From My Friends At Power Line Blog:
Monthly Archives: February 2018
A Valid Perspective
Yesterday The Conservative Review posted an article about the two-year budget recently passed by Congress. Although there are two good things about the budget–the fact that it funds the military and the fact that it prevents government shutdowns for the next two years–there are some serious problems with it–mostly overspending. I understand the objection to the overspending (and agree with it), but I wonder if a budget without overspending could have been passed. I suspect with good leadership and good messaging, we could have passed a much more sensible budget.
The article reports:
A travesty occured in the chambers of Congress last night and early this morning. Republicans in Congress exposed themselves as hypocrites and frauds by passing an unconscionable two-year budget deal that will explode this year’s deficit and add $1.5 trillion to the debt. This is a level of spending that is three times larger than government spending in President Obama’s final year in office.
A majority of Republicans in both chambers of Congress voted for the bill, and President Trump signed it Friday morning. Whatever pretense of fiscal conservatism the Republican Party once professed has vanished from all but a few conservatives in Congress.
In the United States Senate, Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., stood in objection to the Republican Party’s fundamental betrayal of conservative principles. He was joined by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah. Paul held up the Senate vote Thursday evening, triggering a short government shutdown in the middle of the night. In a lengthy speech on the Senate floor, Paul criticized his colleagues for assailing government spending under President Obama and then outdoing Obama under President Trump.
“So the reason I’m here tonight is to put people on the spot. I want people to feel uncomfortable,” Paul said on the Senate floor. “I want them to have to answer people at home who said, ‘How come you were against President Obama’s deficits and then how come you’re for Republican deficits?’ Isn’t that the very definition of intellectual dishonesty? If you were against President Obama’s deficits, and now you’re for the Republican deficits, isn’t that the very definition of hypocrisy?”
It is, on both counts. And the liars and the hypocrites are outraged that Sen. Paul would dare expose them as such. Republicans are savaging Sen. Paul in the media. Sen. John Thune, the number three Republican in the Senate, called Paul’s actions “a colossal waste of time.” “He wanted attention and he got attention,” said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla. Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Penn., went so far as to suggest it’s “easy to understand why it’s difficult to be Rand Paul’s next door neighbor.” Dent is referring to the neighbor who assaulted Sen. Paul, breaking several of his ribs and putting him in the hospital. But receiving disgusting comments like that are the norm when you expose the swamp, as Sen. Paul has done.
I would like to mention at this point that I believe John Thune is gearing up for a presidential run. He is not a conservative and will say what he thinks will get him the highest approval ratings.
Voters elected Republicans to shrink government and decrease spending. If Republicans want to be re-elected in the mid-terms, they are certainly not moving in the right direction. The budget that was recently passed is an illustration that there are really only two parties in Washington, and those parties are not the Democrats and the Republicans. One party is the Democrats and what are called mainstream Republicans; the other party is the Republicans who hold to the Republican party platform of smaller government and lower taxes. We need more Republicans who believe in the party platform and fewer Republicans who have chosen to become part of the Washington establishment (swamp).
Some Perspective On The Debt
The 2-year spending bill has passed. The good news is that we will now be able to go two years without the threat of a government shutdown. The bad news is that in order to get the needed military spending and pass the bill, fiscal sanity went out the window. However, when you look at the bigger picture of where we are currently, things are actually getting better.
The Gateway Pundit posted an article today about the Trump Administration and debt increases.
The article included the following:
In spite of the fact that President Trump took over with nearly $20 trillion of debt and the related interest payments on the debt, and in spite of the Federal Reserve (FED) under Janet Yellen increasing interest rates by a full 1 percent since the 2016 election, President Donald Trump’s debt is one third and $1.2 trillion less than Obama’s.
The US Debt since President Trump was inaugurated on January 20th, 2016 through today has increased by only $547 billion. On inauguration day the debt was at $19.9 trillion and on February 7th, 2018 the debt stood at $20.5 trillion.
…Where President Trump increased the Debt to date by only 2.7% , Obama increased the debt by 16.2% or 13.5% more than President Trump.
President Obama inherited a US Debt amount of $10.6 trillion on his inauguration and increased it by more than $1.7 trillion by the end of his first year in office.
…CNBC reported in December 2015 that President Obama oversaw “seven years of the most accommodative monetary policy in U.S. history” (from the Fed). The Fed Funds rate was at zero for most of Obama’s time in office. Finally, in December 2015 the Fed announced its first increase in the Fed Funds rate during the Obama Presidency.
The only Fed Funds Rate increases since 2015 were after President Trump was elected President. The Fed increased the Fed Funds Rate on December 14, 2016, March 15th, 2017, June 14, 2017 and again on December 13, 2017. Four times the Fed has increased rates on President Trump after doing so only once on President Obama late in his 2nd term.
The article explains how the Fed Funds Rate impacts the economy:
Lower interest rates usually spur the economy by making corporate and consumer borrowing easier. Higher interest rates are intended to slow down the economy by making borrowing harder.
If the Federal Reserve was political and wanted to prevent Republican Presidents from successful economic growth and debt decreases, then the Fed would increase the Fed Funds rates during Republican Presidents’ terms while decreasing the Fed Funds rates under Democratic Presidents’ terms. This appears to be exactly what the Fed is doing and the market is reacting negatively this past week because of it..
One of the things to remember during the Trump Administration is that President Trump is truly swimming upstream. There are a lot of vested interests in Washington who feel that the success of President Trump would not be in their best interest. Among other things, shrinking the size of the bureaucracy would have a negative impact on real estate prices in the suburbs surrounding Washington–currently the wealthiest counties in the nation. President Trump is a serious threat to the deep state.
Taxpayer Dollars Used To Fund Terrorism
The following video was posted on YouTube today:
The Iran deal was a mistake. The fact that American diplomatic policy was skewed against Israel, against our European allies, and toward Russia to make that deal happen is a disgrace.
Evidently The Wheels Of Justice Turn Really Slowly
On April 22, 2015, The New York Times posted an article about the Uranium One deal.
The article stated:
Uranium investors’ efforts to buy mining assets in Kazakhstan and the United States led to a takeover bid by a Russian state-owned energy company. The investors gave millions to the Clinton Foundation over the same period, while Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s office was involved with approving the Russian bid.
The article included the following graphic:
Yesterday, according to an article posted at The Hill, Douglas Campbell, an FBI informant, testified to three congressional committees via a written statement.
The Hill reports:
An FBI informant connected to the Uranium One controversy told three congressional committees in a written statement that Moscow routed millions of dollars to America with the expectation it would be used to benefit Bill Clinton‘s charitable efforts while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton quarterbacked a “reset” in U.S.-Russian relations.
The informant, Douglas Campbell, said in the statement obtained by The Hill that he was told by Russian nuclear executives that Moscow had hired the American lobbying firm APCO Worldwide specifically because it was in position to influence the Obama administration, and more specifically Hillary Clinton.
Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems as if Mr. Campbell’s statement simply reiterates what The New York Times told us almost three years ago. The Democrats, of course, will be trying to discredit what Mr. Campbell has said, but again I don’t see how they will have any credibility because of the New York Times article.
The article at The Hill states:
But Campbell said he was gratified when the FBI in 2016 gave him a $50,000 reward check celebrating his undercover work, directly answering Democrats criticisms that federal prosecutors didn’t trust him as a witness.
“My FBI handlers praised my work. They told me on various occasions that details from the undercover probe had been briefed directly to FBI top officials. On two occasions my handlers were particularly excited, claiming that my undercover work had been briefed to President Obama as part of his daily presidential briefing,” he said.
In the end, though, he told lawmakers he remains disturbed that the Obama administration made so many favorable decisions benefiting the Russian nuclear industry when the evidence of wrongdoing and ill intent was so extensive.
“I was frustrated watching the U.S. government make numerous decisions benefiting Rosatom and Tenex while those entities were engaged in serious criminal conduct on U.S. soil,” he wrote. “Tenex and Rosatom were raking in billions of U.S. dollars by signing contracts with American nuclear utility clients at the same time they were indulging in extortion by using threats to get bribes and kickbacks, with a portion going to Russia for high ranking officials.”
He said he never got a satisfactory answer from the FBI.
“I remember one response I got from an agent when I asked how it was possible CFIUS would approve the Uranium One sale when the FBI could prove Rosatom was engaged in criminal conduct. His answer: ‘Ask your politics,’ ” Campbell said.
This is a troubling list of events. It sounds as if even The New York Times was willing to post an article about what was going on. This is another situation where the Clinton Foundation received donations related to matters involving the government at critical times. The events also raise some questions about the FBI–why weren’t they shouting from the rooftops when this was going on? Isn’t their oath to America–not to any one administration?
Caught In A Boldfaced Lie
The problem with the information superhighway is that you can find anyone saying anything at any given time. If you tell the truth all the time, that is not a problem; however, if you say something untrue, what you said can come back to bite you. That just happened to former President Obama.
PJ Media posted an article today about a discrepancy between what President Obama told Chris Wallace and something that appears in one of the emails between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
The article reports:
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released additional Strzok/Page text messages on Wednesday as part of a majority staff report titled “The Clinton Email Scandal And The FBI’s Investigation Of It.
One text causing raised eyebrows today seems to implicate the president: “potus wants to know everything we’re doing,” former FBI lawyer Lisa Page texted to her paramour, then-FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, on Sept. 2, 2016. She said that she had just been in a meeting to discuss “TPs for D” (talking points for the director, i.e. FBI Director James Comey) to brief the president on their investigation.
The rabidly anti-Trump Strzok played a key role in the Clinton email and Russia investigations.
While it’s not clear which investigation Page was referring to in the text, it looks bad for Obama because he had forcefully claimed throughout 2016 that he does not get involved with pending investigations. “FULL STOP.”
Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked him about widespread concerns that the Clinton email case was being handled on political grounds. Obama stressed that there was “a strict line” that he never crossed. “I do not talk to the attorney general about pending investigations. I do not talk to FBI directors about pending investigations,” he insisted.
“I guarantee that there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department or the FBI — not just in this case, but in any case. FULL STOP. PERIOD. Guaranteed. Nobody gets treated differently when it comes to the Justice Department,” he said.
It will be interesting to see what the Democratic spin is on this. Some of the Congressional oversight committees are getting very close to the truth about the government corruption during the Obama Administration. An FBI informer testified before Congress today about the Uranium One scandal. It seems as if the noose is tightening on those involved in corruption in our nation’s capital. Voters need to keep in mind that none of this corruption would have been exposed if Hillary Clinton had been elected President. It would have been buried so deep that no one would ever find it. It is time for the voters to ask themselves what kind of government they want for America. Do they want a government that dispenses justice equally or a government that allows a corrupt cabal of crooks to use their offices for their personal enrichment?
The American Thinker Asks A Very Good Question
On January 29th, The American Thinker posted an article with the following title:
Why aren’t the Democrats horrified by the corruption at the FBI and DOJ?
That is a really good question. When the government bureaucracies can be politicized in one direction, there is nothing to say that they can’t be politicized in another direction. What has happened in our upper levels of government is a threat to all of us.
The article reports:
The public has seen only a fraction of the material that, according to those who have seen it, proves higher-ups at the DOJ and FBI colluded to clear Hillary Clinton of any responsibility for her many crimes. These operatives knew she had ignored all the rules regarding classified material by having her own private server. They likely all knew the Clinton Foundation was nothing but a pay-to-play outfit to enrich the Clintons (only 6% of its funds went to charity). And this bunch still thought she was qualified to be President, this woman with a forty-year history of lying, cheating and scheming!
Are there no essential values among these persons privileged to wield power over the rest of us? In collusion with the Clinton campaign, the DNC, the FBI and DOJ worked together to produce and then use fabricated opposition research to obtain FISA warrants to spy on possibly hundreds of people connected to the Trump family and campaign. They did this to bring him down by any means necessary. As many people have observed, this is the stuff of the former Soviet Union and third-world dictatorships.
The article concludes:
What is so distressing is that no elected Democrat, not one, has expressed shock or concern that these agencies have been so corrupted. Given what we know so far, every member of Congress and every member of the press should be equally horrified. This level of criminality should offend everyone, every citizen and every elected official. But to the left, it’s just another dust-up created by those rascally Republicans. Use our law enforcement agencies to destroy a campaign and/or to bring about the impeachment of a President? “So what” seems to be the attitude on the left. The Constitution be damned.
Among these culprits, who include Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, James Clapper, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Andrew McCabe, James Comey, Rod Rosenstein, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok, there is no honor, no respect for the law, the truth or the American people.
Shouldn’t the Democrats be as angry about this as Republicans? Has their hatred for Trump so impaired their judgment that they have sacrificed their integrity, their respect for ethics and the law? How else to explain their full engagement in the cover-up, fueled by their wholesale denial of the facts?
Once DOJ IG Michael Horowitz’s report is released, and if the FISA memo is made public, much more will be clear to everyone. One has to wonder how the Democrats will recover their lost dignity. Their many months-long defense of the indefensible will have done significant damage to their brand unless Democrat voters are as unscrupulous, as unconcerned about honor and ethics as their elected representatives have proven to be.
Isn’t the lack of integrity in the upper levels of government under the Obama Administration something all Americans should be concerned about?
Complex Scandals Generally Don’t Make Mainstream Media Headlines–Aside From The Politics, They Are Too Hard To Follow
The Conservative Treehouse has been an excellent source to follow the corruption that was rampant in the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation during the Obama Administration. The mainstream media has largely ignored this story partially for political reasons and partially because it is very complex and hard to follow. The mainstream media is simply hoping that the average American voter will ignore the story rather than sort through it. Hopefully they are wrong–many of the actions taken by the FBI and DOJ under the Obama Administration were illegal and should have jail terms attached to them. Whether or not they will remains to be seen.
These are some highlights from The Conservative Treehouse:
Proving, once again, this is a well thought-out strategy, Chuck Grassley’s newest partly declassified version of the Graham-Grassley memo highlights the DOJ didn’t care about Bruce Ohr meeting with Christopher Steele until Inspector General Michael Horowitz found out.
Page #5 of the Grassley Memo (pg. 7 pdf), highlights the FBI interviewed DOJ Deputy Attorney Bruce Ohr on November 22nd, and December 12th, 2016 [FD-302 Interview Notes], yet didn’t take any action about their discoveries until Inspector General Michael Horowitz found out and revealed the interviews on December 7th, 2017.
The article at The Conservative Treehouse includes screen shots and inserts of memos and letters backing up the claims made in the article.
More highlights:
The Devin Nunes HPSCI memo revealed that Fusion-GPS employee Nellie Ohr, was funneling Clinton Opposition research to her husband Bruce Ohr for use by the DOJ in assembling the ‘Clinton-Steele dossier’; as justification to acquire a FISA “Title 1” surveillance warrant; for retroactive surveillance authority against Carter Page and the Trump Campaign.
…Obviously the ‘small group’ within the DOJ and FBI didn’t have any issue with the activity of Bruce and Nellie Ohr during 2016 until IG Horowitz found out and exposed it in 2017.
After a few feeble attempts at brush back pitches… with the release of the lesser redacted memo, Senator Chuck Grassley took a 3-1 pitch and rocked a solid double off the wall, putting him on Second Base and Devin Nunes confidently standing on Third.
With no-one out, and first base open, the Democrats are stressed.
Adam Schiff calls for a pitching change as House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte steps up to the plate.
However, they can’t pitch around Goodlatte because clean-up hitter Horowitz is on deck. Schiff needs to bring the infield in close and hope for a double-play. They’re down to their last pitcher and he doesn’t look good.
In the next few months we are going to find out if the principle of equal justice under the law still applies in America.
Please follow the link at the beginning of this post to read the entire article. It is chilling that this was going on right under the noses of the oversight committee.
What Exactly Are The Democrats Opposing In The Immigration Bill?
Rasmussen Reports posted an article yesterday about the polling they have done regarding a border wall. The poll questions were related to building a border wall and dealing with the ‘dreamers.’
The article reports:
Most voters favor the immigration reform plan detailed by President Trump in his State of the Union speech and think it’s likely to finally produce a secure southern border.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 52% of Likely U.S. Voters favor a proposal that would create a pathway to citizenship for those brought to this country illegally when they were children, build a wall on the Mexican border and change legal immigration to a more merit-based system. Thirty-two percent (32%) oppose a plan with those key elements in it, while 16% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Have the Democrats opposing the proposed immigration bill read these poll numbers? Is there a reason they are going against the will of the majority of voters? Have we reached the point where the Democrats will simply oppose anything President Trump proposes regardless of what the voters want? Somehow I don’t think that is the path to victory in the mid-term elections. The Democrats (with the help of the mainstream media) may be able to convince some voters that the Republicans blocked a pathway to citizenship for the ‘dreamers,’ but there may be enough informed voters that know the truth that will not support their candidates. Stay tuned. If the Democrats can figure out how to turn it to their advantage, we may be in for another government shutdown.
Do We Need A Warning About Warnings?
NBC News posted a story today which included the following:
Some residents along the East Coast received a false tsunami warning on Tuesday morning after a private company sent out an alert following a monthly test by the National Weather Service.
A tweet from the National Weather Service (NWS) in Charleston, South Carolina, said the alert was sent around 8:30 a.m. ET.
“We have been notified that some users received this test message as an actual Tsunami Warning,” the NWS tweeted, adding that a tsunami warning was “not in effect.”
…In a statement to NBC News, the NWS said that a routine test was sent out and that the agency is investigating why it was communicated as an actual tsunami.
“The test message was released by at least one private sector company as an official Tsunami Warning, resulting in widespread reports of tsunami warnings received via phones and other media across the East Coast, Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean. We’re currently looking into why the test message was communicated as an actual tsunami warning, and will provide more information as soon as we have it,” the NWS said.
The agency said their test message “was not disseminated to the public via any communications channels operated by the National Weather Service.”
The push notification sent to phones in South Carolina was reportedly sent by the AccuWeather app, according to The Post and Courier of Charleston.
AccuWeather also tweeted that the notification was a test, not an actual warning.
“The National Weather Service Tsunami Warning this morning was a TEST. No Tsunami warning is in effect for the East Coast of the U.S.,” the tweet said.
It was not immediately clear how many people received the warning.
Similar reports were also made in New York, Boston, Miami and Houston.
It seems as if some of our emergency notification systems need to be looked at and improved.
More To Come
In case you are not yet convinced that there were government connections to the campaign of Hillary Clinton, more evidence has surfaced.
The Washington Examiner is reporting today that there was a second Christopher Steele dossier.
The article reports:
A newly released document from the Senate Judiciary Committee says Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the Trump dossier, wrote an additional memo on the subject of Donald Trump and Russia that was not among those published by BuzzFeed in January 2017.
The newly released document is an unclassified and heavily redacted version of the criminal referral targeting Steele filed on Jan. 4 by Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. It appears to confirm some level of coordination between the extended Clinton circle and the Obama administration in the effort to seek damaging information about then-candidate Trump.
According to the referral, Steele wrote the additional memo based on anti-Trump information that originated with a foreign source. In a convoluted scheme outlined in the referral, the foreign source gave the information to an unnamed associate of Hillary and Bill Clinton, who then gave the information to an unnamed official in the Obama State Department, who then gave the information to Steele. Steele wrote a report based on the information, but the redacted version of the referral does not say what Steele did with the report after that.
The article includes the heavily redacted memo to Rod Rosenstein referring Christopher Steele for potential violation of federal law. As more of this use of the government for political purposes comes to light, one can only hope that there will be a series of jail sentences for those involved.
Losing Perspective
The American Thinker posted an article today with the following headline:
Parents of slain Pizza Hut robber angry that victim used a gun against him
Wow. I am sorry that Michael Grace Jr., son of Temia Hairston and Michael Grace Sr., was shot during an attempted robbery. But the fact remains that he was shot while committing a crime and possibly endangering someone else’s life.
The article reports:
Hairston and Grace Sr. acknowledged that their son was breaking the law by robbing the business, and said they definitely don’t condone what he did.
“It was an act of desperation, but I do not believe that Michael would have hurt anyone,” said Hairston.
That may be true, but the employee had no way of knowing that Michael would not have hurt anyone, and since Michael was committing a robbery, the employee might have been justifiably concerned for his own safety.
Losing a son is a horrible thing for a parent to go through, but getting angry because he was killed committing a crime does not really make sense. It might make more sense to find a way to help in the community in such a way that fewer children think it is okay to commit crimes.
Title I Surveillance Authority
The Conservative Treehouse posted an article yesterday explaining the difference between a regular FISA warrant and Title I Surveillance Authority. Title I Surveillance Authority was the process used against Carter Page. The article explains why that is important.
This is how FISA Title I works:
The article explains:
This is not some innocuous request for metadata exploration – the FBI said American citizen Carter Page was a “foreign agent of a hostile foreign government”; the FBI was calling Carter Page a spy.
…To present a methaphor, under Title I FISA authority, Carter Page was essentially ‘patient zero’ in an Ebola pandemic. Labeling him as a foreign agent allowed the FBI to look at every single person he came in contact with; and every single aspect of their lives and their activities in growing and concentric circles; without limits to current time or historic review.
The “Title I” designation as a foreign agent applied retroactively to any action taken by Mr. Page, and auto-generates an exponential list of other people he came in contact with. Each of those people, groups or organizations could now have their communication reviewed, unmasked and analyzed by the DOJ/FBI with the same surveillance authority granted upon the target, Mr. Page.
….And keep in mind, amid all of this exhaustive FBI surveillance and DOJ national security division digging into every aspect of his life, Mr. Carter Page has never been accused of any crime, wrongdoing, or subsequent criminal conduct.
It appears the entire reason to label Mr. Page as a Title One “foreign agent” was so the DOJ National Security Division and FBI Counterintelligence Division, could use Mr. Page’s short contact with the Trump campaign as an excuse to monitor everyone else within the campaign before, during and after the election. (emphasis mine)
Think about this for a minute. An upstanding citizen was accused of being a foreign agent by using political evidence against him and that evidence was used to spy on him and the people around him (and the permission to spy was renewed more than once).
This is use of government agencies for political purposes. People need to go to jail for this crime. The tactics used to spy on Carter Page could theoretically be used on any American. If this abuse of power is not dealt with quickly and firmly, we can be sure that it will be repeated in the future.
Winners And Losers In The Release Of The Nunes Memo
So far no one has come forward saying that anything in the Nunes memo is untrue. The charges have been that it somehow endangers national security or that it is partisan. There is no evidence of either–in fact it may have done nothing more than expose the partisanship of governmental organizations that are supposed to be non-partisan.
The Washington Times posted an article yesterday indicating its choice for winners and losers in the release of the memo.
The article lists the winners as President Trump, Representative Devin Nunes (author of the memo), the Republicans, and the American people. The American government is not supposed to operate in secrecy except where necessary for national security. National security was not involved in the surveillance of President Trump–politics was.
The losers are listed as James Comey and Andrew McCabe are totally compromised by their actions. They have lost their jobs due to engaging in the political shenanigans of the Obama Administration. Christopher Steele, whose personal feelings about Donald Trump strongly interfered with his integrity is also listed as a loser with the release of the memo. Rod Rosenstein, who signed off on a questionable FISA warrant that began the entire illegal process, is also listed. Lastly, Robert Mueller, whose investigation now appears to be based on a fraudulent dossier and whose role as special prosecutor has become a witch hunt, is named in the article as a loser.
Generally speaking, the losers are the people involved in this scandal who were willing to use their positions in the government (and government agencies) for partisan purposes. It is time for all of the losers listed to find other avenues of employment. It is quite possible that laws were broken and some of them belong in jail, but I am not sure Congress is that committed to justice at this point. It will be interesting to see what the Inspector General recommends.
From my friends at Power Line Blog:
From The Gateway Pundit
Posted today at The Gateway Pundit:
Jarrett also said, “Again, if true, Rosenstein’s action was an illegal abuse of power and he should no longer serve as Deputy Attorney General. He allegedly used threats to try to stop the Intelligence Committee from exposing wrongful behavior in an attempt to cover it up.’
The swamp is deep, and there will be a lot of resistance to cleaning it up. Hopefully there are enough honest people in Washington to get the job done. It is time for some people to be fired and arrested.
An Interesting Twist On Identity Theft
Yesterday The Daily Signal posted an article about $360 a week in unemployment benefits to be paid to Michael Ryder, who according to the records involved worked at a restaurant chain in Detroit, Michigan.
This is a picture of Michael Ryder:
Isn’t he beautiful? However, I doubt that he worked in a chain restaurant in Detroit. Michael is owned by lawyer Michael Haddock.
The article reports:
“I’m not sure what he’s going to do with the money,” Haddock said.
Haddock contacted the unemployment agency and the restaurant to take care of the mistake. A state investigator with the unemployment agency said while Haddock received an initial claim, the system eventually flagged the claim as suspicious.
“Unfortunately, Michael Ryder’s claim will not be allowed. I know firsthand it is rare for ‘man’s best friend’ to contribute financially to the household and that will continue in this instance,” Tim Kolar, state administrator of investigations with the Unemployment Insurance Agency, said.
The agency also warned people of identity fraud, which can occur with unemployment claims.
“It’s important to note that no money was paid out,Upload Files” Talent Investment Agency spokesman Chris DeWitt said. “Criminals get a hold of people’s personal information like name, address, and Social Security numbers and file a false claim. This is a crime. ”
It would be interesting to know if the potential identity thieves had a stolen Social Security number for Michael Ryder.
If This Has Not Already Happened In Your State, It Will Soon
Congress Needs A Babysitter
No wonder the federal deficit is out of control. Yesterday Judicial Watch sent out the following Press Release:
Obamacare Recruiters Get $1.2 Billion Under Proposed Law
A fraud-infested Obamacare “outreach” program will get an astounding $1.2 billion from American taxpayers if legislation introduced by a veteran congresswoman becomes law. The preposterous measure, introduced by California Democrat Maxine Waters a few week ago, aims to recruit customers for the health insurance exchanges set up under Obama’s disastrous healthcare overhaul. The 14-term congresswoman, investigated by the House Ethics Committee for steering federal funds to her husband’s failing Massachusetts bank, crafted the law because the Trump administration slashed Obamacare outreach funding by more than 90%.
“Our health care system is under attack by a president, administration, and Republican-controlled Congress that – after numerous failed attempts to repeal Obamacare – are sabotaging it for political gain,” Waters said in a statement. “My legislation seeks to reverse their vindictive efforts to undermine and de-stabilize our health care system by ensuring that all consumers are provided with the information they need to make timely and well-informed decisions when purchasing health coverage through the federal and state-run marketplaces.” The bill, Affordable Care Act (ACA) Outreach for the Uninsured, Transformative Recruitment, and Enrollment Action for Compassionate Healthcare (ACA OUTREACH) Act, is cosponsored by 36 other lawmakers. If it passes, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would dole out $300 million annually through 2021 for “navigator” grants. Minority and underserved communities would be especially targeted, according to language in the bill’s text.
The Obamacare navigator program was rife with fraud and corruption and Judicial Watch sued HHS back in 2014 to obtain records that the agency refused to provide under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In 2013, the Obama administration gave dozens of leftists organizations a whopping $67 million to help people “navigate” health insurance exchanges that weren’t even fully established. In a “culturally competent manner” the so-called navigators were tasked with helping people shop for and enroll in plans that would eventually be available on the federal government market places. The money was divided between 105 mostly leftist groups that assisted and recruited the uninsured to sign up for coverage and understand their options.
Here are a few examples of the community organizations that received navigator grants from the government; an Arizona nonprofit called “Campesinos Sin Fronteras” that provides services to farm workers and low-income Hispanics; a south Florida legal group that provided navigators in “racially, ethnically, linguistically, culturally and socioeconomically diverse” communities; three Planned Parenthood branches—in Iowa, Montana and New Hampshire—got a combined $655,000 to serve as navigators. Others include; the Arab Community Center in Michigan, which got nearly $300,000 to reach out to and engage uninsured community members through “multicultural” media. A Black Chamber of Commerce in South Carolina received north of $230,000 to “provide outreach around new coverage options” and a Hispanic aging group in Texas got over $646,000 help members that are “socially isolated due to cultural and linguistic differences.”
Some of the navigator money went to a labor front group called Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York headed by an illegal immigrant activist named Maria Marroquin. The group received navigator funds shortly after Marroquin, an illegal alien from Peru, had been arrested for participating in disruptive demonstrations protesting the deportation of fellow undocumented immigrants and demanding amnesty.
Besides the outrage of hiring an illegal immigrant to promote a U.S. government program, it’s equally disturbing to know that navigators have access to the sensitive personal information of healthcare enrollees. This includes Social Security numbers, which can be used for identity theft, a rampant crime among illegal alien populations seeking to establish residency and land jobs in the U.S.
Navigator funds also went to a nonprofit (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), with such a huge history of corruption that Congress issued a federal funding ban. As part of a broader investigation into ACORN Judicial Watch obtained records showing that HHS violated the congressional ACORN funding ban by awarding a Louisiana nonprofit called Southern United Neighborhoods (SUN) a $1.3 million Obamacare navigator grant to recruit customers. Headquartered in New Orleans, SUN is dedicated to combating poverty, discrimination and community deterioration that keep low-income people from taking advantage of their rights and opportunities, according to its website.
This is what Congress is doing with our money.
The Memo Is Released
The long-awaited memo put out by the House Intelligence Committee has been released. The news source you listen to may determine your evaluation of how important the memo is. There is enough nastiness, hand wringing, and shouts of triumph to provide a space for everyone.
John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article about the memo at Power Line. John Hinderaker is a lawyer from Minnesota who operates Power Line Blog. The blog includes a few lawyers as writers and can always be depended upon for logical, clear-headed analysis of any situation.
The article at Power Line reports a few items in the memo:
The FISA warrants that are the subject of the memo all relate to Carter Page. The original warrant was sought on October 21, 2016, and the memo says that there were three renewals, which apparently occur every 90 days. This would appear to take the surveillance well past the presidential election, and beyond President Trump’s inauguration. The memo does not explain this aspect of the timing. The FISA applications were signed by some familiar names: James Comey signed three, and Andrew McCabe, Sally Yates and Rod Rosenstein all signed one or more.
The fake “dossier” compiled by Christopher Steele with the assistance of unknown Russians “formed an essential part of the Carter Page FISA application. In fact, McCabe testified before the committee that no FISA warrant would have been sought without the fake dossier. Steele was paid over $160,000 by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign to come up with derogatory information–true or false, apparently–on Donald Trump.
DOJ and FBI failed to mention in their FISA application that it was based on opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC, even though this apparently was known to the FBI. The application apparently tried to mislead the FISA court by saying that Steele “was working for a named U.S. person”–the memo doesn’t tell us who that person was–but not disclosing Fusion GPS or Glenn Simpson, let alone Hillary Clinton and the DNC. This appears to be a deliberate deception of the court.
In addition to Steele’s fake dossier, the FISA application cited an article about Carter Page that appeared on Yahoo News. The application “assessed” that this corroborating account did not originate with Christopher Steele. In fact, it did: Steele himself leaked the information to Yahoo News.
The memo casually notes that “the FBI had separately authorized payment to Steele for the same information.” This is news to me. It has been reported that Steele sought funding from the FBI, but I believe prior reports have been to the effect that the Bureau refused. Was the FBI paying Steele, known to be working for the Hillary Clinton campaign?
Please follow the link to the article at Power Line to read the rest of the highlights.
So what does this mean?
This is the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution:
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The FISA act establishes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and collection of “foreign intelligence information” between “foreign powers” and “agents of foreign powers” suspected of espionage or terrorism.
The FISA act states:
Approval of a FISA application requires the court find probable cause that the target of the surveillance be a “foreign power” or an “agent of a foreign power”, and that the places at which surveillance is requested is used or will be used by that foreign power or its agent. In addition, the court must find that the proposed surveillance meet certain “minimization requirements” for information pertaining to U.S. persons. Depending on the type of surveillance, approved orders or extensions of orders may be active for 90 days, 120 days, or a year.
It is becoming very obvious that the FISA applications were being used for political purposes. This is the kind of thing that goes on in a police state. All the people who knowingly engaged in this activity violated their Oath of Office to act in accordance with the U.S. Constitution. Everyone involved needs to be charged with a crime appropriate to their level of involvement. The decisions made from this point forward will determine whether we are a nation of equal justice under the law or we have become a nation where the powerful are exempt from the law.