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President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to halt federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), marking a significant step in his administration’s push to curb taxpayer support for the two liberal news outlets.

The order, announced late Thursday, instructs the CPB to terminate direct funding to NPR and PBS “to the maximum extent allowed by law” and to take steps to “minimize or eliminate” indirect funding through grants to local stations.

The White House framed the move as a response to what it called “radical, woke propaganda disguised as news” from the broadcasters, which receive millions annually in taxpayer funds.

“President Trump just signed an executive order ENDING the taxpayer subsidization of NPR and PBS — which receive millions from taxpayers to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news,’” the White House stated on social media. The order argues that government funding for news media is “outdated and unnecessary” in today’s diverse media landscape and “corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.”

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Conservatives have long criticized NPR and PBS for liberal bias, pointing to coverage they say disproportionately favors leftist viewpoints. The executive order cites the abundance of private media options in the digital era, stating that NPR and PBS “no longer serve a meaningful purpose warranting taxpayer funding.”

The CPB, a congressionally chartered nonprofit, distributes about $535 million annually to public radio and television stations, with a portion supporting NPR and PBS. While NPR receives roughly 1% of its budget directly from federal funds and PBS about 16%, local stations rely more heavily on CPB grants, which can account for 8% to 10% of their budgets.

The move follows earlier signals from the Trump administration, which in April announced plans to ask Congress to rescind $1.1 billion in CPB funding, equivalent to two years of its budget. That proposal has yet to be submitted, but Thursday’s executive order escalates the effort by directly targeting the broadcasters.

Critics of NPR and PBS, including GOP lawmakers, have intensified scrutiny in recent months. In March, the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee grilled NPR and PBS executives over allegations of biased reporting. Brendan Carr, Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, also launched an investigation into whether the broadcasters’ underwriting spots violate laws banning commercial advertisements.

The White House order further directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to investigate potential employment discrimination at NPR and PBS, citing concerns over compliance with federal anti-discrimination laws.

The CPB, which Congress established in 1967 to shield public media from political interference, has already pushed back against the administration. Earlier this week, it sued the White House over attempts to remove three board members, arguing that the CPB, as a private entity, is not subject to presidential authority. Legal challenges to the executive order are expected, with analysts questioning its enforceability given the CPB’s funding structure and congressional oversight.

House Speaker Mike Johnson signaled openness to reviewing public media funding, noting “thoughtful debate” among lawmakers. However, the CPB’s budget is approved through September 2027, potentially complicating immediate cuts.

Trump’s order aligns with broader efforts to reduce federal spending and dismantle programs viewed as misaligned with conservative priorities.

The post President Trump Signs Executive Order Defunding NPR and PBS appeared first on LifeNews.com.

The Crusade of Eucharistic Reparation is a lay sodality run by OnePeterFive in partnership with Benedictus and LatinMass.com (Mass of the Ages). This crusade was called by His Excellency, Bishop Athanasius Schneider in June of 2020 in response to the profanations of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament during the COVID crisis. Now he has also added the intention of the reversal of Traditionis…

Source

Great Britain Has Degenerated Into a Police State

There is no longer any doubt about it.

https://www.unz.com/article/the-west-serves-as-israels-police-w-richard-medhurst/ 

Trump Can Tell the Truth In A Very Poignant Way

https://x.com/townhallcom/status/1917985594136822091 

And he can also tell fibs:

Trump Claims US Did ‘More Than Any Other Country’ to Win World War II

https://sputnikglobe.com/20250502/trump-claims-us-did-more-than-any-other-country-to-win-world-war-ii-1121965577.html

Trump’s claim is ridiculous.  He is making a fool of himself.  It was the Soviet Army that defeated Germany. All of the significant battles were in Russia. The enormous differences in battle deaths prove it.

Total US battle deaths (Germany and Japan):  291,557.  Total WW II US military deaths (all causes):  407,316.  The war with Japan accounted for 111,606 of the US military deaths.

Russian WW II dead:  27,000,000.

Germany’s war dead (including civilians):  18,000,000.

Trump’s false claim does not create an image of a person whose veracity will be trusted by the Kremlin.

The sides are nonetheless “far apart,” meaning a breakthrough is needed for the conflict to end, the US secretary of state has said

Russia and Ukraine are closer to a peace agreement than at any point in the past three years, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said. He cautioned, however, that the sides still need to bridge numerous differences to end the conflict.

In an interview with Fox News on Thursday, Rubio reflected on efforts by US President Donald Trump to settle the Ukraine conflict, a promise he had made while still on the campaign trail.

“For a hundred days he has done efforts to bring about peace… Look, we’ve gotten closer. We – for the first time – we haven’t known this for three years – we kind of can see what it would take for Ukraine to stop. We can see what it would take for the Russians to stop,” Rubio said.

However, stark differences between Moscow and Kiev remain, the State Secretary noted. “They’re closer, but they’re still far apart. And it’s going to take a real breakthrough here very soon to make this possible… or I think the president is going to have to make a decision about how much more time we’re going to dedicate to this,” he added.

His comments come as State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce affirmed that the US is committed to settling the conflict, but is “not going to fly around the world at the drop of a hat to mediate meetings.” Instead, she signaled that it is now up to Russia and Ukraine “to present and develop concrete ideas about how this conflict is going to end.”

Last month, the Trump administration indicated that the US could withdraw from the peace process altogether if there is no clear indication of progress in the talks.

Earlier media reports suggested that the US had proposed a peace agreement that includes Washington’s recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea, as well as “freezing” the conflict along the current front line and acknowledging Moscow’s control over large parts of the four former Ukrainian regions which voted to join Russia. The deal would also reportedly prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and initiate a phased removal of the sanctions imposed on Russia.

Russia has maintained that any peace settlement must include recognition of the new territorial reality on the ground, Ukraine’s demilitarization and denazification, as well as assurances that Kiev will not join NATO. Ukraine, however, has consistently refused to acknowledge its former territories as part of Russia.

Each day between now and the May 7 conclave to elect a successor to Pope Francis, John Allen is offering a profile of a different papabile, the Italian term for a man who could be pope. There’s no scientific way to identity these contenders; it’s mostly a matter of weighing reputations, positions held and influence wielded over the years. There’s also certainly no guarantee one of these candidates will emerge wearing white; as an old bit of Roman wisdom has it, “He who enters a conclave as a pope exits as a cardinal.” These are, however, the leading names drawing buzz in Rome right now, at least ensuring they will get a look. Knowing who these men are also suggests issues and qualities other cardinals see as desirable heading into the election.

ROME – Sweden is widely considered one of the most secularised societies on the face of the earth, with a 2016 Gallup poll finding that almost 20 percent of Swedes identify as atheists and 55 percent say they’re non-religious, while an official government survey in 2015 found that only one in ten Swedes thinks religion is important in daily life.

Yet even in that hostile terrain, Catholicism today is growing – if not by leaps and bounds, at least at a steady pace, adding an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 members annually. Official figures put the total Catholic community at 130,000, but everyone knows the real number is much higher since many immigrant Catholics don’t register. The uptick is being driven in part by new arrivals, but also by a surprising number of conversions among native Swedes.

To some extent, the Church in Sweden today is the entire global Church in miniature, a cosmopolitan mix of Swedish converts along with Poles and French, swelled by recent immigrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, including a large cohort of Chaldean Catholics from Iraq.

The man presiding over this counter-intuitive Catholic revival is 75-year-old Cardinal Anders Arborelius, himself a convert to Catholicism, and seen by many as an ideal missionary to an increasingly secular world.

Born in Sorengo, Switzerland, in 1949, Arborelius grew up in a nominally Lutheran household which wasn’t especially active in the faith. By all accounts, however the young Arborelius himself had a keen religious sense, feeling himself drawn to a life of prayer and contemplation, and at the age of 20 he converted to Catholicism in the city of Malmö.

At that stage it was natural enough for Arborelius to feel drawn to the priesthood, and after reading the autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, he decided to join the order of the Discalced Carmelites. He would eventually study at the Pontifical Teresian Institute in Rome, learning Italian, while also earning a degree in modern languages (English, Spanish and French) at the Swedish University of Lund.

Arborelius was ordained to the priesthood in September 1979 and shortly thereafter took up residence at a Carmelite monastery in Norraby in the south of Sweden, where he would live for the next decade.

Over the course of those years Arborelius earned a reputation as an effective pastor and thinker, bringing him to the attention of the Vatican. In 1998 Pope John Paul II named him Bishop of Stockholm, making him the first ethnically Swedish Catholic bishop in the country, and only the second native Scandinavian bishop, since the era of the Protestant Reformation.

From the beginning, Arborelius made the decision that despite its small size and the historically dominant position of the Lutheran Church in Sweden, Catholicism on his watch wouldn’t just sit on the cultural sidelines. He became active in promoting pro-life movements, as well as being outspoken in defense of the country’s growing population of migrants and refugees. He took on active role in promoting youth organizations and movements in the Church, while writing a number of books on religious themes.

For a full decade, from 2005 to 2015, Arborelius served as the president of the bishops’ conference of Scandinavia. In October 2016 he hosted a visit to Sweden by Pope Francis, the heart of which was a joint Catholic/Lutheran commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

The act of coming together was considered especially striking given the historically bad blood between the two Christian confessions in the country:  Beginning in the 16th century, Catholics were persecuted and even put to death in Sweden, and as recently as 1951 Catholics were barred from becoming doctors, teachers and nurses. Catholic convents and monasteries, such as the one Arborelius himself had lived in, were banned until the 1970s.

On the back of that trip, Pope Francis named Arborelius a cardinal in 2017, making him the first-ever cardinal from Sweden. The elevation made Arborelius even more of a point of reference in his home country – in June 2022, for example, he was awarded a medal by the King of Sweden for his contributions to national life.

In terms of his ideological orientation, Arborelius is notoriously difficult to pin down. He’s unabashedly traditional on matters of sexual morality; among other things, he oversaw the publication of St. Paul VI’s encyclical letter Humanae Vitae in Sweden in 2007, in the run-up to the document’s 40th anniversary the next year, praising its “reverence of nature” also in the arena of “sexuality and reproduction.” He’s come out in opposition to women’s ordination, optional clerical celibacy and the open-ended German “synodal way.”

Yet Arborelius also has views conventionally seen as more progressive on matters such as ecumenism and inter-faith dialogue (including with Islam), immigration, climate change, and Pope Francis’s call for a more “synodal” style of decision-making in the Church, as well as the late pope’s restrictions on celebration of the old Latin Mass.

On a personal level, it’s almost impossible to find anyone who dislikes Arborelius. He’s seen as open, generous, and affable, someone given to genuine dialogue and possessing a keen interest in others, as well as a man of real spiritual depth. If anything, some have raised the question of whether Arborelius is almost too nice, suggesting that his penchant for avoiding conflict has, at times, produced a weak and vacillating approach to governance in his own diocese.

The case for Arborelius?

If one fundamental job requirement of a pope is to be the Evangelist-in-Chief of the Catholic Church, Arborelius arguably fits the bill. He’s seen as especially gifted as a missionary to the most secular corners of Europe, where the fires of faith seem to be in greatest danger of going out. Despite the dynamism of the Church today across the developed world, no one’s quite ready simply to write Europe off, and Arborelius might be seen as uniquely capable of reviving the Church’s fortunes on the Old Continent.

Further, his intriguing mix of conservative positions on some matters and progressive stances on others could make him an ideal compromise candidate between those seeking continuity with Pope Francis and those desiring greater doctrinal stability and clarity. Each would get at least part of what they want with Arborelius, along with the assurance that the new pope is someone would at least listen to their concerns and take them seriously.

In terms of the conventional logic of conclave handicapping, Arborelius ticks a number of the usual boxes.

He’s certainly got the command of languages conventionally seen as desirable, and at 75 he’s right in the sweet spot of the desired age profile (the last two popes, Benedict XVI and Francis, were elected at 78 and 76 respectively). While he doesn’t have a great deal of international experience in terms of serving abroad, he has traveled widely over the years, and in any event, the world has come to him in Sweden in the multi-ethnic and multi-lingual Church over which he presides.

The case against?

Arborelius’ reputation as an indecisive and occasionally weak administrator doesn’t help, especially at a time when most cardinals believe that finishing the Vatican reform started under Pope Francis (or correcting it, depending on your point of view) is going to require a strong hand at the rudder.

Moreover, the way Arborelius blends continuity and rupture with the Pope Francis legacy could hurt his chances more than it helps them, leaving him effectively a man without a country, meaning without a strong base of support in any camp.

Further, Arborelius himself has conceded that he hasn’t quite developed the wide network of relationships among his fellow cardinals that would come in handy in terms of the electoral math of the conclave, saying recently that he knows personally only about 20 or 30 of his fellow electors – a far cry from the 89 votes needed to cross the two-thirds threshold.

In a recent interview with Our Sunday Visitor, Arborelius offered a profile of the next pope.

“That’s what people really need in a time like this — that we find someone who can help them be freed from sin, from hatred, from violence, to bring about reconciliation and a deeper encounter,” he said.

Time will tell if his brother cardinals agree with that assessment … and if they see Arborelius himself as the man to do it.

The post Papabile of the Day: Cardinal Anders Arborelius first appeared on Catholic Herald.

The post Papabile of the Day: Cardinal Anders Arborelius appeared first on Catholic Herald.

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce has said it’s time for the two nations to come up with their own proposals to resolve the conflict

The US will no longer serve as mediator in negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce has said. Speaking at a regular press briefing on Thursday, she stated it was time for the two parties to propose their own solutions and engage in direct talks.

Trump had previously pledged to end the Ukraine conflict “within 24 hours” if elected, though he later described the claim as an “exaggeration.” Since taking office in January, he has pressed both sides for a ceasefire but has expressed frustration over the slow progress in the talks. Trump has warned that the US may withdraw from the peace process if it continues to falter.

Earlier, Moscow signaled it’s ready to start direct negotiations with Kiev “without preconditions,” while Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian forces to observe a short ceasefire during Victory Day celebrations next week. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has branded the Russian truce announcement a “manipulation.”

“We will not be the mediators,” Bruce told reporters when asked about Washington’s future role. “We certainly are still committed to it and we’ll help and do what we can, but we are not going to fly around the world at the drop of a hat to mediate meetings.”

“It’s time for both of the nations involved in this conflict to come up with concrete proposals about how this conflict ends. It’s going to be up to them,” Bruce added.

Her remarks contrasted with comments by US Vice President J.D. Vance, who said earlier this week that Washington planned to dedicate another 100 days to mediating a peace deal.

Media reports have claimed the US peace proposal includes recognizing Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea and its de-facto control over parts of four former Ukrainian regions that chose to join Russia. It also reportedly calls for “freezing” the conflict along current front lines.

Commenting on Moscow’s decision to halt military operations next week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the pause should serve as “the start of direct negotiations with Kiev without preconditions.” Kiev, however, demanded an immediate, unconditional 30-day ceasefire.

In investing, success is often judged by numbers—returns on investment, percentage gains, and the ability to outperform benchmarks like the S&P 500. However, some investors frequently pursue a peculiar set of "awards" without realizing the pitfalls they embody. These unspoken goals, while tempting, rarely lead to sustainable investment success. If there were awards for some of these common but ill-advised behaviors, they would likely cause more harm than good. Here are some of the "investing awards" you’ll never receive, because chasing them isn’t worth the cost.

I Never Sold At A Loss Medal

Market volatility is an inherent aspect of investing. Striving to avoid all losses, or drawdowns, is unrealistic. Trying to sidestep volatility often leads to lower returns and missed growth opportunities. Overly conservative investments may not keep pace with inflation, steadily eroding purchasing power. Managing risk effectively instead of avoiding it is essential for long-term portfolio success.

Many investors pride themselves on never realizing a loss, believing that holding every position until it turns profitable is a badge of honor. However, this mindset often leads to holding onto poor performers indefinitely, tying up capital that could be better deployed elsewhere. This behavior is a classic example of behavioral mistakes investors make, specifically the "disposition effect," where investors hold losing assets too long while selling winners too early. Focusing solely on avoiding losses often damages overall portfolio returns.

Like everything in life, there is a “season” and a “cycle.” When it comes to the markets, “seasons” are dictated by the “technical and economic constructs,” and the “cycles” are dictated by “valuations.” The seasons are shown in the chart below.

As such, successful investing requires disciplined pruning to maintain a healthy garden. Recognizing when an investment no longer aligns with your strategy and cutting losses early frees up capital for better opportunities. There is no award for stubbornly holding a stock that continues to drag down your portfolio.

I Took On As Much Risk As I Could Award

During bull markets, taking on excessive risk seems attractive. High-risk assets like speculative tech stocks or cryptocurrencies often deliver eye-catching gains. Some investors view risk-taking as bravery. But the reality is that high risk doesn't guarantee higher returns; it is frequently quite the opposite. As Howard Marks previously discussed, risk and volatility aren’t the same thing. For years, many investors (and academics) have been taught that volatility, the ups and downs of stock prices, equals risk. However, volatility is just one part of the picture, but risk is the probability of losing money. Just because prices bounce around doesn’t mean you’re at risk of a loss.

However, “High risk equals high reward” is not always true. Just because an investment has a higher degree of risk does not guarantee it will deliver superior returns. Given that risk is the probability of losing money, taking on excess risk does increase the potential for poor returns over time. In other words, increasing risk increases the potential for significant losses. As such, investors must be careful about chasing returns without fully understanding the risks. The goal should be to weigh the possible outcomes and ensure the potential reward is worth the risk taken.

A good example was in 2022, when retail investors chasing meme stocks, SPACs, and IPOs suffered significantly heavier losses than the index. At that time, the ARK Innovation Fund, managed by Cathy Wood, was an example of peak speculation in the market. However, since then, those investments failed to recover. In other words, speculative risk-taking did not lead to outsized returns.

Sustainable investing requires aligning investments with financial goals and risk tolerance to avoid exposing one's future to unnecessary volatility. Diversification, not reckless risk-taking, remains the best tool for improving risk-adjusted returns. While speculative investments lack the excitement and thrill, prudent investors build strategies focused on taking calculated, strategic risks that contribute to long-term wealth.

“You don’t get rewarded for taking risk; you get rewarded for buying cheap assets. And if the assets you bought got pushed up in price simply because they were risky, then you are not going to be rewarded for taking a risk; you are going to be punished for it.” - Jeremy Grantham

Successful investors avoid “risk” at all costs, even if it means underperforming in the short term. The reason is that while the media and Wall Street have you focused on chasing market returns in the short term, ultimately, the excess “risk” built into your portfolio will lead to inferior long-term returns. Wile E. Coyote never received an award for chasing the Roadrunner over the cliff.

I'm a Long-Term Investor (Only When I'm Losing Money) Certificate

A common rationalization is to claim to be a long-term investor only when losses mount. When an investment underperforms, investors often tell themselves they are simply “staying the course,” using time to justify inaction. Research by Barberis and Thaler (2003) on behavioral biases shows that loss aversion—the tendency to prefer avoiding losses over acquiring gains—strongly influences this behavior.

True long-term investing demands more than patience; it requires a disciplined, objective framework. This means purchasing quality assets with strong fundamentals, establishing clear investment theses, and periodically reassessing those theses. Successful investors, like Warren Buffett, have emphasized that staying invested in a poorly performing asset without reevaluating it is not long-term investing—it is emotional decision-making disguised as strategy.

A good example is Intel (INTC) versus Texas Instruments. Over the last five years, Intel has lost 62% of its value as it lost its chip-making dominance to companies like AMD, Nvidia, Broadcom, and others. For investors holding Intel, many are hoping that something will occur and they can recover that loss. However, at any point over the last 5 years, they could have sold Intel and bought virtually any other chip maker and increased their wealth. While there are many examples, this exemplifies the point of opportunity cost. Holding a losing asset for long periods eats away at the wealth-building process and consumes our most precious commodity: time.

Building a resilient portfolio is not about loyalty to individual positions. It is about effective asset allocation, risk management, and ongoing evaluation. Markets evolve, industries change, and even once-promising companies can lose their competitive edge. Recognizing when an investment no longer fits your portfolio’s long-term goals—and having the discipline to move on—is a hallmark of professional investing, not a weakness.

I Never Used Stop-Losses Or Managed Risk Ribbon

Some investors view risk management strategies like stop-losses, portfolio rebalancing, and diversification as unnecessary restraints on potential gains. Instead, they trust intuition, believing they can "ride out" volatility. Behavioral research (Shefrin, 2000) shows that overconfidence is one of individual investors' most common mistakes, often leading to catastrophic losses when market conditions change suddenly.

Managing risk effectively isn't about fear or pessimism. It is about protecting your capital from irreparable damage so that you can continue participating in future market growth. Stop-losses are designed not to predict downturns but to limit exposure to individual positions that deteriorate beyond acceptable thresholds. Similarly, rebalancing prevents portfolios from drifting into unintended risk concentrations over time.

An example of risk management can be very simplistic. For example, using a 40-week moving average as a "risk off" indicator can help avoid more protracted market drawdowns.

We can apply a "risk management" strategy to that moving average to reduce risk during corrective periods. For this example, when the S&P 500 breaks below the 40-week moving average, stock exposure is reduced by 50%, and it reverses to 100% when the index crosses above that moving average. The results are shown below.

While there are times when investors were triggered to reduce and then increase exposures quickly, the 2000 and 2008 financial crises underscored the consequences of unmanaged portfolios. Many investors holding full exposures to equities without risk controls suffered permanent losses (Brunnermeier, 2009). Risk management is the bridge between surviving market turbulence and thriving in long-term wealth creation. No one ever received an award for riding markets substantially lower. Such is not a testament to resilience—it is an avoidable failure.

I Beat the S&P 500 Medallion

Outperforming the S&P 500 is often portrayed as the ultimate measure of investing success. However, data from the SPIVA U.S. Scorecard shows that approximately 85% of actively managed U.S. equity funds underperform their benchmarks over ten years. While not every manager underperforms yearly, and periods of outperformance exist, the persistent challenge highlights the difficulty of consistently beating the S&P 500.

Pursuing benchmark-beating returns can lead investors into dangerous territory. Studies in behavioral finance (Statman, 2000) show that investors chasing outperformance often engage in high-turnover strategies, excessive trading, and speculative bets. These behaviors introduce additional risks and higher transaction costs that erode potential gains. The result is that investors, while trying to "beat the index, " consistently underperform over time. As noted in the 2024 Dalbar Research report:

As noted above, even the most simplistic of risk management strategies can improve returns over time while maintaining a focus on investment goals. Instead of fixating on beating the benchmark, focus on building a portfolio that aligns with your financial goals and personal risk tolerance. Ultimately, true investing success isn't measured against a broad index. No one will ever give you an award for beating an index from one year to the next. However, they will measure your success by what matters most: whether you achieved your objectives, like securing a comfortable retirement or funding important goals.

Conclusion: Building a Smarter Path to Investing Success

To avoid the costly mistakes outlined above, investors must adopt a disciplined, process-driven approach to managing their portfolios. Sustainable investment success comes from understanding, not reacting to, market behavior. Here are the critical steps you should take:

• First, embrace losses as part of the investment journey. Prune weak investments when they no longer fit your strategy, reallocating capital to stronger opportunities rather than waiting for recoveries that may never come.
• Second, respect risk. Avoid equating bravery with excessive risk-taking. Build portfolios aligned with your personal financial goals and loss tolerance, focusing on diversification and asset valuation rather than speculative bets.
• Third, redefine long-term investing. Remaining loyal to a poor investment out of hope wastes time and wealth. Maintain objectivity by reassessing whether each holding still meets your original investment thesis.
• Fourth, implement active risk management. Use stop-loss strategies, periodic rebalancing, and technical indicators like the 40-week moving average to protect against significant drawdowns. Managing risk is about ensuring survival, not limiting success.
• Finally, stop chasing the S&P 500. Focus instead on achieving your financial objectives with consistent, risk-adjusted returns. Outperformance is meaningless if you fail to meet real-world needs, like securing retirement income or building generational wealth.

Successful investing is not about winning arbitrary "awards." It is about managing risk, preserving capital, and steadily compounding returns toward your goals. Ignore the noise, stay disciplined, and remember: no one hands out awards for reckless investing—only consequences.

Sources

• Barberis, N., & Thaler, R. (2003). A survey of behavioral finance.
• Shefrin, H., & Statman, M. (1985). The disposition to sell winners too early and ride losers too long.
• Fama, E. F., & French, K. R. (2004). The Capital Asset Pricing Model: Theory and Evidence.
• Markowitz, H. (1952). Portfolio Selection.
• Ang, A. (2014). Asset Management: A Systematic Approach to Factor Investing.
• Brinson, G. P., Hood, L. R., & Beebower, G. L. (1986). Determinants of Portfolio Performance.
• Elton, E. J., & Gruber, M. J. (1997). Modern Portfolio Theory, 1950 to date.
• Jones, C. M., Wermers, R., & Zi, J. (2020). Mutual fund performance in changing times.
• Brunnermeier, M. K. (2009). Deciphering the Liquidity and Credit Crunch 2007–2008.
• S&P Dow Jones Indices. (2023). SPIVA U.S. Scorecard.

The post The Awards You Never Get When Investing appeared first on RIA.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I really hate modernity. I know, I know, not everything was better in the past. For one, I am very grateful for things like indoor plumbing and refrigeration, and I am well aware that men have been sinners from the get-go, and therefore every age has its drama and iniquity to deal with. But there is one thing about our modern age that is especially repugnant…

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It has been four years since a small Indigenous Band in British Columbia, Canada announced that the remains of 215 children had been discovered on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School (IRS). It has been nearly 10 years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released its final report. The intervening years, however, have left most Canadians scratching their heads and asking the same querulous question as Pontius Pilate, “What is truth?”

By some metrics, it might appear that Canada has moved on from the moral panic that followed the bombshell press release. Chief Rosanne Casimir would later qualify that what had been identified by ground-penetrating radar (GPR) technology were not 215 “remains” but 200 “potential burials;” despite the provision of $12.1 million for field work and exhumation of remains, no remains have ever been recovered.

The government funding streams and commissions are now coming to an end. The “Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund,” $217 million (₤ 117.6 million)  dispersed to 150 Indigenous communities, was wrapped up in March 2025. In the same month, the National Advisory Committee on Residential Schools, Missing Children and Unmarked Burials was disbanded.

A month earlier, Parks Canada announced that the site of the former Kamloops Residential School would become the fifth former IRS to be designated a national historic site. Though the press statement called the school the “largest institution in a system designed to carry out what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission described as cultural genocide,” no mention was made of unmarked or mass graves.

But despite the hasty dismantling of the hastily erected bureaucratic structures, the assumptions and prejudices, even the so-called facts, of that period have become embedded into the national consciousness and are now almost impossible to root out.

Despite the “not one body” refrain echoed in international and independent media, mainstream journalists, politicians and activists continue to speak as if it is still May 2021.

Just recently, the CBC had to issue a correction after its chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton said on air, “there have been remains of Indigenous children found in various places across the country.”

In an electoral riding of 100,000 people, a petition calling for the removal of Conservative candidate Aaron Gunn has garnered close to 20,000 signatures. His mistake was to state on social media that the residential school system did not constitute a genocide.

The conversation has now shifted away from mass graves, of which there were none, to the denouncement and criminalisation of something called “residential school denialism.”

In June 2022, then Minister of Justice and Attorney General David Lametti created the Office for the Independent Special Interlocutor (OISI) for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools.

Lametti appointed Kimberly Murray, a lawyer and former TRC executive director, as special interlocutor. With a $10.4 million budget, the office had a mandate to identify legal barriers to the search of unmarked graves.

In a June 2022 interview with CTV News, Murray said she expected to have conversations with survivors and Indigenous leadership around legal recourse in the matter of jurisdiction over unmarked graves and suspected untimely deaths of children.

What started as the examination of legal frameworks to aid Indigenous communities in their search for so-called missing children, ended in the creation an entirely new “reparations” framework.

In Oct. 2024, after two and a half years of work, Murray released a two-volume report that focused more on denialism than the identification of unmarked graves. 

The executive summary of the Indigenous-led Reparations Framework uses the term “denialism” 50 times and “genocide” 72 times. The report repeatedly asserts that what occurred in Indigenous residential schools was genocide. 

The summary calls for reparations for the families of residential school students, an Indigenous-led national commission with a 20-year mandate to investigate missing children associated with residential schools, and for the government to refer to missing children as victims of “enforced disappearance.” 

It is important to note that former residential school students were the beneficiary of the largest class action settlement in Canadian history. Settled in 2006, some $3.180 billion in payments were approved, the average being $111,265.

The report also recommends the amendment of both Canada’s Criminal Code and Bill C-63: An Act to Enact the Online Harms Act to make residential school denialism an imprisonable offence. A month earlier, NDP MP Leah Gazan introduced Bill C-413: An Act to amend the Criminal Code (promotion of hatred against Indigenous peoples).

Denialism is defined in the report as “condoning, denying, downplaying, or justifying the Indian Residential School System or by misrepresenting facts relating to it…. It is not the existence of the Indian Residential School System that is being denied: it is the intent, outcomes, and impacts of the System.”

At the National Gathering on Unmarked Graves, the two-day conference at which the OISI report was presented, speakers were seated on a raised stage. At the front was placed a display of Indigenous objects: cradleboards, moccasins, and in the middle, a drum with the number “215” at the center. It was a curious choice. By Oct. 2024, it had been years since Chief Casimir had qualified it was 200 “anomalies” not 215 “remains.”

I asked Noah MacDonald, Archdiocese of Toronto canon lawyer and member of the Michipicoten First Nation, why he thought the number 215 had moved beyond a data point to an emotive symbol.

“I see hanging on to those symbols and language because it’s reminiscent of a moment in Canadian history when Indigenous people were believed. The whole world paid attention to the million problems we’ve been trying to express.”

The report stresses the truth of residential schools is to be found solely in the memories of survivors, including accounts of babies conceived in rape being murdered.

“Survivors attest to the bodies of babies being placed in incinerators at Indian Residential Schools. These testimonies and oral history evidence hold veracity and truthfulness given the extent of corroboration and repetition among Survivors of the same institution and across many different Indian Residential Schools in the country.” 

When I questioned MacDonald on this focus upon memory, rather than data, he responded that for many Indigenous communities it was important to focus less on the “implicit facts, but more on the spirit of truth.”

“Regardless of whether a baby was incinerated there, the souls and the persons of young indigenous children were incinerated there, incinerated by this process of assimilation.”

Indigenous communities and opinion are, of course, not a monolith.

Eight days before the OISI report was published, Fr. Cristino Bouvette, priest of the Diocese of Calgary, sat down with YouTuber and Catholic speaker Ken Yasinski, for a conversation on the “mass graves controversy.” 

Of mixed Cree, Métis and Italian heritage, Bouvette has the credentials to speak to so-called residential school denialism. His grandmother attended the Edmonton Indian Residential School for 12 years. Chosen to act as the National Liturgical Coordinator for the visit of Pope Francis to Canada in 2022, Bouvette says he has “spent the last four years of my life and ministry completely consumed” by the question of reconciliation.

Bouvette told Yasinski: “This is something I feel very confident I can stand in the face of… the whole concept of residential school denialism. How can I deny what my grandmother lived through? Who can accuse me of denying that?”

“Asking questions isn’t denying anything,” said Bouvette. “If we are not seeking the truth, if we are not trying to understand all of what surrounds what’s happened here, we will never get anywhere. What’s the point of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission if we leave the truth off? You can’t have reconciliation without truth.”

Many Indigenous argue the term “denialist” is less than helpful.

Aaron Pete is a podcaster based in Chilliwack, B.C. and a Chawathil First Nation Councillor whose grandmother attended St. Mary’s Indian Residential School in Ontario.

Pete finds the word “denialist” to be “a very unproductive term.”

“The ‘Mass Graves Story’ as told by the CBC needs to be a separate conversation from the history of the residential schools told in the Truth & Reconciliation Commission Report,” Pete told me in a phone interview.

Some see broader concerns with the language of denialism applied to the Canadian situation. Barbara Kay, columnist for the National Post, is concerned with the appropriation of the language of the Holocaust, specifically denialism, for the Indian Residential Schools. Kay told me IRS denialism seems to mean something different than Holocaust denialism, which means denying “that the records are correct, that the proofs are proof, that the pictures and the photographs are true.”

“You can’t compare denialism of evidence to denialism of a thought or a belief,” said Kay.

Unfortunately, on the fourth anniversary of the Kamloops announcement, it is the Pontius Pilate question that echoes through Canada.

In the words of Noah MacDonald, “It may come down to different understandings of what truth is. Is truth empirical fact or is truth the spirit of truth?”

(Kukpi7 Chief, Rosanne Casimir, of Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc poses at the site of a makeshift memorial at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in Kamloops, Canada. Photo by COLE BURSTON/AFP via Getty Images)

The post How does the failure to find any Canadian mass graves justify a crime of ‘denialism’? first appeared on Catholic Herald.

The post How does the failure to find any Canadian mass graves justify a crime of ‘denialism’? appeared first on Catholic Herald.