Inquiring Minds Want To Know

On Friday, Rumble posted an article that included a tweet by Roger Stone that asked a very interesting question.

Here is the tweet:

The article notes:

Have you heard the latest? The Biden Boys are set to fiercely fight their congressional subpoenas. Remember what happened to the Trump officials who took a similar stand during the January 6th sideshow?

Who can forget when Peter Navarro refused to testify before the circus known as the January 6th Committee? That poor guy was convicted of contempt of Congress so quickly, it made his head spin.

On October 6, 2014, Politico reported:

A federal judge has declined a House committee’s bid to have Attorney General Eric Holder held in contempt of court — and perhaps even jailed — for failing to turn over documents related to the Justice Department’ s response to Operation Fast and Furious.

However, in a ruling Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson also denied Holder’s request for an indefinite stay of her prior order that the attorney general must turn over any “non-privileged” documents the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee subpoenaed as part of an investigation into the botched gunrunning investigation. The judge previously ruled that Holder must give the panel any documents that are not both predecisional and deliberative in nature.

On November 17th, CNN reported:

The White House says the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden lacks constitutional legitimacy and is calling on GOP-led congressional committees to rescind their subpoenas and interview requests, according to a new letter obtained by CNN.

The move sets up a showdown with House Republicans as the White House criticizes what it describes as “Congressional harassment of the President,” calling on the committees to withdraw subpoenas and a series of requests for interviews aimed at White House officials and Biden family members and associates.

Earlier this week, House Oversight Chairman James Comer said he sent a subpoena to former White House counsel Dana Remus to discuss Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents. The Kentucky Republican had previously requested that Remus to appear for a voluntary interview, but the White House did not comply. And last week, the House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas to the president’s son Hunter and brother James as well as a Biden business associate.

Ignoring subpoenas only matters when you are a Republican.

 

Just Amazing

On Thursday, The Daily Caller reported the following:

Special counsel Robert Hur is unlikely to charge anybody at the conclusion of his investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, according to multiple reports.

Hur is expected to prepare a report with harsh criticism of how Biden and his aides handled classified documents but his investigation is not expected to result in criminal charges, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) first reported citing people familiar with the matter.

Remember, these documents were related to his terms as Vice-President and as Senator. There are some valid questions as to whether or not he was entitled to even possess these documents.

The article notes:

The House Oversight Committee wrote a letter to Hur in October requesting information on whether President Biden possessed classified documents related to his son’s foreign business dealings. The classified documents discovered at the Penn Biden Center and Joe Biden’s Delaware residence date back to his vice presidency and decades-long senate tenure.

Kathy Chung, a Defense Department aide and former Vice President Biden aide recommended by Hunter Biden, was one of the individuals who handled classified documents, according to the Oversight Committee.

Wow. Mar-a-Lago was raided because a President who was entitled to have documents from his presidency might have had classified documents. That trial is still pending.

I guess it pays to have a corrupt justice department that is willing to ignore the law to protect you.

We Need Fiscal Responsibility In Washington

On Friday, The Washington Examiner posted an article about this year’s budget deficit. One of the conclusions that can be drawn from the numbers is that so far electing Republicans to the House of Representatives has not had any impact (actually that’s because the lame-duck Democrat Congress passed bills that limited the 2023 Congress’ ability to curtail spending). However, now we have a speaker who seems to be less likely to continue previous shenanigans. The next few weeks are going to be very interesting in terms of the budget process.

The article reports:

The United States is increasingly losing the war against red ink.

Per new Treasury Department figures, the U.S. government is courting a worsening fiscal crisis. Officially, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the federal government ran a $1.7 trillion deficit for fiscal 2023, which ended Sept. 30. That’s up from a $1.4 trillion federal budget deficit posted in 2022.

But as highlighted by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Yellen’s math ignores another $300 billion in debt incurred by President Joe Biden’s student debt cancellations, bringing the actual total of the deficit under the president to a full $2 trillion. Fix that adjustment for fiscal 2022, and that year’s deficit amounted to a little less than $1 trillion.

This means that in just one year, sans recession and sans war, the federal government under Biden managed to double the deficit by more than $1 trillion. And in large part, it’s all thanks to his embrace of inflation, or at least inflationary spending.

Broadly speaking, the explosion of our national debt, which is now the size of the nation’s annual GDP, is primarily driven by our growth of government spending. While the rest of the nation pays handsomely for inflation with their paychecks, reduced in real terms of purchasing power, our wealthiest generation profits from the pockets of taxpayers. Thanks in large part to the cost-of-living adjustments for our entitlement programs, the three greatest categories of federal budget outlays — Social Security ($1.4 trillion), Medicare ($848 billion), and Medicaid ($616 billion) — grew by 11%, 12%, and 4%, respectively, from just last year.

The article concludes:

The stratospheric surge in bond yields should serve as a warning to Washington that even if the Fed won’t force the government to slow down the spending, the nation’s creditors will not continue to bankroll Uncle Sam without him paying a hefty premium for the privilege. While underlying demographic trends and the inherent, gerontocratic structure of entitlements predestined the nation to a certain fiscal fiasco long before the pandemic, the bipartisan embrace of wartime borrowing, and then Biden’s decision to double down on inflationary policy, have put the country on the path where not even the Fed can fight the deficit disaster on its own.

If Washington won’t listen to the Fed, perhaps it will begin to listen to creditors as the coffers continue to run dry.

We can’t afford to fund wars all over the world. The defense contractors love it, but the country will be destroyed by the debt incurred.

Bias Is Not Only How You Report The News, But What You Leave Out

On Tuesday, Newsbusters reported the following:

Early Tuesday evening, Fox News Digital reporter Brook Singman published a bombshell report of documents released from House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) showing the $250K Hunter Biden received from his Chinese business partners had President Joe Biden’s address listed. All three evening news broadcasts (ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, & NBC Nightly News) ignored this latest development. 

Instead, the networks were enthralled with stories like the so-called “Taylor Swift effect” which apparently caused football player Travis Kelce jersey sales to spike nearly 400% (ABC), African American actor Hattie McDaniel’s missing Oscar (CBS), and a reported shortage of primary care doctors (NBC). 

According to Fox News Digital, “As part of the investigation, Comer subpoenaed financial records related to a specific bank account and received records of two wires originating from Beijing and linked to BHR Partners.” 

How many of these same networks headlined the fiasco in New York that essentially said that President Trump should spend one hundred million years in jail because they disagree with the value of his properties?

The article notes:

…”The first wire transfer sent to Hunter Biden, dated July 26, 2019, was for $10,000 from an individual named Ms. Wang Xin. There is a Ms. Wang Xin listed on the website for BHR Partners. It is unclear if the wire came from that Wang Xin,” Fox reported.

Fox News Digital added that “The second wire transfer sent to Hunter Biden, dated Aug. 2, 2019, was for $250,000 from Li Xiang Sheng — also known as Jonathan Li, the CEO of BHR Partners — and Ms. Tan Ling.”

“The beneficiary for the wires is listed as Robert Hunter Biden with the address “1209 Barley Mill Rd.” in Wilmington, Delaware. That address is the main residence for President Biden,” Fox noted.

According to Hunter’s own diary, he wasn’t living in Wilmington at the time. Could this wire transfer actually be for “The Big Guy”? Don’t expect the leftist media to look into it.

If you rely on the mainstream media for your news, do you know about this?

When Congress Passes Laws And The Biden Administration Ignores Them

On Friday, The New York Post posted an article about the Biden administration’s ignoring the Taylor Force Act. The Taylor Force Act prohibits certain FY2018-FY2023 economic support assistance that directly benefits the Palestinian Authority (PA) from being made available for the West Bank and Gaza unless the Department of State certifies that the PA, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and any successor or affiliated organizations:

The article reports:

An even more distressing irony: President Joe Biden recently launched a first-ever National Strategy To Counter Antisemitism amid a spike in Jew-hatred, yet at the same time — in defiance of Congress’ intent — his team continues to provide material support for the PA, even as it not only spouts antisemitic speech but funds anti-Jewish terrorism through its “pay-for-slay” program.

Congress clearly determined that PA terror payments encourage violence, which is why it passed the Taylor Force Act, barring economic assistance that “directly benefits the Palestinian Authority” until it “stops all payments incentivizing terror.”

In recent months, the West Bank has seen a spate of fatal Palestinian terror attacks, with each of the perpetrators and their families then eligible for PA payments.

Among other things, the law urges our UN representative to “use the voice, vote and influence of the United States at the United Nations” and the State Department “to use its bilateral and multilateral engagements” to highlight the issue of pay-for-slay and push for governments to stop funding the PA.

The Biden administration is violating these requirements.

It has renewed aid to Palestinian and Palestinian-funding entities, like the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, potentially subsidizing the pay-to-slay program.

Money is fungible, so if the PA doesn’t need to spend money because of an UNRWA program, it can allocate more funds to pay-for-slay payments.

I don’t like to think of my government as subsidizing terrorism, but in defying the Taylor Force Act, that is exactly what it is doing.

A Total Misuse Of Taxpayer Dollars

The Biden administration has blazed new trails in wasting taxpayer money. Aside from pouring millions into the war in Ukraine to support a dictator who recently has banned the Ukrainian Orthodox Church after having nationalized television news and restricted political opposition, they have now decided to bail out the pensions of their union friends.

On Thursday, The Epoch Times reported:

President Joe Biden will announce the injection of $36 billion in funding to bolster the multi-employer Central States Pension Fund and prevent “drastic cuts” to the pensions of more than 350,000 union workers and retirees on Dec. 8.

According to the Biden administration, the funding was approved by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) and is the largest-ever amount of federal aid awarded to a pension fund.

The funding will be sourced from the American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package Biden signed into law in 2021.

“Without the historic Special Financial Assistance program included in President Biden’s American Rescue Plan, these workers and retirees—who have already earned these benefits—would have faced estimated benefit reductions of roughly 60 percent in the next few years,” according to a White House fact sheet previewing the announcement. “The Central States Pension Fund estimates that it will now be able to pay full benefits to workers and retirees through 2051.”

Established in 1955, the Central States Pension Fund is one of the country’s largest multi-employer pension plans and provides benefits to union members in the trucking, car haul, warehouse, construction, food processing, dairy, and grocery trucking industries.

According to its website, the fund pays out more than $2.8 billion in pension benefits annually and $5.7 million more per day than it receives in employer contributions.

On June 13, 2010, I posted the following:

The reference for this story is a May 25 article in the Washington Examiner.  The article deals with the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC).  Senator Bob Casey, (D-Pa.), introduced S. 3157 in late March.  According to Thomas.gov, the bill is currently in committee.  The bill is called “Create Jobs and Save Benefits Act of 2010.”

The bill would back union pension funds with federal tax dollars.  The article in the Washington Examiner points out that in 2006, before the recession, only six percent of these union pension funds were doing well.  In a column in the Washington Examiner in April, Mark Hemingway pointed out that the average union pension plan had only enough money to cover 62 percent of its financial obligations.  Pension plans that are below 80 percent funding are considered “endangered” by the government; below 65 percent is considered “critical.”  Union membership is declining, which means that less people are paying into these funds.

In July 2009, the PBGC bailed out the pension liabilities of auto parts manufacturer Delphi ($6.2 billion). In 2007, the PBGC had a deficit of almost $1 billion. They are expected to assume $86 billion in liabilities by 2015. This is not good business practice.

The government has no business bailing out pension funds.

We Are In Danger Of Losing Our Right To Free Speech

Yesterday NewsMax reported that a group representing local school boards is asking the Biden administration to go after parents who protest the school board’s policies.

The article reports:

A group representing local public school boards is asking the Biden administration to invoke the Patriot Act and federal hate crimes legislation, among other measures, to go after parents who have aggressively opposed board policies and members who have adopted measures such as mask mandates and the teaching of critical race theory curricula.

In the open letter addressed to President Joe Biden, the National School Boards Association asserts that ”education leaders are under an immediate threat.”

The request ”to deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation” comes as reports of angry parents expressing opposition to COVID-19 policies and curriculum changes — particularly those tied to critical race theory — have become more frequent.

There is a problem with hate crime laws. You are making a judgement on a person’s thoughts–not solely on his actions. Unless you are a mind reader, your chances of being absolutely accurate in judging someone else’s actions is slim. The concept of hate crimes is simply a step toward embracing the idea of thought crimes–not a place we want to be.

There have been a few examples of parents acting inappropriately at school board meetings, but there are more examples of parents simply questioning the material that is being taught in our public schools. Education leaders are not under “an immediate threat” unless you consider anyone who disagrees with them a threat. The Virginia school board did not like it when a parent read some of the pornography found in the middle school library. The National School Boards Association representing the school boards is simply a group of people who would like to shut down the speech and/or activities of anyone who interferes with the tyranny that has appeared in some of our local school boards. School boards are elected officials and are supposed to answer to the voters. If is unfortunate if some of those voters have behaved inappropriately and they should be dealt with as individuals, but that is no excuse to accuse them of hate crimes or invoke the Patriot Act. Any elected official has to deal with a certain number of idiots, but that is no excuse to call down the power of the government on anyone who disagrees with them.