There Seems To Be A Lack Of Transparency

On Sunday, Jonathan Turley posted an article at The New York Post with the following headline:

Forget classified docs, show us the real haul of Biden’s records in Delaware

What an interesting idea.

The article reports:

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has repeatedly assured the public that President Biden is committed in the classified document scandal to move forward in “a very transparent way.” Putting aside the refusal to share any information beyond a desire to be fully transparent, Biden has one major test awaiting him on his pledge: his senatorial records.

There has been much discussion of a classified document being found in his personal library in Wilmington, but there is a huge library of Biden documents sitting in the University of Delaware. The university is sitting on Biden documents due to a cynical 2012 arrangement made by Biden when he was vice president and contemplating a run for the presidency.

The president effectively locked away his records by giving them to the university, which has claimed for a decade that it is still working to organize and catalog the documents. He has refused to allow the public or the press to see the documents. With the recent reports that Biden may have included classified information in notebooks found at his residence, the status of the University of Delaware documents is becoming more and more untenable for the White House.

The article concludes:

Biden has yet to come up with a plausible reason why he is using the University of Delaware to prevent review of the documents. Indeed, the University of Delaware continues to expend public funds by making technical arguments against access while ignoring questions about the use of an academic institution to shield potentially embarrassing records.

Of course, the FBI does not need permission. It has ample reason to demand access in light of the president’s serial violations. Indeed, past discoveries form a perfect overlaid map of where the president has lived or worked in the past decade. Yet although there is new interest in searching his other residence, there has been little discussion of the largest trove of documents sitting in the bowels of the University of Delaware.

Presumably, this is one question that Jean-Pierre could actually answer. If the president is truly striving to be “very transparent,” he should be able to tell the University of Delaware that his records should be open to outside review. Otherwise, Biden’s pledge is nothing but transparently dishonest.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It’s time the documents at the University of Delaware were released.

Protecting Children As They Approach Adulthood

On Monday, Townhall reported that Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) has signed a bill prohibiting minors from receiving “gender-affirming” health care, which includes hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and sex reassignment surgery. As I have stated before, what someone does after they are eighteen and out of school is not my business, but I can do my part in trying to protect children and teenagers from doing really stupid things.

The article reports:

statement from Cox’s office said that the legislation came about as many countries and states have scaled back gender-transition health care for this age group due to the lack of data surrounding its long-term effects. 

“While we understand our words will be of little comfort to those who disagree with us, we sincerely hope that we can treat our transgender families with more love and respect as we work to better understand the science and consequences behind these procedures.

England’s National Health Service, for example, warned late last year that children who believe they are transgender could be experiencing a “transient phase,” which Townhall covered. This came after the NHS announced it would shutter the country’s only dedicated gender clinic for children. 

The bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Michael Kennedy, a Republican, is a family physician. In a meeting with the state’s Health and Human Services Committee, he said that gender-transition care for this age group is “radical and dangerous.” 

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It tells the story of one young lady who transitioned to male beginning at age 9. She now regrets her decision and is encouraging all states to make sure people are mature enough to be thinking clearly when they make a decision to transition.

There Are Some Downsides To Electric Vehicles

Electric vehicles have a few glitches that have not yet been worked out. The batteries rapidly lose their charge in cold weather, and drivers need to be cautious driving through flooded ares after rainstorms. However, there have also been a few instances of the vehicles catching fire for no obvious reason.

On Sunday, The U.K. Daily Mail reported the following:

Firefighters used 6,000 gallons of water to extinguish a Tesla Model S that spontaneously burst into flames on a busy highway outside of Sacramento on Saturday. 

The driver, who was not injured, was on Highway 50 in Rancho Cordova at around 3pm when smoke started to come out from the front of the car. 

…The horrific blaze wasn’t the first Tesla S fire that Metro Fire of Sacramento officials had to extinguish. 

A white Tesla model burst into flames in a Rancho Cordova wrecking yard in June after the car had spent weeks sitting there after a collision.

Firefighters arrived at the wrecking yard to find the Tesla fully engulfed in flames. Each time the firefighters attempted to extinguish the flames, the Tesla’s battery would reignite the fire.

The fire department posted an Instagram video of the ordeal, saying that even when firefighters moved the Tesla onto its side to spray the battery directly, the car would burst into flames again ‘due to the residual heat.’

Eventually, the firefighters dug a pit near the Tesla and moved the burning car into it and then filled the pit with water, ‘effectively submerging the battery compartment.’

The technique worked, and the fire department was able to put out the fire with no injuries and 4,500 gallons of water used – about the same amount of water used for a building fire.

As I have previously stated–green energy is not entirely ready for prime time. We have a lot to learn before we leave our fossil-fuel-based economy.

Investigating Government Policies On Covid-19

I seriously doubt that there was a perfect solution for handling Covid-19 when it appeared in 2020. However, I also wonder if the government actually got anything rights. An investigation into the government’s handling of the pandemic would be very useful in developing a template for handling future pandemics.

On January 19th, The Daily Signal posted a checklist for the House of Representatives committee that is investigating the government’s handling of the pandemic.

The article notes:

After three years, and more than 1 million deaths in the U.S. associated with COVID-19, a comprehensive, sober, and detailed investigation into the federal government’s response is a necessary precondition for restoring Americans’ trust in federal public health agencies.

Specifically, that includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Office of the Secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services.  

A Heritage Foundation analysis of the federal public health performance identified 13 pandemic-related topics that deserve detailed congressional inquiry. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

Here are some of the things that need to be investigated:

  • Why did the CDC, despite statutory requirements dating back to 2006, fail to modernize and upgrade its systems of data collection and dissemination? Dr. Deborah Birx, former coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force under Trump, has already told Congress that “the No.1 public health issue in the United States today is that there is no comprehensive database or integration of data from laboratories, public health institutions, and clinics.”  
  • Why did federal public health authorities send out confusing messaging on the value of masks and mask mandates? Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the CDC and then-Surgeon General Jerome Adams initially insisted, very publicly and sometimes vehemently, that masking was unnecessary or ineffective. Previous studies on masking indeed failed to provide strong support for cloth masking, let alone mask mandates. Between February and April 2020, however, top federal officials did a U-turn, and insisted on the value of a masking policy that they previously opposed. What was the new scientific evidence, then available in the professional literature, for such a dramatic policy reversal in that brief period? Congress should find out.
  • Why did federal officials attempt to impose a set of unprecedented vaccine mandates on tens of millions of Americans without weighing the risks and benefits of vaccination for different cohorts of the population, based on age, the acquisition of natural immunity, or an underlying vulnerability to the virus?  Young and healthy persons faced little danger of severe illness or death from COVID-19. Robust findings in the professional literature demonstrated the strength of natural immunity. Recent research on vaccine boosters for young adults concludes that potential harms outweigh the benefits of the vaccination.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. America is supposed to be a representative republic–our elected officials are supposed to represent us and answer to us–it’s time they did.

Fact Checking President Biden’s Recent Speech

On Sunday, Townhall posted a fact check on President Biden’s recent speech on the economy.

The article reports:

As Biden’s speech kicked off, he claimed that an additional 700,000 construction projects were added across the U.S., however, he largely exaggerated that number. 

The White House issued a correction in the transcript of Biden’s speech saying that only 7,000 construction projects have been created. 

The second false claim Biden made was saying that the cap on senior’s drug spending is in effect now, as of January 1 there is a limit of $2,000 a year on prescription drug costs for seniors.

In reality, the $2,000 annual cap which was in the Democrat’s Inflation Reduction Act that Biden signed last year, won’t take effect for another two years. 

Biden also took credit for millions of people receiving Covid-19 during his time in office, however, former President Trump initiated the rollout of people getting the jab.

In his speech, Biden said that only “3.5 million people” had been fully vaccinated against Covid under Trump, however, 19 million people had already received the first shot before Biden took office. 

The 3.5 million Biden cited was the number of people who had received two shots to complete their primary vaccination series. 

The article concludes:

“My word as a Biden: I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s future than I am today,” the president tweeted on Sunday. 

However, Twitter users felt the exact opposite. 

Rapid Response Director for the RNC Tommy Pigott criticized Biden for misleading the U.S.

“The border is open, real wages are down, energy costs are outrageously high, the Taliban controls Afghanistan, & the cartels are making billions smuggling fentanyl,” Pigott tweeted, adding “there is reason to be “optimistic” though – we have a [House GOP] majority who is working to hold Biden accountable.”

Another user called Biden’s word an absolute “lie,” while another said that “My word as a Biden” is like saying my word as a “Clinton”— meaningless. 

It will be interesting to see if any of the mainstream media does any fact-checking on the speech. The media seems to be participating in the effort to make sure President Biden does not run again in 2024, so it should be interesting to see if any of this is reported in the mainstream media.

Where Do The Parts For Green Energy Come From?

On Sunday, Breitbart reported that Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives want to reverse President Biden’s tariff waivers for suspected Chinese companies that are reportedly funneling their solar panels through other countries to evade United States trade rules.

The article notes:

In June 2022, Biden announced a 24-month tariff moratorium on solar panel imports from Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Commerce Department officials suspect that the solar panels are actually made in China or by Chinese companies but have been routed through the four southeast Asian nations to evade tariffs.

The tariff moratorium came even as Biden’s Commerce Department found that BYD Hong Kong rerouted its production through Cambodia, Canadian Solar and Trina through Thailand, and Vina Solar through Vietnam to specifically evade U.S. tariffs on China-made solar panels.

Already, about 80 percent of solar panels installed in the U.S. are made in China or by Chinese companies.

The article concludes:

Those massive job losses have coincided with a booming U.S.-China trade deficit. In 1985, before China entered the WTO, the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled $6 billion. In 2019, the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled more than $345 billion.

While skyrocketing U.S. trade deficits have led to devastation across America’s working and middle-class communities over the last two decades, tariffs would be a boon for reshoring jobs and boosting wages, studies show.

A recent study from economists at the Coalition for a Prosperous America, for instance, finds that tariffs on nearly all foreign imports would create about 10 million American jobs while boosting domestic output.

I have very mixed emotions on tariffs. I will concede that tariffs are probably needed on the large amount of Chinese goods that make their way into America. However, looking at history, we can’t ignore the impact of The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which raised the United States’s already high tariff rates. That tariff contributed to the early loss of confidence on Wall Street and signaled U.S. isolationism. By raising the average tariff by some 20 percent, it also prompted retaliation from foreign governments, and many overseas banks began to fail. It planted the seeds for the Great Depression. The world’s economy is not in a really good place right now, and we need to consider carefully the impact of any tariff we pass.

Sometimes The Only Way To Deal With Washington Is To Laugh

Don Surber is a retired newspaperman. He writes columns at Substack. Recently he wrote one about the wit and wisdom of Louisiana Senator John Kennedy.

Here are a few excerpts:

Early in his days in the Senate, the Republican John Kennedy said, “This is Washington, D.C. Politics is in everybody’s blood, kind of like herpes.”

…At a hearing on October 9, 2017, he said something that shocked the Advocate, Louisiana’s biggest newspaper.

It reported, “During a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing last week, members of Congress expressed bewilderment that credit reporting company Equifax, under siege after a data breach affecting more than 145 million people, has received a $7.25 million contract with the IRS to validate the identity of taxpayers communicating with the agency on the telephone or through its website.”

At the hearing, Kennedy said to former Equifax CEO Richard Smith of that contract, “You realize, to many Americans right now, that looks like we’re giving Lindsay Lohan the keys to the mini-bar.”

…Six days earlier, he questioned Wells Fargo CEO Timothy Sloan about the bank’s creation of 3.5 million unauthorized deposit accounts and more than 500,000 unauthorized credit card applications.

Kennedy said, “I am certainly not anti-business. You can’t be for jobs if you are against business. What I am curious about is what in God’s name were you thinking? I am not against big business. With all due respect, I am against dumb.”

…On June 9, 2022, he told Fox, “In my state, the price of gas is so high that it would be cheaper to buy cocaine and just run everywhere.”

…“Just because you’ve seen My Cousin Vinny doesn’t qualify you to be a federal judge.”

…Kennedy told Neil Gorsuch when his nomination came up, “I guess what I want is a cross between Socrates and Dirty Harry, and I believe you just might be that person.”

He told Brett Kavanaugh, “I want someone who is willing to protect the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights and understands that the Bill of Rights is not an a la carte menu.”

The article notes that Senator Kennedy is not uneducated:

He plays the blunt good old boy so well, he could have been Buford T. Justice in Smokey and the Bandit, but without the swearing. He also graduated from Vanderbilt, got a University of Virginia law degree and was educated at Oxford. Good old boys ain’t dumb, as Northerners who underestimate them learn over and over again.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Senator Kennedy definitely knows how to disarm his opponents with a smile.

What Were They Thinking?

On of the problems that the Biden administration has created is the fact that the Mexican cartels currently control our southern border. You pay a fee to get past them and into America. Sometimes that fee involves being sold as a sex slave. This is not a system we should be supporting. However…

On Friday, The Conservative Treehouse reported the following:

This is a jaw-dropping story breaking today.  According to an email sent by Mount Pleasant High School in Rhode Island, it looks like the school administration is seeking contributions from faculty and staff to pay a Mexican “coyote” who trafficked a student into the country.   [SOURCE]

The article continues:

Everything associated with this request for teachers, administrators and staff of the school to participate in gathering funds to pay for an illegal human trafficking operation, is itself illegal.  It is just, well, unfathomable that Asst. Principal Stefani Harvey would openly make such a request.  Local, state and federal law enforcement should immediately be contacted to investigate.

According to the Twitter Account of Nicole Solas [See Here] the school subsequently retracted the fundraising effort, likely after recognizing what was actually at stake.

According to Mrs. Solas, the principal of the school, Tiffany Delaney, sent a follow-up email saying, “the nature of the request is not appropriate.”

Please follow the link above to read the rest of the article.

Why The Two-State Solution Is A Fallacy

As I have stated in a previous article:  When Israel became a nation in May 1948, it was promptly invaded by all of its Arab neighbors. Israel was not able to maintain control of the entire city of Jerusalem, and part of the city fell into Arab hands and was controlled by Jordan. From 1948-1967 Jews were denied access to their holy sites by the Jordanians. In 1967, when Israel regained control of the entire city of Jerusalem, Christians, Jews, and Muslims were all given access to their holy sites. That is one illustration of the difference in the way Jews treat Arabs and the way Arabs treat Jews.

That article included the following picture of a Palestinian kindergarten class:

These children are being trained to grow up and be martyrs and drive Israel into the sea.

On Saturday, The Daily Caller reported:

An Israeli father and son were both critically injured after a 13-year-old Palestinian boy allegedly shot them in Jerusalem Saturday, one day after an attack on a synagogue killed seven. 

The father and son, ages 47 and 23 respectively, were reportedly shot in the historic district of the city by a 13-year old boy who was himself overpowered and shot by two armed passers-by who witnessed the incident, according to the Associated Press.

Police quickly swarmed the area and escorted the wounded teen away from the scene on a stretcher and transported him to a hospital where he is currently being detained, the outlet reported.

The boy who did the shooting was 13. If you would like to understand how a child terrorist is trained, I would suggest reading THE BLOOD OF LAMBS by Kamal Saleem. Mr. Saleem came to America as a terrorist and is now a Christian sharing how his life was dramatically changed by caring Christians in Tennessee. Mr. Saleem was trained as a child terrorist and actually sent on a suicide mission as a child. He also met Yasser Arafat as a child. The only hope for peace in the Middle East is people like Mr. Saleem who trade their terrorism for peace.

 

Have The Republicans Learned To Play Hardball?

On Thursday, The Epoch Times posted an article about the oversight efforts of the Republicans in the House of Representatives. The Republicans are getting very little help from the Justice Department in their investigations. In fact, you might even say that they are being stonewalled.

The article reports:

Anger and frustration were the feelings expressed by bipartisan members of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Jan. 25 over a lack of access to the classified documents found in the homes of President Joe Biden, former President Trump, and former Vice President Mike Pence.

Speaking with reporters at the Capitol after a classified briefing with National Intelligence Director Avril Haines, Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Vice Chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) asserted that the Biden administration had been blocking their oversight efforts.

“It is our responsibility to make sure that we, in the role of the intelligence oversight, know if there’s been any intelligence compromised,” Warner noted.

Members of Congress have sought access to the materials—or at least a risk assessment detailing the information they contained—since the discovery of documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last summer. But they say the administration has objected, arguing they can’t provide that access as two special counsels at the Justice Department (DOJ) are investigating Trump and Biden’s mishandlings of the documents.

Rubio, however, said the administration’s position was “untenable,” noting, “The information we’re asking for has no bearing whatsoever or would interfere in no way with a criminal investigation.”

It also defies precedent, the senators argued, as during the DOJ’s Russia investigation, committees were given access to the classified materials that were part of then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.

Warner, noting that there was broad agreement among the committee members on the matter, added, “Literally every member of the committee, without exception, said this won’t stand.”

On Friday, Townhall reported:

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said he and other Republicans will block presidential nominees until members of the Intelligence Committee are shown the classified material found at former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence as well as President Biden’s home and office.

Please follow the links and read both articles for further details. The thing to be aware of is that the desire to see the documents is bi-partisan. I believe that we are looking at Democrats wanting to prevent President Biden from running in 2024. If you watch carefully, you will see leading Democrats quietly removing their support of the President as the major media begins to report his scandals and missteps.

 

The Death Of The Fourth Estate

On Thursday, Just the News posted an article about the American government’s latest efforts to muffle the free speech of any American who does not agree with the aims of the government.

The article reports:

The government’s campaign to fight “misinformation” has expanded to adapt military-grade artificial intelligence once used to silence the Islamic State (ISIS) to quickly identify and censor American dissent on issues like vaccine safety and election integrity, according to grant documents and cyber experts.

Some of us have real questions as to what constitutes “misinformation.” Vaccine safety is an issue for those who have been impacted by the side effects of the Covid vaccine. There are an awful lot of people under the age of 40 experiencing sudden (and sometimes fatal) heart problems. Dissent is part of what made America great, and it should not be discouraged. I am all for protests–I am not for riots, and I think it’s time the media learned the difference.

The article continues:

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded several million dollars in grants recently to universities and private firms to develop tools eerily similar to those developed in 2011 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in its Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC) program.

DARPA said those tools were used “to help identify misinformation or deception campaigns and counter them with truthful information,” beginning with the Arab Spring uprisings in the the Middle East that spawned ISIS over a decade ago. 

The initial idea was to track dissidents who were interested in toppling U.S.-friendly regimes or to follow any potentially radical threats by examining political posts on Big Tech platforms. 

DARPA set four specific goals for the program:

    1. Detect, classify, measure and track the (a) formation, development and spread of ideas and concepts (memes), and (b) purposeful or deceptive messaging and misinformation.
    2. Recognize persuasion campaign structures and influence operations across social media sites and communities.
    3. Identify participants and intent, and measure effects of persuasion campaigns.
    4. Counter messaging of detected adversary influence operations.

This sounds like something that belongs in a dictatorship–not a republic.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is frightening. There is nothing in our Constitution that allows this sort of interference with the free thinking of the American people.

Good News For Covid Patients In California

On Thursday, Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air about a recent ruling by US District Court Judge William Shubb on enforcement of AB 2098.

The article reports:

Can the state of California enforce its own idea of “scientific consensus” on doctors who treat patients for COVID-19? Not after last night, when US District Court Judge William Shubb slapped an injunction on enforcement of AB 2098. This undoubtedly sets up a showdown at the Ninth Circuit, but for the moment the gag rule on doctors has been shut down.

After reading Shubb’s opinion about how badly the state legislature crafted the law, however, Gavin Newsom might want to think twice about further exposure. In the first place, the law forces doctors to only convey the “scientific consensus” on COVID-19 rather than their own judgment, when no one — not the legislature or its attorneys — can provide a definition of that term in relation to COVID-19:

…Shubb agrees with the plaintiffs in this action, noting that the “scientific consensus” regarding a novel virus only under study for three years is at best an aspirational concept. In practice, as Shubb notes, the “consensus” — as defined by California’s reliance on public-health officials — has changed repeatedly in that time. That puts every doctor at risk for prosecution in California no matter what they might say in any given moment, a standard so unreliable as to practically embody the terms “arbitrary” and “capricious”:

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. Physicians know their patients better than the government. A physician is much more able to look at a patient, understand the degree of risk that person will have in dealing with Covid. There doesn’t seem to be logic in the way different people react to Covid, and doctors should be allowed to do what they think is best for their patients. For example, the doctors at Frontline Doctors had a very high success rate in treating Covid patients, yet the government did everything possible to silence them and to prevent them from successfully treating patients.

Hopefully this case is the beginning of patients and doctors reclaiming the rights of Americans to good medical care.

Another Blow To Free Speech

On Thursday, BizPacReview reported that AT&T has removed NewsMax from  AT&T’s DirecTV, DirecTV Stream, and U-Verse. Roughly a year ago, they removed One America News. It is becoming apparent that if you want to watch news that is less biased than the mainstream, you need a Roku.

The article reports:

At the stroke of midnight on Tuesday, more than 13 million customers of AT&T’s DirecTV, DirecTV Stream, and U-Verse were no longer able to tune into Newsmax, marking the second time in a year that AT&T has canceled a conservative news channel.

…Reports Newsmax:

Despite Newsmax being the 4th highest-rated cable news channel in the nation, a top 20 cable news channel overall, and watched by 25 million Americans on cable alone, according to Nielsen, DirecTV said it was taking the step as a “cost-cutting” measure and would never pay Newsmax a cable license fee.

DirecTV pays cable license fees to all top 75 cable channels and to all 22 liberal news and information channels it carries. Almost all of these channels are paid hefty license fees significantly more than Newsmax was seeking — and despite the fact that most of the channels have much lower ratings than Newsmax.

The article notes:

DirecTV has a different take on the dispute.

In a statement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, a spokesperson for the service said, “On multiple occasions, we made it clear to Newsmax that we wanted to continue to offer the network, but ultimately Newsmax’s demands for rate increases would have led to significantly higher costs that we would have to pass on to our broad customer base.”

“Anyone, including our customers, can watch the network for free via NewsmaxTV.com, YouTube.com and on multiple streaming platforms like Amazon Fire TV, Roku and Google Play,” the statement continues. “We continually evaluate the most relevant programming to provide our customers and expect to fill this available channel with new content.”

That was the same line they used with One America News. It was a lie then, and it is a lie now. This is censorship, and Americans who want to know what is actually happening in the world are going to have to be a little creative in acquiring valid news sources.

Just a note, a friend of mine who has DirectTV told me that when she called the company to complain about NewsMax being dropped she was told that NewsMax would still be reinstated. Her comment was that she would give them a month. If NewsMax is not back on the network by then, she will find another cable provider.

We Need To Hire Congress As Our Stockbrokers

On Wednesday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about some of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s stock trades. It seems that Nancy and Paul Pelosi sold up to $3 million in Google stocks just before Congress began an antitrust probe of the company.

The article reports:

Paul Pelosi sold 30,000 shares of Google from Dec. 20 to Dec. 28, according to a financial disclosure filing the former House speaker submitted to the House Ethics Committee. The Pelosis made an undisclosed profit from the investments, according to the filing.

The trade proved timely. On Monday, the Justice Department and attorneys general from eight states—including California—sued Google over its monopoly on the digital ad market. The lawsuit could force Google to break up its online ad business, which generated nearly $55 billion in revenue for the company in the most recent quarter. Google’s stock has dropped around 6 percent since the Justice Department announced the lawsuit.

The trades are the latest in a string of questionable transactions for Paul and Nancy.

They saved roughly $600,000 in June by selling shares of microchip maker Nvidia weeks before the U.S. government placed restrictions on the company’s business in China and Russia. The Pelosis have seen their fortune grow $140 million since 2008, thanks largely to Paul Pelosi’s stock trades, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis.

The article notes:

Pelosi’s stock market charades have sparked calls for tougher regulations on members of Congress cashing in on their positions of power.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) on Tuesday introduced the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments Act—the PELOSI Act—to prohibit members of Congress and their spouses from owning or trading individual stocks.

I don’t have a problem with members of Congress owning stocks, I just have a problem with them trading stocks related to forthcoming legislation of investigations. Even blind trusts are not as blind as they should be.

Penalizing One Group Of People To Save Money For Another

There is a housing crisis in America. Housing prices have skyrocketed (although they have come down slightly and the real estate market has cooled as interest rates have increased). Rents are going up and inflation is making it difficult for people to pay their rents. This will eventually work itself out, but unfortunately, the government is planning to get involved.

On Wednesday, Hot Air posted the following headline, “First step towards national rent control? Biden admin to mandate “fairness”” Government “fairness” has a way of not being fair.

The article reports:

If you’ve been renting, especially a single-family house vice an apartment, you’ve been on pins and needles the entire time, not knowing if it would be sold out from under you if the owner decides to cash in on good times, vice continues to deal with tenants. Almost every aspect has been fraught with anxiety for all concerned.

A good portion of this is attributable to measures taken (with questionable authority) by the Centers for Disease Control. In an unprecedented order on 1 September 2020, the CDC brought an immediate – and “temporary” – halt in residential evictions to “prevent the further spread of COVID-19.” Congress and then the Biden administration extended that order through various incarnations for another year, claiming a surge in Delta variant infections justified it.

What is being overlooked here is that fact that even if t he renter cannot affort to pay his rent, the homeowner is still required to pay his mortgage.The renter may not be evicted, but the owner is in danger of foreclosure.

The article concludes:

Also, please note – there’s nothing about independent landlord protections. Who is going to want to rent their home to anyone and face not getting paid with the government’s stamp of approval? Here people were, hoping for rents to start easing off some and housing to open back up. ‘Tis to laugh.

The government’s going to sanction both non-payment of rent and pay for the scofflaw’s lawyers? As the landlord is also a taxpayer, you could look at it that he’s getting shafted twice in this deal.

Well, hello. There’s another house sold to Blackrock for cash.

We need to look at any government interference against the free market as an attack on our freedom and treat it as such.

Putting An End To Urban Myths

Every time that someone suggests a change in our voting laws that might make voter fraud more difficult, a group of people on the political left yell, “voter suppression.” One example was the Georgia law that was actually less restrictive than the voting laws in Delaware. No matter, the baseball all star game got moved.

On Tuesday, PJ Media posted an article headlined, “What Would Happen if They Held a Voter Suppression Election and No Voters Got Suppressed?” We now have the answer to that question.

The article reports:

Last January, Joe Biden set the Democratic base ablaze with the incendiary charge that Republicans were suppressing the votes of minorities.

“Jim Crow 2.0 is about two insidious things: voter suppression and election subversion,” Biden told a crowd at Atlanta University. “It’s no longer about who gets to vote; it’s about making it harder to vote. It’s about who gets to count the vote and whether your vote counts at all.”

“It’s not hyperbole; this is a fact.”

At the time, it was a supposition, not a fact, to claim that the Republican election reforms would suppress the black vote. And as it turns out, it certainly was hyperbole. It was a supposition that was so pervasive that it forced Major League Baseball to cancel its all-star game set for Atlanta later that summer. And numerous corporations punished the state for its supposed efforts to suppress the vote.

So where does Georgia go for an apology?

The article ends with a bogus claim by Stacey Abrams:

“In 2018, we had record turnout,” Abrams said in a press conference Monday. “We had record turnout that shattered records for Democrats among communities of color and in that same election … we know that 85,000 Georgians were denied their right to vote due to voter suppression tactics that shut down their precincts. We know that 50,000 voters had their right to vote held hostage by the exact match process which was proven to be voter suppression tactics. We know that thousands of people stood in lines for hours because of voter suppression tactics.”

None of that is true, or it’s grossly exaggerated.

If there was record turnout, how was there voter suppression?

Get Out The Popcorn

In 2021 Marjorie Taylor Greene was removed from her committee assignments, an unprecedented step to discipline a member over past incendiary remarks. The vote was mostly along party lines. Incendiary remarks made by other Congressmen were conveniently ignored and no penalty paid. During his campaign for Speaker, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy promised to strip Democratic Representatives Ilhan Omar, Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell of their committee assignments. Obviously the Democrats are not planning to let this happen (unlike their Republican counterparts who have  no idea how to fight),

On Monday, Townhall reported the following:

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has officially selected Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA) to the House Intelligence Committee. This is despite Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) promises he would not let that happen, setting up quite the likely showdown between the two party leaders. Earlier this afternoon, Rep. Schiff responded over Twitter, with just the kind of response you’d expect. 

The article includes screenshots of Representative Schiff and Representative Swalwell thanking Representative Jeffries for the nominations. The ball is now in Speaker McCarthy’s court. We are now going to see if he is willing to keep the promises he made. We are also going to see if it is worth it to elect Republicans.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE:  According to an article at Red State yesterday, Speaker McCarthy is standing his ground.

 

Taxing People Who Don’t Live There Anymore

Margaret Thatcher famously said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” We are seeing that principle currently illustrated in the formerly great State of California.

On Monday, Fox News reported the following:

California lawmakers are pushing legislation that would impose a new tax on the state’s wealthiest residents — even if they’ve already moved to another part of the country.

Assemblyman Alex Lee, a progressive Democrat, last week introduced a bill in the California State Legislature that would impose an extra annual 1.5% tax on those with a “worldwide net worth” above $1 billion, starting as early as January 2024.

As early as 2026, the threshold for being taxed would drop: those with a worldwide net worth exceeding $50 million would be hit with a 1% annual tax on wealth, while billionaires would still be taxed 1.5%.

…The current version just introduced includes measures to allow California to impose wealth taxes on residents even years after they left the state and moved elsewhere.

Exit taxes aren’t new in California. But this bill also includes provisions to create contractual claims tied to the assets of a wealthy taxpayer who doesn’t have the cash to pay their annual wealth tax bill because most of their assets aren’t easily turned into cash. This claim would require the taxpayer to make annual filings with California’s Franchise Tax Board and eventually pay the wealth taxes owed, even if they’ve moved to another state.

The article includes a wonderful quote:

“A wealth tax could be particularly destructive in California, home to so many tech startups, because the owners of promising businesses could be taxed on hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of estimated business value that never actually materializes,” said Walczak (Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at Tax Foundation). “Very few taxpayers would remit wealth taxes, but many taxpayers would pay the price. The only people who should genuinely love a California wealth tax are the ones who work in Texas’ economic development office.”

This is another really bad idea to come out of the State of California. I believe we fought a war to end ‘taxation without representation.’ If people no longer live in the state, they no longer vote in the state and are therefore not represented.

The Consequences Of An Open Border

On Tuesday, Issues & Insights posted an article about a consequence of our open southern border that is not widely reported.

The article reports:

In a data dump Friday, the Biden administration announced that more than a quarter million people crossed the border illegally in December – the highest ever recorded. The timing of this release was designed to bury the news, not that it mattered, since the mainstream media have ignored the growing border crisis with fierce determination. 

But that’s not the worst of it. Border deaths also reached all-time highs. That news is so bad, the “most transparent administration in history” tried to keep it hidden altogether, coughing it up only in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. When that data did come out … crickets.

This silence is particularly galling, given that the left was screaming bloody murder about border deaths during the Trump administration.

The publicly released news showed that Border Patrol agents stopped 251,487 illegal crossers in December. That’s a 7% increase from November, a 40% increase from the year before, and a 240% increase from December 2020.

But that’s only part of the story.

The article continues:

A better description is an invasion, one aided and abetted by the Biden administration, the Democratic party, and the legacy media that has covered it up.

It’s also a deadly one to the migrants themselves.

Over the last fiscal year, 880 immigrants died trying to get into the U.S. That is the highest number of deaths since data became available, according to numbers obtained by the Epoch Times through a FOIA request. 

The second-largest number of migrant deaths occurred the year before, when 566 perished.

By comparison, in fiscal 2020, there were 247 border deaths — a record low.

If the media weren’t so corrupt, they would have been all over this story.

For one thing, they’d demand to know why “the most transparent” administration decided to stop releasing the number of border deaths, which had previously been part of the CPB’s reporting.

Then, they’d want to know why all those Democrats — including Biden — who were screaching about every border death during the Trump administration have been silent now.

This is another example of the mainstream media and its biased reporting. Thank goodness for reporters and watchdogs who know how to use FOIA requests.

It’s Called ‘Projection’

According to Psychology Today:

Projection is the process of displacing one’s feelings onto a different person, animal, or object. The term is most commonly used to describe defensive projection—attributing one’s own unacceptable urges to another. For example, if someone continuously bullies and ridicules a peer about his insecurities, the bully might be projecting his own struggle with self-esteem onto the other person.

There seems to be a lot of that going on right now in American politics.

On Monday, The New York Post reported:

The former FBI official busted Monday for allegedly taking illegal foreign payments played a key role in the bureau’s controversial  “Russiagate” probe of former President Donald Trump — and a “defensive briefing” of ex-rival Hillary Clinton’s lawyers.

Charles “Charlie” McGonigal, 54, was among the first FBI officials to learn that Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat that Russia had “political dirt” on Clinton.

FBI Deputy Assistant Director Jonathan Moffa told Senate Judiciary Committee staffers in 2020 that he got a July 2016 email from McGonigal which “contained essentially that reporting, which then served as the basis for the opening of the case.”

The FBI investigation, dubbed “Crossfire Hurricane,” led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller and a 22-month, $32 million probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and potential ties to associates of Trump, now 76.

Shortly before Mueller was appointed, McGonigal also sent a message to an FBI colleague that discussed how agents were interviewing another Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.

Please follow the link to read the entire article.

The actions of  Charles McGonigal were part of the deep state’s war on President Trump. All of the people involved in that war need to go to jail. Regardless of who is President, working against him is treason. Framing people in his campaign, cabinet, etc. is treason. Making phone calls to enemies of America without Presidential approval is treason. People who lied to Congress to make a case for impeachment should also be held accountable.

The deep state’s actions during the Trump administration were a disgrace to America. Any honest people who may be left in Washington need to remove those in the deep state and make sure they never again have power.

Reporting On The American Economy

On Monday, Issues & Insights posted an article about inflation and the state of the American economy.

The article includes the following:

Ronald Reagan, in his 1980 campaign for president, updated Harry Truman’s useful definitions of two key economic terms.

“It’s a recession,” Truman had intoned, “when your neighbor loses his job. It’s a depression when you lose yours.”

To which The Gipper appended, entertainingly: “And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.”

The article notes:

These articulations sprang to mind in pondering the variations of inflation measurements advanced by economists to determine whether price growth is “easing,” as the counterfeit chief executive would have one believe.

Should the focus be the “headline” Consumer Price Index? The one the Bureau of Labor Statistics describes as “a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a representative basket of consumer goods and services” (listed on the chart below)? Should the guide be a CPI subset referred to as “core inflation,” which excises “more volatile” food and energy prices? And how about the latest craze: “super core inflation?”

According to Fortune magazine, super core “does not have an established definition” but “refers to price measures that exclude sectors that economists feel distort the broader inflation figure.”  Economists like Paul Krugman (yeah, we know; kind of like discussing “military intelligence”) surmise that super core leaves out not just food and energy but also housing.

The article concludes:

Yet both the spending and the inflationary outcome – a dragon that had been largely slain since the Reagan Administration – are now revived for one reason: provide another set of tools of power and oppression.

The spending is to get citizenry and businesses alike hooked on federal largess. Inflation is another means of weakening the populace and private institutions as their labor and investment yields less and, in yet another spiral, they get all the more dependent on Uncle Sam and its cohort of crony capitalists.

The cynical, midterms-oriented pause in the upward price of fuel, occasioned by further manipulation of energy markets in the form of petroleum reserve releases, is only a stall in this brutal power play.

No matter the Fed’s efforts to run twice as fast – and come up with new fictions when it comes to measuring the real price of the dollar – there is no way for the central bankers even to stay in the same place when Jerome Powell’s exertions are swept under by a continued flood of Inflation Reduction Act and Omnibus(t) largess and excess.

Meanwhile, this correspondent will continue to define inflation as what it is: the loss of his dwindling dollars’ buying power. And relief, again paraphrasing The Great Communicator, as the prospect of another loss of power: Joe Biden’s.

Hang unto your hats. Unless Congress develops a spine to stop the spending, the future looks a little shaky.

Perks vs. Jobs

One of the problems we are seeing in recent years is the concept that there are different rules for different classes of people. We have seen state governments at pricey restaurants without a mask while declaring everyone else should wear a mask and stay home. We have seen elected politicians take advantage of beauty salons while denying access to those salons to everyone else. We have seen the World Economic Forum arrive at Davos for their meeting in private jets while telling the rest of us we need to reduce our carbon footprint. On Tuesday, however, Microsoft outdid itself.

On Friday, Gizmodo reported:

Layoffs are plaguing the tech industry left and right, but that doesn’t mean the big-wigs have to suffer too. Ahead of laying off several thousand employees, Microsoft hosted an exclusive Sting concert at Davos for executives.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that the concert was about 50 people, including executives from Microsoft, who got to enjoy the musings of English rock artist Sting. The concert reportedly occurred on Tuesday in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum and the following day the company announces its largest sweep of layoffs yet—10,000 employees. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella issued a memo to staff on Wednesday announcing the layoffs, some of which began the same day.

I realize that a company is permitted to layoff people whenever necessary, but to me this seems like a misuse of money. How much income did the concert at Davos generate? How much did it cost? If the money had been spent on salaries of employees, how much money would that have generated?

The article concludes:

Microsoft says that the layoffs will last through Q3 of 2023, and that the blow will only impact 5% of the company’s workforce. The burn of these layoffs is exacerbated not only by the execs living it up in Switzerland, but also due to the company backtracking on its claims that talk of layoffs was simply hearsay. A Microsoft spokesperson told Gizmodo in an email earlier this week that layoffs at the company were a “rumor.”

Layoffs have hit the tech industry far and wide over the past several months, with some of the titans like Microsoft and Google making huge cuts to their workforce while citing economic uncertainty. Amazon also wound up announcing a plan to cut thousands of positions earlier this month.