Security Means Having Force Available

Unfortunately school shootings seem to be happening more frequently than they used to (or at least we are hearing about them more often). Former Vice-President Joe Biden introduced a bill in Congress in 1990 that ““prohibits any person from knowingly possessing a firearm … at a place the individual knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, is a school zone.” That was the bill that made schools gun-free zones. A gun-free zone is a place where a shooter will have no opposition for at least five minutes until the police arrive. That is not a reliable plan to protect the students. That point was illustrated this morning in a school in Maryland.

The Daily Caller is reporting today:

The Great Mills High School student who injured two others Tuesday morning was reportedly stopped by the school’s “armed” resource officer.

According to WUSA9’s Peggy Fox, St. Mary’s County Sheriff Tim Cameron updated reporters after the incident had been contained.

Cameron stated that three students were injured in the incident, including the shooter himself, who was taken down by an armed school resource officer.

The SRO reportedly responded without hesitation and exchanged gunshots with the suspect before disarming him. He was not injured in the exchange.

This was a case where an armed, trained, person on the site ended the incident. Every school needs someone on site who is armed, trained, and willing to engage a person shooting at students. If teachers want to fill that role, that is fine, but if not, an extra security person is needed. The fact that there are armed people in the school may deter some shooters from attempting to shoot students. At least, putting an armed person on the site will increase the students’ safety.

Sometimes The Double Standard Is Breathtaking

Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial today about data collection.  Oddly enough, the editorial was not about Facebook and the Trump campaign.

The editorial states:

In 2012, the Obama campaign encouraged supporters to download an Obama 2012 Facebook app that, when activated, let the campaign collect Facebook data both on users and their friends.

According to a July 2012 MIT Technology Review article, when you installed the app, “it said it would grab information about my friends: their birth dates, locations, and ‘likes.’ “

The campaign boasted that more than a million people downloaded the app, which, given an average friend-list size of 190, means that as many as 190 million had at least some of their Facebook data vacuumed up by the Obama campaign — without their knowledge or consent.

If anything, Facebook made it easy for Obama to do so. A former campaign director, Carol Davidsen, tweeted that “Facebook was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn’t stop us once they realized that was what we were doing.”

This Facebook treasure trove gave Obama an unprecedented ability to reach out to nonsupporters. More important, the campaign could deliver carefully targeted campaign messages disguised as messages from friends to millions of Facebook users.

The campaign readily admitted that this subtle deception was key to their Facebook strategy.

“People don’t trust campaigns. They don’t even trust media organizations,” Teddy Goff, the Obama campaign’s digital director, said at the time. “Who do they trust? Their friends.”

According to a Time magazine account just after Obama won re-election, “the team blitzed the supporters who had signed up for the app with requests to share specific online content with specific friends simply by clicking a button.”

The effort was called a “game-changer” in the 2012 election, and the Obama campaign boasted that it was “the most groundbreaking piece of technology developed for the campaign.”

First of all, if you have any expectation of privacy on Facebook, you need to get rid of that expectation immediately. Privacy on Facebook does not exist. Do not write anything on Facebook that you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of The New York Times. Other than than there’s no problem.

The editorial concludes with an observation about the double standard:

More important, the vast majority of people involved in these data-mining operations had no idea they were participating. And in the case of Obama, they had no way of knowing that the Obama campaign material cluttering their feed wasn’t really just political urgings from their friends.

There is one other big difference: how these revelations were received by pundits and the press. In 2012, Obama was wildly celebrated in news stories for his mastery of Big Data, and his genius at mining it to get out the vote.

We were told then about how the campaign “won the race for voter data,” and how it “connected with young voters.” His data analytics gurus were treated as heroes.

This is not to say that Facebo0k doesn’t deserve criticism. Clearly, its data-protection policies have been slipshod.

But the recent fury exposes a massive double standard on the part of those now raising hell.

When Obama was exploiting Facebook users to help win re-election, it was an act of political genius. When Trump attempted something similar, with unclear results, it’s a travesty of democracy and further evidence that somehow he stole the election.

Welcome to the new world of elections–candidates will gather information anywhere they can. It is up to the public to guard their own privacy.

Washington Incest?

A website called THEYIG posted an article yesterday about Lisa Barsoomian. She is a lawyer who graduated from Georgetown Law School and is a protege of James Comey and Robert Muller. She and her boss R Craig Lawrence have a very interesting portfolio. They represented Bill Clinton 40 times, Robert Mueller 3 times, James Comey 5 times, Barack Obama 45 times, Hillary Clinton 17 timesand Kathleen Sebelius 56 times. She represented the FBI at least 5 times. Actually, that is a pretty impressive resume. It is also a somewhat politically biased resume, but there are no laws against that. A lawyer has every right to pick and choose who they represent.

Here’s where it gets interesting. The article reports:

Someone out there cares so much that they’ve purged all Barsoomian court documents for her Clinton representation in Hamburg vs. Clinton in 1998 and its appeal in 1999 from the DC District and Appeals court dockets

 Someone out there cares so much that the internet has been purged of all information pertaining to Barsoomian.

 Historically this indicates that the individual is a protected CIA operative.

 Additionally Lisa Barsoomian has specialized in opposing Freedom of Information Act requests on behalf of the intelligence community

 And although Barsoomian has been involved in hundreds of cases representing the DC Office of the US Attorney her email address is Lisa Barsoomian at NIH gov.

 The NIH stands for National Institutes of Health.

This is a tactic routinely used by the CIA to protect an operative by using another government organization to shield their activities.

It’s a cover, so big deal right, I mean what does one more attorney with ties to the US intelligence community really matter.

It wouldn’t under normal circumstances. However, she is Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s WIFE.

This is a blatant example of the incest that is the swamp in Washington, D.C. There is no way Rod Rosenstein should be anywhere near anything involving the Clintons, Robert Mueller or James Comey. It’s time to bring new people into the FBI, DOJ, and CIA. The ones who are there now have too many interconnections.

 

Cutting Government Spending By Improving The Economy

Last Thursday, Breitbart posted an article about the declining number of Americans using the SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) program. The program was altered in 2013 to add a work requirement to the program, but the Obama administration made it very easy for states with high unemployment numbers to waive that work requirement, and many states did. Now that fewer people are unemployed, many of those state waivers are no longer in force.

The article reports:

Enrollment in the food stamp program plunged by more than 1.3 million since Trump’s inauguration month, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The USDA data reveals that the number of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants fell from 42,676,312 in January 2017 when Trump took office to 41,324,904 in December 2017—a decrease of 1,351,408.

Although enrollment in SNAP sharply increased by 3.5 million during the first month of fiscal year (FY) 2018 (October 2017) due to temporary SNAP enrollment in hurricane-affected states, the data shows that enrollment in the food stamp program has declined on the whole over the first calendar year of Trump’s presidency.

The most recent data of food stamp participation available reveals that from November 2017 to December 2017, 333,984 people discontinued their participation in SNAP.

The number of people dropping off the food stamp rolls is a continuation of a bigger trend that has been taking place since 2013.

Food stamp enrollment steadily declined after 2013, when participation in the government program swelled to 47.6 million—the highest amount it has ever been since former President Lyndon Johnson authorized the creation of the food stamp program in 1964. Taxpayers spent $79.8 million on SNAP when enrollment reached its peak in 2013.

After 2013, enrollment in SNAP declined as states passed laws requiring food stamp recipients to work, volunteer, be in school, or take part in job training for a set number of hours a week to receive food stamps. The improving economy also contributed to the continuing decline in food stamp usage.

The decline in enrollment is due to both the requirement that food stamp recipients work and the improving economy. Most of the work requirements are very easily met–volunteer work, job training, attending school–things that will help equip a person to find a job or find a better job. Ideally the aim of any government assistance program should be to help people become successful enough not to need the program. Unfortunately it does not always work that way. The danger (and we have watched this happen) in creating a government assistance program is that a giant bureaucracy is created to run the program. Obviously the people in the bureaucracy managing that program need people in the program in order for the bureaucracy to continue. That has an impact on the bureaucrats desire to see people leave the program. Somehow we have to find a way to motivate those in the bureaucracy overseeing assistance programs (and those in Congress) of creating a situation where these programs are no longer needed.

The Swamp Reacts To Being Drained

The Washington establishment does not like the fact that the swamp is slowly being drained. The establishment has acquired wealth and power in the current swamp and does not want to give it up. How many millionaires in Congress entered ‘public service’ as middle class Americans and are now millionaires? How many have taken advantage of knowing about upcoming legislation in order to increase their stock portfolios? How many of them are engaging in activities that they do not want revealed to the public? I realize that there are a few honest men and women in Congress, but I suspect it is only a few. So what happens when they begin to see the draining of the swamp?

The Hill posted an article yesterday that included the following tweet addressed to President Trump in response to the firing of Andrew McCabe:

Can you imaging this lack of civility directed at any other President? This is a prime example of why Democrats (and establishment Republicans) need to be defeated in order for the swamp to be fully drained.

We need to remember that Andrew McCabe was fired as a result of an internal investigation at the FBI. President Trump was not responsible for the firing of Andrew McCabe, although I am sure he supported it. McCabe was guilty of lying to the FBI under oath and leaking information. Either one of these offenses is enough to get you fired from the FBI. If Representative Swalwell supports equal justice under the law, he should be supporting the firing of Andrew McCabe–not threatening President Trump.

The Inspector General’s Report And Real Collusion

Kevin McCullough posted an article at Townhall today about the investigation into Russian collusion and the upcoming Inspector General‘s report. Anyone who is following the Russian collusion story on their own rather than listening to the mainstream media, is aware that there has been some serious wrongdoing in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Justice (DOJ). The corruption goes back a long time. I first became aware of the corruption in the DOJ when I watched how the voter intimidation case involving the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia was handled. There was a video that showed voter intimidation, and the Justice Department dropped the charges against them (article here). The leaks coming from the FBI that undermine the presidency have been numerous, and no one seems to be held responsible. Congress is no better–one Congressman said that the House Intelligence Committee leaks like a sieve. So where do we go from here.

The firing of Andrew McCabe is the first step, but there is much more to come.

The article at Townhall reports:

Few remember, though my radio show discussed at length, the reports that surfaced in October of 2016. In reaction to the bizarre July 5th announcement by then FBI director James Comey, FBI officials revealed that members of the DOJ and FBI investigative teams that had worked the Hillary email case were “angered & disgusted” that the co-opted DOJ and FBI leadership ignored the very real analysis of evidence and decided against bringing criminal indictment against Hillary Clinton for the handling of top secret information. More than 100 FBI agents that worked the case, and more than 6 DOJ attorneys expressed their disgust, according to a source within the group. 

It was later revealed that Comey had been prepared to exonerate Clinton in February of that year when he would yet not interview her until months later. She was also granted an interview, instead of being asked to testify under oath.

The article goes on to list various misdeeds of people in the FBI regarding the handling and leaking of information to damage the President.

The article concludes:

There was collusion in the election of 2016. It involved Russians, a British ex-spy, law firms, FBI agents, DOJ attorneys, an FBI director that prejudged evidence, an Attorney General that had an unethical meeting with the spouse of a target, FISA warrants obtained on faulty information that stemmed from political sources, a Deputy Director whose wife received monetary support in an election, an FBI director who lied to Congress, an FBI Deputy Director who lied to the Justice Department’s Inspector General, loads of classified materials that were mishandled and criminally passed to those without clearances, and partisan hacks spearheading inquiries aiming for political outcomes. The scope of this collusion is overwhelming, the attempts are a damning indictment of political operatives that have lost all integrity, and sadly an administration, a major political party, and agents of a deep state that attempted in a wide sweeping number of ways to undo an election that they lost.

Former high-ranking FBI officials (like Chris Swetzer who appeared with Harris Faulkner’s FoxNews broadcast on Friday) believe that the Inspector General’s coming report will be explosive.

For the sake of justice, above all else, I hope it brings clarity to a story our modern media landscape is highly invested in keeping as convoluted as possible.

The Inspector General’s report is due out in a matter of weeks. Although the Inspector General does not have the right to prosecute crimes or to interview witnesses outside of the government. That is why many Republicans are asking for an additional Special Prosecutor to cover areas outside the areas covered by the Inspector General.

It is becoming obvious that some of the upper levels of the FBI and DOJ have become politicized. Hopefully the firing of Andrew McCabe is the beginning of solving that problem.

Hanged On Hayman’s Gallows

In the book of Ester in the Bible, there is a character called Haman. Haman is an ambitious character who loves status, money, and power. He is honored by the king and expects all citizens of the kingdom to bow down before him. Mordecai is a Jewish man who refuses to bow down to Haman. As a result of this perceived affront, Haman plans to kill all of Mordecai’s people (the Jews) and hang Mordecai. Ester intervenes, the Jews are saved, we have the Jewish holiday of Purim, and Haman is hanged on the gallows he built for Mordecai. The current situation with the Russian investigation, corruption at the highest levels of the FBI, and massive leaks to the press to undermine President Trump is beginning to look a lot like the book of Ester.

Based on the emails we have all seen, I suspect the ‘Russia’ story began officially in the office of Andrew McCabe. Hillary blamed the Russians the night she lost the election, but I have no idea if she knew what was being planned at the FBI if Donald Trump won. So some senior officers at the FBI set out to unseat a duly-elected President. Wow. It’s amazing that they have not been charged with treason, but the story isn’t over yet either.

The plan unfolds with numerous leaks to the press, use of personal connections to a judge on the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978) court, withholding information from the FISA court, and lying to Congress and the Inspector General. Remember, the plan is to remove President Trump from office before he can accomplish anything. So where are we now?

Yesterday Paul Mirengoff posted an article at Power Line about the firing of Andrew McCabe as Deputy Director of the FBI. Andrew McCabe was fired yesterday. Paul Mirengoff is a lawyer, and the articles he posts at Power Line are very clear and very logically thought out. His article on the firing of Andrew McCabe is an example of that clarity and logic. The article reminds us of a few important points in this story that may get overlooked by the mainstream media.

The article reports:

McCabe promptly issued an angry statement. He claimed, among other things, that his dismissal was part of the Trump’s administration’s “ongoing war on the FBI and the efforts of the Special Counsel investigation” and was the result of pressure from President Trump.

It seems likely that McCabe will seek legal redress. However, he may end of fighting on two legal fronts — criminal and civil. A prosecution for making false statements might well be in McCabe’s future.

As to the firing, it was recommended by the FBI office that handles discipline. The recommendation was based on findings by the DOJ’s inspector general investigation. The IG found that McCabe authorized the disclosure of sensitive information to the media about a Clinton-related case and then misled investigators about having done so.

If these findings are valid, they warrant firing. Unless McCabe can point to high level DOJ employees who were found to have engaged in similar misconduct but were not fired, I doubt he has much of a case (assuming, again, that the findings of misconduct are well-supported). That, at least, is my impression on first blush.

…But if the discharge decision has a strong factual basis, if (as is the case) it was recommended to Sessions through normal DOJ channels, and if it’s consistent with past practice, then the decision seems just and proper, whatever Trump has tweeted. In these circumstances, it ought to be upheld.

This is going to get ugly, but it is the beginning of the next phase of draining the swamp.

How You Find The Leaks

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article that illustrates how you find people in government that are leaking to the press. The method used is rather obvious, but also rather brilliant.

The article reports:

The PR Firm for the corrupt U.S. intelligence apparatus known as The Washington Post, runs a story about H.R. McMaster being fired tonight.

The Washington Post quotes “five people with knowledge of the plans”.

Except there’s a problem, there are no plans.

No plans except to entrap staff and intelligence community leakers; likely those five ‘leakers’ are in/around the National Security Council, and they just got caught.

One of the most effective weapons of the ‘deep state‘ is leaks. Simply putting a stop to those leaks will allow President Trump to govern much more effectively.

The Washington Post ran the following report:

President Trump has decided to remove H.R. McMaster as his national security adviser and is actively discussing potential replacements, according to five people with knowledge of the plans, preparing to deliver yet another jolt to the senior ranks of his administration.

Trump is now comfortable with ousting McMaster, with whom he never personally gelled, but is willing to take time executing the move because he wants to ensure both that the three-star Army general is not humiliated and that there is a strong successor lined up, these people said. 

Trump’s reaction–“the leaks are real, but the news is fake.”

That’s how you catch the leakers.

Frankly, I think that there are better choices than McMaster for national security advisor, but it really doesn’t look as if he is going anywhere right this second. However, I suspect the people who leaked to The Washington Post may be out looking for jobs!

Be Careful What You Ask For

PJ Media posted an article yesterday that highlights one of the major problems of the Trump administration–civil servants who are working against President Trump’s policies. The amazing thing about spotlighting this problem is that the Congressional Democrats accidentally illustrated the problem without meaning to.

House Democrats Elijah Cummings and Eliot Engel have written an open letter to the White House and State Department expressing concern that Obama holdovers who do not support President Trump’s policies were being removed.

The letter deals with Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, an Obama-era pro-Iran-deal State Dept staffer.  Ms. Nowrouzzadeh reportedly expressed “willingness to support the policy priorities of the Trump Administration” in good faith, but her actions tell another story. Ms. Nowrouzzadeh co-authored an article entitled “Trump’s Dangerous Shift on Iran,” which severely criticizes the President’s stance on the Iranian nuclear deal.

 

The article at PJ Media reports:

The Democratic Party and Politico just went to bat for a rubber-roomed “whistleblower.”

They really did just try to make hay with: “Trump Demotes — But Can’t Fire — Employee Who Calls Him ‘Dangerous.'”

If the Republican Party has a smidge of the media instincts of Schachtel and Ceren, then this coming Monday should open with a House Oversight Committee hearing on civil service employment law reform.

They don’t, of course.

But Trump does. And winning over America with civil service reform is a six-inch putt for him.

Politico, Cummings, and Engel just demystified the Deep State for American voters. It’s not about paranoiac white men bumbling about like Inspector Clouseau. It’s about an irrational set of laws that allow thousands upon thousands of unelected Executive Branch employees to work against the elected boss.

Some of them are even the precise cause of the constant “chaos” that the mainstream media loves to ascribe to this White House. Some of them routinely commit felonies by leaking confidential information to those media outlets.

And, unbelievably, one was a JCPOA architect so blinded by a lifetime in government that she actually thought America embraces her “right” to be an un-fireable bureaucrat.

Any employee in the business world who does not support the policies of her corporation or company would be shown the door. Why should civil service be any different?

The New Economic Advisor

Bloomberg reported yesterday that Larry Kudlow was chosen to be the new White House economic adviser.  Mr. Kudlow is an economist frequently seen on CNBC.

The article outlines some of his views:

Kudlow spoke at length on the U.S. currency, including its appropriate valuation, saying he would like to see it “a wee bit stronger than it is currently, but stability is the key.” He said the president shares his views.

“A great country needs a strong currency, he knows that,” said Kudlow, after being chosen to replace Gary Cohn as director of the White House National Economic Council. “I have no reason to believe that President Trump opposes a sound and stable dollar.”

…He said the administration will pursue a “phase two” of Trump’s tax overhaul, seeking to make tax cuts for individuals permanent. Making the tax changes permanent would add $500 billion to the budget deficit, while tripling the amount of economic growth, according to a paper earlier this month from two Harvard economists.

The next phase, Kudlow said, should include a lower capital gains rate — and a rate that’s indexed for inflation. The top rate for long-term capital gains was left untouched at 20 percent.

Kudlow said he is “on board” with the duties Trump has imposed on steel and aluminum imports. He said he was encouraged by the president’s move to grant temporary waivers to allies including Canada and Mexico.

Bloomberg is not known for his support of conservative politics, so the article goes on to list some of the times that Larry Kudlow has been wrong or not supported President Trump. Be that as it may, Kudlow has been a supporter of reasonable economic policies in the past, and I am sure he will do a good job as economic advisor.

President Trump has been willing to shuffle his cabinet to get the most qualified people in the right positions. I think the choice of Larry Kudlow is a good choice.

 

 

There Really Are Not Two Parties In Washington

The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today that erases any illusion anyone might have had that there are two political parties in Congress. There are two political parties in Washington–the anti-Trump agenda party and the pro-Trump agenda party, but the Republican and Democratic parties in Congress are generally one and the same despite the show they put on that they are different.

The article reports:

Now, a stunning discovery surfaces of Paul Ryan’s Congressional Leadership SuperPAC, congressionalleadershipfund.org, actually campaigning for the Democrat, Conor Lamb, in the recent PA18 congressional race.

As evidenced by Big League Politics the Paul Ryan SuperPAC sent a mailer to Pennsylvania CD-18 voters touting Lamb’s favorable position on gun ownership rights:

This is the mailer:

The article explains:

The real motive, based on an honest review of history, is the professional UniParty apparatus knew that Democrat Conor Lamb needed a lift to offset the cross party voting that was reflected in the district voting (by over 20 points) for Donald Trump in 2016.

The DC Republican apparatus is quite comfortable losing their majority position so long as they are not forced to support Trump policies which are entirely against their financial interests.  [How Mitch McConnell Crushed The Tea-Party]

It really is about money–in Washington power is measured by how much money you control. The more of taxpayers’ money Washington can seize and control, the more power they have. That’s why the establishment opposes the tea party movement and that is why the establishment opposes President Trump.

The article concludes:

The only threat to the financial interests of the GOP is President Donald Trump remaining in office and having to actually face carrying out a conservative Trump agenda in 2019 and 2020.  That Trump agenda is entirely against their “establishment republican” interests.

The Paul Ryan mailer to elect a Democrat is just another example of how corrupt the entire UniParty political apparatus is within Washington DC.

Another illustration of the opposition to President Trump is seen in the number of Libertarian and new Republican primary candidates in the current primary season. Many of these candidates are funded by the Republican establishment and are there to replace conservative Republicans who support President Trump with candidates the Republican establishment can control. President Trump is not the perfect President, but he is not part of the Washington establishment and is not controlled by it. If you want to see things change in Washington, you need to support the people who will support the President’s policies. Otherwise, we will have more of special interest fleecing the American taxpayer.

Undoing The Economic Damage Done By President Obama

Like him or not, President Trump is a businessman. He has also encouraged Congress to do things that make sense from a business perspective. He worked hard to undo the damage done by the economic policies of the Obama administration–he has decreased regulation, lowered corporate taxes, and it working hard to put Americans back to work. Well, it looks as if Congress has also decided to help encourage the American economy.

The Daily Caller reported yesterday that the Senate had voted 67-31 to roll back some of the provisions of the Dodd-Frank bill. At this point I need to mention that the Dodd-Frank bill was a supposed solution to the housing bubble, but never actually addressed the read source of the problem. The video below explains the true source of the problem.

Below is a nine-year old YouTube video I have repeatedly posted. It is the most honest history of the housing bubble I have seen. It is embedded because I am afraid that someday YouTube will take it down:

The DC Caller Article reports:

Seventeen Democratic senators joined Republicans in the Senate to approve the roll back.

The bill is the brainchild of Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo and aims to rework a number of the protective barriers Dodd-Frank put between consumers, banks and the greater economy in the wake of the 2007-2009 Great Recession.

“This bill has received widespread support for good reason: the cycle of lending and job creation has been stifled by onerous regulation,” Crapo said on the Senate floor prior to Wednesday evening’s vote.

Dodd-Frank was originally intended to increase transparency by implementing a consistent set of regulations aimed at closing loopholes and making firms accountable for their own mistakes. The bill attempted to shift the burden of major financial mistakes from taxpayers to market participants, ensuring those who partake in risky investment practices would bear the financial burden of their mistakes. Dodd-Frank promised to “end too big to fail” and “promote financial stability.”

Large banking institutions have grown dramatically since the passage of Dodd-Frank despite the act’s intentions, and small community banks have incurred serious losses as they try to keep up. Crippling regulations saddled smaller banks, forcing American consumers to market with fewer investment vehicles and greater costs.

Even if Dodd-Frank were actually attempting to address the true cause of the housing market collapse, it failed miserably.

There is some question as to whether or not the bill can pass in the House of Representatives.

Just as a reminder, I would  like to post the content of an article that I wrote in March of 2009 here:

I don’t have a link on this because I don’t want to get people in trouble.  This is a true story, but I will leave the specific names out.  This is truly a tale of the upside down world we currently live in.

There is a small local bank in a city in Massachusetts.  It is not a rich city, and the city has the reputation of being a rather ‘rough’ city.  The bank is a small local bank that has probably been in business for twenty or thirty years.  The bank has had no foreclosures on property that it owns this year.  The bank had made a small profit last year.  Almost (if not) all of the mortgages the bank has given out are current.  No property is currently in foreclosure.  This rather quiet little bank is simply doing its job of being a small, local bank as best it can.

Last week the bank got a letter from the federal agency that regulates the bankling industry in this country.  The letter had done its annual review of the bank and was sending the results to the bank.  The letter was highly critical of the bank–the agency felt that the bank had not created enough sub-prime mortgages and that it had not done enough lending to people in lower income brackets with bad credit ratings.  Duh.  That’s why the bank is not in need of bailout money!!

The time has come for a little common sense on the part of the government.

The real cause of the housing crisis was the federal government. How can we manage to get them under control?

I Wouldn’t Celebrate Just Yet

The Hill is reporting today that Democrat Conor Lamb has declared victory in the House of Representatives race in Pennsylvania. It is quite possible that he has won, but all of the votes have not been counted yet, and the race is extremely close. This race is a beautiful example of the fact that every vote counts. When it is all over, it will be very close.

There are a few things to look at in this race. Conor Lamb is a very attractive candidate. He is a Marine and a former federal prosecutor. The Democratic candidate ran as a conservative, but when you look at his website, his views are not necessarily all that conservative. He sounds like another tax and spend Democrat. Mr. Lamb is not pro-life–according to The Weekly Standard, he has stated that he does not support proposals to ban abortions after 20 weeks, the point at which fetuses can feel pain. His website states that he wants to fix ObamaCare (not repeal it), forgive student debt, encourage more green energy, support unions, spend on job training, and spend on infrastructure.

It is obvious that Conor Lamb wants to be another Joe Manchin. However, the thing to remember is that Joe Manchin votes with the Democrats when his vote is needed. He votes with the Republicans when the Democrats do not need his vote. Electing a conservative Democrat to the House of Representatives does not in any way make the House any more conservative–the new house member will tow the party line when asked. Nancy Pelosi will become Speaker if the Democrats gain the majority in the House. Impeachment proceedings against President Trump will begin (Lord knows on what basis), and the tax cuts will be taken away from average Americans. Conor Lamb successfully (and smartly) avoided nationalizing his race. However, that does not mean that the consequences of electing Democrats will not be national.

Purposely Returning A Woman To A Dangerous Situation

CBN News posted an article today about Aideen Strandsson, who is awaiting deportation from Sweden to Iran. Sweden has turned down her request for asylum. Ms. Strandsson is a Christian and would face rape and prison time if she is returned to Iran. Hungary has offered her asylum, but Sweden was not willing to let her go to Hungary.

The article reports:

Aideen Strandsson came to Sweden from Iran in 2014 on a work visa and adopted a Swedish last name. She Left Islam and became a Christian in Iran after seeing a video of Muslims stoning a woman to death and then having a dream about Jesus.

When she arrived in Sweden, she requested a public baptism.

Strandsson said, “I wanted to be baptized in public because I want to say I am free, I am Christian and I wanted everyone to know about that.”

Which means the Islamic government of Iran knows. And because she starred in films and a TV series in Iran, it makes her an even bigger target if she is sent back.

In July of last year, CBN News reported:

At the same time Sweden is deporting Christians to Muslim nations where they face prison, torture and death, it is giving new identities to ISIS fighters who have returned from Syria and Iraq.
 
An investigation by the Swedish newspaper Expressen found that 150 ISIS terrorists are being protected by the Swedish government so that locals don’t find out that they were jihadists.
Today’s CBN News article provides the information to contact the Swedish embassy about this matter. I don’t know how much good that will do, but it is worth a try.
Meanwhile, could someone please explain how allowing former ISIS members asylum and not granting Christians asylum makes sense? Which is more likely to be a threat to the peace of your country?

 

All Americans Are Equal Under The Law…Except Those Who Are Not

Yesterday Tablet Magazine posted an article about the ongoing Robert Mueller investigation. The magazine has a unique take on the investigation and cites numerous events that illustrate why they drew the conclusions they did.

The article reminds us of some of Robert Mueller’s recent activities:

News that special counselor Robert Mueller has turned his attention to Erik Prince’s January 11, 2017 meeting in the Seychelles with a Russian banker, a Lebanese-American political fixer, and officials from the United Arab Emirates, helps clarify the nature of Mueller’s work. It’s not an investigation that the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is leading—rather, it’s a cover-up.

After all, Mueller took his job not at the behest of the man who by all accounts he is likely to professionally and personally disdain, Donald Trump, but of the blue-chip Beltway elite of which he is a charter member. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed him nearly a year ago to lead an investigation without parameters. That’s because Mueller’s job is to obscure the abuses of the US surveillance apparatus that occurred under the Obama administration.

The fact that someone at the level of former FBI director was called in to sweep up the mess left by bad actors in the bureau and Central Intelligence Agency and other parts of the intelligence bureaucracy suggests that the problems are even worse than previously thought. And that means the constituency for Mueller’s political intervention is enormous.

Mueller is said to believe that the Prince meeting was to set up a back channel with the Kremlin. But that makes no sense. According to the foundational text of the collusion narrative, the dossier allegedly written by former British spy Christopher Steele, the Kremlin had cultivated Trump himself for years. So what’s the purpose of a back channel, when Vladimir Putin already had a key to the front door of Mar-a-Lago?

The group behind the goals of this investigation are counting on the American people to get bored and stop paying attention. They are also hoping that we are not asking questions about the cost and strange direction the investigation has taken.

The article also reveals that some of the information the investigation is using could have only come from illegal unmasking of the people involved:

Prince was thrown into the middle of Russiagate after an April 3, 2017 Washington Post story reported his meeting with the Russian banker. But how did anyone know about the meeting? After the story came out, Prince said he was shown “specific evidence” by sources from the intelligence community that the information was swept up in the collection of electronic communications and his identity was unmasked. The US official or officials who gave his name to the Post broke the law when they leaked classified intelligence. “Unless The Washington Post has somehow miraculously recruited the bartender of a hotel in the Seychelles,” Prince told the House Intelligence Committee in December, “the only way that’s happening is through SIGINT [signals intelligence].”

Mueller presumably knows whether Prince’s name was indeed unmasked and then leaked to the press—and that the leak was a crime. Mueller certainly knows that most of the case he has regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election was built by abuses of the foreign intelligence surveillance apparatus and other related crimes that are punishable with jail time. The identity of Trump’s short-tenured National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was swept up and leaked to the press in the same way as Prince’s. It was leaked to the same newspaper, the Washington Post.

As I explained last week, the identity of Attorney General Jeff Sessions was also unmasked from intelligence intercepts and leaked to the Washington Post. The fact that the FBI had secured a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant on Carter Page was also leaked to the Post. The warrant on Page was secured on the basis of the findings in the Steele dossier, an unverified piece of opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee.

One of the main conclusions in the article:

The purpose of the Mueller inquiry is therefore not to investigate the mostly ludicrous-seeming charges in the Steele dossier, but to protect the institution of the FBI, former colleagues, as well as the national security surveillance system. Therefore the inquiry has to cover up the sinful origins of the collusion narrative itself—which was born in repeated abuses of power and subsequent crimes committed by US officials in the intelligence bureaucracy and the Obama administration.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It reveals some of what President Trump is up against in trying to reclaim America for the average American.

This Is Actually No Big Deal

Rex Tillerson has been fired as Secretary of State. He will be replaced by Mike Pompeo. This is not really news to those who pay close attention. Pat Robertson (who hosts the 700 Club produced by the Christian Broadcasting Network) predicted yesterday that Tillerson would be gone today. Why? Because Trump and Tillerson disagreed on too many major issues–Iran, the Paris climate treaty, and North Korea. Tillerson is not a man who is used to operating under someone else’s leadership when he dioes not agree with that leadership, and Trump is not used to having people undermining his policies when they are supposed to be supporting them. The change is probably good for everyone involved.

Mike Pompeo is a good choice to succeed Rex Tillerson. He graduated first in his class at West Point and went on the Harvard to get his law degree. He worked in the business world and served in Congress before becoming head of the CIA. It is believed that his worldview is much more compatible with President Trump than was Tillerson’s.

Two qualities of a good executive are the ability to be flexible and the ability to change direction when needed. The current shuffle in the White House is a good example of both. Although I am not sure I agree with exactly how the change was handled, it was a necessary change and needed to be done quickly. Now hopefully the President and at least some of the State Department can move in the same direction.

The Names That Keep Reappearing

Yesterday Front Page Magazine posted a story related to the Fox News “Scandalous” television series. I guess I really wasn’t paying a lot of attention during the Clinton years–I didn’t realize that in some cases, the same names keep appearing in matters related to the Clintons.

The article includes a number of names we have heard lately:

Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal has recently emerged in the DNC dossier affair. Republican James Rogan, a hawk for the impeachment of Bill Clinton, has given way to Democrat Adam Schiff, whose evidence of Russian collusion has an existential problem. Other links emerged in the 140 pardons Bill Clinton issued on his last day in office.

President Clinton pardoned his brother Roger, busted for distributing cocaine, and Whitewater crony Susan McDougal. He pardoned former HUD boss Henry Cisneros and Patty Hearst who became a partisan of the murderous Symbionese Liberation Army. Clinton also pardoned fugitive financier Mark Rich, but this was not the president’s most controversial last-day reprieve.

John Deutch had been CIA director in 1995 and 1996 and the White House said he was pardoned “for those offenses described in the information dated January 19, 2001.” The precise nature of the DOJ charges remained unclear but, as it emerged, the man in charge of the nation’s secrets had mishandled classified information.

According to ABC News, Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder was unaware of the pending presidential pardon when “Attorney General Janet Reno gave the approval for investigators to make a deal with Deutch.” The former CIA boss had been “under investigation for sloppy handling of secret files.”

…As Hans A. von Spakovsky recalled in National Review, the IG did not let Deutch pick and choose what information he was going to hand over. Instead they sent in a team to grab everything and found that Deutch “continuously processed” classified data “for unclassified use.” This took place on computers that were “vulnerable to attacks by unauthorized persons,” and the information included “Top Secret communications intelligence,” and information on the “National Reconnaissance Program.”

That was a violation of 18 U.S.C. §793, which makes it a criminal offense “through gross negligence” to allow classified information “to be removed from its proper place of custody.”

As von Spakovsky notes, “no intentional misconduct is required; just gross negligence,” and offenders can be fined or imprisoned for violations.

The article continues:

Deutch duly returned to his teaching post at MIT and more than two years later was stripped of his security clearances. What classified information might have been stolen by hostile actors remained uncertain, but with the pardon from Clinton the grossly negligent Deutch would not be taking a fall. This all proved instructive to former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

She kept government information, including classified materials, on a private, unsecured server in her home, and POTUS 44 emailed her through that unsecured network. Hillary Clinton said it was all about Chelsea’s wedding, yoga classes, and no classified material was involved. When government investigators wanted to have a look, Clinton promptly destroyed more than 30,000 emails, bleached the server clean, and smashed up electronic devices.

Trump-hating James Strzok of the FBI changed “gross negligence” to “extremely careless” and FBI boss James Comey said no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges. In similar style, as a deputy attorney general, Comey cut a sweetheart deal with former Clinton national security advisor Sandy Berger, who stole and destroyed classified documents.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch told Comey to call whole thing a “matter” and Hillary Clinton paid no penalty. After she lost the 2016 race, her FBI-DOJ team set about framing the winner, Donald Trump, on the charge that he colluded with Russia to steal the election.

I had forgotten that James Comey had made the deal with Sandy Berger after Berger was caught with classified documents in his socks. This was attributed to sloppiness on Berger’s part!

An article at the Conservative Base posted on November 16, 2016, states the following:

Several law-enforcement officers believe the documents stolen told the true story about the LAX plot, but the Clintons sent their henchman Sandy Berger to get rid of the evidence.

“The Clintons have a history of playing by their own rules which means committing acts that would get anyone else — including Berger — convicted of malfeasance,” said former police detective sergeant Walter Fendner. “Berger fell on his sword for the Clintons and he was rewarded with probation and a slap on the wrist,” Fendner added.

As luck would have it, before the FBI or Justice Department prosecutors could talk to him, Sandy Berger died on Dec. 1, 2015. The cause of death was listed as cancer. He was 70-years-old, said a statement by his consulting firm, the Albright Stonebridge Group. 

The article at the Conservative Base includes evidence that Sandy Berger had been acting as an advisor to Hillary Clinton during her time as Secretary of State.

The article at The Conservative Base reports:

His (Sandy Berger) email correspondence with Clinton was stored on her private server and it’s yet to be reported whether or not he — a convicted thief of classified documents — had access to emails containing classified intelligence.

The release of the Clinton/Berger email was part of a batch of email messages released by the State Department.

Again, James Comey was the person who made the deal with Sandy Berger–Berger was sentenced to community service and probation and fined $50,000 for illegally removing highly classified documents from the National Archives and intentionally destroying some of them.

Hillary Clinton wasn’t even charged for mishandling classified information. I guess she learned from the mistakes of those who came before her.

The Fight To Delete Our History

In July 2015, The Raleigh News & Observer posted an article that included an announcement by then Governor McCrory that he would sign a bill to protect Confederate monuments in North Carolina.

The article reported:

“Our monuments and memorials reminds us of North Carolina’s complete story,” McCrory said in a news release. “The protection of our heritage is a matter of statewide significance to ensure that our rich history will always be preserved and remembered for generations to come.

“I remain committed to ensuring that our past, present and future state monuments tell the complete story of North Carolina.”

The bill had passed the North Carolina Senate unanimously in April, but there was a heated debate in the North Carolina House about the bill.

The article describes the bill:

The bill passed the House Tuesday and would ban state agencies and local governments from taking down any “object of remembrance” on public property that “commemorates an event, a person, or military service that is part of North Carolina’s history.”

That would mean a state law would be needed to remove a monument or relocate one to a site that’s not of “similar prominence.”

The idea behind the bill was to prevent cities or towns from acting abruptly and later regretting their actions regarding various statues.

Fast forward to today.

Channel 12 is reporting that there will be a public hearing next week where the public can address the committee examining the proposal by Governor Roy Cooper‘s administration to move three Confederate monuments from North Carolina’s old Capitol grounds to a Civil War battlefield.

This is trivial pursuit. It changes nothing and costs the state a serious amount of money. Also, according to the law currently in place, a state law would be needed to move the monuments. Why are we wasting the government’s and the public’s time with this? What in the world will moving the monuments change?

As we attack these monuments, we need to remember that Union and Confederate soldiers are considered U.S. veterans under federal law, and that they would be entitled to the same benefits as Union soldiers today. It’s also true that federal law (formerly Public Law 810) makes Confederate soldiers eligible for burial in national cemeteries and for taxpayer-funded headstones, just like Union soldiers. The men who fought for the south were fighting for states’ rights. They are as much to be honored as the men who fought against them.

Moving monuments does not change history–it simply brings up more divisions. We need to put the generally mistold history of the Civil War behind us and move forward. The Civil War was not about slavery–it was an economic war about tariffs and the exploitation of the agricultural south by the industrialized north. To characterize it as anything else is to misunderstand our history. (Just for the record, this is not necessarily a southern perspective–I grew up in New Jersey!)

The American Family

Some thoughts from a blog called The Conservative Millennial:

In the book, Home Economics: The Consequences of Changing Family Structure, Nick Schulz presents data that shows the deconstruction of the nuclear family since 1960. Not only are people getting married later and less than they used to, in 2009, 41% of all births were to unmarried mothers.

This is significant, because, as explained in a study by Jane Anderson published by the National Institutes of Health, children and society are generally happier, healthier, and more successful when the nuclear family is intact. She points out that as societal norms and perceptions of marriage have changed – from something that’s healthy and beneficial to something that’s constricting and even harmful. Therefore, our culture has evolved to glorifying singleness — and even single parenthood — rather than embracing the nuclear family.

This has led to a higher risk of emotional distress, of psychological immaturity and social and financial immobility for many children who were raised in single-parent homes, which in turn negatively affects societies economically and socially.

This is not to say that this is the sole cause for young people committing acts of violence.  This is to argue that the deterioration of the family has hurt society as a whole, and children, specifically.

…Furthermore, a study by the Social Science Department at UCLA cites a clear link between loneliness and isolation and delinquent behavior. Sociologist Adam Lankford actually argues that lonely, troubled childhoods are a direct cause of more mass shootings.

Fatherlessness, in particular, seems to play a key role in violence among young men. In fact, the majority of school shooters come from fatherless homes. Research by W. Bradford Wilcox suggests that boys who grow up in single-mother homes are twice as likely to commit crimes than those who grow up with a present father. Both sons and daughters are more likely to be depressed without a strong relationship with a father. Broken families, in general, create not only a higher threat of delinquency for children, but also an increased risk of poverty and social immobility. The breakdown of the American family hurts our adolescent who often grow to be hurt adults, which consequently leads to a cycle of pain and violence.

All of this said, correlation does not necessarily equal causation. It is difficult to say, empirically, that the breakdown of family and community causes these horrible acts of violence, but it sure hasn’t helped.

So, if we want to get real about talking about solutions to violence and crime in America, we need to talk about the truth behind these crimes and criminals. The glorification of individualism, of singleness, and of isolation has coincided with our culture’s embrace of moral relativism and rejection of absolute truth is doing more to damage our country and promote discontentment which can lead to violence than it is helping.

Why not start there?

The Cost Of The Wall

One of the recent talking points used against those people who actually want to control our borders is the cost of building a wall. Obviously, Mexico will not directly pay for a wall–they enjoy having people come here illegally and send money back to Mexico. There is no incentive for them to put a stop to that behavior. So how do we pay for the wall?

Paul Sperry posted an article at The New York Post on Saturday that offers one possible solution.

The article reports:

Mexico won’t have to pay for the wall, after all. US taxpayers won’t have to pick up the tab, either. The controversial barrier, rather, will cover its own cost just by closing the border to illegal immigrants who tend to go on the federal dole.

That’s the finding of recent immigration studies showing the $18 billion wall President Trump plans to build along the southern border will pay for itself by curbing the importation of not only crime and drugs, but poverty.

“The wall could pay for itself even if it only modestly reduced illegal crossings and drug smuggling,” Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Post.

Federal data shows that a wall would work. A two-story corrugated metal fence in El Paso, Texas, first erected under the Bush administration has already curtailed illegal border crossings there by more than 89 percent over the five-year period during which it was built.

The problem is not only illegal immigrants–it’s drug smuggling. How much money and how many lives do the illegal drugs coming into America cost?

The article concludes:

While Democrats complain the $18 billion price tag for the Trump wall is too high, the “Dreamers” amnesty bill they want Trump and Republicans to pass in exchange for funding the wall (or ideally in spite of the wall) would cost US taxpayers even more than the construction of the border partition over 10 years.

“The cost of the DREAM Act has been estimated as very large — a $26 billion net cost in the first 10 years,” Camarota noted.

Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that 3 million DREAM Act recipients would receive an estimated $12 billion-plus in ObamaCare subsidies, more than $5.5 billion in Medicaid benefits, $5.5 billion in earned-income and child-tax credits and more than $2 billion in food stamps.

A bipartisan bill incorporating the deal was defeated in the Senate last month by a vote of 54-45. Trump rejected the proposal in favor of a tougher border bill introduced by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), which limits the number of DACA beneficiaries to 1.8 million, curbs family visas, or so-called chain migration, and phases out the diversity visa lottery, while earmarking $25 billion in funding for the wall and other border security.

The problem is not the money–the problem is the spending priorities.

Some Rational Thought On Global Warming

John Horgan, the director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology, has written an essay for the Scientific American about global warming. Breitbart posted some of his comments today.

The article reports:

The essay, penned by John Horgan, the director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology, analyzes two recent reports by “ecomodernists” who reject climate panic and frame the question of climate change and humanity’s ability to cope with it in radically new terms.

One of the reports, a work called “Enlightened Environmentalism” by Harvard iconoclast Steven Pinker, urges people to regain some much-needed perspective on climate, especially in the context of the overwhelming material benefits of industrialization.

Pooh-poohing “the mainstream environmental movement, and the radicalism and fatalism it encourages,” Pinker argues that humanity can solve problems related to climate change the same way it has solved myriad other problems, by harnessing “the benevolent forces of modernity.”

Separating himself from environmentalists who seem to detest modernity, Pinker asserts that industrialization “has been good for humanity.”

…The second report put forward by Horgan is a recent article by Will Boisvert titled “The Conquest of Climate,” which contends that the “consequences for human well-being will be small” even if human greenhouse emissions significantly warm the planet.

Boisvert, who has been described as a “left-wing environmental expert, is no “climate denier,” yet he calls for climate alarmists to take a deep breath and step back from doomsday forecasts that likely have little to do with what will actually take place in the future.

As an example, the author pokes fun at a 2016 Newsweek article announcing that “Climate change could cause half a million deaths in 2050 due to reduced food availability.”

The story, based on a Lancet study, made dire forecasts regarding the effects of climate change on agriculture, while failing to note that the study actually predicts much more abundant food availability in 2050 thanks to advances in agricultural productivity. These advances will “dwarf the effects of climate change,” he contends, and the “poorest countries will benefit most.”

Like Pinkers, Boisvert tries to factor in what climate alarmists ignore: the capability of human beings to react to changing scenarios in remarkably ingenious ways.

The activities of civilized human beings may have some small impact on the environment, but we are not significant enough to control climate. We have a responsibility to keep the air and water as clean as possible, and sometimes we do not live up to that responsibility. As human beings, we need to be good stewards of our planet, but we do not need to cripple the economies of prosperous nations to do it.

The article concludes with what is actually a concise summation of what is driving much of the climate change hysteria:

While climate skeptics will welcome this gust of common sense wafting in from the Scientific American, establishment climate alarmists will undoubtedly seek to quash the news, knowing it could affect not only the funding they depend on, but the ideologically driven political programs they seek to impose on the world.

After all, if the world is not under imminent peril from climate change, who will listen to—and fund—the prophets of doom?

It really is all about the money!

This Is Not A Surprise, But It Is Really Tacky

The Center for Security Policy is reporting today that a new think tank has recently formed in Washington. The think tank, called National Security Action (NSA), is made up of about fifty former Obama administration officials. Three founding members are Ben Rhodes, Susan Rice and Samantha Power. Even in Washington, could anyone find three people with a worse record of telling the truth?

The article reports:

The mission statement of the group is anything but subtle: “National Security Action is dedicated to advancing American global leadership and opposing the reckless policies of the Trump administration that endanger our national security and undermine U.S. strength in the world.”

National Security Action plans to pursue typical liberal foreign policy themes such as climate change, challenging President Trump’s leadership, immigration and allegations of corruption between the president and foreign powers.

This organization uses the acronym NSA, which is ironic. Three of its founding members – Ben Rhodes, Susan Rice and Samantha Power – likely were involved in abusing intelligence from the federal NSA (National Security Agency) to unmask the names of Trump campaign staff from intelligence reports and to leak NSA intercepts to the media to hurt Donald Trump politically. This included a leak to the media of an NSA transcript in February 2017 of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s discussion with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak. No one has been prosecuted for this leak.

…It is interesting that the new anti-Trump group says nothing in its mandate about protecting the privacy of Americans from illegal surveillance, preventing the politicization of U.S. intelligence agencies or promoting aggressive intelligence oversight. Maybe this is because the founders plan to abuse U.S. intelligence agencies to spy on Republican lawmakers and candidates if they join a future Democratic administration.

I am sure that the formation of this group is not unrelated to the 2018 and 2020 elections. I also suspect that part of the purpose of this group is to create a positive image of Barack Obama. As the Trump administration continues and the economy and foreign relations improve, it is becoming very obvious that America needed to move in a new direction after eight years of President Obama. I suspect that this group is going to work very hard to undermine President Trump and convince Americans that President Obama’s policies were successful. Good luck.

 

This Is Not A New Idea

On Friday, The Daily Signal posted an article about a proposal before Congress asking taxpayers to make loans to private, union-run pension plans. This is a really bad idea. We have seen what has happened to the college loan program since the government took it over. Just in case you think the idea of the government bailing out union pension plans is far-fetched, I posted an article about this idea in October of 2010.

The article reports:

The Butch Lewis Act—a proposal to bail out private-sector pensions through loans as well as direct cash assistance—acknowledges the high probability of default by stipulating that pension plans that have trouble repaying their loans after 30 years of interest-only payments will be eligible for forgiveness or alternative repayment plans.

A loan with a zero-consequence default option for the borrower is not a loan—it’s a bailout.

But it’s not just defaults that taxpayers need to be concerned about. There’s also the cost of providing highly subsidized, low- or no-interest loans for 15 to 30 years, as well as the risk that plans will increase—rather than decrease—their unfunded liabilities over the course of their loans.

These features could lead to loans to insolvent pension plans costing taxpayers more than direct cash bailouts.

But those costs won’t be apparent in the official government score because the Congressional Budget Office is required to score loans under the assumption that insolvent pension plans are essentially riskless borrowers.

In reality, loans to insolvent pension plans could cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. The most liberal proposals—which supplement loans with direct cash assistance—could cost more than the entirety of multiemployer pensions’ half-trillion-dollar shortfall.

Does anyone really believe that these loans will be paid back? Union membership is down, and various courts are hearing cases that will make the mandatory payment of union dues by non-union members who work in a union shop illegal. Both of these factors will make the union retirement plans (actually a true Ponzi scheme) unsustainable.

The article concludes:

Coping with roughly $500 billion in private union pensions’ unfunded promises will not be easy. There are ways to minimize losses to workers who have earned pension benefits and protect taxpayers from paying for private pensions’ broken promises.

Policymakers should look to improve the solvency of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.’s multiemployer program through premium increases and other reforms; end union pensions’ preferential treatment; enact and enforce sound funding rules; hold pension trustees liable for financial decisions; act sooner rather than later to enact needed reforms, including benefit reductions; and explicitly prohibit federal pension bailouts.

None of these actions provide a costless cure-all, but they offer more fair and rational solutions that don’t treat taxpayers as guarantors of private-sector promises or set the stage for even more mismanagement and reckless behavior.

There is no reason every American should pay for the fact that the unions have not sufficiently funded their retirement plans!

If You Ever Wondered What The Problem Was With Higher Education, This Might Be Your Answer

On Thursday, The Hill reported that on May 25th the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University was going to present Hillary Clinton an award that recognizes individuals who have had a “transformative impact” on society. I assume the award may be conditional based on whether or not she is in jail by then.

The article reports:

“Hillary Clinton’s life and career are an inspiration to people around the world,” Radcliffe Institute Dean Lizabeth Cohen, who teaches American studies at Harvard, said in the press release.

“Whether in Arkansas, Washington, D.C., New York state or traveling around the globe as secretary of State,” Cohen said in the statement. “Secretary Clinton has provided a model of what it takes to transform society, often under scrutiny — tireless effort, toughness amid the political fray, and an enduring capacity to envision a better future.”

The event in May will feature a tribute to Clinton delivered by friend, former secretary of State and fellow Radcliffe medalist Madeleine Albright, according to the release, as well as a conversation between Clinton and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D).

Clinton, who ran unsuccessfully against President Trump in 2016, was the first woman to secure a nomination for president from a major political party in the United States.

In the statement, Radcliffe added that Clinton was a “skilled legislator,” and “an advocate of American leadership to create a world in which states live up to their responsibilities.”

“We commend Secretary Clinton for her accomplishments in the public sphere as a champion for human rights and the welfare of all,” Cohen said.

Yes, Mrs. Clinton was the first woman to run for President. Based on what? She was elected a Senator from New York on the basis of her husband’s popularity. She rigged the Democratic primary election to become the candidate. The jury is still out on the corruption in the Clinton Foundation (although that may come to a head very soon). She obviously mishandled classified information in a way that would have put other people in prison. The list of scandals that has followed the Clintons since the 1990’s is almost endless. And this is the woman Harvard is choosing to honor.

I will admit that Hillary Clinton has been transformative in that she has transformed the meaning of the word ethical.