Monthly Archives: February 2018

The Terrorists Are Already Here

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Breitbart is reporting today that an improvised explosive device (IED) was found at an international bridge connecting Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico. The Mexican town is the headquarters of the Los Zetas cartel.

The article reports:

Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office issued a statement in regards to the recent discovery of the IED. The information released by Mexican authorities does not reveal the date that the bomb was left at the bridge, but confirmed that the explosive was active. The IED was left at the Las Americas International Bridge, also known as Bridge One. Neither the City of Laredo nor U.S. Customs and Border Protection has released any information in relation to the IED at the port of entry.

Mexican authorities de-activated the explosive device and removed it from the pedestrian lane of the bridge. While bomb threats are not unheard of at the various international bridges in Tamaulipas where cartels often flex their muscle; the discovery of an actual explosive device at the bridge is a first of its kind.

The border city of Nuevo Laredo is under the control of the Cartel Del Noreste faction Los Zetas cartel; a violent, transnational criminal organization that uses the Texas border city of Laredo as one of its main corridors into Texas.

The article further reports:

The knowledge of the IED at the border bridge comes days after as Breitbart Texas reported, Mexican authorities discovered two anti-personnel mines known as Claymores in the border city of Camargo, a Mexican city that sits immediately across the border from Rio Grande City, Texas. The mines were found in underground storage facilities used by the Gulf Cartel to hide weapons and ammunition. While the CDN controls Nuevo Laredo, the areas east of there are controlled by the Gulf Cartel. Both the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas criminal organizations have undergone a series of internal fighting and fracturing that is linked to the escalating violence in the various border cities with Texas.

Thank God for the fact that these weapons were discovered before they were actually detonated.

The Best Question Asked On The Sunday Morning Shows

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The following video was posted at YouTube yesterday:

Most of the interview is a classic example of media bias and rehearsed talking points, but the question as to why the Democrats did not focus on the places the Russians knew to focus on is wonderful! Just for the record, there is no evidence that the Democrats were behind the hacking of the DNC. Remember that the DNC would not let the FBI examine their computers.

The Conservative Treehouse has a few relevant comments on this intervieiw:

Interesting interview. The Russians didn’t keep Hillary out of Wisconsin; the Russians didn’t make Hillary use personal email; the Russians didn’t hire Fusion-GPS; the Russians didn’t pay Christopher Steele; the Russians didn’t make a dossier or deliver work product to the State Dept; the Russians didn’t do the unmasking of campaign officials.

The Russians didn’t apply for a FISA warrant; the Russians didn’t lie to a FISA court; the Russians didn’t leak Mike Flynn monitored phone calls; the Russians didn’t use DOJ and/or FBI databases to download FISA 702(16)(17) queries and extract the data to private contractors; the Russians didn’t hire Nellie Ohr and Russians didn’t approach president-elect Trump and warn him of politically weaponized intelligence surveillance…

The… wait…. then again, THAT’S ENTIRELY THE MOTIVE to blame the Russians:

If the Russians were actually successful in influencing the 2016 election, it was because Americans were not paying close attention to what was going on. The Russians will always try to influence our elections. We will always try to influence elections in other countries. We live in the world of Spy v. Spy illustrated by Mad Magazine in the 1950’s. It is our responsibility as Americans to do our own research into what we see on social media. The best defense against foreign meddling in our elections is an informed electorate!

 

The Economic Consequences Of Legal And Illegal Immigration

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On January 23rd, PEW Research posted an article about the flow of money worldwide. The article noted that in 2016,  $28,126,000,000 was sent from America to Mexico by Mexicans living in the United States.

An article posted at the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform explains how this impacts America.

The article reports:

$60 billion dollars are earned by illegal aliens in the U.S. each year. One of Mexico’s largest revenue streams (after exports and oil sales) consists of money sent home by legal immigrants and illegal aliens working in the U.S. Economists say this will help Mexico reduce its $17.8 billion defecit and may bolster the peso. $10 billion dollars (as of 2003) are sent back to Mexico annually, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, reported in an Associated Press article, up $800 million from the previous year. ($9 billion dollars were previously sent back annually, according to a September 25, 2002 NPR report). That figure equals what Mexico earns annually from tourism. This is a massive transfer of wealth from America – essentially from America’s displaced working poor – to Mexico.

A May 28, 2004 study by Bendixen & Associates6 found that legal and illegal immigrants send a total of $30 billion to their home countries on an annual basis. Mexico receives $13.3 billion a year. The largest amount in remittances ($9.6 billion) is sent from California, followed by New York ($3.6 billion), Texas ($3.2 billion) and Florida ($2.5 billion). Of those surveyed by the study, 24% were Latin American-born U.S. citizens, 39% were legal residents, and 32% were illegal aliens. Sixty-one per cent of those surveyed send remittances overseas at least once a month. A typical remittance is between $150 and $250.

This is money earned in the United States, but not added to the United States economy–it is money added to the Mexican economy. It should be noted that these remittances include money earned by both legal and illegal immigrants. In the case of the illegal immigrants, they are not paying taxes to America and often are taking advantage of federal assistance programs (I know illegal aliens are not supposed to be able to take advantage of federal assistance programs, but I personally know of instances where they have been able to do so easily).

It is time to take control of our borders. We need to return to a merit-based immigration system and return to the idea of allowing people to come to America who want to be part of America. Our Constitution is the foundation of our law. If you want to live under something other than the U.S. Constitution,  please go elsewhere. It is time that we brought people in who will add to the general well being of America. That is the only way to ensure the future of our country for our children.

 

 

Influencing An Election Or Just Causing General Chaos?

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On Friday, Newsweek posted the full text of the Mueller Indictment (here). You can read the whole thing if you choose–it’s thirty-seven pages long. I don’t have that kind of patience, but I did glance at it and found an interesting snippet:

Number 53 show that the Russian meddlers used a Muslim Facebook group to support Hillary Clinton because supposedly she had made a statement in favor of Sharia Law. Later on the same Facebook page, they stated that Muslim voters were “between Hillary Clinton and a hard place.” What does that even mean? They also used Facebook and Twitter to organize political rallies in New York for Trump. I don’t know where it is in the indictment, but it has also been reported that they organized pro-Trump and anti-Trump rallies in New York City on the same day. I suspect that the motive behind that scheduling was the possibility of violence.

The thing that occurs to me here is that the Russians were able to accomplish whatever they accomplished (and it is questionable whether they accomplished anything) because of the unwitting cooperation of Americans. We, as Americans, are the ones who have let our political discourse get out of hand. Many of us have forgotten how to have a civil discussion of issues–instead we resort to name calling or changing the subject. Maybe it is time to require debating classes for everyone over the age of two so that we can bring back civility.

At any rate, I find it interesting that the Russians used a Muslim Facebook page to promote Hillary Clinton.

Also, just for the record, we as Americans have meddled in a few elections ourselves.

The Issue Or The Solution?

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One of the problems with Washington is that if there is a problem, the political types will always try to figure out if solving it is the answer or if playing up the issue and the fact that it is not solved will gain votes. That is one of many reasons it is so hard to get things done. It is a shame that our politicians have forgotten that they are supposed to work for the voters and that they were sent to Washington to accomplish things. There are a few aspects of illegal immigration that make it very difficult to solve. The Democrats want the issue and the future voters. The Republican corporate types want cheap labor. There is also a school of thought that leaving the issue of the ‘dreamers’ unsolved will bring out Democratic voters–another reason Democrats would rather have the problem than the solution. Meanwhile, no one in Washington is looking at the negative impact of illegal workers on the salaries of Americans with low skills.

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted an article today about the failure of Congress to pass a bill to help the ‘dreamers.’ He pointed out some of the last minute things that were added to one ‘compromise’ bill.

The article quotes a Washington Post article:

[A]s the “war room” of administration lawyers and policy experts examined the 64-page text on Wednesday, it was a handwritten note on the final page that set off the loudest alarm bells. That section dealt with setting in law DHS’s priorities for enforcement. Under the proposal, the agency would focus its powers on immigrants with felonies or multiple misdemeanors, who were national security threats and who had arrived in the country after a certain date.

Scribbled in the margins was a date: June 30, 2018 [Note: an end of January date in the typed text was crossed out].

The administration team was dumbstruck: In addition to making it harder for DHS to deport all of those already here illegally, lawmakers were opening the door to a surge of new unauthorized immigrants by setting an effective “amnesty” date four months in the future.

“No one who has worked on immigration issues in the administration or on the Hill was aware of any legislation that had ever been proposed and scheduled to receive a vote on the floor of the Senate that created an amnesty program effectively for those who arrive in the future,” said a DHS official who helped lead the review. “That would clearly and unequivocally encourage a massive wave of illegal immigration and visa overstays.”

(Emphasis added by Paul Mirengoff)

What this bill would do would be to extend amnesty to anyone who arrived before June 30. Does anyone believe that setting that date would not encourage a flood of illegal immigrants wanting to arrive before the deadline. There is no way anyone who read the bill all the way through and understood its consequences could support it.

The article at Power Line concludes:

Perhaps some wanted to maximize the amnesty, while others were too lazy to read to the end of bill or too clueless to grasp the consequences of what they read.

From the Democrats’ perspective, was the prospective amnesty something they thought they could sneak through or was it a poison pill? Some have speculated that Democrats don’t want any deal that includes a wall and would like (or be okay with) a political landscape in which the Dreamers are still in limbo.

Perhaps Democrats saw inclusion of the handwritten note as a win-win. Either they get all those new illegal immigrants ensconced here or they blame the administration for doing nothing for Dreamers.

Today’s Post story looks like implementation of the second option.

When you hear the Democrats complain that President Trump refused to help the ‘dreamers,’ remember that it was the Democrats who made sure the bill would not be passed. It is obvious that the issue is of more value to the Democratic party than a solution.

This Is Not Encouraging

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Breitbart is reporting today that a terrorist on trial in Germany has stated that the Islamic State terror organization sent him to Germany telling him to disguise himself as a refugee. This certainly illustrates the need for careful vetting of refugees in all western countries.

The article reports:

The three Syrians, aged between 19 and 27, came to Germany during the migrant crisis in 2015 and were arrested in September of 2016 at asylum homes in Ahrensburg, Großhansdorf and Reinbek near Hamburg, Suddeutsche Zeitung reports.

For the last eight months, the judges in the court have tried to determine whether or not the men were sent by the Islamic State, or whether they were radicalised independently.

The eldest defendant, 27-year-old Mohamed A., confirmed to the judge that he had been commanded by the Islamic State terror group to infiltrate the wave of refugees and wait in Germany for further instructions.

The 27-year-old said that he trained with the terror group in its former capital of Raqqa for three months with four different weapons before heading to Europe. An Islamic State member also gave him a forged passport along with a sum of $1,500.

The article concludes:

The German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) released a report in late 2016 claiming that hundreds of jihadists have come to Europe disguised as refugees, and last year the Heritage Foundation released a report showing that asylum seekers made up 54 percent of the suspects in terror plots uncovered in Germany.

Letting in young men from Islamist countries without extreme vetting is national suicide. Those judges attempting to block that vetting need to held accountable when we discover (note I said when–not if) terrorists masquerading as refugees in America.

I Just Wish All Terrorists Were This Dumb

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Yesterday Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article about a would-be New York City terrorist. The way the New York Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation uncovered this plot is somewhat amazing.

The police were investigating a bomb threat called into a school. When a 15-year-old student was bored in class one day, her teacher, Christian Toro, told her to call in a bomb threat to liven things up. When the threat was investigated, the student told the authorities that the teacher had suggested it. (I can’t believe she was stupid enough to follow the suggestion.) The teacher resigned, and two days later his brother returned the laptop computer that had been issued to Christian Toro by the school. When a school technician examined the computer, he found an instruction book on how to make explosives. NYPD dropped by to pay the former teacher a visit. Meanwhile, the student indicated to authorities that her relationship with the teacher was inappropriate. The former teacher was arrested for statutory rape. The student also mentioned that she and a friend had been in the teacher’s apartment and had been paid to empty black powder from fireworks. The investigation of the former teacher continued.

The article reports:

So police got a search warrant for the apartment shared by the twin Toros — and hit paydirt:

They discovered a box on the floor of the bedroom closet containing a glass jar of black powder, 20 pounds of iron oxide, five pounds of aluminum powder, five pounds of potassium nitrate, and two pounds of confectioners sugar. A small container held iron oxide and aluminum powder that had been mixed into thermite, which the complaint describes as “an explosive material that can create heat and high temperatures.”

They also found Tyler Toro’s diary, which had all sorts of interesting comments, including this epigram: “UNDER THE FULL MOON THE SMALL ONES WILL KNOW TERROR.” Yeah, nothing creepy at all about that.

So let’s recap. The teacher had decided to build a bomb for “terror,” but rather than keep things quiet, he had teenage students emptying out fireworks for the powder in large quantities. He then started having sex with one of them, and then encouraged her to call in a fake bomb threat to relieve her boredom. If all this is true, the only thing Toro didn’t do is to install a large sign on his apartment building that said “TORO TWINS TERROR, INC.”

The article concludes:

If stupidity was a federal crime, Christian Toro would be a death-penalty case. And yet, it apparently took all of this sequence of events for someone to finally say something about the Toros and their black-powder reclamation project. Next time, let’s hope “see something, say something” gets taken more seriously earlier in the cycle. Thankfully, an alert IT technician at the school managed to get it right.

I wish all terrorists were this stupid.

When A Scandal Just Isn’t Sexy

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The problem with the Special Council investigation, the electronic surveillance of the Trump campaign and transition team, Hillary Clinton‘s server, and the Uranium One scandal is that none of them are sexy. That and the inherent media bias that currently exists results in the fact that most Americans are thoroughly unaware of the details of any of these scandals. They are difficult to follow and deal with intricacies of law that most of us just really don’t care about or are familiar with. However, there are aspects of all of these scandals that will eventually have an impact on all of us. For instance–what are the guidelines for spying on American citizens, how important is it that those in positions of authority handle classified information correctly, and does it matter how much uranium America has and how much uranium Russia has. Unfortunately all of these are issues that may come back to bite all of us in the future.

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted a story about one aspect of the Robert Mueller investigation. Recent revelations have put certain aspects of the investigation under the spotlight again.

The article reports:

Extraordinary manipulation by powerful people led to the creation of Robert Mueller’s continuing investigation and prosecution of General Michael Flynn. Notably, the recent postponement of General Flynn’s sentencing provides an opportunity for more evidence to be revealed that will provide massive ammunition for a motion to withdraw Flynn’s guilty plea and dismiss the charges against him.

It was Judge Rudolph Contreras who accepted General Flynn’s guilty plea, but he suddenly was recused from the case. The likely reason is that Judge Contreras served on the special court that allowed the Federal Bureau of Investigation to surveil the Trump campaign based on the dubious FISA application. Judge Contreras may have approved one of those four warrants.

The judge assigned to Flynn’s case now is Emmet G. Sullivan. Judge Sullivan immediately issued what is called a “Brady” order requiring Mueller to provide Flynn all information that is favorable to the defense whether with respect to guilt or punishment. Just today, Mueller’s team filed an agreed motion to provide discovery to General Flynn under a protective order so that it can be reviewed by counsel but not disclosed otherwise.

Judge Sullivan has had some experience with out of control federal prosecutors.

The article reminds us:

Judge Sullivan is the perfect judge to decide General Flynn’s motion. The judicial hero of my book, Emmet Sullivan held federal prosecutors in contempt for failing to disclose evidence, dismissed the corrupted prosecution of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the Department of Justice.

As you may remember, Ted Stevens was found guilty eight days before he was narrowly defeated in a re-election bid. After the election the indictment was dismissed because an investigation of the Justice Department found evidence of gross prosecutorial misconduct. The charges had served their purpose–Senator Stevens lost the election, and Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich (a Democrat) was elected.

The article points out:

Since Flynn entered his guilty plea, we’ve learned that information Mr. Comey leaked deliberately to “trigger” Robert Mueller’s entire investigation was classified. Also, FBI agents Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe were working on an “insurance policy” to protect the country against a Trump presidency. It seems plausible that this “insurance policy” included the appointment of a special prosecutor.

It gets worse. One problem with the whole special prosecutor investigation is that Robert Mueller chose Andrew Weissmann as his deputy. Mr. Weissmann’s history as a prosecutor is somewhat spotty.

The article concludes:

Watching guilty pleas evaporate is nothing new for Mr. Mueller’s favored lieutenant Andrew Weissmann. Along with his Enron Task Force comrade Leslie Caldwell, Weissmann terrorized Arthur Andersen partner David Duncan into pleading guilty. (RELATED: Meet The Very Shady Prosecutor Robert Mueller Has Hired For The Russia Investigation)

Weissmann and Caldwell made Duncan testify at length against Arthur Andersen when they destroyed the company and 85,000 jobs only to be reversed by a unanimous Supreme Court three years later. Turns out, the “crime” they “convinced” Mr. Duncan to plead guilty to was not a crime at all. The court allowed Duncan to withdraw his plea. And, that was not the only Weissmann-induced plea to be withdrawn either. Just ask Christopher Calger.

Judge Sullivan is the country’s premiere jurist experienced in the abuses of our Department of Justice. He knows a cover-up when he sees one. Until the Department is cleaned out with Clorox and firehoses, along with its “friends” at the FBI, Judge Sullivan is the best person to confront the egregious government misconduct that has led to and been perpetrated by the Mueller-Weissmann “investigation” and to right the injustices that have arisen from it. Stay tuned for the fireworks.

I believe there are common elements in the cases of Ted Stevens and Michael Flynn. The charges against General Flynn were brought to hurt the Trump Administration and to prop up the idea of some sort of Russian collusion. They have probably done as much damage as they are capable of doing, and I suspect they will be dropped in the near future. My question is what can we do to avoid this sort of political misuse of the justice system in the future.

Lying With False Statistics

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When I heard the mainstream media claim that there had been eighteen school shootings this year, I wondered where I had been. It’s only February, and I just don’t remember anywhere near eighteen incidents of school shootings in the last month or so. Well, maybe my memory isn’t as bad as I thought–there haven’t been eighteen school shootings this year.

Investor’s Business Daily is one of many alternative news sources that debunked the claim.

The article explains what the real facts are:

One of the “school shootings” on the list, for example, involved a Greyson College, Tex., student who accidentally discharged a weapon at the school’s Criminal Justice Center during a class supervised by a police officer on how to use handguns.

Another on the list involved a third grader who accidentally pulled the trigger of a police officer’s holstered weapon.

Two were suicides that happened to take place on school grounds. One of them was a 31-year-old man who shot himself while parked in his car, which happened to be on a school lot— at a school that had been closed for seven months. Another was a student who shot himself in the head in the school’s bathroom.

Three “school shootings” involved fights that broke out between either adults or students in school parking lots — one of them at a college in North Carolina — in which one of the people arguing pulled a gun on the other.

Another student was shot by a robber, during a robbery that happened to take place in a school parking lot.

One involved a gun that a 12-year-old brought to school, which accidentally went off inside her backpack.

In fact, of the 18 “school shootings,” only five occurred during school hours, and only four — including the latest — are what most people would consider a school shooting; in which someone brings a gun to school with the intent of shooting students.

Of those three previous shootings, only one resulted in deaths, when a 15-year-old boy armed with a handgun opened fire inside a Kentucky high school and killed two fellow students while injuring 14 others. The two others resulted in two injuries.

Obviously one school shooting is too many, but it would be nice if the mainstream media at least tried to get the facts straight.

I would like to mention at this time some history about guns in school. I have friends from Ohio that tell me that their senior parking lot was filled with pick-up trucks with guns in the gun racks during hunting season. This was during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. The parking lot was filled with guns and no one used them to shoot at students. My husband tells me that during the early 1950’s when he was in elementary school right outside of New York City, the school provided gun safety classes. The junior high had a shooting range and the high school shop allowed students to work on their guns. Obviously guns were brought into the schools and no one was shot.

So maybe the problem goes deeper than guns. What has happened to our society since the 1950’s? We took prayer out of schools in the 1960’s. At some point we removed the Ten Commandments from our schools. The value of both prayer and the Ten Commandments in the schools was that these two things promoted the idea that there would eventually be a higher authority that students would have to answer to. We have lost that idea–our current children believe that they are a law unto themselves. We taught children (and adults) that it was okay to kill a baby if it was inconvenient. We devalued the family and particularly the role of husbands through media and through government policies (See Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan‘s comments on the War on Poverty programs). Our media has mocked Christianity, one of the things that historically provided unity in our nation and provided moral clarity. Maybe we need to look at restoring some of the things we have lost since the 1950’s.

We can’t change our culture overnight. It is also obvious that there are many people who do not want to bring back the Christian culture of the 1950’s. Because of that, it may be necessary to harden the security in our schools. There needs to be absolute control as to who enters our schools–the shooter in Florida had no reason to be inside the building. There also should be random (unidentified) teachers with concealed carry permits scattered throughout our schools. That way if an unfortunate incident unfolds, it can be dealt with quickly. Making schools ‘gun-free zones’ simply means that the targets of a shooter will be unarmed. That policy needs to end quickly.

 

More Twists And Turns Regarding Fusion GPS

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The following video was posted at The Daily Caller today:

It is becoming very obvious that the Democrat‘s plan to use a collusion with Russia charge to end the Trump Administration is not going as planned. Every day some new piece of information comes out that reveals how underhanded some members of the FBI and Justice Department were during the Obama Administration.

The article at The Daily Caller reports:

The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Editor-in-Chief Chris Bedford thinks Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr could face jail time for failing to disclose his connection to Fusion GPS and the Trump dossier.

…“What’s dangerous here, too, for Bruce, who could be in a lot of trouble over here, he could face criminal penalties. He wasn’t even assigned to the case when he would have had the chance to recuse himself. From everything we understand, he took the dossier and put it in front of the FBI of his own volition. He didn’t recuse himself,” Bedford said. “He didn’t say anything like that and he didn’t list the name of Fusion GPS like he should have. That’s punishable, if he just didn’t include the information, and that’s all they can say, it’s punishable by up to a year in prison. But if he knowingly falsified the documents by not telling the FBI about a conflict that really and truly existed, that’s up to five years in prison.”

Stay tuned and get out the popcorn.

Washington Agencies Are Totally Out Of Control

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The Daily Caller posted an article today about a New York federal court case involving the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The twisted logic being used by the CIA in the case is simply amazing.

The article reports:

Intelligence officials can selectively release classified information to trusted journalists while withholding the same information from other citizens who request it through open records laws, CIA lawyers argued Wednesday.

That is simply an amazing statement. If the journalists receive the information, isn’t the public also entitled to see it?

The article states:

The case stems from lawsuit against the CIA by New York-based independent journalist Adam Johnson, who had used FOIA to obtain emails between the agency’s public information office and selected reporters from the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and The New York Times. The emails the CIA provided to Johnson were redacted, leading him to question why he was not allowed to see the same information that had been given to uncleared reporters.

Johnson challenged the redaction in court, arguing that the CIA, once it has selectively disclosed information to uncleared reporters, cannot claim the same information is protected by a FOIA exemption.

…“In this case, CIA voluntarily disclosed to outsiders information that it had a perfect right to keep private,” she wrote. “There is absolutely no statutory provision that authorizes limited disclosure of otherwise classified information to anyone, including ‘trusted reporters,’ for any purpose, including the protection of CIA sources and methods that might otherwise be outed.

MacMahon also said it didn’t matter if the journalists in question published the information they received, only if the CIA waived its right to deny the information.

As President Trump continues to drain the swamp, hopefully one of the things his administration will look at is the practice of classifying information that Washington agencies don’t want the public to see for reasons other than national security. It is amazing how much material has come to light recently that was classified only for political reasons–it revealed nefarious activities on the part of the government.

The Concept Of Highway Robbery Illustrated In Our Nation’s Capital

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The Washington Post posted an article yesterday about the tolls levied on solo drivers on I-66. It seems that the tolls on this road vary according to the amount of congestion on the road.

Yesterday the toll on Interstate 66 inside the Capital Beltway reached $46.50 for a solo driver during the morning rush, just below a record of $47.25 set last month. This toll is for 10 miles of road.

The article explains:

The I-66 tolls, which are meant to encourage drivers to carpool or use public transportation inside the Beltway, have raised criticism among some drivers since they began in December. Solo drivers who travel on those 10 miles of I-66 at peak periods are charged based on a “dynamic pricing” system that changes every six minutes, depending on traffic volumes and speeds.

Drivers are charged to use the lanes if they are alone, but usage is free with two or more occupants in a vehicle with an E-ZPass Flex transponder.

On Tuesday, Jake Jenkins was driving from his home in Clifton to his job in McLean when he noticed the price hit $46. He said he watched the highway signage indicate a driver would get to the District in 20 minutes. That compared to 33 minutes if driving on U.S. 50 for free — a difference of 13 minutes.

The variation in the toll creates problems in that when some solo drivers planning to take the toll road see the toll go above a reasonable amount, they will often have to change lanes quickly to avoid the toll. This is a recipe for traffic accidents during congested times. This is a ridiculous system designed to manipulate people into car pooling. Car pooling may be a good idea, but I (and I suspect many other people) resent being forced into it.

The Things Many Of Us Didn’t Know

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You can’t change history, and ‘what if’s’ are somewhat useless, but on February 4th, Larry Elder posted a very interesting article in the Toronto Sun. The article reveals one way the media bias in America has impacted our nation.

The article is titled, “Had the ‘news’ media done its job, Obama would not have become president.” That is a very interesting thought. I somewhat disagree in that I believe the media considered it their job to discredit anyone who said anything negative about then Senator Obama and acted accordingly–so in their minds they were doing their job.

The article reports the first obvious example of the media omitting something that might have been relevant:

A photojournalist withheld publication of a 2005 photograph of a smiling then-Sen. Barack Obama with a beaming Louis Farrakhan, the anti-Semitic, anti-white leader of the Nation of Islam.

The occasion was a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus. The photographer, Askia Muhammad, said that almost immediately after he took the picture a CBC staffer called and said, “We have to have the picture back.”

Muhammad later surrendered the disk with the photo to Farrakhan’s chief of staff. “I gave the picture up at the time and basically swore secrecy,” Muhammad said in an interview with the Trice Edney News Wire. “But after the (presidential) nomination was secured and all the way up until the inauguration; then for eight years after he was President, it was kept under cover.”

…Harvard Law School professor emeritus and lifelong liberal Alan Dershowitz says he would not have campaigned for Obama had he been aware of this photograph. Dershowitz says: “Louis Farrakhan is a virulent anti-Semite. He’s called Judaism a ‘gutter religion.’ He’s anti-American. He is a horrible, horrible human being.

Example number two:

Obama’s longtime association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ would likely have derailed his candidacy had media pounced on this as they did the Trump “Access Hollywood” tape. But for Fox News’ coverage of Wright and the videotapes of his fiery sermons, the other major media would have avoided or downplayed Obama’s 20-year association with a pastor who gave fiery sermons critical of America and who had a longtime friendship with Farrakhan.

Ezra Klein, then with The Washington Post, set up a private internet forum he called JournoList, which served as an online gathering place for several hundred like-minded (aka liberal) reporters. When the Jeremiah Wright scandal broke, several reporters on the “J-List” literally schemed of ways to deflect attention from the scandal.

Not an encouraging picture of a supposedly unbiased media.

The third example:

Then there’s the Los Angeles Times, which, to this day, has not and will not publish even a transcript of the “Khalidi tapes.” Rashid Khalidi, an Obama friend and a University of Chicago Palestinian-American professor of Middle East studies, had a going-away party to celebrate his new post at Columbia University. Someone gave the Los Angeles Times a videotape of this 2003 event that Obama attended, where he reminisced about their friendship in a tribute to the professor.

Khalidi was an outspoken supporter of Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. But what he said and what others said at this farewell party, we will never know. Were attendees bashing Israel? Did Obama bash Israel? The Times says it promised the unnamed source who provided the videotape not to air or reproduce the tape. The paper, whose editorial board endorsed Obama, claims it simply kept its promise to a source. If a tape could have ended Trump’s 2016 campaign, would the LA Times, whose editorial board twice endorsed Obama and considered Trump a danger to the world, have sat on it?

Whether or not this information would have mattered to the voters is not clear. What is clear is that each one of these events was an indication of the policies Senator Obama would embrace as President. Under President Obama we had eight years of very strained relationships with a number of our allies–the Churchill bust that was sent back to England, and the horrific treatment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during one of his visits when he was ignored then asked to leave by the back door of the White House are just two examples.

Under President Trump our relationship with Israel and Britain have improved. We are regaining the respect that our country lost under President Obama. We are no longer ‘leading from behind’ (which makes no sense anyway), but taking our place in the family of nations as a supporter of freedom and a voice for the exploited.

When You Have No Intention Of Following The Rules–Write A Memo

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Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article about the memo Susan Rice wrote to herself in January 2017. Writing a memo to file or to yourself is not all that unique, but there are a few aspects of this memo that make it noteworthy.

The article includes some excerpts from the memo:

President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities “by the book”. The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book….

From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia….

The President asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team. Comey said he would.

President Trump was the incoming President. It was the job of the outgoing President to share information with the incoming President. President Trump was the elected President, it was not up to President Obama to decide what information to share. The is a blatant example of an outgoing President undermining the administration of the incoming President.

In this memo, Susan Rice is protecting herself (she was only following directions), but also attempting to put a positive spin on an unconstitutional action by President Obama. The whole Russian investigation was a fraud–something President Obama knew because of his close contact with the Hillary Clinton campaign and his cronies at the FBI and DOJ who were all part of the scheme. This memo acts as if the Russian investigation (which led to the illegal surveillance) was valid and they were only protecting America. Bull feathers.

This is further evidence that a lot of people tied to the Clintons and the Obamas (possibly including the Clintons and Obamas) should be writing their memoirs from a jail cell.

Revealing Their True Motive

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For years we have been hearing the Center for American Progress say that voter ID laws are equal to voter suppression. The charge is somewhat ridiculous when you consider that the vast majority of Americans have picture ID of some sort because it is needed for so many simple things–cashing a check, entering a federal building, boarding an airplane, buying alcohol or cigarettes, opening a bank account, etc. Nevertheless, the Center for American Progress and other leftist groups claim that voter ID is voter suppression–they never mention that states that require voter ID also provide free ID cards for anyone who needs them.

Well, the motives of the Center for American Progress are showing. The Washington Times posted an article today about the Center for American Progress’s efforts to make our elections more secure.

The article reports:

After years of accusing states of “voter suppression,” the Center for American Progress wants to make it tougher for overseas military to vote in the name of election security.

The left-wing public-policy group issued Monday a report, “Election Security in All 50 States,” that called for stricter standards to prevent cyber-meddling in elections by foreign governments, including banning military stationed abroad from submitting ballots via email or fax.

One state that allows such vote-casting is Colorado. The center called on the state to “prohibit voters stationed or living overseas from returning voted ballots electronically.”

 “Regardless of the state’s secure ballot return system for electronically voted ballots, we recommend that all voted ballots be returned by mail or delivered in person,” said the 245-page report.

Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams defended the practice, saying the state has incorporated safeguards to protect the integrity of ballots cast by military personnel living overseas.

“They don’t believe someone who works on a submarine should be allowed to vote. We do,” said the Republican Williams in a statement.

The article notes:

“Perhaps they think that Navy SEALS can swim ballots ashore, hand them off to Army paratroopers who can parachute into Colorado to drop off the ballots?” asked the conservative website Colorado Peak Politics.

“You can bet that if the military historically voted Democrat instead of Republican, the Center for American Progress would not have a problem with it,” added Peak in a Monday post.

The article reminds us of some of the past activities of the Center for American Progress:

The report comes as something of a departure for the center, given its record of fighting for greater ballot access, including same-day registration and making it easier for felons to vote, and against tighter rules aimed at combating voter fraud.

Founded by former Clinton and Obama White House adviser John Podesta, who currently sits on its board, the center has opposed state efforts to require government-issued photo identification, scale back early-voting periods, and remove inactive voters from rolls.

The hypocrisy shown by the Center for American Progress is amazing.

Things Just Got Murkier

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Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article by Byron York about General Michael Flynn.

The article reports:

There was also a lot of concern in Congress, at least among Republicans, about the leak of the wiretapped Flynn-Kislyak conversation. Such intelligence is classified at the highest level of secrecy, yet someone — Republicans suspected Obama appointees in the Justice Department and intelligence community — revealed it to the press.

So in March, lawmakers wanted Comey to tell them what was up. And what they heard from the director did not match what they were hearing in the media.

According to two sources familiar with the meetings, Comey told lawmakers that the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn did not believe that Flynn had lied to them, or that any inaccuracies in his answers were intentional. As a result, some of those in attendance came away with the impression that Flynn would not be charged with a crime pertaining to the Jan. 24 interview.

So what happened?

There seem to be some serious irregularities in the whole episode.

The article further reports:

It has sometimes been asked why Flynn, a man long familiar with the ways of Washington, would talk to the FBI without a lawyer. There seems to be no clear answer. On the one hand, as national security adviser, Flynn had plenty of reasons to talk to the FBI, and he could have reasonably thought the meeting would be about a prosaic issue involved in getting the new Trump National Security Council up and running. On the other hand, the media was filled with talk about the investigation into his conversations with Kislyak, and he might just as reasonably have thought that’s what the agents wanted to discuss. In any event, Flynn went ahead without an attorney present.

In addition, it appears the FBI did not tell White House officials, including the National Security Council’s legal adviser or the White House counsel, that agents were coming to interview the national security adviser over a potentially criminal matter.

On February 13th, General Flynn resigned as National Security Advisor after charges that he had lied to the FBI were leaked. General Flynn later pleaded guilty to Special Prosecutor Mueller’s charges of lying to the FBI on January 24th. The only way this makes sense is when you consider the financial and emotional cost of defending yourself against the government. This is particularly disturbing when the weight of the government is aimed at the destruction of one innocent person.

This is reminiscent of the tactics used against Billy Dale during the Clinton Administration. On November 17, 1995, The Los Angeles Times posted the following:

Billy R. Dale, a White House official fired for allegedly mismanaging staff and press travel arrangements, was acquitted Thursday by a federal court jury of charges that he embezzled $68,000.

Culminating a 13-day trial, jurors decided in less than two hours that federal prosecutors had failed to prove charges that Dale stole funds paid to his office by reporters and photographers who traveled with the President.

A White House employee for more than 30 years, Dale broke into tears as the verdict was announced.

Dale, 58, was at the center of a Clinton Administration travel office fiasco two years ago that resulted in seven employees being fired, and later in reprimands for those responsible for the dismissals.

The 1993 dismissals were inspired by complaints of mismanagement from Catherine Cornelius, a distant cousin of the President, and Hollywood producer Harry Thomason, a close friend of Clinton’s.

Cornelius wanted a more powerful job in the travel office, and Thomason was seeking a federal aviation contract.

There was no mention in the article of the financial and emotional toll this ordeal took on Billy Dale.

If we are going to end the government being used as a weapon against innocent Americans, we have to begin to send those guilty of doing the weaponization to jail.

General Flynn was charged after an illegal wiretap. The charges should not be against General Flynn–they should be against the people involved in the wiretap. If we want to see the misuse of the intelligence agencies end, the guilty parties have to go to jail–regardless of who they are.

The Laffer Curve At Work

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Yesterday CNS News reported that during the month of January (the first month the Trump tax cuts were in effect), the federal government ran a surplus.

The article reports:

January was the first month under the new tax law that President Donald Trump signed in December.

During January, the Treasury collected approximately $361,038,000,000 in total tax revenues and spent a total of approximately $311,802,000,000 to run a surplus of approximately $49,236,000,000.

Despite the monthly surplus of $49,236,000,000, the federal government is still running a deficit of approximately $175,718,000,000 for fiscal year 2018. That is because the government entered the month with a deficit of approximately $224,955,000,000.

The article also reports some of the history:

Over the last twenty fiscal years, going back to 1999, the federal government has run surpluses in the month of January 13 times and deficits 7 times. Six of the Januaries in which the federal government ran deficits overlapped President Barack Obama’s time in office—including January 2009, the month Obama was inaugurated, and the Januaries in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2016.

If you are not familiar with the Laffer Curve, it is a financial theory that the website the balance describes as follows:

The Laffer Curve is a theory that states lower tax rates boost economic growth. It underpins supply-side economics, Reaganomics and the Tea Party’s economic policies. Economist Arthur Laffer developed it in 1979.

The Laffer Curve describes how changes in tax rates affect government revenues in two ways. One is immediate, which Laffer describes as “arithmetic.” Every dollar in tax cuts translates directly to one less dollar in government revenue. 

The other effect is longer-term, which Laffer describes as the “economic” effect. It works in the opposite direction. Lower tax rates put money into the hands of taxpayers, who then spend it. It creates more business activity to meet consumer demand. For this, companies hire more workers, who then spend their additional income. This boost to economic growth generates a larger tax base. It eventually replaces any revenue lost from the tax cut.

This is an illustration of how the Laffer Curve works:

As you can see, there is a point where taxes reach a high point and the amount of revenue generated from taxes goes down. That is not a coincidence–that is what tax attorneys get paid for. One of the reasons we need to make the tax code simpler is that we need to take away the complexities that allow people to hide income and avoid taxes. I believe that was one of the goals of the Trump tax plan. It remains to be seen whether or not that goal was achieved.

The Entry-Level Job Is Going The Way Of The Starter Home

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Investor’s Business Daily posted an article today about the impact of raising the minimum wage. Traditionally the minimum wage job has been a place for those young people who are just entering the workforce to learn the basic principles of holding a job–showing up on time, being there when you are supposed to, treating people with respect, integrity, etc. Most of these concepts should have been covered during the school years, but many of them are not. The entry-level job was the last place a potential employee would be able to learn them. An entry-level job was supposed to encourage the employee to work hard in order to get a better paying job and advance his/her career. Well, I guess that concept has gone out the window.

Investor’s Business Daily reports:

Twenty-one states and Washington, D.C., will raise their minimum wage this year, under the misbegotten notion that it will help the poor, in particular struggling minority youth. It won’t.

As a new study from the American Action Forum shows, not only will most workers not be better off, they will take a huge hit.

Why? Common sense tells you that when you raise the cost of something, anything, less of it will be used or consumed. It’s a fundamental precept of economics. And labor is no different.

Coercive minimum-wage hikes this year, the AAF estimates, will kill 261,000 jobs held mostly by poor, undertrained, undereducated, young suburban millennials and minority teens.

But it’s even worse than that: Once the minimum-wage increases are fully phased in, some 1.7 million jobs will be lost. As the Daily Caller helpfully notes, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated last year that the U.S. economy will add 11.5 million jobs over the next 10 years. So that’s roughly 15% of a decade’s worth of jobs destroyed.

The complaint has been that you can’t support yourself on the current minimum wage. You’re not supposed to—you are supposed to use the opportunity of a minimum-wage job to become a better worker and be promoted or educate yourself and move on to a better job.

The article concludes:

Yes, some people will do better because of the “Fight for $15,” the organizing shibboleth used by activists who want a national minimum wage. But many small businesses struggle to stay open. Labor is their No. 1 cost, taking up more than two-thirds of total costs. If you raise the minimum wage sharply, they have to lay off people or raise prices to stay in business. And some won’t make it.

The job losses are already happening. Just last month, the food chain Red Robin announced it would eliminate busboys at 570 restaurants to “address the labor increases we’ve seen.” For “labor increases,” read “minimum wage hikes.”

Other restaurant chains take a slightly different approach, automating to offset rising labor costs. Neighborhood mainstays Chili’s and Applebee’s,  for instance, are replacing front-end wait staff with computer tablets for placing orders. Since a tablet entails a one-time expense of roughly $200, the investment pays for itself in a little over 13 hours at minimum wage.

It’s sad that just as the tax-cut boom gets going, one big group is going to be cut out of the action entirely. Whenever government sets the price of anything, distortions occur. In this case, the “distortion” is millions of lost jobs. It’s cruel, racist and devastating to lower-income people who depend on entry-level jobs to make ends meet.

Waiting For The Spin

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Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article comparing statements made by top officials in the State Department in 2017 to what we know now about the Steele Dossier. We know that the people involved in the spygate scandal felt that if Hillary Clinton were elected, it would all go away. What is interesting is that they were still lying in 2017.

The article reports:

Now that Chairman Devin Nunes, Chuck Grassley and the key players themselves, have discovered and admitted the U.S. State Department was heavily involved in passing along Clinton opposition research to Chris Steele to create the “Clinton-Steele Dossier”, it’s interesting to look at how the former State Department spokesperson -in place during all the events- responded last year when the Clinton-Steele Dossier was thought to be part of the underlying evidence for the DOJ/FBI FISA application.

Former State Department spokesperson Marie Harf, a person in direct and continuous contact with all the principle agents during the 2016 information flow, was confronted in July 2017 and adamantly denied the dossier was part of the FISA application.

The video clip of that denial is included in the article at The Gateway Pundit.

The article continues:

Looking beyond the transparent lying and subsequent collapse of credibility, the key takeaway here is how State Department officials knew what was going on in 2016, recognized the risk presented by that action in 2017, and were willing to walk the plank because they were certain none of it would ever come to light.

The article concludes:

Officials at the top of the FBI and Department of Justice; officials in the intelligence apparatus of the ODNI, CIA and NSA; and officials at the top of the U.S. Department of State – to include Secretary John Kerry; were all working in common political cause.

Beyond the political talking points, when you simply point out the provable facts the Director of the FBI, Attorney General of the United States and the Secretary of State, were all deeply within the information loop there’s no way possible to extract President Obama from the network. This is how the collapsing house of cards eventually brings down the office of the presidency.

What would be the fall-back, or alternative, narrative?

The talking points are still a few weeks away, but there’s only one possible angle: The President was unaware of the action of his Attorney General, FBI Director, Director of National Intelligence, CIA Director and Secretary of State?

Absurd.

Many of the people involved in the surveillance of the Trump campaign and the Trump transition team are still employed by the government. A few have resigned, but many are still employed. It is time for them to be fired and convicted of violating Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights.

“Squirrel!”

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One can only admire the lengths the Democrats in Congress (and their media allies) will go to in order to distract Americans from the surveillance scandal that is happening underneath their noses. The latest episode involves the Democratic memo the Democrats composed as an answer to the Nunes memo.

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today about the distractions and what is actually going on.

The Democrats stated that they wanted their memo released, but included material in that memo that is genuinely classified and should not be released to the public. That is by design–the Democrats wrote the memo in such a way that there was no way that it could be released as written. At that point the Democrats could complain that any redaction or change made was political. However, that has not worked as planned.

The article at The Gateway Pundit includes a screenshot of a letter from the FBI regarding the memo which indicates concerns with the content:

The article also includes the following:

Mark Meadows: Democrats keep complaining about their counter-memo not being released. But if it was so critical, why have 75% of House Dems not even read their own memo?

Perhaps even they know: this memo was written in panic as a misdirection from the disturbing information we already know.

The article concludes:

Democrats also thought the release of the memo was so urgent that they did not even meet this weekend to rewrite their tripe.

The Democratic memo was not meant to be seen–it was meant to serve a political purpose. It is quite possible that the American public will never see this memo and uninformed voters will assume that the reason they are not seeing it is political. The reason is political–the memo was strictly political and not meant to add anything useful to the discussion.

 

Bad Policies Have Consequences

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On Friday, Investor’s Business Daily posted an article about the results of the government’s takeover of the student loan program. The results of that takeover have not been good.

The article reports:

A report from the Department of Education notes that the net cost of the federal government‘s direct loan program is quickly heading into the red. This program, mind you, was supposed to be a moneymaker for the government, as students paid back federal loans with interest.

But as it turns out, borrowers have been flocking toward various loan forgiveness programs, by which the government will lose money, erasing gains from other loans. The report shows that the direct loan program went from a $25 billion surplus in 2012 to less than $5 billion by 2015.

A separate report says that this program ran a $36 billion deficit last year, up from $8.4 billion in 2016.

One of the problems with the government’s takeover of the student loan program is that the government did not have any interest in limiting the loans to people who might be willing and able to pay them back. When the program was privately granted, banks had an incentive to use good business practices in granting student loans–in order to stay in business, the banks needed the people borrowing the money to pay it back. This is another example of the private sector being able to do something better than the government.

The article concludes:

One program, called “income-driven repayment,” lets borrowers avoid payments if their income falls below a certain threshold, and then caps payments as a percentage of total family income. Any debt left over at the end of 25 years is forgiven.

Not surprisingly, students flocked to these and other programs that let them avoid paying back all their loans, even though the interest rates they had to pay were already subsidized.

Between 2011 and 2015, the portion of loans being repaid through these IDR plans shot up 625%, according to the report.

The direct lending program even earned the nickname “Obama Student Loan Forgiveness,” and surveys of student borrowers by LendEDU found that half of them don’t expect to have to pay back all their debts because the federal government would forgive them.

The rising expectation that loans wouldn’t have to be paid back in full also had the perverse effect of making students increasingly indifferent to college costs, thereby fueling tuition inflation.

As the Education report says, “Decision makers and others may not be aware of the growth in the participation in these IDR plans and loan forgiveness programs and the resulting additional costs.”

Given the $1 trillion in loan debt on the federal books, one hopes that awareness comes soon. Otherwise, the student loan program will quickly turn into one of the most regressive taxes on the books.

This is one example of the need to shrink the government. Taking over a program that has been run successfully in the private sector and moving it to government control is simply not wise. Free market capitalism is always the best way to run anything.