You never want to be the one who’s done fundraising,” he said. “We’ve seen nothing but increases in the money spent the last few election cycles, and this cycle won’t be any different.”

Television Still King Television has long cost the most. For a long time, it was the best way to reach the most people. The decline of its reach, though, doesn’t mean—not yet anyway— that campaigns can save money by not doing it. For one thing, older people still watch it, and older people vote.

“A serious campaign has to be on the airwaves,” said Jacob Neiheisel, a political science professor at the University at Buf falo. “I’m increasingly convinced it brings legitimacy to a campaign. If you see a TV

Young people watch televised coverage of the U.S. presidential election in Seattle on Nov. 8, 2016.

ad, even if you see it online, the fact that the campaign produced an ad shows they have money and serious people working for them. They’re viable.”

“Broadcast TV has become more and more complicated, but it’s still the single most dominant and prominent way to reach the electorate in a short period of time,” Aho said.

“All the things you used to do, you still have to do, and you have to do the new things,” said Fred Hicks, a Demo cratic strategist in Atlanta. “You still need to be on TV, but with more TV networks, cable, hundreds of stations, and now streaming.”

And the television industry has found new ways to charge the campaigns. Pay ing for the ads viewers watch on televi sion is still there.

“But if you want to appear on their web site, on their app, you have to pay, and pay, and pay again,” he said.

56 EPOCH INSIGHT Week 39, 2022 The new technology era and shifting

DELMAS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES, COURTESY OF ROBERT AHO

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: JASON REDMOND/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES, CHRIS

“Broadcast TV is still the single most dominant and prominent way to reach the electorate in a short period of time.”

Robert Aho, partner, BrabenderCox

tastes have also brought with them new tools to use to reach you. All the data generated as you surf the net, as you shop online, and as you watch vid eos creates more information they can use to target who they want, tailoring a message specifically for you if you fit in that group.

“You can target people more specifi cally now,” Hicks said. “The advertisers’ goal, whether it’s TV or phone or com puter, they’re trying to get in front of as many eyeballs as possible as many times as possible. The number of ways to do it grows every year. So the number of ways you have to do it grows every year, too.”

Campaigns tailor their approaches to the specifics. In New York City, Neiheisel said, few political ads go on television be cause it’s so expensive with the enormous media market. They stick to radio for mass media, and even that’s expensive.

In the Midwest—say, in Omaha, Ne braska,—television costs are much more

reasonable. But person-to-person cam paigning, “the ground game,” such as knocking on doors, costs more per person reached because of the greater distanc es involved, Neiheisel said. In New York, with its dense population, that’s cheaper.

Suppose television ads are the heavy artillery of campaign warfare. In that case, data-driven use of social media and digital platforms might be compared to a division of highly skilled snipers aiming for individ ual voters.

Tailor, Tailor, Tailor

directly to them. And just them.

There are significant efficiencies in this brave new world.

“There’s a lot less waste,” Aho said. And TV commercials cost less to produce than they once did.

Campaigns can laser in on specific people with tailored information. That pressures them, in turn, to generate more different ads. Garrett said scuttlebutt in the Atlanta TV market was that the Warnock campaign in 2020 ran 54 specific ads tar geted to different subgroups.

$9.7

It’s up to the campaign to figure out who they need to reach, Aho said. Going back to the example of the subur ban women voters, they do research to tease not only dif ferences between the 65- and 35-year-old women, say, but also within those groups, to find just the ones they’re trying to reach and figure out just where to reach them.

BILLION

WILL BE SPENT ON political advertising in the United States in 2022, almost four times the $2.57 billion spent in 2016, a firm predicts.

“Ten years ago, it would have been four or five.”

Smart campaigns cut costs by adapting the same material to different media, Hicks said. He was asked by The Epoch Times how he would spend a million dollars budgeted for campaign advertising.

Then, they can turn it over to the tech companies, Aho said. The campaigns don’t have to figure out which videos, say, their 35-year-old is watching. The tech platforms can do that.

“YouTube knows who the 35- to 40-yearold women in Pittsburgh are. The ad buy er doesn’t have to know,” Aho said. The platforms have enough data about users, like their ZIP codes and IP addresses, to find those people, and they can target ads

“That’s a great question. I would do 10 percent on digital and social media, spend 30 percent on mail, and the remainder on TV and radio.”

Campaigns can keep production costs down, Hicks said.

“You produce a video one time. You strip the audio from the TV version and run it on the radio. You take the video and do a 15-second version or a five-second version for social media. And I can take the visuals and put them on the mailer. We get the most bang for our buck.”

“The 35-year-old woman, I’m going to reach her on connected TV—Netflix, streaming, Hulu, Roku,” an expert says.

THE REFERENDUMS

11 THEMES TO 2022 BALLOT MEASURES

Ballot measures related to abortion, marijuana, and slavery are among a diverse array of issues that voters in 37 states will de cide at the polls this fall.

Taxes, infrastructure bonds, crime, minimum wage, elections, and the structure of state governments are also among common themes on Nov. 8 bal lots nationwide.

An expected flurry of measures relat ed to sports betting and ranked voting failed to qualify for the midterm elec tions, and there are relatively few relat ed to firearms and Medicaid expansion, which have been common ballot issues over the past decade.

Five abortion-related measures, five that seek to legalize recreational mar ijuana, and four formally banning slavery as punishment are among 129 proposed constitutional amendments to be decided.

Voters in four states have already cast ballots on five proposals in 2022, with Louisianans to see three in a Dec. 10 spe cial election.

Of the 37 states with proposals on Nov. 8 ballots, voters in 14 will see at least four.

Alabama’s and Colorado’s ballots both have 11 proposals, while 10 will go before Arizonans. Eight proposals are on tap in Louisiana—with the three extra being set for December—and seven are certified for the polls in California.

Iowans will see a “Right to Keep and

Bear Arms Amendment,” Californians will decide on a proposed “flavored to bacco products ban,” Alabamans will see a “Broadband Internet Infrastruc ture Funding Amendment,” and Neva dans will decide on a request to become the third state to adopt a total “Top-Five Ranked Choice Voting” system.

South Dakotans will see a proposed Medicaid expansion initiative, Oregon voters will see a “Right to Healthcare Amendment,” and Massachusetts resi dents will be asked if they want to “re move proof of citizenship or immigra tion status” when applying for a driver’s license.

Here’s a roundup of 11 prominent Nov. 8 ballot measure themes:

Abortion

On Nov. 8, abortion will be on the ballot in five states, with California, Vermont, and Michigan voters seeing proposals to enshrine abortion access and those in Montana and Kentucky seeing proposals to curb it. Kansans rejected a proposal on Aug. 2 to remove abortion access from their state constitution.

The Michigan and Kentucky measures will be the most-watched.

The proposed “Michigan Right to Re productive Freedom” measure would create a state constitutional right to “make and effectuate decisions about all matters relating to pregnancy, includ ing but not limited to ... contraception, sterilization, [and] abortion care.”

Pro-abortion and pro-life activists protest during a demonstration outside the Supreme Court in Washington on Oct. 4, 2021.

Kentucky’s “Yes for Life” Amendment 2 asks voters to vote yes or no to a pro posed amendment that states, “To pro tect human life, nothing in this Consti tution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion.”

Marijuana Legalization

If voters in five states—Arkansas, Mary

land, Missouri, North Dakota, and South Dakota—legalize adult recreational use of marijuana on Nov. 8, it will be legal in nearly half of the 50 states.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, adult use of mar ijuana is currently legal in 19 states, while 37 states have legal medical mar ijuana programs.

New Hampshire became the 19th state

to legalize recreational marijuana when lawmakers adopted a 2022 measure al lowing cannabis use by those aged 21 and older.

Legalization ballot measures are planned for Mississippi in 2023, and two such measures are collecting signatures for Wyoming’s 2024 ballot.

Earlier this year, as many as 15 legalization proposals across

nine states were vying for the ballot, including as many as five in Arkansas.

In Colorado, where voters approved recreational marijuana in 2012, they’ll now vote on Proposition 122, the “De criminalization and Regulated Access Program for Certain Psychedelic Plants and Fungi Initiative.”

Slavery Bans

Slavery may be banned under the U.S. Constitution but apparently not in some state constitutions.

To clear that up, voters in Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont will be asked to remove “involuntary servitude” (Louisiana) and “slavery” (Oregon, Ten nessee, and Vermont) as “punishment for a crime” in their constitutions.

Crime

Alabama’s Amendment 1 and Ohio’s Issue 1 both propose tightening bail require ments. Missouri’s Amendment 4 would allow the state Legislature to require that cities increase police funding “without state reimbursement.”

Taxes

Among varied proposals, three Loui siana and two Georgia measures seek

property tax exemptions for the elder ly, disabled, and veterans, for timber equipment, and in disaster areas.

Idaho voters will see proposed in come and corporate tax changes, and in Colorado, two proposed income tax reductions are on the ballot, including Proposition 121: the “State Income Tax Rate Reduction Initiative.”

California’s Proposition 30 would impose a tax on income of more than $2 million for a “Zero-Emissions Vehi cles and Wildfire Prevention Initiative,” while Massachusetts’s Question 1 asks voters to approve a tax on income of more than $1 million for education and transportation improvements.

Arizona’s Proposition 132 seeks to require a 60 percent supermajority to approve any ballot measure that in creases taxes.

Minimum Wage

Nebraska and Nevada voters will see proposed constitutional amendments addressing minimum wages.

Nebraska Initiative 433 would increase the state’s current $9 per hour minimum wage to $15 per hour by Jan. 1, 2026. Neva da’s Question 2 would increase the state’s current $9.50 per hour minimum wage

to $12 per hour by July 1, 2024.

In Illinois, voters will see Amend ment 1, a “Right to Collective Bargain ing Measure,” while for voters in Ten nessee, a “Right-to-Work Amendment” is on the ballot.

Elections and Campaign Finance

Seven measures across six states address elections and campaign funding.

Michigan’s Proposal 2, the “Right to Voting Policies Amendment,” would re duce the requirements for legal voting, and Connecticut’s proposed “Allow for Early Voting Amendment” would allow for early voting in the state, if approved.

There are three election integrity mea sures on tap: Arizona’s Proposition 309, the “Voter Identification Requirements for Mail-In Ballots and In-Person Voting Measure”; Nebraska’s Initiative 432, the “Photo Voter Identification Initiative”; and Ohio’s Issue 2, a “Citizenship Voting Requirement Amendment.”

Petition Rules

Voters in three states will see four pro posals seeking to impose restrictions on the citizen initiative process.

Arkansas’s Issue 2 would require a 60

percent supermajority to adopt ballot measures, Colorado’s Proposition GG would require that “income tax effects” be included in initiative analyses, and Arizona’s propositions 128 and 129 would tighten language and title re quirements.

State Constitutional Conventions

Voters in three states will be asked if they want to appoint delegates to a convention to revise and amend their state’s constitution.

They’re among 14 states in which the state’s constitution mandates the measure be presented to voters at stipulated intervals. In Alaska and New Hampshire, the “Constitutional Convention Question” must be asked every 10 years; in Missouri, it must be asked every 20 years.

State Government

Arizona voters will decide if they want to create a lieutenant governor office. In Arkansas and Idaho, proposals would allow the state legislature to call special sessions without the gov ernor’s assent.

Michigan and North Dakota voters will be asked if they want to impose term limits on state lawmakers and, in North Dakota, the governor. A mea sure tightening residency require ments for state legislators is on the Maryland ballot.

TOP 11 THEMES

 Abortion: 6 states

 Taxes: 6 states

 Elections and Campaign Finance: 6 states

 State Government: 6 states

 Marijuana Legalization: 5 states

 Slavery Bans: 4 states

 Crime: 3 states

 Minimum Wage: 3 states

 Petition Rules: 3 states

 State Constitutional Conventions: 3 states

 Sports Betting: 2 states

37 STATES

Missouri’s Amendment 4 would allow the state Legislature to require that cities increase police funding “without state reimbursement.”

Sports Betting

According to the American Gaming As sociation (AGA), 33 states have legalized sports betting since the U.S. Supreme Court gave states the authority to regu late such wagering in 2018.

With the boom in online and mobile betting, sports gaming revenue topped $4.3 billion in 2021, the AGA reported. Goldman Sachs projects that the market will top $40 billion per year in the United States by 2033.

California voters will see two pro posed constitutional amendments seeking to legalize sports wagering, with tax revenues from betting being put toward addressing homelessness and mental illness.

The “Tribal Sports Wagering Act” is sponsored by a 40-tribe coalition that spent about $25 million promoting the policy, and the “California Solutions to Homelessness and Mental Health Sup port Act” is backed by seven sportsbooks, including FanDuel and DraftKings, which staked the campaign $100 million.

Gaming in Californian tribal casinos has been legal for more than 20 years, while gambling at horse tracks has been legal since the 1930s. But online and mobile sports betting—an estimated $3 billion annual market—is illegal in California.

Florida voters won’t see a measure re lated to gaming or sports wagering on their ballot, at least not in 2024, until numerous lawsuits are resolved.

Florida lawmakers legalized sports betting when they approved a 30-year gaming compact with the Seminole Tribe of Florida in May 2021.

In exchange for at least $500 million per year, the pact gives the Seminoles’ Hard Rock Digital platform exclusive control of blackjack, craps, fantasy, and sports betting at its seven casinos and on nontribal parimutuels.

The Seminoles launched the site in late 2021, but it has been offline for most of 2022 because of lawsuits.

Several prospective constitutional amendments related to gaming vied for Florida’s 2022 ballot, including one asking voters to approve non-Seminole casinos and one sponsored by a commit tee supported by DraftKings and Fan Duel to legalize sports gaming beyond Seminole casinos.

HAVE PROPOSALS ON THE NOV. 8 BALLOTS.

STRUGGLE

GERRYMANDERING

An aerial view of New York City.

Can states develop fair processes that can’t be manipulated by politicians?

GERRYMANDERING

In new york state, the late Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) once rep resented what was called the Earmuff District.

It took in a round part of Buffalo, a similarly shaped one in Rochester 60 miles away, and joined them with a narrow strip drawn along the Lake Ontario shore.

Former Rep. Cynthia McKinney’s (D-Ga.) dis trict in Georgia was called the Sherman District because, like Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, it marched from Atlanta to the sea.

In Louisiana, former Rep. Cleo Fields (D-La.) represented the 4th Congressional District, called the Zorro District. Older folks may re member the television show “Zorro,” in which the masked hero left his trademark with his sword by slashing the letter Z.

The Zorro District looked like that.

In North Carolina, the I-85 District took in parts of numerous cities—Charlotte, Gastonia, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Durham, and High Point—by joining them with stretches of I-85 and I-77. The district at points was no wider than the highways themselves.

These are some of the more notorious recent examples of gerrymandering, the practice by which those in charge of creating new congressio nal and legislative maps draw the lines unfairly.

They may do it to suit their own parties, protect incumbents, or otherwise pursue objectives at odds with the goal of grouping together people in compact geographical areas with interests in common.

The charge reliably comes up when maps—and representation in Congress—need to be adjust ed following the U.S. Census. The process often winds up in court, as it did this cycle in states such as New York and North Carolina.

Is there any way to remedy this? Can states de velop fair processes that can’t be manipulated by politicians?

“It’s unlikely unless you change human nature and how humans relate to power, acquiring and holding on to it,” said Carl Calabrese, a retired Buf falo-area political consultant, professor, and elect ed official. “You’re not going to get rid of that.”

It may not be quite that bad. The Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy insti tute named for Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, noted that some states are succeeding in making the process fairer with various types of independent commissions.

How people define gerrymandering can vary.

The phrase stems from the early days of the republic.

Elbridge Gerry was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confedera

tion, a Founding Father—he initially refused to sign the Constitution because it didn’t contain a Bill of Rights—and later vice president under President James Madison.

As governor of Massachusetts, he signed a redis tricting map into law in 1812—one he reportedly disliked as highly partisan—including a state Sen ate district in Essex County shaped, some thought, like a salamander.

A political cartoon made that point and coined it “the Gerrymander,” and the phrase stuck.

GERRYMANDERING CAN MEAN unusually shaped districts such as that one.

It can also refer to an excessive effort expended protecting the state’s dominant political party. It might mean varying the population of districts— in most cases illegal now for federal redistricting— just enough for the party in power to squeeze an extra seat or two out of the process.

And it can just mean taking pains to make sure a congressional pal doesn’t lose his seat or pitting two veterans of the opposing party against each other to guarantee getting rid of one of them.

One reason that gerrymandering will never go away entirely is this: Complying with the Voting Rights Act more or less requires it. Under the act, states must create majority-minority

People wait in line to vote in the 2020 general election at Life Stream Church in Allendale, Mich., on Nov. 3, 2020.

districts, guaranteeing minority representation in Congress.

That often forces states to draw oddly shaped districts that join, say, black populations in two different cities to make a district with a majority black population. The Zorro, I-85, and Sherman districts were all the results of states complying with federal law.

Charles Bullock, a University of Georgia political science professor, described how the Sherman District came to march through Georgia.

At the time of the 1990 census, the state already had one majority-black district, one in Atlanta represented by John Lew is. Georgia gained a con gressional seat in 1992 and would now have 11. State leaders knew they now needed a second major ity-black district. They drew it on Atlanta’s east side, stretching 85 miles south to Macon.

The federal Depart ment of Justice said this wasn’t enough: Georgia needed three majori ty-minority districts.

The state created another one by taking the southwestern state’s district, which included Co lumbus and Albany, and adding Macon to the East. That district, the 2nd Congressional District, elected Sanford Bishop to Congress in 1992. The veteran Democrat is still there, running for re election to a 16th term.

However, that meant that the second Atlanta district now needed more black residents found somewhere to replace those in Macon who had been assigned instead to the 2nd Congressional District. They found them in Savannah, Georgia, 250 miles from Atlanta.

In Louisiana, Democrat Cleo Fields represented the 4th District, called the Zorro District, in reference to the television show “Zorro,” in which the masked hero left his trademark with his sword by slashing the letter Z.

Doing this can be tricky. The connecting ar eas, passing through sparsely populated areas, can’t pick up too many white voters, or it will work against the desired minority population arithmetic. Taking that principle to an extreme is what created North Carolina’s I-85 district, ac cording to Bullock.

“If the connecting areas are only as wide as the interstate, you might pick up a homeless person living under a bridge, but that’s it,” he said.

The districts that have been drawn since 1992 represent an unusual deal between Republicans and African American Demo crats, Bullock said. He has consulted in redistricting litigation in a dozen states, including in Florida in the 1990s over Rep. Corinne Brown’s (D-Fla.) “Fishhook District,” which took in black neighborhoods in Jacksonville, Gainesville, Or lando, Ocala, and Lake City.

Republicans had the opportunity to move minority Democrats out of several districts and concentrate them into one while making the other districts more reli ably Republican. This lessened the influence of white Democrats.

“It was a case of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend,’” Bullock said.

Democrats call this tactic “packing and crack ing”: packing a lot of Democrats into a few dis tricts, then cracking up the rest into smaller clusters spread around predominantly Repub lican districts.

At its root, gerrymandering is about parties seeking to retain or expand their power.

Michael Li of the Brennan Center, writing in September, gave high marks for fairness to redis tricting commissions in California, Arizona, and Colorado; noted the struggles of New York, Virgin ia, and Utah; and singled out Ohio for criticism.

He reserved his highest praise for Michigan. It went from one of the “most aggressively ger rymandered states” in 2011 to “one of the fairest this time around,” Li wrote.

“Among states with new reforms, there is no brighter star than Michigan. Reforms overwhelm ingly approved by Michiganders in a 2018 ballot initiative took map-drawing power out of the hands of the state legislature and gave it to a 13-person independent commission that includ ed independents and third-party members

“If the connecting areas are only as wide as the interstate, you might pick up a homeless person living under a bridge.”

Charles Bullock, professor, University of Georgia

People cast their ballots during midterm primary elections in South Congaree, S.C., on June 14.

as well as Democrats and Republicans,” he wrote.

“To promote independence, members of the commission are barred from being current or for mer elected officials or from having close ties to elected officials or to partisan politics. Members are also prohibited from immediately running for office. ... Michigan reforms also changed the process for passing a map. Before reforms, when the legislature drew districts, maps could be ap proved on a party-line basis, giving the majority party the ability to steamroll opponents and little incentive to compromise.

“By contrast, the new commission’s rules re quire that a map win support from at least some Democratic, Republican, and independent or third-party members in order to become law.

“Reforms produced a sea change in Michigan. The state’s 2011 maps, drawn by Republicans, were some of the most aggressively gerrymandered in the country. By contrast, this decade’s commis sion-drawn map is among the country’s most politically balanced, and it easily survived legal challenges [although some minority groups say tweaks still might have to be made to some dis tricts to ensure the fair treatment of communities of color].”

Politicos concur that New York Democrats “got greedy”—several of them who discussed this with The Epoch Times used the term—in drawing the new maps for this round.

State voters passed a constitutional amendment in 2014 that created the Independent Redistricting Commission. Its structure made for a body with four Republicans and four Democrats appointed by the legislative majority and minority leaders, as well as two independents selected by those eight.

The commission had no tiebreaker. The re spective parties on it each submitted their own maps to the legislature on Jan. 3. With Demo crats controlling both houses, they threw out the commission’s competing maps and created their own.

The legislature-drawn map would have limited the Republicans to four out of 26 congressional seats, as New York, in the census reapportion ment, lost a seat from its previous 27.

In a drama fought out in courtrooms and the legislature during the winter and spring, a state judge overturned that map, his decision affirmed by the state’s high court. Also rejected in the pro cess was the new state Senate map.

The judge, Patrick McAllister, ordered the legis lature to pass new maps with bipartisan support among Democrats and Republicans in both hous es. When it didn’t comply, he appointed a special master to draw a new map, which he approved on May 20, barely a month before the state’s sched uled June 23 primary.

The congressional and state Senate primaries were postponed until late August to give candi dates time to adjust.

Gerald Benjamin, a retired political science professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, noted the irony that a process in a state with both houses of the legislature and the gover nor’s mansion controlled by the Democrats, in a decision reaching the state Court of Appeals with all seven of its justices appointed by Democrats, wound up giving the Republicans meaningful shots at eight seats in Congress, up from four.

“Pigs get fed, but hogs get slaughtered,” Cal abrese said.

However, even states with independent com missions can see their work attacked in court, be come deadlocked if they don’t have a tie-breaking mechanism, or see their politically independent members accused of bias.

Also, the standards that courts use to judge whether redistricting is fair have changed over time, and judges themselves are often political appointees, according to Shawn Donahue, a polit ical science professor at the University at Buffalo.

Some previous federal rulings limiting gerry mandering may be thrown out by the Supreme Court in cases now before it if the court decides that state legislatures are ultimately supreme in the matter of redistricting.

“You could let a computer generate 100 maps that all met the criteria of equal population, be ing compact, geographically connected, treat ment of minorities, and the like,” Bullock said. “And then you could throw a dart, and whichever one it hits, go with that. That would take the pol itics out of it.”

The standards that courts use to judge whether redistricting is fair have changed over time, and judges themselves are often political appointees, a professor says.

The Week

Biden Declares Major Disaster for Florida After Hurricane Ian Hits

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN ON SEPT. 29 APPROVED a major disaster declaration for Florida due to damage from Hur ricane Ian.

The declaration allows the U.S. government to utilize federal funding for aid to Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa and

nearby counties that were affected by the storm.

Nine counties in total are covered by the declaration.

More than 2 million were without power on the night of Sept. 28 after the hurricane made landfall hours earlier over Florida’s west coast as a Category 4.

“What we’ve found are shocking gaps in federal oversight.”

MILLION

The Drug Enforcement Administration seized more than 10.2 million fentanyl pills as part of its “One Pill Can Kill” enforcement operation, from May to September.

MILLION $684

The Small Business Administration likely distributed $684 million worth of Paycheck Protection Program loans to nonprofits that may not have been eligible to receive such funds, according to the administration’s Office of the Inspector General.

57%

68 EPOCH INSIGHT Week 39, 2022 Election officials in six Minnesota counties are alleged to have failed to remove 515 duplicate registrations from the voter rolls in their jurisdictions, according to a complaint by the Public Interest Legal Foundation.

of Americans say they’ve sought out extra work at some point over the past year, a Bluecrew survey shows.

125,000 Admissions President Joe Biden on Sept. 27 announced that he will keep in place the current cap on refugee admissions at 125,000 for fiscal year 2023. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people continue to cross the border illegally and stay indefinitely in the United States.

IMAGES, SHUTTERSTOCK; RIGHT PAGE: ANNA ROSE LAYDEN/GETTY

THIS PAGE FROM TOP: JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES, ANNA MONEYMAKER/GETTY

“If we want a free 21st century and not the Chinese century ... the old paradigm of blind engagement must end.”

The Week in Short US

HEALTH CARE

Biden Touts Reduction of 2023 Medicare Fees, Due Largely to Limiting Alzheimer’s Drug

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN has touted a decline in costs for tens of millions of Americans covered by the Medi care health program as the country continues to battle soaring inflation, stating that the “American people won, and Big Pharma lost.”

Monthly premiums for Medicare Part B will drop by $5.20 for an an nual savings of about $62.

Democrats Release Bill to Ban Stock

Trading by Members of Congress, SCOTUS

HOUSE DEMOCRATS HAVE RELEASED their long-awaited bill to ban stock trading by members of Congress, senior government officials, and U.S. Su preme Court justices, with the legislation seeking to cut conflicts of interest, increase transparency around enforcement, and make penalties for noncom pliance more painful.

The text of the bill, titled the “Combatting Financial Conflicts of Interest in Government Act,” seeks to ban a range of officials from trading or owning investments in instruments including stocks, commodities, futures, and cryp tocurrencies.

The draft legislation would force individuals covered by the measure to divest themselves of these holdings or put them in a qualified blind trust.

COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Analysis Finds Signals for Miscarriage, Menstrual Irregularities

RESEARCHERS HAVE IDENTIFIED 14 safety signals for the COVID-19 vaccines for women of childbearing age, including menstrual abnormality, miscarriage, and fetal cardiac arrest.

Dr. James Thorp, a maternal fetal medicine specialist in Florida, and other researchers performed a type of analysis called proportional reporting ratio on reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. The system accepts reports of adverse events following vaccination.

Comparing the rates of events following COVID-19 vaccination to those reported following influenza vaccination for women who can bear children, the research ers found a significant increase in 14 conditions, including fetal malformation, fetal cardiac arrest, and stillbirth.

“Pregnancy and menstrual abnormalities are significantly more frequent following COVID-19 vaccinations than that of Influenza vaccinations. A world wide moratorium on the use of COVID-19 vaccines in pregnancy is advised until randomized prospective trials document safety in pregnancy and long-term follow-up in offspring,” the researchers wrote.

The decline in costs is largely due to a decision to severely limit cov erage of a controversial and pricey new Alzheimer’s drug marketed as Aduhelm.

ELECTIONS

Bill Making It Harder for Lawmakers to Object to Presidential Results Advances in the Senate

A MEASURE that would reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887 and make it harder for members of Congress to object to or decertify presidential election results has advanced in the Senate, after Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) signaled support for the bill.

The bill, titled the “Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022,” would clarify that the vice president has no discretionary powers and only has a ministeri al role in the vote counting and certification process. It would also require one-fifth of the House and the Senate to agree to challenge a state’s results; current law allows objections to proceed with the support of just one lawmaker from each chamber.

WORLD

Seismologists Reveal Suspected Cause of Damage to Nord Stream Pipelines

TWO UNDERSEA LEAKS that began in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 natural gas pipelines were likely caused by underwater explosions, according to seismographic data.

Bjorn Lund, director of the Swedish National Seismic Network at Uppsala University, told NPR that it is “very clear from the seismic record that these are blasts.” Neither of the gas pipelines were active when officials reported sudden losses of gas pressure late on Sept. 26, which they said could only be caused by significant leaks.

“These are not earthquakes,” he added. “They are not landslides underwater.” And in an interview with Swedish television, Lund said he has “no doubt that these were explosions.”

His team was able to determine that the blasts occurred in the vicinity of the location of the pipelines.

UK

UK Warns TikTok Could Face $29 Million Fine for Failing to Protect Children’s Privacy

THE CHINESE-OWNED SOCIAL MEDIA SITE TikTok could face a 27 million pound ($29 million) fine after British authorities found that it may have breached UK data protection law by failing to protect children’s privacy.

The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said in a statement that the video-sharing platform may have processed the data of under-13s without appropriate parental consent.

The ICO investigation also found that TikTok may have failed to provide proper information to its users “in a concise, transparent and easily understood way,” and “processed special category data, without legal grounds to do so.”

70 EPOCH INSIGHT Week 39, 2022 The Week in Short World

AFRICA

Congo Declares End of Latest Ebola Outbreak in East

THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF Congo has declared the end of its latest Ebola virus outbreak in the eastern province of North Kivu, Health Minister Jean-Jacques Mbungani Mbanda said in a statement.

The 15th outbreak in the central African country emerged when a new case of the deadly virus was confirmed in the eastern city of Beni on Aug. 22.

Testing showed the case was genetically linked to the 2018–2020 outbreak in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, which killed nearly 2,300 people.

Another flare-up from that outbreak killed six people last year.

“After 42 days of reinforced surveillance without a new confirmed case ... I am happy to solemnly declare the end of the 15th [Ebola] epidemic ... that lasted one month and 12 days,” Mbungani Mbanda said.

US, India Vow to Bolster Ties Despite Strain Over US–Pakistan Arms Deal

TOP U.S. AND INDIAN OFFICIALS have pledged to deepen security and economic cooperation against the backdrop of Washington’s $450 million F-16 deal with Pakistan, which India has strongly opposed.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in Washington, a day after his separate meeting with Pakistan’s foreign affairs minister.

Blinken said the U.S.–India partnership is “one of the most consequential in the world” and that both countries have made “real progress” in elevating it through institutions such as the Quad and G-20 in the past years.

Perspectives

A cargo ship moves under the Bayonne Bridge as it heads out to the ocean, in Bayonne, N.J., on Oct. 6, 2021.

CHINA STEALS OUR SHIPPING DATA

Logistics program tracks 90 percent of container ships in real time. 73

THE CHIPS BILL: STRANGE MIX

Washington throws only onefifth of an allocated $280 billion at the chips problem. 74

THE EVER-INCREASING COST OF DRIVING

The rising cost of cars, maintenance, and insurance is impacting personal mobility. 75

Thomas McArdle

Drill for a Greener Planet

Bank CEO says oil and gas investments would reduce carbon emissions

No new fossil fuel production starting today” is required to save the earth, hard-left “Squad” member Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a Democrat who represents Detroit, ludicrously claimed to bank ing executives during a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee on Sept. 22, before asking them if they were following a policy “against fund ing new oil and gas products.”

“Absolutely not,” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon responded. “That would be the road to hell for America.”

To which Tlaib sneered back, “Yeah, that’s fine,” and ranted that everyone who gets a student loan taxpayer bailout should take their money out of Chase.

“You obviously don’t care about work ing-class people, frontline communities like ours that are facing huge amounts of high rates of asthma, respiratory issues, [and cancer],” she told Dimon.

According to Tlaib, anything other than no more oil and gas “defies all logic and scientific evidence at our disposal.” And if banks don’t stop financing fossil fuels, “then regulators, including the Federal Reserve and Congress, must step in and make them.”

Back home last week, Tlaib’s constitu ents in Detroit attended an urgent town hall meeting. Not to address cancer or asthma or going green ASAP, but in regard to more immediate causes of death and distress to the community.

“I observed two young men with Uzis. One killed the other one,” Detroit resident Glenda McGadney said. “And this was two Sundays ago.”

She called it something “I thought I would never see in my entire life. I’m traumatized.”

The 221 killings in the Motor City so far this year, with a little more than three months left to go, are actually looked at by local officials as good

news—because there were 309 homi cides last year and 323 in 2020. Still, Tlaib apparently thinks that having the Fed become the green police will make up for defunding the real police and leaving innocent black and brown peo ple unprotected from violent criminals.

Advances in carbon capture and storage technology, paired with fracking, point the way to sensible energy policies for the coming decades, as opposed to the fanaticism of Tlaib and the White House.

As an enemy of the working class, it’s odd the way Dimon’s bank, the largest in the United States, with branches in all 48 contiguous states, provides more than 250,000 working men and women with livelihoods. According to Indeed. com, Chase pays an average of $59,000 per year to banking associates, about $10,000 higher than the national av erage, and it boasts a $30 billion “racial equity commitment” to “close the racial wealth gap.”

That sounds like a page torn from the Squad’s “woke” manifesto, and yet all those billions of dollars don’t buy Dimon any relief from being pilloried as a robber baron cannibalizing the proletariat.

Now, Dimon is saying that “the world needs 100 million barrels effectively of oil and gas every day. And we need it for 10 years” and that it will require “proper investing in the oil and gas complex,” which “is good for reducing CO2,” as proved by high oil and gas prices recent ly spurring much of the world to turn back to dirtier coal.

Dimon pointed out that from China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam to fully

industrialized nations such as France, Germany, and the Netherlands, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are worsening.

Carbon Capture Is an Energy Policy

Advances in carbon capture and storage technology, paired with fracking, point the way to sensible energy policies for the coming decades, as opposed to the fanaticism of Tlaib and the White House. Even the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change conceded in 2018 that carbon capture must be an element in global energy policies going forward.

Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, called carbon capture “a necessary bridge between the reality of today’s energy system and the increasingly urgent need to reduce emissions.”

It’s a procedure that utilizes biomass to absorb CO2 as it grows, injecting it into deep geological formations. The first large-scale direct air-capture plant may open in the United States next year, capturing up to 1 million tons of carbon dioxide annually for use in enhanced oil recovery.

Harold Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources and one of the pioneers of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, is committing $250 million toward a $4.5 billion carbon-capture project to utilize a 2,000-mile pipeline that will dispose of 8 million tons of CO2 by injecting it a mile underground in North Dakota.

“Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing gave us the American energy renaissance,” Hamm declared of the work done over the past decade or two. “We used ingenuity to get the hydrocar bons out of the earth. There’s no reason why we can’t use the same skills to put the carbon back in.”

Far from Tlaib’s claims, the world won’t reach any green future destina tion without being fueled by a lot of “black gold.”

Anders Corr

China Steals Our Shipping Data

Logistics program tracks 90 percent of container ships in real time

China stole a march on the United States by getting a major informa tion technology system to market while we were dozing. The technology, called LOGINK, reportedly tracks 90 percent of the world’s container ships in real time, including granular details about thousands of containers per ship and packages per container.

Beijing provides the technology free of charge to ports and shippers globally. The cost is the confidential ity of shipping, price, customs, and even military information lost to Beijing, which almost certainly hacks it through LOGINK backdoors and without notifying users.

Beginning in 2007 as a Chinese provincial initiative, LOGINK grew to a regional network with Japan and South Korea in 2010 and globally after 2014, according to a Sept. 20 U.S. congressional report, which states, “The state-spon sored and -supported platform has now expanded to partner with over 20 ports worldwide as well as numerous Chinese and international companies.”

Only now, 15 years after its inception, is the United States gearing up to address the danger. The U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) report is 16 pages full of evidence about how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is stealing the world’s shipping data.

In July, Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Calif.) introduced legislation to ban LOGINK.

“Only the House version has been voted on,” Steel’s staff stated in an email. “That version included Rep. Steel’s amendment to ban the US military from using LOGINK. Rep. Steel introduced a separate bill that would ban the entire federal govt & govt contractors from using LOGINK.”

The Chinese system might sound like a backwater of the global economy. Still, the third-party logistics industry is worth almost $1 trillion, and the

freight-forwarding services market is worth nearly $200 billion. Of course, the CCP wants a big part of that.

LOGINK “has cooperation agree ments with at least 24 ports, freeports, and port operators outside of China, including twelve in Asia, nine in Europe, and three in the Middle East,” according to the USCC report.

The CCP can extend its global control by using LOGINK data to precisely target economic coercion against U.S. allies.

China’s biggest companies in ship ping, including Alibaba and stateowned COSCO, are LOGINK partners. COSCO “currently operates terminals at Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Seattle, potentially granting LOGINK a window into vessel, container, and other data at those ports,” the report reads.

The Port of Los Angeles is a mem ber of an international organization that may potentially share data with LOGINK on vessel and container status from 70 ports and 10 airports.

LOGINK is also expanding its coop eration with international organiza tions, including the United Nations and the International Organization for Standardization, to set standards regionally and internationally that would benefit China’s leadership in not only shipping logistics, but other adjacent technologies.

LOGINK is integrated with China’s Cainiao network of more than 200 global warehouses.

“In the past few years, Cainiao has focused on expansion in Europe, building a major hub at Liège Airport in Belgium; launching regional ware houses in Madrid, Paris, Bremen, and Rome and announcing plans for sever al more in late 2021; and establishing

an intra-Europe trucking fleet and system of delivery lockers throughout Europe,” the report reads.

It notes that the system gives China a major business advantage, as “stream lined logistics from a factory in China to a European wholesaler may make the difference between the wholesaler buying from China or from a supplier within the eurozone.”

The LOGINK information system uses China’s Beidou satellite naviga tion system, a key part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (also known as “One Belt, One Road”), which is the economic core of Beijing’s plans for a mercantilist and global hegemony.

LOGINK is part of China’s “smart transportation system” in a “Digital Silk Road” that could eventually make political control of international trade possible through Beijing’s centralized system.

The CCP can extend its global control by using LOGINK data to precisely target economic coercion against U.S. al lies, or interdict U.S. military shipments during times of crisis, for example.

As with other areas of CCP expansion, the United States and its allies must get much tougher on LOGINK—and quickly. In addition to Steel’s legislation, U.S., European, Japanese, and South Korean businesses should voluntarily stop using the system.

The United States and allies should work together to offer the world’s ship pers an alternative shipping logistics in formation and facilitation system that’s superior to LOGINK and free of charge.

This system should be extended to Africa, Latin America, and Asia while making clear that trade privileges in the economies of the United States and its allies are a privilege, not a right, and that countries and companies will only be afforded those privileges when they refuse to use information systems such as LOGINK that are associated with the CCP and other totalitarian regimes.

Milton Ezrati

The CHIPS Bill: Strange Mix

Washington throws only one-fifth of $280 billion program at the chips problem

Washington has rushed to save computer chipmaking in the United States and has found $280 billion for the project. Even by the standards of modern Washington, that’s a sizable sum. And as is typical of federal practice, the new legislation is about a lot more than manufacturing semiconductors.

Chipmaking will get a little less than a fifth of the total outlay. The rest will go to a wide range of activ ities favored by Congress. However the money is spent, the U.S. taxpay ers will foot the bill.

The legislation’s official title is “Cre ating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America Act”— the CHIPS for America Act, for short (wonderful how good Washington is with acronyms). The legislation would do its spending over five years. Of the total, roughly $52 billion aims at in creasing the production of these im portant tech products domestically, largely from grants, loan guarantees, and a 25 percent tax credit for domes tic chip manufacturing operations.

The balance of the spending will go to a raft of projects, almost all being at least vaguely connected to technology and science and aimed at increasing Washington’s control over research and technological directions.

Despite the giveaway, some within the semiconductor industry aren’t entirely happy with the legislation. Their problem isn’t with the amount but rather that the money is too narrowly focused. According to the government’s assessment of how things will shake out, as much as $20 billion—almost 40 percent of the industry’s take—will go to one company, Intel. The bulk of the rest will go to two other companies, Texas Instruments and Micron Technology.

It isn’t so much favoritism—al though that isn’t unheard of in Wash ington—but rather that these compa nies do most of their manufacturing domestically, while others, such as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Qualcomm, and Nvidia, tap foreign partners to fabricate their chips. Management at AMD has argued that the law should be written more broadly to give these companies cred it for the research and design work that they do domestically.

Chip making will get a little less than a fifth of the total outlay. The rest will go to a wide range of activities favored by Congress.

AMD’s point has merit, but the legislation was done to secure the supply of chips, and that would seem to demand domestic manufacturing, wherever the research and design are done. If others set up U.S. man ufacturing operations, they would presumably also get the subsidies and tax breaks, and Intel would get relatively less of the total. Moreover, domestic supplies would be much less concentrated and hence more secure. Perhaps this logic captures the think ing of those who wrote the legislation. Meanwhile, more than four-fifths of the allocated funds would go to activities other than chipmaking. About $100 billion—almost twice the share allotted to the chipmak ers—would go to the National Science Foundation to set up technology hubs in regions of the country with little technology activity. Funds would also go to the Department of Energy for green energy initiatives. It may be a bit of a stretch to link green energy to chip security, but there it is

in the legislation.

Funding would also go to estab lishing a Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnership with what appears to be a broad mandate to provide support for all sorts of technology.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) would receive substantial funds for its exploration of Mars. Other monies would go for research on blockchain, low-emis sions steel manufacturing, and the production of more efficient, quieter airplanes. The legislation emphasizes STEM (science, technology, engineer ing, and mathematics) education at all levels, from high school through post-graduate work. This way, perhaps, the effort can produce the staffing for the new technology hubs without the need for a great migra tion from existing hubs to new ones.

As with all Washington spending legislation, this one includes a long list of conditions before any entity can receive funding. Much of this fo cuses on the by now familiar issues of inclusion and diversity. More than 30 percent of the legislation’s language concerns diversity and sexual ha rassment issues, while 60 percent of its language dwells on requirements generally, including how products should be shipped.

The worth of all this is, of course, debatable. It’s unclear whether the effort will do much to create more domestic chip manufacturing. After all, Intel was already planning new facilities. Now, it might just substi tute government for private funding. On the many initiatives that make up the bulk of the legislation and the spending, the detail is so great that even the government scorers have refrained from drawing conclusions.

What’s sure is that Congress has just put the U.S. taxpayers on the hook for an additional $280 billion.

Emel Akan

The Ever-Increasing Cost of Driving

ehicle ownership and personal mobility have become an expen sive endeavor in 2022.

The average price of a new car in the United States is now around $48,300, the highest on record. The surge in car prices, com bined with large increases in fuel, insurance, and maintenance costs, over the past year have drastically increased the total cost of driving.

American drivers have altered their driving habits or lifestyles this year to cope with high prices at the pump. Various surveys have found that people are driving less, combining errands, doing fewer leisure activi ties, and postponing vacations.

However, it’s not just high gas pric es that make people change habits, according to the Lundberg Letter, a major oil industry newsletter.

“Associated costs including main tenance, insurance, tires, and the car itself have exploded higher,” the newsletter states. “For some motor ists, it means reduced gasoline usage. For others, it means not driving at all as the cost of a car is out of reach.”

According to the Lundberg report, new car prices have surged 19 per cent since 2019. Prior to then, price increases were hardly noticeable.

Motorists looking for a good deal on used cars have also suffered, as prices jumped 44 percent between August 2020 and early this year. While prices have eased since January, they’re still higher than they were a year ago. Ed munds reported that used car prices averaged $29,300 in July.

Other costs are also through the roof.

After briefly falling during the pan demic’s height in 2020, car insurance costs, for example, have risen nearly 9 percent per year, reaching an alltime high in August. And on average nationally, insurance premiums are 30 percent higher compared to 2015,

the Lundberg report showed.

The average cost of car insurance in the United States is now around $1,771 for full coverage, according to Bankrate data. As the price of a vehicle increases, so does the auto insurance premium. But that isn’t the only reason why insurance costs are rising.

The costs are high, in part, due to sharp increases in crime throughout the country, particularly vehicle theft.

The number of recorded vehicle thefts increased by 17 percent in 2021 compared to 2019, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau. And the outlook for this year isn’t promising either, as nearly a quar ter-million vehicle thefts were re ported in the first three months. So, insurance premiums are expected to grow further.

A similar trend can be seen in the rapidly rising costs of maintenance and repair, as well as the hourly wag es of auto mechanics. Now, they’re

roughly 9 percent higher than last year and 28 percent higher than they were in 2015, according to the Lundberg report. Annual inflation numbers in August also showed that the prices of tires and vehicle parts climbed 13.7 percent and 12.9 percent, respectively.

Sky-high energy prices have eased this summer. From July to August, gasoline prices declined 10.6 per cent, but they’re still up 25.6 percent from the same time a year ago.

Recently, gas prices have resumed their upward trend, reversing a 98day decline. The national average price for a gallon of gas rose 7 cents in a week, reaching $3.75 on Sept. 27, AAA data showed.

Although gas prices dropped signifi cantly from June’s record high of $5, they’re still quite high when compared to averages from previous years.

“Between December 2015 and August 2022, the average pump price is up a staggering 94 percent,” the Lundberg report stated. “Through September 9 this year, regular grade has averaged $4.227, 37 percent above 2021’s annual average.”

Driving itself is also becoming more expensive, with various costs such as title, registration, and sales taxes rising across the country.

In addition, the Federal Reserve’s campaign against inflation, which involves boosting interest rates, has created an additional financing bur den for car buyers. This year, the cen tral bank has raised its benchmark rate five times, from near zero to a range of 3 percent to 3.125 percent.

The interest-rate increases have had a domino effect on auto loan rates, according to the Lundberg report. A higher interest rate would add $70 to the monthly payment of a five-year $50,000 loan. It would cost $4,200 in interest during the loan’s life, the report stated.

Rising cost of cars, maintenance, and insurance affect personal mobility

Car insurance costs have risen nearly 9 percent per year, reaching an all-time high in August 2022.

Daniel Lacalle

Retail Sales Weaken As Inflation Soars

Small firms suffer from falling sales and rising interest rates

For the first time in decades, central banks are tightening their monetary policy while governments are continuing to spend money as if noth ing has changed. Large enterprises aren’t harmed by the most recent rate increases as long as credit conditions are still lax.

Meanwhile, households and small enterprises are bearing the full weight of the financial squeeze.

The current level of U.S. mortgage rates is the highest since 2008. Ac cording to Freddie Mac, the average interest rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage hit 6.02 percent last week.

A perfect storm of declining sales and increased finance costs hurts small enterprises. While retail sales rose 0.3 percent in August, the data for July was corrected to indicate a 0.4 per cent decline. In addition, after July’s numbers were negatively revised, core retail sales were unchanged in August. This indicates a sharp decline in sales in real terms. Since official retail sales aren’t inflation-adjusted, August’s 9.1 percent increase over the prior year was actually flat.

In order to combat inflation, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates and moderated liquidity require ments, which continue to affect con sumers but have no appreciable effect on government expenditure.

Government expenditure continues despite the Fed’s excessive lag.

For 17 months, inflation has exceeded the Fed’s target, and increased expendi ture by the government only fuels the fire. Core inflation continues to rise.

When the money supply is com pletely absorbed by new government debt and public deficit spending is kept at record high levels, rate increases are insufficient. Because of that, yearly inflation is running at 8.3 percent, close to a 40-year high.

Furthermore, the core consumer price index (CPI), which strips out food and energy, rose to 6.3 percent in August. This month-over-month growth of 0.6 percent exceeded economists’ predictions by a factor of two.

According to analysts, inflation is de creasing and, based on consensus pro jections, will reach 4 percent or less in 2023. But if all goes according to plan, that means that in two years, consum ers and businesses will see cumulative inflation of at least 12 percent.

Also keep in mind that since March, shipping rates and commodity prices have corrected, which brings us to these poor August numbers.

Because stocks and bonds are declining, market participants are pleading with central banks to change course. An investor base that hasn’t seen tight monetary policies in more than 10 years is becoming more worried. Governments are also growing more concerned about rising public debt yields.

Governments like low rates be cause they profit from both, even if inflation surges.

Stagflation, such as that seen in the 1970s, is considerably more likely if central banks alter their approach and stop raising interest rates while governments implement so-called anti-inflation measures that entail increasing debt, expenditure, and cur rency creation.

There isn’t a magic bullet for inflation. It’s quite simple to start and extremely challenging to stop. Governments will continue to in troduce new aid initiatives that fuel inflationary pressures if they have a financial motive to grow their debt.

The notion of cost-push inflation is dis proved by rising core inflation. The ma jority of goods and services would see flat or declining pricing if the amount of money remained constant. If there ar en’t more currency units available, then costs don’t increase uniformly.

Those who predict a decline in inflation are referring to the rate of price increases rather than a decrease in overall costs: Not that prices would decrease, but rather that the annual rate of price increases will slow down.

Because margins are shrinking and real incomes are declining, this new reality of enduringly high prices is difficult for businesses and families to accept.

The reality that households and small companies are getting poorer and the middle class is being destroyed is true, whether you are bullish or bear ish on the rate of change of prices.

Stagflation like that seen in the 1970s is considerably more likely if central banks alter their approach and stop raising interest rates while governments implement so-called anti-inflation measures that entail increasing debt, expenditure, and currency creation.

FAN YU is an expert in finance and economics and has contributed analyses on China’s economy since 2015.

Fan Yu

A New ‘Lost Decade’ for the Market?

Sustained periods of stock market stagnation may be the new normal

Investors may need to prepare themselves for the possibility that the good times are over.

Stock market investors have generally enjoyed a run of great returns dating to 2013, when the market emerged from the doldrums of the 2008 financial crisis.

The S&P 500 has now lost more than 21 percent in 2022 after a week of selloffs following the Federal Reserve’s third straight month of 75-basis-point benchmark interest rate increases. The outlook isn’t very optimistic.

Before we dive into what the future may hold, it’s worth revisiting how spectacular returns have been over the past decade. In the three years from the beginning of 2019 to the end of last year (2021), the S&P 500 has increased 89.9 percent, or at an annual rate of 23.8 percent. During the decade from 2011 to 2021, the market gained 274.7 percent, or an annual return of 14.1 percent.

Prior to that, however, the U.S. stock market had gone through long peri ods of lackluster returns. In the eight years from the beginning of 2000 (near the height of the “dot-com” bub ble) to the end of 2008 (the midst of the great financial crisis), the S&P 500 returned a negative 5.8 percent an nually. And in the 12 years from 1968 to the end of 1981, the index returned only 1.4 percent annually.

If the S&P 500 index ends this year at the same level as today, 2022 would register as the third-worst annual return going all the way back to 1975, with 2008 and 2002 being the only worse years, with returns of negative 38.5 percent and negative 23.4 percent, respectively.

All of this is to say that investors generally have been rather spoiled over the past few decades. We certainly don’t expect (or hope for)

From here on, investors may need to resort to old-school stock picking.

annual declines of 20 percent or more in the next few years, but the macroeconomic environment also doesn’t encourage optimism.

Could the market trade sideways over the next several years, with small pockets of gains and losses, but ultimately without sustained positive momentum? A few experts believe a “lost decade” could indeed be in the cards.

Albert Edwards of Société Générale has argued for years that the most recent bull market—propped up by years of zero-to-negative interest rates and massive money printing— would end and usher in a period of high inflation, high interest rates, and high government spending in an attempt to boost the economy.

Morgan Stanley’s chief U.S. econo mist Ellen Zentner put it succinctly in a note to clients on Sept. 23:

“We now see the Fed delivering additional pain to households and businesses via a higher rate. While the alternative—persistently high inflation—is harder to bear, the path to a soft landing has narrowed.

“The higher interest rates go, the greater the risk of a recession.”

The bank now expects another 75-basis-point boost in Novem ber, followed by a 50-basis-point increase in December and a 25-ba sis-point hike in January 2023. Mor gan Stanley also lowered its forecast for 2023 gross domestic product (GDP) growth to 0.5 percent and revised its 2022 GDP growth outlook down to zero.

Major banks are cutting yearend targets for the S&P 500, with generally bullish Goldman Sachs projecting the index to end the year at 3,600 points, slightly lower than its current mark. Michael Harnett, chief investment strategist at Bank of America, told Reuters that the S&P could end the year as low as 3,020, which is another sizable drop from current levels.

We hear investors looking for signs of “capitulation” in the market that typically would indicate a near-term bottom in stocks. But such triedand-true investing methods may no longer work, with the Federal Re serve having effectively abandoned the stock market and economic fundamentals being so weak.

All of this will come as a wake-up call for those accustomed to the mar ket going up the majority of the time and a central bank that has always had the market’s back. The previ ously useful passive index investing strategy of holding a market index and depending on the “tide to lift all boats” should also be thrown out.

From here on, investors may need to resort to old-school stock picking, choosing quality companies with healthy balance sheets and high dividends, and short-term buying and selling.

EPOCH INSIGHT Week 39, 2022 77 Sustained periods of market stagnation? It may just be the new “old” normal.

Ideas and Why Rational People Fall for Them

‘Parasitic’

‘It’s easy to infect people with bad ideas, especially when those bad ideas are alluring,’ Gad Saad says

“Sam Harris demonstrates that intelligent people aren’t inoculated from parasitic thinking.”

It takes profes sors to come up with some of the dumbest ideas,” says Gad Saad, a Lebanese Canadian professor of marketing at Concordia University and author of “The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense.”

“The fact that you are educated doesn’t mean you have properly administered the mind vaccine against all these idea pathogens.”

Saad recently sat down with EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” host Jan Jekielek to discuss the “idea pathogens” behind such recent phenomena as wokeism, the COVID dog mas, and postmodernism.

JAN JEKIELEK: “The Par asitic Mind” has been on my reading list for some time, but what really caused me to pull the trigger was your commentary about the Sam Harris “TRIGGERnometry” podcast. I’ve taken in a lot of really interesting material from your book. And for those in the audience who might not be aware, Harris has talked eruditely on numerous topics including wokeism. In that “TRIGGER nometry” episode, he actual ly calls it a woke apocalypse, a big threat to society. At the same time, he has voiced some extreme views about former President Donald Trump, which is where your commentary comes in.

GAD SAAD:  Harris demon strates that intelligent people aren’t inoculated from parasitic thinking. As I explain in “The Parasitic

Mind,” all the idea patho gens that have parasitized the West originally stem from the university. It takes professors to come up with some of the dumbest ideas.

The fact that you’re educat ed doesn’t mean you have properly administered the mind vaccine against all these idea pathogens.

Harris encapsulates this kind of parasitic thinking.

So what is it? In Chapter 2 of “The Parasitic Mind,” I talk about the distinction be tween thinking and feeling, which is a false dichotomy.

It’s not that humans are thinking animals or feeling animals. We’re both. We can trigger both systems. The challenge is to know when to trigger what system.

When it comes to Trump, what should be triggered is your cognitive system. What are the policies of Trump, Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama that you agree with or disagree with? When we’re choosing a president, we should be triggering our cognitive system. On the other hand, when you look at all of the reasons that people use to justify why Barack Obama is so beautiful and why Trump is such a threat, they’re based on emotional responses. People will say of Trump: “He disgusts me. He’s grotesque. He’s cantan kerous. He speaks like an eighth grader from Queens.”

All the things they despise in Trump have nothing to do with his views on mone tary policy or immigration policy.

The first problem with the “parasitic thinking” of Harris is that he’s suc cumbing to the triggering of the wrong system, the

emotional system instead of the cognitive system. The second important thing that he’s violating is the distinction, which I talk about in the book, between deontological ethics and consequentialist ethics.

But suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story was perfectly OK because, other wise, Donald Trump could have won, and that wouldn’t have been good.” In this instance, he was taking a deontological principle and was violating it for conse quentialist goals. That’s morally grotesque.

MR. JEKIELEK: Later in the podcast, Harris says, and I’m paraphrasing here, “All bad things are a matter of people’s minds being out of control.” He goes on to men tion that so much of daily conflict and misery is born of people being captured by their own thoughts and un able to be skeptical of their own opinions. I thought, “You’re so right about this, so what just happened 10 minutes ago?”

Deontological ethics are absolute statements of truth. For example, if I say to you, “Jan, it is never OK to lie,” that would be a deonto logical statement. If I were to say, “It’s OK to lie when your spouse asks you, ‘Do I look fat in these jeans?’” In this case, I would be putting on my consequentialist hat. I’d like to remain married. I don’t want to hurt the feelings of my spouse.

Most of us put on our con sequentialist hats on many different occasions. But the fundamental principles of Western society should be based on deontological ethics. Harris basically says on the podcast: “Sure, the media should be honest and fully report all stories.

MR. SAAD: I have a code of conduct where I try not to go after people I know out of loyalty and friendship. So for years, as Harris was becoming utterly unhinged about Trump, I kept quiet. But that silence was pitted against my deontological love for the truth. Should I be loyal to someone I know, or should that be supersed ed by defending the truth at all costs? I’m happy to report that truth won.

A lot of people thought I had a personal animus against Harris. Nothing could be further from the truth. But if you’re walking around positioning yourself as this great mediator, this dispassionate pursuer of rationality, and then you be come the exemplar of hyste ria, I’m going to call you out on your hypocrisy.

“The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense” by Gad Saad.

MR. JEKIELEK: I feel we owe Harris a debt of gratitude for revealing this kind of thinking, which seems prevalent among certain groups of people. To some extent, it helps us to understand this crazi ness and why these con tradictions can exist. Do you think people actually get programmed through propaganda and marketing by people who already had this mind virus them selves?

MR. SAAD: It’s easy to in fect people with bad ideas, especially when those bad ideas are alluring. One serious problem is that most people are cognitive misers. A cognitive miser is someone who doesn’t make the necessary cognitive effort to come to a valid decision. For example, they might say: “If Barack Obama or George Bush says that Islam is a religion of peace, then it’s case closed. The president has said it; therefore, it’s good.” They didn’t expend the neces sary effort to test the verac ity of that statement.

MR. JEKIELEK: Several experts on public health

I’ve spoken with believe we killed public health policy during COVID. We stopped looking at the evidence, the body of information, and the consequences that came as a result of enacting certain policies. Everything had to be based on the eradication of COVID, and forget all the other consequences. Effec tively, that’s what happened.

MR. SAAD: To be charita ble, a lot of these errors in public policy were due to the fact there was a fog of war going on, and people were just trying to respond in any way they could. But my non-charitable side sug gests that, in many cases, the policies enacted were willfully diabolical. As you may remember, Jan, hun dreds of health profession als with Ph.D. and M.D. after their names wrote a letter essentially saying, “From a public health perspective, regarding a gathering of 50,000 people, because it supports BLM, the pros and cons of the health effects downstream are such that we should permit the gath ering.” That’s how politics can even parasitize some thing as noble as public health policy.

MR. JEKIELEK: I’ve seen an internet video clip where a state department-type person is explaining to some Afghan women that the Duchamp urinal is art. It’s up on a screen and in the eyes of the women, you can see them asking, “What is this?”

MR. SAAD: Those Afghan women are demonstrating, unbeknownst to them, that they disdain postmod ernism. Postmodernism, as I explain in “The Parasitic Mind,” is an idea pathogen. Other examples of idea pathogens would be social constructivism, biopho bia—the fear of using biology to explain human phenomena—cultural rel ativism, and militant fem inism. These and others I describe in the book are forms of idea pathogens, but the most insidious and worst is postmodernism, because it fundamentally attacks the epistemology of truth. It’s not simply spreading specific false hoods. Postmodernism rejects the possibility of seeking truth. It basically says we are always con

strained by our personal biases, that there is no truth with a capital T.

I always tell people: “Stop worrying about being canceled at your job. Stop worrying about being unfriended on Facebook. Truth is more important than you being canceled.”

MR. JEKIELEK: T here’s a moral courage that you’re describing, though it’s not quite courage. It’s more a feeling where you couldn’t live with yourself if you didn’t do the right thing or be as honest as you could.

MR. SAAD: I call it existen tial authenticity, and one of the ways you can truly achieve happiness is to be authentic. If, at the end of your life, you look back with little regret, it’s probably because you really lived by that internal compass that had driven your life. When I lie down at night, I need to feel that I was true to truth, that I never equivocated. Authenticity is the way to happiness and liberation.

This interview has been edit ed for clarity and brevity.

People

“In ‘The Parasitic Mind,’ I talk about the distinction between thinking and feeling, which is a false dichotomy.”

SCAN TO WATCH NOW

Consider What You Promise

Being there for everyone is noble, but not always wise

My online dictio nary offers two definitions of commitment: “the state or quality of being dedicated to a cause, activity, etc.” and “an engagement or obligation that restricts freedom of action,” as in “I’m sorry I can’t make book club, but I have some family plans for that evening.”

Toss these dual definitions into a blender, and you pour out the margar ita of commitment: giving our word, and then keeping our word.

These promises with their obliga tions come in all shapes and sizes. Some pull more weight than a three-lo comotive freight train. A committed relationship, for instance, means spending time together, being honest with each other, working through problems, desiring a shared future, and so on. A bride and groom take their commitment a step further by exchanging legally binding vows of fealty, often in the presence of God.

On the other hand, the single working mom who promises her 5-year-old a Saturday afternoon in the park signs a featherweight contract, one with few strings attached other than the plea sure of the child.

The first half of the commitment equation, the promise, is the easy part. A friend asks us to serve on the board of the Friends of the Library, and we accept, thinking we can do some good for the community and secretly puffing ourselves up a bit for our volunteerism.

But the second part of the equation, the obligation, whops us in the head with the reality that once a month, exhaust ed from our workday, we are con demned to spend an evening in debates over trifles. What were we thinking?

son stuck, allowing me time and again to avoid taking on tasks for which I was either unsuited or which I would likely resent.

If, however, we have promised our time, talent, or treasure to some cause or person, pride and duty demand that we do our best to honor that promise. If we’ve accepted a job offer, we owe our employer a full day’s work. If we’ve volunteered as a class parent at our daughter’s school, we are obliged to lend a hand to the teacher.

Sometimes we make similar prom ises to ourselves and likewise fail. We join a gym, swearing to exercise three evenings a week, but soon we’re down to three times a month. Again, we ask, what were we thinking?

Sticking to a pledge, then, can be hard, and if we break that pledge, even one made to a 5-year-old, we diminish our reputation for reliability. So, a question: What’s a good way to approach com mitments?

First, we can be wary about making promises. When I was in my mid-40s, self-employed, married, and with three children and another on the way, I spent more than a year volunteer ing as a Cub Scout leader, serving on my church’s parish council, teaching Sunday school, and helping three ren egade nuns found a private school. It was a miserable whirlwind of appoint ments and anxiety.

But it taught me one invaluable lesson. I learned to say no. Firmly, without regret or hesitation. That les

And finally, once we do commit, we should follow up with enthusiasm. The dad who promised his son a game of catch in the backyard needs to bring joy to that game, no matter how hard his day. He may forget that shared half-hour by the next morning, while the kid may remember it his entire life. The woman who helps a friend with a yard sale shows up on time and greets customers with a smile. Obligations delivered with frowns, grousing, and a lousy attitude are worse than never having made the commitment at all.

Our commitments, both the pledges given to ourselves and to others, are noble and worthy things, but only if we make them so.

Making promises means weighing obligations.

Jeff Minick lives and writes in Front Royal, Va. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust on Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning as I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.”

The first half of the commitment equation, the promise, is the easy part.

Unwind

A Quest for Perfect Pizza 86

Come along on an exploration of the best pizzerias in Naples, Italy.

IF YOU WANT YOUR NEXT business or personal travel experience to be more pleasurable, consider these tips on what to bring and how to bring it.  90

STAYING CONNECTED FOR remote work meetings or to see far-away family keeps getting easier and better.  93

MEETING FRIENDS TO share a meal and memories can be great fun, as long as everyone abides by these basic rules of dining etiquette.  96

Set high on a hilltop overlooking the French Riviera, the property sprawls on a grand scale, affording a most unique lifestyle to its owners.

A French Masterpiece

Set on 75 lush acres, this property features a spacious main residence, 3 private villas, and spectacular views

Perched high on a hilltop overlooking the Bay of Cannes on the French Riviera, a one-of-a-kind private estate defines luxury homes on the Cote d’Azur. Listed for $29 million, the property consists of a 75-acre exclusive reserve surrounding a 10,700-square-foot mansion and three additional private villas.

The prestigious property boasts spellbind ing views over Cannes, the Leris Islands, and the Esterel Mountains. A picturesque pri vate drive leads past beautifully landscaped gardens, fields of lavender, mature olive groves with century-old trees, manicured lawns, and natural meadows to a circular drive at the main house.

The property could easily be called a private resort with a total of 22 bedrooms, 17 baths, and virtually every conceivable luxury and amenity.

The principal residence features five superb suites, including an entire floor dedicated to a magnificent owner’s suite. The home is grand in every way, offering a vast array of reception rooms, a lounge, a salon, a formal dining room, a library, and a study. Designed with enter taining guests in mind, the home also features entertainment spaces galore, including a bar/

nightclub and a gaming room. At the center of it all, the mansion’s traditional French kitchen is a chef’s dream, replete with a wide array of professional-grade appliances and vast counter space. Additional features include a fully equipped gym and fitness suite with a steam room, a sauna, and other spa features.

Three additional villas offer 17 more bed rooms, another 10,700 square feet of living space with amenities of complete luxury. In addition, the property is improved with a tennis court, three luxurious private pools, a cottage for staff, several garages, eques trian facilities, and a private helipad. The Cannes-Mandelieu Airport is a minute or two away via helicopter from the residence.

Located outside the quiet little village of Tanneron, which sits halfway between the sea and Lake St. Cassien and is only a halfhour’s drive from Cannes, this prestigious estate offers unmatched seclusion, abundant nature, and panoramic views of this part of the Riviera.

Phil Butler is a publisher, editor, author, and analyst who is a widely cited expert on subjects ranging from digital and social media to travel technology.

TANNERON, PROVENCEALPES-COTE D’AZUR, FRANCE

$29 MILLION

• 22 BEDROOMS

• 17 BATHS

• 3 PRIVATE POOLS

• 75 ACRES KEY FEATURES

• COTE D'AZUR PANORAMAS

• EQUESTRIAN FACILITIES

• PRIVATE RESORT FEATURES AGENT CARLTON INTERNATIONAL Email: info@carlton group.com +33 493 95 1111

(Above) The main house’s inviting infinity pool looks out over a breathtakingly beautiful Cote d'Azur panorama. (Top Right) The master suite is an elegant and tasteful sanctuary. All of the main house’s bedrooms enjoy similar ensuite features. (Right) Throughout the main house and the guest villas, great attention has been paid to providing a sense of luxurious livability.

The Perfect Pizza

No bad slice is seemingly to be found in Naples, the birthplace of pizza

Is there a dish more beloved the world over than pizza? Whether you’re pulling up your chair to a checkerboard tablecloth in a small Cambodian village or popping off the train for a quick snack at a Trans-Siberian railway station, you’ll find it everywhere. That savory combination of meat, cheese, and dough is ubiquitous—and, usually, pretty delicious.

Like many famous dishes, you can trace its provenance back to one place: Naples, the larg est city in southern Italy. And on a recent trip there, dodging mopeds in the narrow laneways and walking along the sultry waterfront, I learned some of its secrets.

First, here’s something that’s not a mystery: Neapolitans love their pies. Walk a few blocks, and you’ll find more pizza than you’ve ever seen in your life. While it’s probably not tech nically true, it feels like every corner in this city of about 3 million people is occupied by a pizzeria. And the tables aren’t just filled with tourists—on any day of the week, you’ll find plenty of locals enjoying a slice, too.

Even the ancients consumed flatbreads, but this particular combination became popular in Naples in the 18th and 19th centuries. The city was (and, in some ways, remains) a rough-andtumble port, home to thousands of working poor collectively called the lazzaroni. They needed food that was filling and cheap, and the humble pizza did the trick.

It may be apocryphal, but, as the story goes, Italian King Umberto I and Queen Margarita visited the city in 1889. They were tired of all the fancy food they had been served on their trip and wanted to try a slice of this popular Nea politan dish. The queen particularly enjoyed a pie with mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, and basil; henceforth, it was known as the Pizza Margarita.

I came to town with a single plan: I was there to eat pizza, then walk around for as long as it took to get hungry enough to eat pizza again. I had very humble slices, including a tiny little finger of pizza given to me free by a microbrewery as a reward for ordering one of their pilsners. I avoid ed any place that was too touristy.

I also tried something new, at least to me: fried pizza. Walking a few blocks from my ho tel, I entered the Spanish Quarter, a frenzied corner of the city made up of a labyrinth of tiny, ancient lanes. There, the parties, fueled by one-euro Aperol spritzes, often rollick into the wee hours.

Arriving in the early afternoon, I found Pizza Fritta da Gennaro to be a tiny—and busy—family-owned business staffed by an uncle (Antonio) and his nephew

Neapolitan pizza must be baked for 60 to 90 seconds in a 905 degree F wood-fired oven.

Rome

Naples is Italy’s third-largest city, after Rome and Milan.

Another great slice, this time at Pizzeria Matteo.

Be careful with taxis. Drivers are often reluctant to run the meter, and charge tourists an arbitrary fee.

(Giovanni). Occupying a corner where two narrow streets intersect, the kitchen was separated from the lane by a rope across the door and no public tables were available; it was clear that most of the store’s business was takeaway. When I mentioned that I would love to sit and chat while I enjoyed my first fried slice, they graciously pulled back the rope and let me sit at a table right in the kitchen.

The Gennaros chatted with me as they pre pared the food, frying the bread in a big vat of oil before filling it with red sauce and cheese.

“We’ve been here 18 years, but my grandfa ther started making fried pizza 50 years ago,” Giovanni said. Time, it seems, has turned out a delicious product—the sauce was bright and flavorful, the cheese was stringy and perfect, and it was all rolled into a chewy dough.

My single-minded explorations took me across the city. One gambol took me to Pizzeria Matteo, where all of their promotional mate rials advertised the fact that Bill Clinton once dined there, decades ago, as U.S. president. Since the pizza was amazing, it wouldn’t surprise me if he still remembers it. I didn’t have a single mediocre slice the entire time I was in town.

But the best slice was in an inauspicious place, on my last night in town. After all the walking— not to mention the pounds of mozzarella already in my stomach—I opted for something close by. Looking online, I found a hole-in-the-wall pizza

parlor, just around the corner.

It wasn’t stylish, with its garish sign and harsh inside lightning, but the reviews were over-thetop—they were glowing as bright as the sign. The waiters didn’t speak English.

And the pizza was perfect. Sitting on a wobbly chair at a metal table on a busy street, I could see the tiled, wood-burning oven through the window. A cook went about his business steadily, kneading the dough, spreading the sauce, and portioning out the cheese, methodical yet metic ulous, like a magician performing a trick.

They brought me the pie, a Margarita with buffalo mozzarella. The first bite was glorious. The sauce tasted like springtime. The cheese, like little pillows of heaven, was so good that it made my eyes water. A meal fit for royalty but served in a place where even the lazzaroni would feel comfortable. A perfect final pie, there in the birthplace of pizza.

Tim Johnson is based in Toronto. He has visited 140 countries across all seven continents.

If You Go

Fly: Naples International Airport links to major cities across Europe, with few direct flights to North America.

Stay: The four-star Grand Hotel Oriente is close to dozens of pizza places and most of the city’s biggest attractions. Rooms are large and comfortable, some with balconies.

Getting Around: A public transit system has both buses and a metro. Taxis are also everywhere.

Take Note: A number of major attractions can be found very close to Naples, including the Amalfi Coast and Pompeii.

People wait outside the famous L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele in Naples, Italy.

AT THE FAMILY TABLE WITH HETTY MCKINNON

Between the busyness of school, work, and everything in between, the beloved cookbook writer still makes time for family dinner—an anchoring ritual with deep roots.

In hetty mckinnon’s house, family meals are sacred.

The Australian-born, now Brooklyn-based cook and award-winning food writer is plenty busy; her many hats include being the founder of salad-deliv ery business Arthur Street Kitchen back home in Surry Hills, Sydney; the creator and publisher of Ped dler Journal, a biannual multicul tural food magazine; the host of The House Specials, a podcast from the Peddler team; and a prolific recipe developer and cookbook au thor, with her fifth and latest book, “Tenderheart,” to be released in the United States in spring 2023.

Her three kids don’t sit still much, either. They “lead full, busy lives, sometimes as busy as my husband [who’s a lawyer] and [me],” McKinnon said.

But at the end of the day, come dinnertime, they all find their way back together.

“The family table is an anchor,” McKinnon said, “a time to slow down and take time for one another.”

MEALTIME MEMORIES

McKinnon’s mother, a Chinese im migrant who moved to Australia in her early 20s, took family meals seriously.

“We woke up with her cooking, and we went to sleep with her pre paring the kitchen for the next day. She was a force,” McKinnon said.

Dinner each night was a tradi tional Cantonese banquet: five or six dishes and a medicinal broth, set in the middle of the table with bowls of rice all around. She said her mother sometimes went to great lengths to source ingredients, hop ping on multiple buses or trains to track down the best brand of tofu

A familystyle feast, McKinnon’s preferred meal format.

McKinnon’s deconstructed falafel salad, which appears in her third cookbook, “Family.”

HETTY MCKINNON’S WEEKNIGHT WISDOM

Stock the Pantry: Stock the shelves with ver satile staples. “If you’re shopping for canned, frozen, or dry ingredients, buy two instead of one, and stash the spare for a rainy day.”

Instant Flavor Boost: A ver satile herb oil— extra-virgin olive oil infused with chopped herbs, garlic, and salt— can be drizzled on almost anything.

Mix It Up: If kids turn their noses up at a particular food, try present ing it in a different way (how about roasted instead of raw?) or pairing it with something more familiar.

or noodles across town.

“I remember often wondering why she was so obsessed with cooking,” McKinnon said.

When she started a family of her own, however, she began to better understand: For her mother, “cook ing was her way of nurturing.”

“I’ve realized how seminal these moments around the table were for me,” McKinnon said. “[They] gave me an appreciation of how to express love ... and how satis fying it can be to nurture others through food.”

NEW FAMILY CLASSICS

Now, McKinnon is continuing the ritual. In place of her mother’s Cantonese feasts, however, she fills her table with multicultural vegetarian dishes that her family has grown to love: hearty salads, soups, pastas, and bakes. A per sonal favorite is a deconstructed falafel salad, with pan-charred kale

leaves that all but disappear under a mountain of crispy, cumin- and paprika-roasted chickpeas.

She still serves the food fami ly-style.

“It’s a much more social way of eating,” McKinnon said.

It also encourages her kids to try a variety of foods.

McKinnon acknowledges the challenge of getting regular fam ily meals on the table. But she said that a key step in overcoming that challenge is a mental switch: “It’s about thinking about family meals as an everyday ritual.”

Home cooks put up obstacles for themselves when they “feel pres sure to whip up a gourmet meal every night,” she said. Instead, she encourages busy parents to prior itize the heart of the matter.

“Think of the ritual first, and put emphasis on that,” McKinnon said. “What you actually cook is almost secondary.

HOW TO

TRAVEL LIGHT

Considering what luggage to use may not seem important, but it can make any trip better

Learning how to choose the right luggage can improve business and vacation travel.

Whoever said “you can’t take it with you” never saw the average traveler with a mountain of luggage.

When traveling for busi ness or vacation, where you go and how you get there are important, but it’s easy to overlook some critical details. One example is how we bring our clothes and other items. For some, a suitcase used since childhood works just fine, while others utilize a veritable fleet of high-end luggage emblazoned with designer labels. The happy medium is to use the least amount of luggage required to bring what you need. A steamer trunk would easily accomplish that goal, but there are more practical and efficient options to consider.

Before choosing your luggage, con sider what will go in it. It’s common to bring along more than is actually needed, so by factoring in the purpose of the trip—business or pleasure—and how much clothing and other items will be required, it’s possible to cut back to only what you actually need, which, in turn, affects the size and quantity of luggage required. The late Queen Elizabeth II was fond of luggage from the British firm Globe-Trotter to bring along the crown jewels and multiple outfits, but she had a staff of hundreds to drag it all around.

As just one example of how to travel light, clothes can be laundered and worn multiple times when you arrive at your destination, rather than packing an outfit for every day and activity. After you know what you’ll be bringing, the next step is to deter

mine the best way to carry it.

For brief or overnight trips, try to avoid checking luggage if possible. Of course, you can’t get around this if you must bring multiple bags or oversized items, but otherwise learn to pack what you need in one carry-on bag, such as Ghurka’s Cavalier I No. 96 com pact leather duffel. You can also tuck a few other items into a laptop case that can be stowed beneath the seat in front of you (making it important not to end up in bulkhead seating).

THOSE WHO’VE EVER GONE backpacking take pride in using every inch of luggage and know tricks such as tucking socks and small toiletry items into shoes. By not checking luggage, you not only have control of your belongings at all times, but you also can board flights much more quickly and avoid delays at bag gage claim areas.

When it comes to luggage types, it can be classified as wheeled or not wheeled. Wheeled luggage is incredibly easier to transport than the non-wheeled type. As a bit of travel trivia, wheeled luggage was patented in 1972 by Bernard D.

For brief, or overnight trips, consider a duffel bag that you can stow in an airliner’s overhead compartment, thus avoiding the need to check luggage.

Taking too much clothing is worse than not taking enough; laundering and wearing clothes again if needed is preferable to hauling around items you didn’t really need to bring.

Backpacks are popular choices for travel luggage because they accommodate a large amount of clothing and are easy to carry.

When choosing any type of new luggage, bigger is not always better, as it will be heavier and may not fit in an airliner’s overhead bin.

Overly small or vintage pieces of luggage may be chic, but they tend to be inefficient choices due to their minimal capacity.

Streamline the travel process by bringing only what you absolutely need in easy-to-transport luggage.

Sadow and was then improved upon by Robert Plath, a retired Northwest Airlines 747 pilot, in 1987 with his “Rol laboard” Travelpro luggage design. This design is now in wide use by airline crews, who are pros at traveling light, and by savvy passengers.

However, there are a few caveats that prevent wheeled luggage from always being the best choice, starting with size. Just because the luggage is labeled as sized to fit in an overhead compart ment doesn’t mean it will be easy to do so. The maximum size for overhead compartment luggage is 9 inches by 14 inches by 22 inches, but choosing even a slightly smaller bag that will hold pretty much the same volume of contents will be much easier to stow in the overhead bin, and will be greatly appreciated by the passengers waiting to get past you to their seats. If you’re unable to fit the luggage in the overhead bin, you’ll have to check it, which can delay the flight.

LUGGAGE WITH WHEELS four corners are called “spin ners” because they are easy to roll while upright, or can be tilted and pulled behind, whereas luggage with wheels

only on one edge can only be pulled be hind. Metal-clad wheeled bags provide more protection for their contents, but are often heavy, while a soft-sided model may afford that extra bit of flex needed to fit in just one more item, and will be a bit easier to lift when needed.

A classic duffle in leather or fabric, such as those from T. Anthony, can swallow an enormous amount of lug gage. But as you add more items, you also add weight, which can make trans porting the shoulder bag from home to the car, the plane, a cab or shuttle, and finally the hotel a daunting, uncomfortable task. Some duffle bags are hybrids that solve this dilemma by being equipped with wheels.

The bottom line is to streamline the travel process by bringing only what you absolutely need in easy-to-transport luggage so that you can focus on enjoying the experience.

When choosing luggage for kids, consider more than its capacity; they will need to be able to carry it or move it through an airport.

TRAVEL LIKE

A PRO

How to choose the right luggage

Just the Essentials

By leaving behind items such as the running gear you likely won’t end up using, you can use smaller pieces of luggage, which are easier to transport and stow.

Wheels Are Better

Airline crews use wheeled luggage that is easy to pull along instead of lugging on their shoulders. Look for luggage that will easily fit in the overhead compartment.

Think Twice

Do you really need to bring six sweaters or swimsuits? Pack items that can be laundered when you arrive and then worn again.

THOMAS

THIS PAGE FROM TOP: ZOWY

SIT-DOWN CHATS WITH FOLKS MANY MILES AWAY

Side by Side SIDEKICK

HARDWARE IS FREE; $25/MONTH SERVICE FEE

This system allows you to virtually sit with a group or just one favorite person via a device you can set next to you on your desk. If you’re busy, set it to mute to avoid interruptions. It’s ideal for staying in touch with friends or the new college student. This system requires a subscription plan of $25 a month.

Can You Hear Me?

LOGITECH ZONE WIRELESS HEADSET

$229

See Everybody OWL LABS MEETING OWL 3 $1,049

This innovative system lets all participants on the call see each other, even those hiding in the back. Rather than just being able to see the person speaking, the Owl provides a 360-degree view of the room. Its highly efficient microphone has a range of up to 44 feet to make sure all comments can be heard.

Being able to see and be seen during a teleconference is important, but so is being heard. The wireless design, boom microphone, and comfortable ear pieces of this headset ensure that you can hear every bit of the conversation—and are heard clearly, too. It’s also great for hands-free audio-only calls or for screening out distracting noise when you need to concentrate.

Plug and Play POLY STUDIO P15

$449.95

This system is designed to be very easy to use: Just set it on top of the monitor and plug it in to create a virtual, two-way studio. The speakers deliver crisp sound while the integral microphone lets viewers hear you clearly. Even if you get up and move around, the camera automatically keeps you framed and in focus.

Simply Better PICTAR FAMILY ZOOM KIT

$124.99

Not everyone has access to a tablet, laptop, or full-size computer. If you prefer just using your phone, this system is worth considering. It includes an adjustable, flexible stand to hold the phone steady, wide-angle and macro lenses, and an LED light to make sure the folks on the other end can see you clearly.

Technology keeps improving and, in this instance, makes it a simple matter to stay connected, regardless of how far apart we may be

Epoch Booklist

RECOMMENDED READING

FICTION

of such tales as well as novels such as “Fahren heit 451,” and here are some of his best. Humor, horror, nostalgia: These descriptions and oth ers apply to the work of this American lover of the written word.

Great reading not only for adults but for teens as well.

MEMOIR

life, charting his highs and lows as a bookseller in a rural village. The astute owner is often sarcastic but always bighearted, and the result is hilariously charming. This book is witty, wild, and wonderful.

DAVID R. GODINE PUBLISHER, 2020, 324 PAGES

Putnam to the Rescue, Again!

The naval adventure series continues as Bliven Putnam joins the fight for Texas’s inde pendence from Mexico. A master of Texas his tory storytelling, Haley brings to life his fictional characters and inter twines them seamlessly with historical figures and moments.

WILLIAM MORROW PAPERBACKS, 2005, 912 PAGES

HISTORY

A Socialite War Correspondent

CLASSICS

FOR KIDS

100 of Ray Bradbury’s Best

This collection of short stories, all selected by Bradbury himself, is the perfect “dipper” book, one the reader can open at random and fall straight into the imag ination of a renowned storyteller. For more than 60 years, Brad bury gave us hundreds

‘Princes at War’

The Battle for Britain’s Throne

Queen Elizabeth II’s death should remind us no one expected her to become queen of England when she was born. Elizabeth became queen through her father, an accidental king. The tale is etched against the lead-up and period of World War II. Elizabeth’s father, Albert, became George VI when his brother Edward abdicated. Loyally supported by brothers Henry and George, he rallied Britain in World War II. Meanwhile, Edward tried to regain his crown through treasonous approaches to the Nazis.

PUBLICAFFAIRS, 2016, 400 PAGES

In 1935, socialite Vir ginia Cowles was a soci ety columnist for toney magazines writing about fashion and gossip. She traveled the world writ ing light pieces about places she visited. Then, she met Mussolini, and she decided to take her career in a different direction: She became a war correspondent. These memoirs describe her activities from 1936 through 1941, detailing events from the Spanish Civil War to the Battle of Britain.

‘The Black Intellectual Tradition’

The Classics Are for Everyone

‘Time to Say “Please”’

Mice Teaching Manners

Here’s a book that should “please” the 3- to 5-year-olds. Bold, bright pictures and light wit are the hallmarks of this early guide to “please,” “thank you,” “excuse me,” and “I’m sorry.” The final page should bring a chuckle even to adults.

HYPERION BOOKS FOR CHILDREN, 2005, 40 PAGES

‘Confessions of a Bookseller’

Diary of a Bibliophile

Bythell purchased The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland, when he was 30. This rollicking read chronicles a year in his

In this groundbreaking book, which they’ve sub titled “Reading Freedom in Classical Literature,” African American schol ars Prather and Parham explore the enormous influence of such giants as Plato and Milton on earlier black intellec tuals, several of whom were born into slavery. From the classics, they learned the arts of com position, oratory, and reason. Prather and Par ham argue that the clas sics are beyond the parameters of race or sex, and that restoring them to the classroom would nurture American unity and virtue.

CLASSICAL ACADEMIC PRESS, 2022, 270 PAGES

‘Strega Nona’s Harvest’

94 EPOCH INSIGHT Week 39, 2022 Are there books you’d recommend? We’d love to hear from you. Let us know at features@epochtimes.com

An Enchanting Fall Read

This delightful story has many heartwarming elements: from the diligent spirit of doing a good job, to respect for the seeds and the process of gardening and nature at large, to the heart of generosity in sharing one’s abundance.

PUFFIN BOOKS REPRINT, 2012, 32 PAGES

MOVIE REVIEWS

RELEASE

Epoch Watchlist

This week, we feature an engaging new thriller about an extraordinary bank robber and a beloved swashbuckling fairytale sure to inspire giggles.

FAMILY PICK

‘The Princess Bride’ (1987)

‘Bandit’ (2022)

Gilbert Galvan Jr. (Josh Duhamel) escapes a minimum-security prison in the United States and relocates to Canada. There, he reinvents himself as Robert Whiteman and falls in love with the kind-hearted Andrea (Elisha Cuth bert). But he turns back to crime and goes on a massive bank robbing spree.

It’s a pretty straightforward bank heist movie based on a true story, with good tension and drama. But what makes it stand out are the excellent acting performances by its cast. Mel Gibson sizzles in his small role as a crime boss.

CRIME | DRAMA | THRILLER

Release Date: Sept. 23, 2022

Director: Allan Ungar Starring: Josh Duhamel, Elisha Cuthbert, Nestor Carbonell Running Time: 2 hours, 6 minutes

Based on the William Goldman novel of the same title, “The Princess Bride” is an epic fairy-tale adventure. Framed with a plot device of a grandfather reading to his grandson, the story involves a sim ple farm boy turned swashbuckling pirate (Cary Elwes). He must overcome various challenges to save and be reunited with his one true love—the princess Buttercup (Robin Wright).

This charming, thoroughly enjoyable film with its some

times-zany script is both an ode to classic fairy tales as well as a satire on happily-ev er-afters.

ADVENTURE | FAMILY | FANTASY

Release Date: Oct. 9, 1987

Director: Rob Reiner

Starring: Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Robin Wright

Running Time: 1 hour, 38 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG Where to Watch: Redbox, Vudu, Apple TV

MPAA Rating: R Where to Watch:  Theaters AN ’80S CLASSIC ACTION-THRILL RIDE

‘Die Hard’ (1988)

‘High Society’ (1956)

In this remake of “The Philadelphia Story,” C.K. DexterHaven (Bing Crosby) and Tracy Lord (Grace Kelly) were childhood

friends who married and quickly divorced. Now, Lord is set to marry an up-andcoming businessman, but Dexter-Haven wants her back.

This charming romcom should appeal

to fans of musicals and tongue-in-cheek comedies. It’s hard not to smile as you listen to it.

COMEDY | MUSICAL |

ROMANCE

Release Date: July 17, 1956

Director: Charles Walters

Starring: Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra

Running Time: 1 hour, 51 minutes

Not Rated

Where to Watch: Redbox, DirecTV, Vudu

John McClane (Bruce Willis) is a New York cop who is visiting his estranged family on Christmas Eve. When a group of terrorists, led by dastardly villain Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), takes over the high-rise party McClane’s wife is attending, it’s up to McClane to save the hostages.

The action show cased in this thriller is consistently exciting and the cinematog raphy is inventive.

John McTiernan (“Last Action Hero”) directed

this film with brisk pacing that keeps you engaged from begin ning to end.

ACTION | THRILLER

Release Date: July 20, 1988

Director: John McTiernan Starring: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Bonnie Bedelia

Running Time: 2 hours, 12 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Where to Watch: DirecTV, Vudu, Redbox

Dining Get-Togethers Etiquette

Before you order an entrée, make sure your etiquette skills are sharp

Enjoying a fun night out with friends whom you don’t often get to see can be a great way to recharge your inner batteries, but make sure your behavior ensures the restaurant will want you to come back.

Get everyone’s input when choosing a restaurant. If someone doesn’t enjoy sushi, find another place to go. Make it easy to get to, as you’ll all have to get there on time and then make it home within a reasonable timeframe. Consider meeting for dinner rather than lunch to create a more relaxed atmosphere, if only because there’s less pressure to get back to the office. Don’t forget to make sure the restaurant will be open when you plan to arrive.

Fun

These meals are about enjoying each other’s company, so do your best to avoid politics, religion, and other controversial subjects that could put a damper on fun. Diplomatically steer the conversation back on track if someone in the group wants to discuss sensitive topics. Without being a damp blanket, make sure no one overindulges, and be aware if your group’s antics are disturbing others at nearby tables—they are also there to have a nice time, so behave yourselves.

We’ve all been there: You only had one appetizer and a soft drink, but when the check comes, it’s split equally and you end up subsidizing the folks who had multiple cocktails and full meals. Before the server begins to take orders, discreetly ask him or her for separate checks in order to keep things fair. If one person offers to pick up the tab, don’t go wild ordering expensive items, and offer to pay at least a portion of the tip.

Timeliness

When the plan is set and a location and time agreed upon, be on time. Showing up “fashionably late” is disrespectful to everyone who made the effort to be punctual. Don’t overstay, either— your friends may have babysitters or pets waiting for them at home, or others may need to get up early for work. Don’t expect to be seated if you arrive a half-hour ahead of everyone else; taking a table out of service adversely affects the restaurant’s bottom line.

Private

If someone shares confidential info, whether intentionally or by accident, keep it private. Don’t even share it with your spouse, if they aren’t present, or other friends who know both parties. Similarly, don’t gossip about those who aren’t present. These are your friends, so be aware if you sense someone may need a bit more attention due to difficulties at home or at work. Discreetly ask if they would like to discuss anything in private with you.

Courageous Reporting

CROSSFIRE HURRICANE

ON MAY 25, 2017, The Epoch Times published an article headlined “Despite Allegations, No Evidence of Trump–Russia Collusion Found.” The article detailed that—despite a media frenzy at the time—no actual evidence had been uncovered that President Donald Trump or anyone associated with his campaign had colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.

OUR REPORTING was proven accurate with the conclusion of the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.

NOT ONLY DID WE NOT BUY INTO the false narrative that Trump colluded with Russia, but we have also been a leader in reporting on the irregular and apparently politicized nature of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign. During the past five years, we have published dozens—many of them exclusive—articles on the topic.

ELECTION INTEGRITY

FOLLOWING THE 2020 ELECTION, The Epoch Times was at the forefront of investigating and reporting on the questions surrounding the integrity of the election. Through our fact-based and independent reporting, we were able to uncover multiple irregularities.

ORIGINS OF COVID-19

ON APRIL 15, 2020, The Epoch Times published its docu mentary “Tracking Down the Origin of Wuhan Coronavirus.” The film, which received over 100 million views, ex plored the origins of the virus, including the possibility of a lab leak. It presents scientific data and interviews with top scientists and national security experts.

YEARS AFTER THE RELEASE of this ground breaking documentary, the possibility of a lab leak is considered by government offi cials and experts as the most likely explana tion for the virus's spread.

CHINA THREAT

SINCE ITS INCEPTION in the year 2000, The Epoch Times has been at the forefront of reporting on the infiltration of the United States by the Chinese Commu nist Party. Numerous times over the years, we've broken major Chi na-related stories ahead of other news organizations. In 2003, The Epoch Times was the first media outlet to system atically and continuously report on the spread of SARS, well ahead of most other Western media. We were also the first to report on state-sponsored forced organ harvesting in China—one of the most underre ported atrocities of our time—in

which prisoners of conscience are killed for their organs, which are then sold for profit on a large scale.

THE EPOCH TIMES also pub lished the editorial series

“Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party,” revealing the true nature and history of the Com munist Party and inspir ing a movement that so far has seen more than 400 million Chinese people quit the Party and its affiliated organizations. Another of our series, “How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World,” systemati cally exposes the evil nature of communism, as well as the harm it has brought and continues to inflict on the United States and the world.

We believe that investigating and exposing the truth is the only way that we can remain safe and free

A message and a story you

Dear future subscriber,

If you are sick of the bias, ies, and fake outrage that’s business-asusual in the media today, I believe that you will love our weekly magazine, Epoch Insight.

My name is Kirk Wang, and I am the senior vice president of the Subscription Department at The Epoch Times—the fastest-growing independent news outlet in America.

When The Epoch Times was founded in 2000, I was the first to join the production team in Atlanta. Together, we made our first edition, in Chinese. Thus began our commitment to reporting the truth and exposing the Chinese Community Party and its infiltration in the United States and around the world.

In today’s desert of shameless media dishonesty, The Epoch Times has become an oasis for those thirsting for truthful, fact-based coverage of current events. Now, our news magazine Epoch Insight provides an even more refreshing shelter for you to explore.

Produced by our award-winning newsroom, Epoch Insight is a weekly publication that provides big-picture news coverage and in-depth analysis of today’s most challenging issues.

Epoch Insight will keep you up to date on the most significant developments in the United States, world, as well as economic news, with exclusive content in the timeless format of a real American news magazine.

You can trust us to provide you with this indepth coverage because we’re committed to honoring Truth and Tradition—and treating our readers with the respect they deserve.

Let me offer you three reasons why honest reporting is absolutely central to every line you read in The Epoch Times and Epoch Insight. Later on, you can assess the truth of my claims for yourself.

Our commitment to tradition is so strong that we believe YOU ought to be able to judge facts for yourself and decide what to make of them.

Many other media corporations want to tightly control what you’re allowed to see or read, so that you don’t arrive at the “wrong” views.

Not us. When we search for new hires, every single job description emphasizes that the candidate must practice ethical journalism: “Seek the truth and report it.” This used to be standard in American newsrooms ... but lately it’s been sacrificed by activists who emphasize ideology over facts.

Is it hard to find reporters who qualify? You bet. A lot of journalism schools have taught students to forsake traditional journalistic ethics for newsroom activism.

While this hiring process is laborious, it has proven successful: The Epoch Times has built a team of reporters who are dedicated to seeking and reporting the truth, regardless of whether what they find conflicts with their personal biases.

1. The Epoch Times rejects politically motivated journalism.

do not want to miss

The Epoch Times takes this principle so seriously that it has never endorsed a political candidate for office. Can you imagine?

2. The Epoch Times is indebted to no one.

Let’s face it: If you are beholden to a corporation or conglomerate, you aren’t really free to report the facts. That’s the problem we see with many news outlets today—they know where their bread is buttered, and their “factual” reporting shows it!

What’s more, if your business model depends on getting a ton of “clicks,” you aren’t really free to report the news honestly. Every single headline is an advertisement looking to manipulate the consumer. (Remember the saying, “If a product is ‘free,’ there’s a good chance that YOU are the product.”)

But The Epoch Times is totally independent. We are funded by loyal subscribers like you and generous donors who are proud to support high-quality, trustworthy journalism.

(By becoming a subscriber today, YOU will become part of this movement to restore truth to our country.)

3. The Epoch Times has seen firsthand where ideological manipulation leads.

I have to warn you, this part of the letter gets a little heavy, and I write it with a somber heart.

You see, the founders of The Epoch Times are Chinese Americans who witnessed persecution in communist China.

We started a newspaper that would counteract the total censorship of the press inside China and the world’s reporting about China, and let people see the truth, not just the official government narrative.

And for their courageous commitment to the

truth, many Epoch Times journalists paid a very heavy price.

In 2000, China’s state security agents arrested the manager of the newspaper’s China bureau and 10 journalists. Editor-in-chief Zhang Yuhui received a prison sentence of 10 years, while Epoch Times staff member Huang Kui received five.

Both men were interrogated, tortured, forced into slave labor, and subjected to brainwashing classes. Huang was released in 2004 and Zhang in 2010. However, several other Epoch Times staff members were never heard from again. We fear they paid the ultimate price for their commitment to telling the truth.

So, for us, it’s personal. When you have colleagues tortured and killed for honest reporting, you’re not going to forsake those principles just because it’s convenient. We would dishonor their sacrifice if we gave you anything less than the honest truth.

I’d like to invite you to take a look at this Epoch Insight Special Report and decide for yourself if it’s the kind of in-depth news you’ve been looking for.

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