A Defining Moment thumbnail

A Defining Moment

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By Bruce Bialosky

We are coming off two years of lockdowns that were countered with government programs spending billions and billions of dollars to offset the effects of those government-imposed restrictions. We are then hit with a burst of inflation at levels not seen in America for forty years. Additionally, one of the world’s largest energy suppliers decided to attack its neighbor without provocation. This has all brought to the forefront the failed philosophies of a political party and a lesson to be learned.

With the soaring cost of energy and the abandonment of sourcing that energy from America and Russia, there is a logical and pragmatic solution. Restore our own production to the levels we had prior to the Democrats taking over our government. Unfortunately, the party is so driven by their blind allegiance to their green energy policy that has caused this crisis that an adjustment is not even a consideration.

First, Washington proposed a release of oil from the strategic petroleum reserve. One might think that the reserve is for legitimate national emergencies and not just politically embarrassing price increases. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced an agreement among 30 countries to release some 60 million barrels from reserves. The U.S. Has made a commitment to release 30 million barrels.  To understand the significance of that, know it equals roughly 1.5 days of U.S. usage.

Then the government wonks in DC suggested a gas tax holiday. At 18.4 cents per gallon, that would barely dent the price of gas at your local station. California then started throwing around their own gas tax holiday. Governor Newsom suggested he wanted the holiday. At 53.3 cents per gallon (second-highest state tax in the nation), that would be a significant decrease. Newsom also suggested eliminating an automatic tax increase that went into effect on July 1, 2022, but the legislature balked.

Before we go further, the gas tax is a use tax. It is supposedly dedicated to the repair of roads and bridges. Drive in California and one might think how the funds are not being spent in a highly effective manner in maintaining roads and highways.

The state currently has a projected surplus of $46 billion so expending some of that to alleviate significant financial pain for residents would be a shot in the arm — especially for middle-class workers.

It would be too easy a solution to let the people who use gas get a direct benefit by reducing the price of the product they are taxing – gasoline. The legislators in Sacramento have a better idea. They want to send every taxpayer a $400 check. They even said it would cover a once-a-week fill-up for a year. The problem is the check goes to every taxpayer whether they have a car or not or whether they use gasoline in their vehicle. 

This is a quintessentially Democrat solution. Instead of letting people make their own decisions on their money, they will make their decisions for them. They will run the money through their hands, processed by the government union employees who are the Democrats’ principal campaign contributors, and then give us back the residue (at their discretion of course). We will never know the cost of this program which would be zero if they simply suspended the gas tax.

This rebate program comes on the heels of the Secretary in charge of the unemployment program in California stating that $11.4 billion of benefits were given out fraudulently. She believes it could be an additional $20 billion. Did Ms. Su get fired in disgrace? No, she was hired by the Biden Administration to be the Deputy Secretary of Labor.

With this recent history, one might think sending out random checks for $9 billion might give one pause. Not these Sacramento Democrats.

The latest proposals have Newsom recommending $400 debit cards (that worked so well with unemployment benefits why not bring it back for an encore – they never learn). The good thing is that the cards would be limited to two per person if you happen to own two vehicles. The members of the legislature proposed $200 rebates per family member (six-year-olds need gas tax rebates), but income restrictive up to $250,000 (whatever that means except we know it is punishing people for being successful but does not recognize the cost of living in California has been driven ridiculously high by government policies.) Of course, these silly ideas do not recognize EVs owners who will also get the money.

There are a combined one million EVs and hybrids in California. They pay either no gasoline tax or a severely reduced amount. They will likewise be getting $400 debit cards along with all the criminals who got the unemployment debit cards and went on a buying spree on Rodeo Drive. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Virtually every time there is a problem that is created by a Democrat-induced program, their solution is to create another program instead of either correcting the existing program or dismantling it. No wonder California has 25% of the country’s state government unionized employees.

The lesson to be learned here is this is what happens when you have one-party control of all the levers of a state. The last time a Republican was elected statewide in California was 2006 and that was Arnold – enough said. With the Democrats having control of every statewide constitutional office, supermajorities in both houses of the legislature, and almost every judge appointed by their team, controls on them simply do not exist. 

Ask the Russians or the Chinese if one party government works well. That is how simple problems end up with complicated solutions. This could be your future.

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This article was published in Flash Report and is reproduced with permission from the author.

Study Raises New Questions About 2020 Election Results in 6 States thumbnail

Study Raises New Questions About 2020 Election Results in 6 States

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By Fred Lucas

At least 255,000 excess votes were cast in the 2020 presidential election across six battleground states, according to a new study that examined individual voting precincts.

Economist John Lott, president of the Crime Research Prevention Center, is the author of the peer-reviewed study, which looked at precincts in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

The study, set to be published in the academic journal Public Choice, compares precincts where there were allegations of voter fraud to similar precincts in neighboring counties that had no fraud allegations. In each comparison, the two precincts examined fall on opposite sides of a county line—in some cases across the street.

Precincts are county-level election subdivisions, usually with fewer than 1,000 voters. Precincts in counties with fraud allegations had significantly higher voter participation than adjacent precincts in counties without alleged fraud, the study found.

“Precincts are generally small, homogeneous areas, and when two areas are adjacent and similar to each other, why would one precinct have far many more votes?” Lott asked The Daily Signal in an interview. “If you have a get-out-the-vote campaign, you care about winning the state, [and are] not focused on the precinct.”

Lott’s study found that at least 255,000 excess votes were cast—and possibly as many as 368,000—for Democratic nominee Joe Biden in six states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Biden beat then-President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, by a total of 313,253 votes in the six states.

Calculating Possible Fraudulent Votes

The study compares Trump’s share of absentee votes in adjacent precincts and accounts for differences in Trump’s share of in-person votes.

The study also notes that in-person votes are counted at the precinct level, while absentee votes are counted at a county’s central election office.

The potential number of fraudulent votes is reached by comparing the number of votes cast in bordering precincts on opposite sides of a county line. In some cases, Lott said, voters could be neighbors who live across the street from one another.

“To isolate the impact of a county’s vote-counting process and potential fraud on candidates’ vote margins, I first compare voting precincts in a county with alleged fraud to adjacent precincts in neighboring counties with no allegations of fraud,” Lott’s study says, according to a published abstract. He continues:

I compute the differences in President Trump’s vote shares on absentee ballots in those adjacent precincts, controlling for the differences in his vote shares on ballots cast in person. I also control for registered voters’ demographics and compare data for the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

The study doesn’t question the legitimacy of the outcome of the 2020 election, writes Lott, who has held teaching positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, and Rice University.

Rather, he writes, the analysis indicates that concerns about voter fraud are legitimate and undermine confidence in elections.

‘Have to Be Careful’

Many statements from Trump allies criticizing the 2020 election lacked evidence, which discredited concerns about fraud, Lott told The Daily Signal.

“There were people, perhaps well-meaning, who didn’t check out information before going public with it,” Lott said. “You have to be careful with these things.”

Lott said he waited to talk about his research until it was fully peer-reviewed. He said that process took more than a year, a longer review than usual.

Lott is a former senior adviser for research and statistics at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy, where he dealt with issues of voter fraud, among other matters.

He has been among the most-cited economists in the world, according to an analysis by the Free University of Brussels, or Université libre de Bruxelles.

“John Lott is a serious scholar who does very good, in-depth research,” said Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, the parent organization of The Daily Signal.

“I am very interested in reading his study when it comes out, in particular, to see what lessons it provides for how states can improve the integrity of their election process,” von Spakovsky, who manages Heritage’s Election Law Reform Initiative, said.

Heritage’s Election Fraud Database has documented 1,349 adjudicated cases of voter fraud since 1982.

6,700 Extra Votes for Biden

The Brennan Center for Justice, a left-wing think tank at New York University School of Law, contends that voter fraud in the United States is a “myth.” The center did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment for this report.

Lott’s study compared precincts in Georgia’s Fulton County to neighboring precincts in border counties. The comparisons show what Lott describes as an unexplained 17,000 votes from Fulton County. That’s 32% more than Biden’s official 12,000-vote margin over Trump in the entire state.

Similarly, the study looked at provisional ballots in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, where voters allegedly were allowed to correct defects in absentee ballots by submitting provisional ballots on Election Day. This practice violated state law, Lott said.

Biden carried Pennsylvania by about 80,000 votes.

“When I examine Georgia and Pennsylvania separately, weak evidence of vote fraud on absentee ballots is found,” Lott’s abstract of the study says. “However, combining the samples produces significant results and implies at least 10,000 additional votes for Biden in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny and Georgia’s Fulton counties.”

His abstract continues:

I then apply the same method to provisional ballots in Allegheny County, where, contrary to state law, voters were allowed to correct alleged defects in absentee ballots by submitting provisional ballots on Election Day. My analysis finds that such permission contributed to a statistically significant additional 6,700 votes for Biden.

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This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

Democrats Look To Sustainable Investing Craze As Means For Pushing Climate Agenda thumbnail

Democrats Look To Sustainable Investing Craze As Means For Pushing Climate Agenda

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By Thomas Catenacci

  • Democrats have increasingly pushed their expansive climate agenda through the financial sector and legal system as Congress has failed to implement Green New Deal reforms.
  • “Congress is really unwilling to impose much in the way of costs and to address climate change,” David Kreutzer, the senior economist at the Institute for Energy Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “Frustrated by that, people in Washington want to use non-legislative ways to impose these costs and raise the price of energy-intensive goods and energy in general.”
  • The Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a sweeping set of rules Monday that would require companies to disclose their carbon emissions and how they were planning to transition away from fossil fuel reliance, the latest example of the sustainable investing movement.
  • “This is just an attempt by the left to use the business community, the finance sector, companies … to accomplish with other people’s money, what they can’t accomplish at the ballot box,” Andy Puzder, the former CEO of CKE Restaurants and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF in an interview

Democrats, banks, regulators, and activists have increasingly set their sights on the financial sector and legal system, not Congress, for pushing their aggressive climate agenda.

Employing so-called environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives, financial institutions and government agencies have quietly implemented policies prioritizing a focus on factors unrelated to a company’s bottom line, experts said. The ESG movement has swept across the corporate world, leading to individual pledges from companies promising to become more sustainable and improve internal diversity.

In the latest example of the ESG and sustainable investing movement, the Democratic-majority U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a sweeping set of rules Monday that would require publicly-traded companies to disclose their carbon emissions and how they were planning to transition away from fossil fuel reliance. Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Pat Toomey was one of many lawmakers to immediately slam the proposal, saying it “hijacks the democratic process and disrespects the limited scope of authority that Congress gave to the SEC.”

“Congress is really unwilling to impose much in the way of costs and to address climate change,” David Kreutzer, the senior economist at the Institute for Energy Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “Frustrated by that, people in Washington want to use non-legislative ways to impose these costs and raise the price of energy-intensive goods and energy in general.”

“One of the ways that they’re doing it — it’s like an all fronts attack — is under the guise of environmental, social, and governance investments,” he added. (RELATED: New York To Divest Pensions From Fossil Fuel Companies)

‘Priorities Are A Little Misplaced’

Regulators have also targeted Americans’ pensions. In October, the Department of Labor (DOL), which is tasked with regulating private sector pensions under the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act, reversed a Trump-era rule that placed barriers to fiduciaries’ ability to consider ESG factors when selecting investments.

Similar to the SEC proposal Monday, the DOL rule stated that “climate change and other ESG factors can be financially material” for investors. (RELATED: Biden’s Green Transition May Usher In More Energy Insecurity. Here’s How)

“The primary purpose of fiduciaries is to look out for the wellbeing of the pensioners who contribute to these funds,” Pat Pizzella, the former deputy secretary of labor during the Trump administration, told the DCNF. “Not to speculate on risky or trendy, expensive ESG products. I think their priorities are a little misplaced.”

He added that the Trump administration’s view was to look at ESG investing from a legal point of view. Pizzella predicted that individuals with pensions managed by fiduciaries that invest in risky ESG-focused companies or funds would eventually take the institutions to court….

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Continue reading this article at Daily Caller and is reprinted with permission.

Conservative News Sites Are Pushing Misleading Activist Phrase ‘Don’t Say Gay’ thumbnail

Conservative News Sites Are Pushing Misleading Activist Phrase ‘Don’t Say Gay’

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By Laurel Duggan

Editors’ Note: The use, or abuse, of language is now an integral part of the culture war. The attack on Florida by activists, the press, and corporations, is for the most part caused by deliberate verbal distortions of what the legislation actually says. But activists believe a higher cause is served by repeating a lie over and over again, hoping the uninformed will be duped into believing the legislation discriminates against homosexuals. Conservatives always need to be cautious about adopting the terms developed by the Left. It is not too much to say that if you control the language of the debate, you control the debate.

Conservative-leaning news outlets parroted liberal activist language in headlines to describe a Florida bill banning lessons on sexuality and gender ideology for young children.

The phrase “Don’t Say Gay,” which was used by LGBT activists since at least 2012, was mainstreamed by corporate media in February and eventually picked up by conservative outlets to describe Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill.

The legislation, which does not ban the word gay in schools or anywhere else, bars teachers from discussing sexuality and gender identity with children in kindergarten through third grade and requires parental consent for health services offered in schools. Students in fourth grade and higher will still be able to have age-appropriate lessons on gender and sexuality.

It also blocks schools from imposing rules that prevent teachers from notifying parents about services offered to children that impact their physical, mental, or emotional health, with exceptions in place for instances of potential child abuse.

Newsmax published “WH Denounces Florida GOP Over ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill” Feb. 8, and the Daily Caller published “SNL Rips Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill” March 6.

The Washington Examiner, Fox Business and the New York Post also used “Don’t Say Gay” uncritically in their headlines.

Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, discussed the importance of language in shaping public opinion in comments to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“It is always important to look at how a question is worded when evaluating a public opinion survey,” she said. “I rarely comment on polls on a news story until I have been able to compare several polls with different question wordings.”

The legislation was signed into law by DeSantis Monday.

Newsmax, the Washington Examiner, Fox Business, and the New York Post did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.

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This article was published by the Daily Caller and is reproduced with permission.

Exclusive: Zuckerberg-Connected Nonprofit Helped Shift Michigan’s 2020 Voting Rules thumbnail

Exclusive: Zuckerberg-Connected Nonprofit Helped Shift Michigan’s 2020 Voting Rules

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By Logan Washburn

This private organization, with ties to Zuckerberg’s CTCL, gained access to absentee ballots and edged public officials out of the election process.

A nonprofit connected to Mark Zuckerberg-funded groups worked with Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to influence state elections ahead of 2020. The changes include getting the state to alter how it used absentee ballots without an act of the state legislature.

Documents exclusively obtained by The Federalist through an open records request show National Vote at Home Institute CEO Amber McReynolds working with Benson to change Michigan elections policy. NVAHI shares leadership ties with the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a group that shuttled money from Zuckerberg to government election agencies ahead of the 2020 election, as The Federalist previously reported. In several instances, NVAHI and CTCL worked together to influence the 2020 election.

The documents also show that the private organization funded by Facebook tycoon Zuckerberg exists to push states to adopt mass mail-in balloting of the kind that made chaos of the 2020 election.

Mail-in ballots are proven to be significantly more susceptible to fraud, as a bipartisan federal election integrity commission chaired by former President Jimmy Carter concluded in 2005. That’s because mail-in ballots provide more opportunities to influence, obtain, and traffic in ballots.

In one recent example, during a 2017 city council election in Dallas, Texas, investigators found one person had fraudulently signed 700 mail-in ballots—more than the total vote difference between competing candidates at the time. During the 2020 election in Wisconsin, officials took part in ballot trafficking and used drop-boxes for mail-in ballots, which a judge later ruled violated state law.

Private Groups Telling Public Employees What To Do

In Michigan, this highly partisan organization directly affected voting rules, the new documents show. In the emails, McReynolds suggested that Benson use administrative rulemaking to implement a permanent absentee voting option in the state. Administrative rulemaking means making regulations based on an interpretation of the law, often yielding regulations that differ from the law’s original intent and sometimes its explicit text.

“I was thinking that you may have rule-making authority,” McReynolds wrote in an email on Feb. 5, 2019. “The language below indicates that voters have a right to vote without giving a reason, which to me has left open the possibility of permanent or election specific absentee requests. To me, this means you do not likely need a legislative change.”

“Thanks Amber,” Benson replied, “Looping in Jonathan Brater and Mike Brady from our legal and policy team to explore.”

Brater served as Benson’s legal policy director in 2019, and Brady began working as her chief legal director in February 2019, according to LinkedIn. Benson named Brater director of elections in November 2019.

Benson spokesman Jake Rollow said Benson’s actions conformed to state law.

“Michigan’s voters enshrined the right to vote absentee in our state constitution in 2018, and upon being sworn into office Secretary Benson went to work implementing the will of the voters,” Rollow said.

Private, Zuckerberg-Connected Group Affects Election Policy

The National Vote At Home Institute focused its 2020 work in Michigan on its top goal of increasing mass mail-in balloting. By January 2020, NVAHI had “hired a lobbyist to quietly push for an administrative fix that would speed up the ballot processing and counting in Michigan,” according to a 2020 presentation obtained through The Federalist’s open records request. NVAHI detailed a five-step plan to push universal absentee ballots, according to meeting material from 2019.

The states that receive one star from NVAHI’s rating system are those that require a valid excuse to vote outside a private booth on election day. States with five stars, its highest rating, had achieved NVAHI’s end goal of “Full Vote at Home.”

NVAHI developed four strategies to push 100 percent mail-in balloting policy in all 50 states, according to 2019 meeting material. The materials say the organization uses the first strategy to eliminate state safeguards on mail-in ballots: “Strategy 1: Reduce the number of Step 1 and Step 2 (excuse required) States to zero. We can achieve this through federal legislation or state by state (legislature or where possible– ballot initiatives),” meeting material reads.

The group’s second strategy is to increase the number of states with a permanent absentee ballot option: “Strategy 2: Increase the number of states that are Step 4 (permanent absentee). So, move current no-excuse states (IL, FL, MN, OH, MI, NM, and others) to Step 4,” the meeting material reads.

NVAHI’s third strategy is to increase the number of mail-in-only states: “Strategy 3: Increase the number of states that are Step 5 (full VAH). CA and UT are in process. We anticipate other states will move in this direction,” say the meeting materials.

The group’s final strategy is to affect how government election offices process absentee ballots: “Strategy 4: Work with states to improve their current procedures with regards to processing mail ballots. This includes a variety of reforms that improve the current process,” meeting material reads.

In 2020, NVAHI’s Circle of Advisors provided an update on the group’s national policy efforts, according to the Federalist-obtained public documents. A map in this update claimed progress in Michigan during 2018/2019 with “no-excuse absentee,” but even more was planned for 2020, including “fixes to allow for earlier processing of ballots.”

According to the emails obtained by The Federalist’s records request, McReynolds met with Benson about Michigan elections multiple times in 2019.

“I would like to connect with you about some follow-up items from my visit,” McReynolds wrote in an email on Jan. 26, 2019. “Perhaps a quick chat at some point while you are at NASS [National Association of Secretaries of State].”

After a previous visit, the emails show, McReynolds planned to meet with Benson and several other secretaries of state at the NASS conference in Washington, D.C.

“I wanted to see if we could connect in DC [sic] during NASS,” McReynolds wrote in a Jan. 28, 2019 email. “I was hoping to spend an hour discussing a few topics.”

McReynolds also asked to meet with Benson privately in D.C. to discuss Michigan elections, and Benson agreed, the emails show.

“Perhaps you and I can chat about Michigan specifically on our own,” McReynolds said in an email on Jan. 30, 2019. “Sounds good!” Benson replied.

In February 2019, Benson took advice about absentee ballot applications from both McReynolds and Stephen Silberstein. Silberstein is a left-leaning donor connected with Democracy Alliance and National Popular Vote, according to InfluenceWatch.

“This is very helpful,” Benson said. “We will be implementing many of your suggestions.”

Shortly after their January 2019 meeting in D.C., McReynolds offered Benson and former Secretary of State Kim Wyman (R-Wash.) the position of co-chairs of NVAHI’s new Circle of Advisors, the emails show.

“I am happy to serve,” Benson replied on Feb. 19, 2019. Wyman, however, is not currently listed as a member of the group.

Benson’s Spokesman Denies Private Influence

Rollow claimed McReynolds had “limited and minimal” interactions with McReynolds.

“She was asked to join NVAHI’s circle of advisors, but her direct interactions with McReynolds have been limited and minimal,” Rollow said.

Benson joined Tiana Epps-Johnson, the founder and director of the Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life, on NVAHI’s Circle of Advisors. In 2020, CTCL funneled approximately half a billion dollars from Zuckerberg to public election agencies in 2020, as The Federalist previously reported.

Partisan Employees Running Public Elections

After officials accepted CTCL grants, NVAHI “grant mentors” sometimes gained access to absentee ballots and edged public officials out of the election process. In Wisconsin, NVAHI’s State Lead Michael-Spitzer Rubenstein—who previously worked for Democrat political campaigns—personally accessed absentee ballots, over Green Bay City Clerk Kris Teske’s objections.

Teske later resigned due to frustration over election intervention by third-party groups like CTCL and NVAHI.

“I don’t know what to do anymore. I am trying to explain the process but it isn’t heard,” Teske said. “I don’t understand how people who don’t have knowledge of the process can tell us how to manage the election.”

The Federalist reached out to McReynolds for comment but did not receive a response.

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This article was published by The Federalist and is reprinted with permission.

Arizona Legislature Approves Bill Vetting All Voters for Citizenship Before They Can Cast a Ballot thumbnail

Arizona Legislature Approves Bill Vetting All Voters for Citizenship Before They Can Cast a Ballot

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By Cole Lauterbach

Arizona lawmakers approved new voter safeguards that supporters said will ensure only U.S. citizens can cast ballots.

A unanimous Republican caucus approved House Bill 2492 in the Senate, sending the legislation to Gov. Doug Ducey for consideration.

While Arizona is one of the few states that already require proof of citizenship before registering to vote, residents can bypass that by registering for a federal-only ballot under the National Voter Registration Act and can vote in federal contests.

HB 2492 would require counties to check those individuals for citizenship against multiple databases. Counties must reject any federal applications if they find the individual is not a U.S. citizen. Any official knowingly ignoring the requirement could be charged with a Class 6 felony.

Democrats accused Republicans of seeking to purge the voter rolls as revenge for the 2020 general election, where President Joe Biden narrowly defeated former President Donald Trump.

“This is absurd, illogical and discriminatory,” Sen. Sally Ann Gonzales, D-Tucson, said.

Constitutional analysts told GOP lawmakers in another hearing the bill presents some issues that could face a legal challenge. Opponents were quick to note that in debate.

“We are voting on a bill that is unconstitutional and has a tremendous impact on the voters of the state of Arizona,” Sen. Martín Quezada, D-Phoenix, said. “There are many provisions in this bill that are offensive, and that will have a negative impact on some communities more than others.”

Republicans said their legislation simply ensures U.S. citizens are the only ones voting in U.S. elections.

“The issue is making sure the citizens of this country are voting,” state Sen. Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, said. “If you’re not a citizen of this country, you’re not allowed to vote. We have over 35,000 people registered to vote where we are not certain whether they’re citizens or not.”

The bill passed along partisan lines. Democrats gathered in Phoenix on Thursday to pressure Ducey to veto the legislation.

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This article was published by The Center Square and is reproduced with permission.

Sweden—Once Mocked for Its COVID Strategy—Now Has One of the Lowest COVID Mortality Rates in Europe

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By Jon Miltimore

Sweden, which avoided strict lockdowns, now has a lower COVID mortality rate than 29 countries in Europe alone.

Early in the coronavirus pandemic, I asked a simple question. Could Sweden’s laissez-faire approach to the coronavirus actually work?

Unlike its European neighbors and virtually all US states, the Swedes had opted to not shut down the economy. The country of 10 million people took what was at first described as “a lighter touch.”

While other countries closed schools and businesses, life in Sweden stayed pretty normal. Kids went to public pools and libraries, while adults sipped wine and had lunch in local bistros. Though mass gatherings were prohibited, children kept going to school, though students older than 16 were encouraged to attend classes remotely. The Swedish government also encouraged people to work remotely and asked people over 70 to isolate themselves, if possible.

For taking this approach, Sweden—and the architect of its public health policies, Anders Tegnell—was widely condemned. Consider just a sampling of headlines:

“The Inside Story of How Sweden Botched Its Coronavirus Response”

Foreign Policy, Dec. 22, 2020

“Sweden Stayed Open And More People Died Of Covid-19, But The Real Reason May Be Something Darker”

Forbes, July 7, 2020

“Sweden’s Covid-19 strategy has caused an ‘amplification of the epidemic”

France 24, May 17, 2020

“Sweden’s Unconventional Approach to Covid-19: What went wrong”

Chicago Policy Review, Dec. 14, 2021

“Sweden Has Become the World’s Cautionary Tale”

The New York Times, July 7, 2020

These are just a few examples of the avalanche of criticism Sweden received for not locking down its economy like other governments around the world. A quick Google search will turn up dozens more.

I spent a great deal of time in 2020 and 2021 arguing that the media was getting the narrative wrong on Sweden, pointing out that Sweden’s response had resulted in exponentially fewer deaths than modelers had predicted and lower mortality overall than most of Europe.

The BBC also noted Sweden’s economy had not suffered nearly as much as the economies of other European nations, and, more importantly, as other countries were implementing more lockdown measures in 2021, daily COVID deaths in Sweden had reached zero.

That was nearly 9 months ago, however. How does Sweden rank compared to other European countries today?

Like many countries, Sweden saw cases spike with the arrival of Omicron, which resulted in a new wave of COVID deaths. However, the wave was much smaller than in other countries. In fact, Sweden’s overall COVID-19 mortality rate throughout the pandemic is one of the lower rates you’ll find in all of Europe.

The point in sharing this information is not to take a victory lap. The point is to learn from the mistakes made during the pandemic.

In March of 2020, when public health officials realized COVID-19 was more deadly than they previously believed, they panicked. Instead of pursuing similar courses humans had pursued in previous pandemics, public health authorities decided to copy the strategy of China—one of the most totalitarian regimes on the planet—and use the government to force entire sectors of the economy to shutdown. (Americans were told this was just for 15 days to “flatten the curve,” something that was quickly proven to be untrue.)

The strategy failed miserably. Study after study after study has shown the lockdowns failed to adequately protect populations, which is why non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) have been scrapped by countries around the world.

Shutting down society, however, came with serious and deadly consequences. The World Bank reported last year that global poverty surged during the pandemic, with 97 million more people living on less than $1.90 per day. In the United States, 8 million more people fell into poverty in 2020, tens of millions lost jobs, and hundreds of thousands of businesses went under. To mitigate these harms, the government “flooded the system with money,” which has resulted in surging inflation. The losses went beyond financial costs, of course. Cancer screenings plunged and drug overdoses reached record highs, resulting in an untold number of deaths.

And on Tuesday, The New York Times revealed the latest unintended consequence of the government’s lockdown experiment: a new study shows alcohol-related deaths spiked in 2020, increasing 25 percent from the previous year.

“The assumption is that there were lots of people who were in recovery and had reduced access to support that spring and relapsed,” said Aaron White, one the report’s authors and a senior scientific adviser at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Public officials made two serious mistakes above all others in their response to the virus. The first was assuming they possessed the knowledge and ability to contain a highly contagious respiratory virus through lockdowns and other NPIs.

Many world-leading epidemiologists at the time, like Tegnell, saw the futility of such an approach.

“In early March 2020, when Italy and Iran started to report many COVID deaths as the first countries outside China, it was clear to any knowledgeable infectious disease epidemiologist that the virus would eventually spread to all parts of the world,” Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School from 2015 to 2021, told me. “At the time, we only knew a small proportion of the actual cases, so it was clear that it had already spread elsewhere and that it would be futile to try and eliminate the disease with contact tracing and lockdowns.”

The second mistake public officials made was not considering the unintended consequences of their actions. The writer and economist Henry Hazlitt once pointed out this is one of the perennial flaws in policymaking.

“[There’s a] persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy,” Hazlitt wrote in Economics in One Lesson, “and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups.”

Hazlitt described this as “the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.”

Anders Tegnell, the architect of Sweden’s strategy who recently joined the World Health Organization, was one of the only public health officials in the world who acknowledged these secondary consequences,predicting that “the consequences of shutting down the economy [would] far outweigh the benefits.”

Tegnell was right, the data show. And the critics of Sweden’s policy should acknowledge that.

*****

This article was published by FEE, Foundation for Economic Education and is reproduced with permission.

Law Schools Fall To Revolutionaries – A Commentary on SCOTUS Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson thumbnail

Law Schools Fall To Revolutionaries – A Commentary on SCOTUS Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson

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By Rod Dreher

Here’s a very, very powerful addition to my danger of conservative complacency post.

Writing on Bari Weiss’s invaluable Substack, Aaron Sibarium details the corruption of the American legal profession by wokeness. Y’all, this is a five-alarm situation. Excerpts:

Read it all. Seriously, every word. As scholar Eric Kaufmann said over the weekend (see my link in the first graf), conservative voters and politicians have to make fighting wokeness in the culture war their No. 1 priority. If they don’t, we are going to lose our freedom. It really is that simple.

The people who lived under totalitarianism in the Soviet bloc were the first to understand the true nature of the changes sweeping over America in this last decade. I tell their story in Live Not By Lies, and share their advice on how to resist it. If you have previously thought the idea of “soft totalitarianism” was unduly alarmist, I invite you to read Sibarium’s report and reconsider. If you are the kind of person who thinks that wokeness is a fad among the young, and that they’ll grow out of it, you are not only wrong, you are dangerously wrong.

This [past] week,   is appearing before the Senate in her Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Two years ago, in a law school lecture, she discussed Critical Race theorists who were influential in shaping her thinking. Here is a link to the text of the lecture. She also praised the fraudulent 1619 Project. Well, Critical Race Theory came up yesterday in questioning:

But it was a question about whether or not infants were racist that drew the first detectable sign of exasperation from Judge Jackson, who sits on the board of trustees at Georgetown Day School, a private school in Washington where the city’s elite — both conservative and liberal — send their children.

Wielding a stack of children’s books, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, had an aide display several large color photos from a children’s book called “Antiracist Baby” by Ibram X. Kendi.

“This is a book that is taught at Georgetown Day School to students in pre-K through second grade,” Mr. Cruz said from the dais. “Do you agree with this book that is being taught with kids that babies are racist?”

Judge Jackson audibly sighed before leaning into the microphone.

“Senator,” she said, “I do not believe that any child should be made to feel as though they are racist, or though they are not valued, or though they are less than, that they are victims, that they are oppressors. I do not believe in any of that.”

During his 30 minutes of questioning, Mr. Cruz questioned Judge Jackson on her views of race, racism, and critical race theory. Critical race theory is a field of study in law schools that argues that laws and institutions can incorporate structural racial bias, but Republicans have used the term as a way to criticize educational materials that describe ideas of racism, racial privilege, or inequality.

After he was done with “Antiracist Baby,” Mr. Cruz asked Judge Jackson about whether or not she had read any of the children’s books. And she continued to tell the senator that she was not sure how the children’s books related to her work as a judge.

“I have not reviewed any of those books, any of those ideas,” Judge Jackson said. “They don’t come up as my work as a judge, which I am respectfully here to address.”

Earlier in his questioning process, Mr. Cruz quoted Judge Jackson’s praise of Georgetown Day’s “rigorous progressive education that is dedicated to fostering critical thinking, independence and social justice.” Judge Jackson replied that the school was private, and every “parent who joins the community does so willingly, with an understanding that they are joining a community that is designed to make sure that every child is valued.”

It’s a fair line of questioning. Someone who was against the principles of Critical Race Theory ought to have been eager to criticize the school’s racist policies. Moreover, it ought to have been easy for the judge to give to Sen. Marsha Blackburn the definition she asked for:

“Do you interpret Justice Ginsburg’s meaning of men and women as male and female?” Blackburn pressed. Jackson did not comment on the matter.

“Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman?’” the senator asked.

“Can I provide a definition? No,” Jackson responded. “I can’t.”

“You can’t?” Blackburn asked.

“Not in this context, I’m not a biologist,” the judge replied.

“Do you believe the meaning of the word woman is so unclear and controversial that you can’t give me a definition?” Blackburn pressed.

“Senator, in my work as a judge, what I do is I address disputes. If there’s a dispute about a definition, people make arguments, and I look at the law, and I decide,” Jackson said.

This is completely disingenuous. Judge Brown knows well that judges like her are required to make these decisions in cases involving transgender civil rights claims. Her refusal to answer the question straightforwardly tells us what we need to know.

Judge Jackson is both a radical and a mainstream 2022 liberal, in the sense that Aaron Sibarium means in his piece. That is, it’s clear that she would be a reliable vector to Supreme Court deliberations of the kind of culture-war radicalism that has consumed law schools. I have a relatively expansive view of SCOTUS nominations, thinking that presidents should generally get their nominees confirmed absent some grave reason not to. In these times, though, and with the serious threat that gender ideology and CRT pose to the fundamental social and constitutional order, I would not vote to confirm any judicial nominee who was not explicitly opposed to both. This is too important to the country’s present and future.

This is morally insane. You don’t need to be a biologist to answer this question. The fact the Judge Jackson can’t do it — or rather, will not do it — tells us everything we need to know about her. I would vote against her nomination for this reason alone. A potential Supreme Court justice who declines to define “woman” is not fit for the office.

*****

This article was published in The American Conservative and reproduced with permission.

SpyGate 101: A Primer On The Russia Collusion Hoax’s Years-long Plot To Take Down Trump thumbnail

SpyGate 101: A Primer On The Russia Collusion Hoax’s Years-long Plot To Take Down Trump

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By Margot Cleveland

For those who care about our country’s future but don’t want to be buried in the minutia of the Russia collusion hoax scandal, here is your big-picture primer.

As Special Counsel John Durham continues to expose more details of the “SpyGate” or “Russia collusion” scandal, it can be difficult for any apolitical, non-news-junkie member of the public to grasp the ongoing developments.

After all, for more than five years, the corrupt legacy media has refused to report on scandal or done so with a slanted portrayal of the facts. So most Americans remain unaware of the Democrats’ years-long duplicity that sought to destroy first candidate and then President Donald Trump. Add to that reality the overlapping conspiracies and sprawling cast of characters involved, and it can be difficult to follow the story.

That the scandal is dense, however, does not mean it should be ignored. To the contrary, the duplicity must not be disregarded because what Trump’s political enemies tried to accomplish over the course of five years represents the biggest threat our constitutional republic has seen in the last century.

So for those who care about our country and her future but don’t want to be buried in the minutia of the scandal, here is your big-picture primer.

DNC Emails Are Hacked

While every thread of SpyGate could be unraveled more, April 30, 2016, marks the cleanest point to pin the start of the intrigue. It was then, amid the contested presidential primaries, that the Democratic National Committee learned that its computer network had been breached. The DNC then hired a company called CrowdStrike to investigate the hack, and by mid-May, CrowdStrike concluded that Russian actors were responsible for the hack, which the DNC then reported to the FBI.

The public first learned about the DNC server hack on June 14, 2016, when The Washington Post broke the story. Then, on July 22, 2016, after Trump and Hillary Clinton had been declared the presidential nominees, WikiLeaks released a trove of documents, purportedly obtained through the DNC hack.

These documents included emails in which then-DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other party officials disparaged Clinton’s primary opponent, Bernie Sanders. The behind-the-scenes communiques also revealed that the DNC, which should maintain neutrality between primary candidates, favored Clinton, with top officials plotting ways to harm the Sanders campaign.

Clinton Campaign Plots to Convert DNC Scandal into Trump Scandal

The timing of WikiLeaks’ release of the DNC emails couldn’t have been worse, with delegates poised in Pennsylvania to officially nominate Clinton the Democratic candidate for president. But by Sunday evening, the Clinton campaign had devised a strategy to respond to the scandal: blame it on Trump.

“I’m Jake Tapper at the Democratic Convention in beautiful Philadelphia, where the state of our union is exposed emails just published by WikiLeaks showing Democratic Party officials actively discussing possible ways to sabotage Bernie Sanders, even as they were insisting publicly that they were staying neutral during the primaries,” the CNN host opened the video segment that launched the Russia collusion hoax.

Tapper introduced Clinton’s then-campaign manager Robby Mook, asking him the campaign’s reaction to the leaked emails. After responding that the DNC needed to “look into this and take appropriate action,” Mook pivoted to Trump, premiering the Russia conspiracy theory that would consume the country for the next five years.

“What’s disturbing to us,” Mook began, is that “experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails, and other experts are now saying that the Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump.”

Mook continued:

“I don’t think it’s coincidental that these emails were released on the eve of our convention here, and that’s disturbing. And I think we need to be concerned about that. I think we need to be concerned that we also saw last week at the Republican Convention that Trump and his allies made changes to the Republican platform to make it more pro-Russian. And we saw him talking about how NATO shouldn’t intervene to defend — necessarily should intervene to defend our Eastern European allies if they are attacked by Russia. So I think, when you put all this together, it’s a disturbing picture. And I think voters need to reflect on that.”

When Tapper asked Mook for evidence to support his claims, Mook cited unnamed experts and press reports “that the hackers that got into the DNC are very likely by to be working in coordination with Russia.”

“If the Russians in fact had these emails, again, I don’t think it’s very coincidental that they are being released at this time to create maximum damage on Hillary Clinton and to help Donald Trump,” Mook reiterated.

“It is a very, very strong charge that you’re leveling here,” Tapper interjected. “You’re basically suggesting that Russians hacked into the DNC and now are releasing these files through WikiLeaks to help elect Donald Trump.”

Again, Mook deflected to “a number of experts,” saying, “Experts have said that it is the Russians that, in fact, went in and took these emails. And then, if they are the ones who took them, we have to infer that they are the ones then releasing them.”

Clinton Campaign Co-Opts the Russia Collusion Hoax

While the Clinton campaign introduced the Russia collusion hoax on the eve of the DNC convention to convert the Sanders’ scandal into one about Trump, the strategy also proved a perfect response to the second Clinton scandal — this one involving Clinton’s illegal use of a private server during her time as secretary of state.

The New York Times first broke the news on March 2, 2015, that Clinton had used a private email server to communicate as secretary of state under President Barack Obama. Two days later, the Select Committee on Benghazi subpoenaed any Benghazi-related emails contained on the private server. Upon learning of the document request, a technician for Clinton’s computer service provider deleted approximately 30,000 of Clinton’s emails, which she claimed were personal emails.

By May of 2016, the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General had released an 83-page report condemning Clinton’s use of the server. Coverage of this report stressed that the State Department had “deemed more than 2,000 of Clinton’s messages as classified, including 22 that were upgraded to the most sensitive national security classification, ‘top secret.’” At the time, the media also noted that “the FBI is still probing whether any laws were broken laws by putting classified information at risk — or whether her staff improperly sent sensitive information knowing it wasn’t on a classified system.”

The Clinton campaign tried to downplay the FBI’s involvement in the private-server scandal by framing it as “a security inquiry,” but in response to questions about that characterization, then-FBI Director James Comey said he was “not familiar with the term ‘security inquiry,’” stressing “the word investigation” is “in our name.”

“We’re conducting an investigation. … That’s what we do. That’s probably all I can say about it,” Comey concluded.

At a press conference two months later, on July 5, 2016, Comey announced that the FBI had completed its investigation and that while Clinton’s handling of classified information was “extremely careless,” he had referred the matter to the Department of Justice with a recommendation that no charges be filed. Comey took this same position when he testified before Congress, there calling Clinton’s conduct related to the server “sloppy.”

Although Comey publicly declared the investigation into Clinton’s private server closed, when Democrats gathered for their convention in Philadelphia, her campaign continued to face questions about the scandal, with Tapper drilling Mook about Comey’s conclusion that Clinton’s use of the private server had been “sloppy.” Mook quickly changed the conversation to “this election” and what “voters are looking for and asking about in this election.”

Two days later, though, the media took Mook’s lead and converted the Clinton server scandal into a scandal about Trump. A July 26, 2016, opinion article for USA Today, titled “Putin for President 2016,” opened with an acknowledgment that Clinton’s “secret private-server emails are almost certainly already in the hands of Russian intelligence,” and concluded, “Putin can embarrass Hillary — or worse — whenever he wants.”

“We’re getting a small foretaste of that in the release of hacked Democratic National Committee emails,” the piece continued, speaking of the DNC officials engaged in “dirty tricks aimed at Bernie Sanders” and “getting awfully chummy with some allegedly professional journalists.” And with that, the media converted Clinton’s use of a private server to a story about Trump and Russia’s supposed backing of his candidacy.

From then on, the Clinton campaign and a complicit media framed any concern over her use of a home-brew server and any questions about the details buried in the DNC emails not as a scandal about Clinton but as a conspiracy between Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Clinton Campaign Pays for and Peddles Fake Trump-Russia Evidence

By the last week of July 2016, the Russia collusion diversion controlled the narrative, and Democrats repurposed every question about the DNC hack or the sever scandal as an opportunity to peddle it.

Similarly, Clinton’s team converted every comment by Trump, even tangentially related to Russia, as further evidence of a conspiracy. Likewise, her campaign framed every Russia connection, past or present, between Trump, his business, his family, or members of his campaign as concrete proof of collusion.

While the Clinton campaign had not gone public with the Russia-collusion angle until July 24, 2016, when Mook marketed that theme on CNN, it had been collecting supposed intel on Trump’s connections to Russia for some time.

In the first half of 2016, Perkins Coie, the law firm that represented the Clinton campaign, had hired private investigation firm Fusion GPS to collect opposition research on Trump. In turn, Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele in May or June of 2016 to focus on Trump’s connections to Russia, and by June 20, 2016, Steele had drafted the first of some 17 memoranda that would eventually compose what is now known colloquially as the Steele dossier.

Steele shared his initial memorandum — which contained claims that the Kremlin had blackmail material on Trump, including the salacious and false “golden showers” accusation — with an FBI contact on July 5, 2016. Over the next six months, Steele continued to craft the dossier, relying primarily on an unnamed “Primary Sub-Source,” now known to be Russian national Igor Danchenko.

Danchenko, who has since been indicted for lying to the FBI, is also alleged to have invented some of the supposed intel contained in the dossier. Danchenko also fed Steele false information about the Trump campaign, which a Clinton booster had invented and then passed on to Danchenko.

The bottom line some five-plus years later is that the dossier consisted of a few publicly known accurate facts and a litany of false claims concocted by Danchenko and others and then sold by Steele and the Clinton campaign as the work of a former MI6 Russian expert.

The Steele dossier represented but one aspect of the invented evidence of collusion. The Clinton campaign also paid Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmann for his work in crafting, with the assistance of various tech experts, a report purporting to show that the Trump organization had established a secret-communication network with the powerful Russian Alfa Bank.

Additionally, computer scientists who had worked with the Clinton campaign’s attorney “surveilled the internet traffic at Trump Tower, at his New York City apartment building, and later at the executive office of the president of the United States, then fed disinformation about that traffic to intelligence agencies hoping to frame Trump as a Russia-connected stooge.”

As Steele, Fusion GPS, and other Clinton backers created fraudulent reports, they, along with the Clinton campaign and her lawyers, exploited their relationships with reporters and government officials.

Steele and/or Fusion GPS’s founder Glenn Simpson shared Steele’s memoranda with various news outlets. They also fed the supposed intel to members of the law enforcement and intelligence communities, including representatives in the Departments of Justice and State. After the FBI fired Steele as a source because he had spoken with the media, it arranged for him to continue providing his reports to the FBI by having him meet with a Justice Department attorney instead.

This dual-prong approach resulted in a public saturated with circular confirmation of Trump-Russia collusion. Outlets parroted the false details fed to reporters by Steele and then referenced the FBI’s investigations into the same matters to create the appearance that the investigations confirmed the validity of the leaks. Simultaneously, the FBI used media reports as a basis to confirm Steele’s supposed intel.

Obama Admin Spies on Trump Campaign Under Knowingly False Pretenses

On July 31, 2016, the Obama administration and the FBI launched an investigation into the Trump campaign, branded “Crossfire Hurricane.” While to this day, the FBI maintains it opened Crossfire Hurricane after U.S. officials learned from an Australian diplomat that young Trump adviser George Papadopoulos had bragged “that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton,” former Attorney General William Barr and Special Counsel John Durham have both questioned that account.

The Obama administration’s targeting of the opposition party’s presidential campaign came just as the Clinton campaign began publicly pushing the narrative that Trump was colluding with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. And the opening of Crossfire Hurricane came three days after then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Barack Obama and other senior national security officials on intelligence alleging “that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee.”

Brennan’s briefing also noted that intelligence agencies had obtained intel indicating that on July 26, 2016, Clinton approved “a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.” In early September 2016, a U.S. intelligence official would forward an investigative referral to the FBI regarding “Clinton’s approval of a plan” about “Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server.”

Even with this foreknowledge of the Clinton campaign’s plot to frame Trump, and even while watching the execution of the plan in real-time, the FBI moved forward with Crossfire Hurricane. The FBI would also later use Steele’s fraudulent reporting to obtain four court orders from the secret FISA court to surveil a former Trump campaign volunteer named Carter Page.

While Page was no longer connected to the campaign when the FBI obtained the FISA surveillance orders, the warrant allowed the FBI to access prior correspondence between Page and the Trump campaign, as well as any communications Page continued to have with individual campaign members. Further, while FISA proceedings are secret, media leaks about the targeting of Page gave the press more material to further the Russia-collusion spin.

Accessing private campaign emails, however, represented but one aspect of the spying that took place under the auspices of Crossfire Hurricane. The FBI also tasked a Confidential Human Source (CHS) with questioning Page, and that CHS “sought specific details from Page related to the Trump campaign, and fed Page unsolicited (and potentially illegal) advice concerning campaign strategy.”

The FBI used the same CHS to question Sam Clovis, a senior member of the Trump campaign. In a recorded conversation, the CHS posed several questions about sensitive campaign strategies and concerns.

The spying on Trump’s campaign also included the FBI using a private Trump security briefing as a possible opportunity to collect information for the investigation.

Investigation into Trump Continues During His Administration

Significantly, Crossfire Hurricane did not end with the 2016 election. Instead, after Trump defeated Clinton, the investigation continued and so did the leaks, with Comey giving Trump a briefing on the Steele dossier — a fact then leaked to give CNN a pretext to report on the Steele dossier.

After Trump’s inauguration, the FBI hatched a plot to oust the president’s national security adviser, again with the help of the media. Comey also began writing secret memoranda of conversations he had with now-President Trump. And after Trump fired Comey, the latter leaked those memoranda to the media through a law professor friend, triggering the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Mueller continued Crossfire Hurricane, retaining many of the original FBI agents. The country would later learn that many of those investigating the Trump campaign held rabid anti-Trump sentiments when text messages exchanged by members of the Crossfire Hurricane team were made public. Other text messages went missing when several agents wiped their cell phones.

The public learned of even more malfeasance by the Crossfire Hurricane team when the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General released a 400-plus-page report concluding that the DOJ included 17 significant inaccuracies and omissions in the FISA application and renewals related to Carter Page.

These problems and others led then-AG William Barr to appoint U.S. Attorney John Durham to lead an investigation into Crossfire Hurricane, later naming him a special prosecutor.

As part of his investigation, Durham revealed additional misconduct in Crossfire Hurricane when he obtained a guilty plea from a former FBI attorney for altering an email related to the FISA case against Page.

Durham’s team also obtained a statement from another FBI agent involved in the investigation named William Barnett. Barnett told DOJ investigators that there was never any basis for the bizarre “collusion” theory and that Mueller’s office pushed prosecutions with a “get Trump” mentality. But even then, Mueller found no evidence of Trump colluding with Russia.

There are thousands more details already known and many more players involved — and that’s before whatever else Durham may reveal. But just these basics provide all the information you need to understand SpyGate — and to see why it far surpasses the Watergate scandal. 

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

Climate Change Poses No Existential Threat. Nada. Not Any. thumbnail

Climate Change Poses No Existential Threat. Nada. Not Any.

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By H. Sterling Burnett

A refreshing article in the Washington Examiner demonstrates what I have repeatedly said for more than a decade: climate change does not pose an “existential threat.” In fact, that’s the title of the article: “Climate change is not an ‘existential threat.’” In discussing the energy crisis that has arisen during Joe Biden’s brief tenure as president of the United States—primarily because of Biden’s climate policies—David Simon writes,

The Biden administration’s climate change policies have sharply increased oil prices, damaging the domestic economy and increasing the cost of nearly everything consumers buy. By increasing revenues for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime, they also made Russia stronger and more dangerous at a critical time, thus damaging national security. …

But worst of all, the Biden administration’s basis for these policies, the claim that global warming presents an “existential threat,” is fraudulent. It is not based on any scientific consensus, and in fact, it ignores evidence of environmental benefits of global warming that offset its harm. 

In this article, chock full of data, Simon schools so-called journalists in the corporate media on how to examine claims that humans are causing a climate catastrophe. Simon presents data and research that conclusively demonstrate temperature and climate-related deaths have significantly declined during the period of modern warming. Climate Realism has also pointed this out on numerous occasions, refuting alarmists’ claims to the contrary.

For example, arguably the largest study ever to examine excess mortality associated with temperature was published in the July 1 edition of The Lancet, one of the world’s most prominent health journals. The study’s authors, 68 scientists representing universities and research institutes in 33 countries spanning all regions of the world, came to two clear conclusions: cold temperatures contribute to far more deaths each year than warmer temperatures, and deaths associated with extreme temperatures, hot or cold, are declining. The researchers found nearly 10 times more people die due to cold temperatures than hot temperatures. Moreover, as global temperatures modestly increase, the number of people dying because of suboptimal temperatures is decreasing.

“Importantly, cold-related death decreased 0.51 per cent from 2000 to 2019, while heat-related death increased 0.21 per cent, leading to a reduction in net mortality due to cold and hot temperatures,” the study reports.

Considering that 10 times more people were dying from cold than from heat, the study indicates the warming between 2000 and 2019 saved 3.1 million lives from cold-related deaths, at the expense of just 130,000 extra deaths caused by heat. As a result, global warming saved a net of nearly three million lives during the past 20 years.

This study confirms what previous research has consistently shown. In 2015, for example, The Lancet published the results of another large-scale temperature/mortality study, in which the researchers found cold weather directly or indirectly killed 1,700 percent more people than warm or hot weather. The scientists examined health data from 384 locations in 13 countries, accounting for more than 74 million deaths. The authors of this study wrote,

[N]on-optimum ambient temperature is responsible for substantial excess in mortality, with important differences between countries. Although most previous research has focused on heat-related effects, most of the attributable deaths were caused by cold temperatures. Despite the attention given to extreme weather events, most of the effect happened on moderately hot and moderately cold days, especially moderately cold days.

Even The New York Times acknowledged the importance of that study, with Jane Brody writing, “Over time, as global temperatures rise, milder winter temperatures are likely to result in fewer cold-related deaths, a benefit that could outweigh a smaller rise in heat-caused mortality.”

In addition to correcting the record on heat-related deaths, Simon dismantles various climate fictions about worsening natural disasters, using readily available data:

The facts regarding natural disasters also do not support the “existential threat” claim. The number of hurricanes per year, a 2021 EPA report shows, has not increased since the late 19th century. Moreover, although you wouldn’t know it from the panicky, sensationalized news coverage, the total acreage burnt by forest fires annually has decreased, and most rivers flood less today than they used to.

Since 1920, Earth’s average temperature has risen by 1.12 degrees and the world population has quadrupled from less than two billion to almost eight billion. Even so, the number of people killed each year by natural disasters has declined by about 90 percent. That statistic, more than any other, puts the lie to claims of an existential crisis due to climate.

There is also the global air pollution death rate, which has declined by about 45 percent over the last three decades. Again, no “existential threat” here.

Simon is correct. Research published at Climate Realism has refuted assertions about worsening wildfires and hurricanes on multiple occasions.

Simon also discusses research showing the positive side of climate change: “global warming has increased both agricultural yields and growth of forests, grasslands, and tree leaves.”

Climate Change Weekly and Climate Realism have refuted claims climate change is a threat to crop production more than 100 times. We have cited research and hard data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization showing regional and global crop production and crop yields have regularly, almost yearly, set new records during the recent period of modern warming.

Basic agronomy explains why crop production is booming under current climate conditions. As detailed by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change in Climate Change Reconsidered: Biological Impacts and Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels, the carbon dioxide humans have been pumping into the air since the middle of the twentieth century has enriched plant growth and improved plants’ water-use efficiency, thereby contributing to record crop yields.

Laboratory experiments and real-world field research show as carbon dioxide increases, plant fitness, and flower pollination improve, plants develop more-extensive root systems to extract greater amounts of nutrients from even poor-quality soil, plants use water more efficiently by reducing the number and openness of stomata through which they lose moisture during transpiration, and plants produce greater amounts of natural substances that repel insects and fight off competing weeds.

All of this has helped bring about the largest decline in hunger, malnutrition, and starvation in human history.

Simon’s conclusion is spot-on and speaks for itself:

Biden administration climate change policies are sensationalizing the threats while ignoring all the benefits. They rely on speculative “models” that supposedly project global temperatures and predict disasters. But these models are highly unreliable, … unable even to reproduce the temperature changes of the 20th century.

The Biden administration’s campaign against U.S. oil production and pipelines is not just harmful—it is an environmental fraud.

To quote longtime radio host Paul Harvey, that’s “the rest of the story”: the very good news the mainstream media and various scientific and political shills aren’t telling you about climate change.

*****

This article was published by The Heartland Institute and is reproduced with permission.

Beat Him Until He Cannot Run For Election’: Chinese Secret Police Target Congressional Candidate And Other Americans thumbnail

Beat Him Until He Cannot Run For Election’: Chinese Secret Police Target Congressional Candidate And Other Americans

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By Philip Lenczycki

The FBI charged five individuals with crimes related to “transnational repression schemes” for allegedly serving Communist China’s secret police on Wednesday.

The FBI defines “transnational repression” as “when foreign governments stalk, intimidate, or assault people in the United States.”

Among the five charged is Matthew Ziburis, a former correctional officer for the state of Florida, according to an FBI press release.

Former Tiananmen Square pro-democracy leader and current Democratic party New York congressional candidate, Yan Xiong, has been identified as one of the secret police’s targets, according to a New York Times report.

The FBI charged alleged agents of China’s secret police on Wednesday with crimes related to the repression of Americans by foreign governments.

In three separate cases, the FBI revealed it had charged five individuals in the Eastern District of New York with perpetrating “transnational repression schemes” on targets within the U.S., according to a Wednesday press release.

‘Beat Him Until He Cannot Run For Election’

Qiming Lin, 59, a citizen and resident of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), is alleged to be an agent of the Ministry of State Security (MSS) by the FBI, which characterized the foreign agency as “a civilian intelligence and secret police agency responsible for counterintelligence and political security” in the press release.

Charged with “conspiracy to commit interstate harassment” and related crimes, Lin is alleged to have hired a New York private investigator to harass and even physically attack a “student leader of the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square” now “currently running for U.S. Congress.”

The FBI stated that Lin also told the private investigator “we will have a lot more-more of this [work] in the future … Including right now [a] New York State legislator.”

The New York Times identified Lin’s alleged victim as Yan Xiong, a Democratic party congressional candidate in New York.

After allegedly asking the private investigator to find the target’s address and phone number, Lin then instructed the private investigator to “manufacture” a disqualifying scandal, the press release said.

“Go find a girl,” the FBI claims Lin told the private investigator. “Or see how he goes for prostitution, take some photos, something of that nature.”

Lin later suggested for the private investigator to “consider physically attacking” Yan in order to “prevent his candidacy,” according to the press release.

“In the end, violence would be fine too,” Lin allegedly said. “Beat him until he cannot run for election .. You-you think about it. Car accident, [he] will be completely wrecked [chuckles], right?”

Yan told the Daily Caller News Foundation he was unaware he was being targeted by Chinese secret police.

“I’m a U.S. Army chaplain, retired,” Yan said. “I served the country for 27 years. I’ve left China for 30 years. I have nothing to do with them.”

Although Yan said he was unaware of Lin’s alleged plot, he told the DCNF he understood why the Chinese government might target him.

“Let me put it this way: because I was a Tiananmen Square student leader,” said Yan. “If I was elected as a congressman, maybe all over the world they’d say that guy is a former Tiananmen Square student leader and maybe that would have more influence on the Chinese.”

“I carried a lot of bodies during the June 4th massacre,” Yan said while reflecting on his role during the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy movements. “I really witnessed that tragedy.”

Undaunted by the FBI’s report, Yan says he will continue his candidacy.

“Number one, I have no fear in my heart. I have love in my heart. As a pastor in the clergy, you could say god is with me, that’s the spiritual thing and that’s for sure for me,” Yan told the DCNF. “Number two, I will be cautious, drive safely, do the right thing, be in the right place, talk the right thing, and love the people, all of the people. That’s what I want to do.”

The other individuals charged by the FBI are Shujun Wang, Fan “Frank” Liu, Matthew Ziburis and Qiang “Jason” Sun, according to the release.

Wang is charged with “acting as an agent of the PRC government, criminal use of means of identification, and making materially false statements, in connection with his participation in a transnational repression scheme orchestrated by the MSS,” the release said.

The FBI claims Wang started a pro-democracy organization in Queens in order to infiltrate New York’s Chinese community, later leveraging his dissident status to report sensitive information on “prominent activists, dissidents, and human rights leaders” back to Beijing.

Wang allegedly kept tabs on a “prominent human rights activist,” and his victims included “individuals and groups located in New York City and elsewhere that the PRC considers subversive, such as Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, advocates for Taiwanese independence, and Uyghur and Tibetan activists,” the press release stated.

*****

This article was published by Daily Caller and is reproduced with permission.

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Middle Kingdom Rising

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By Srdja Trifkovic

In 1935 the Nazi regime was two years old, fully consolidated at home, and increasingly assertive abroad. It enacted the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws and announced that Germany would start a massive rearmament program, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Meanwhile, Britain and France were focused on condemning Mussolini’s intervention in Ethiopia and on punishing Italy in the League of Nations for its colonial adventure. The obsession of Britain and France with a peripheral issue, which did not affect their security calculus, allowed Hitler to act with impunity during the next three years. He reoccupied the Rhineland in March 1936, effected the Anschluss in March 1938, and scored a bloodless diplomatic acquisition of the Sudetenland in Munich, in September 1938. The rest, as the cliché goes, is history.

Historical analogies are useful, providing they are not carried too far. Putin is not Mussolini, Ukraine is not Ethiopia, Xi Jinping is not Hitler, and China in 2022 is not the Reich. There is a salutary warning, however. The crisis in relations with Russia—conjured by the Beltway alliance of neoliberal and neoconservative globalists—pleases Russophobic obsessions, but the only real winner in this minus-sumgame is China. Her remarkable economic and political COVID-era performance has immense implications. The magnitude of her recent rise vis-à-vis the United States is dangerously underestimated by geopolitical analysts. To wit, during the thick of the Ukraine crisis, the March-April 2022 issue of Foreign Affairs published an insanely optimistic manifesto for containing China in the years to come.

The journal’s lead column, “Enemies of My Enemy: How Fear of China Is Forging a New World Order,” by Michael Beckley, a senior fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, asserts that, “Through a surge of repression and aggression China has frightened countries near and far.” Beijing is acting belligerently in East Asia, trying to carve out exclusive economic zones in the global economy, and promoting authoritarian governance abroad. “For the first time since the Cold War, a critical mass of countries face serious threats to their security, welfare, and ways of life—all emanating from a single source,” he writes.

Beckley’s assertions and his reference to “a single source” obliquely deviate from the party line of the journal’s publisher, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which insists that “Putin’s Russia” is a serious threat. Beckley’s conclusion, however, expresses solid CFR orthodoxy: the only source of hope in our time can be provided by “a renewed commitment to democratic values.… an international order based on democratic principles and enshrined in international agreements and laws.”

The core of such an order is being forged in the crucible of competition with China and could be built out into the most enlightened order the world has ever seen—a genuine free world. But to get there, the United States and its allies will have to embrace competition with China and march forward together through another long twilight struggle.

Marching forward together to create the most enlightened order the world has ever seen, a genuine free world, does not sound like a viable strategy for containing China—to put it charitably. Such utopian kitsch may have been taken seriously by a misguided few when the Berlin Wall fell more than three decades ago. Today, however, the CFR “vision” is beyond absurd.

The reality is that over the past two years, largely thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, China has greatly strengthened its overall position in the world. Its stringent measures in response to the virus appealed to its collectivist-minded populace. From now on—regardless of when the pandemic ends—if a major crisis or war were to break out, the comprehensive militarization of the Chinese can be completed more quickly and efficiently than ever before.

On the foreign front, China has deployed “vaccine diplomacy” to strengthen relations with the developing world. It has delivered over two billion doses of vaccines and antiviral medicines to a hundred countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Most of those countries are now reluctant to join an American led “march forward” to contain and confront China.

The perception of a faltering U.S. will strengthen the tacit consensus of the Han nation that their loyalty to the community, from the family upwards, trumps individualism. The notion that the future belongs to China is pleasing even to the ruling elite in Taiwan, which is loath to submit to Bejing’s political control but, for the most part, does not perceive its destiny as separate from that of China as a whole.

An early sign of Beijing’s self-confidence was on display a year ago at the failed Anchorage summit, where an attempt by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to lecture his Chinese guests on China’s human rights record prompted an unprecedentedly stern response. The same spirit was on full display on Feb. 20, as Beijing wrapped up the Winter Olympics with an impressive closing ceremony.

On the economic front, China is doing better than predicted by most specialists. Its factories returned to production faster than those of its main rivals or of the two developing aspirants, India and Vietnam. It is the only major global player whose economy is stronger now than it was two years ago, having grown by 2.3 percent in 2020—the first year of the pandemic—when the rest of the world was losing economic ground. Its 8.1 percent growth rate in 2021 was well ahead of America’s better-than-expected 5.7 percent.

As we enter the third year of COVID-induced uncertainty, it is clear that foreign investors are not fleeing China: its status as the world’s workshop seems safe. On Jan. 14, Beijing announced that its December 2021 exports increased by almost 21 percent over the prior November, and the annual value of its foreign trade surpassed $6 trillion for the first time. Current attempts by some Western conglomerates to reduce their dependence on Chinese supply chains, notably in the pharmaceutical sector, are unsurprising, but there is no sign of a stampede by major multinationals to get out.

Of course, China has every reason to be pleased by the events in Ukraine. It is supportive of Russia in the cost-free realm of public diplomacy, but Beijing is not rushing to give Moscow any meaningful help. That much was obvious when Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. The encounter resulted in a joint statement asserting that the friendship between the two nations “has no limits.” This rhetoric implies that their relationship can also expand further in the military and technological fields, where the two nations have been collaborating closely for years. It does not hint at the possibility of a formal security alliance, however, which makes the endeavor disappointing from Russia’s vantage point. The Bear needs the Dragon here and now, but the latter beast remains cold-blooded.

The reference to a “new era” in international relations is the standard Chinese slogan to mark the advance of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to superpower status. Meanwhile, Putin was goaded into a no-win situation in Ukraine. Subjected to intense Western pressure, Moscow has no choice but to seek support in Beijing. Their would-be alliance carries the threat of Russia’s increasingly subordinate position, however, with an economy and a population one-tenth that of China. Longterm consequences would be detrimental to the entire European-derived civilization, from Vancouver to Vienna to Vladivostok.

China’s ambivalent position on Russia’s recognition of the two separatist republics and the entry of its regular forces into the Donbass on Feb. 21 is illustrative of Beijing’s calculus. China sees Ukraine as a welcome distraction that draws the U.S. away from the Indo-Pacific. In global-strategic terms, Russia is not America’s enemy, and it is not a threat to vital American interests. In a realist-run Washington, Russia would be seen as a natural partner—perhaps a possible ally—in a multipolar balancing act aimed at preventing China’s hegemony over the Eurasian heartland. The Biden administration is manifestly unable to make such a bold reassessment, however.

Its lack of long-term vision was evident in an “Indo-Pacific Strategy” released by the White House on Feb. 11, which fails to articulate specific U.S. objectives, much less the methods of their attainment. It declares that China “is combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological might as it pursues a sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and seeks to become the world’s most influential power.” In order to counter China’s “harmful behavior,” however, the document offers nothing new. The U.S. objective, it says, is “not to change the PRC but to shape the strategic environment in which it operates, building a balance of influence in the world that is maximally favorable to the United States, our allies and partners, and the interests and values we share.” It’s conclusion is just as vague:

We will not have the luxury of choosing between power politics and combatting transnational threats; we will rise to our leadership charge on diplomacy, security, economics, climate, pandemic response, and technology … the United States can lead with others toward an Indo-Pacific that is free and open, connected, prosperous, secure, and resilient for generations to come.

Such platitudes call into question the existence of a balanced U.S. strategy to deal with China as a rising power. China is not necessarily an enemy, unless America continues to treat every square inch of the globe as its rightful turf. It is in the American interest for China to be accepted as a great power among great powers in a multipolar world. At the same time, it is legitimate for the U.S. to try to contain China’s eventual bid for Eurasian hegemony, which it may entertain now or in the future. In either time frame, America needs Russia as a partner, not an enemy. Grasping this simple fact and acting accordingly is the greatest security challenge of our time.

*****

This article was published by Chronicles and is reproduced with permission.

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If You Don’t Know What a Woman Is, You Are Disqualified

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By Neland Nobel

Under questioning from Senator Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee, Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson said she could not define what a woman is because she (Ketanji Jackson) is not a biologist. This was among the most revealing of some of her muddled answers.

This was obvious pandering to the Transgender Lobby and is disqualifying on a number of levels.

She will have cases pertaining to this social controversy and she already is prejudiced herself. We cannot afford to have such a confused brain sitting on the Supreme Court.

Likewise disqualifying is the cowardice displayed, in that she could have answered the question as a reasonable person would, but chose to be evasive because she either thinks the question is very complicated or she is more a politician with her finger in the wind than a judge. Both positions are disqualifying.

She also pandered to the credentialed crowd and the idiotic notion that one has to have a degree to think. We have to possess a degree in biology now to know the difference between a man and a woman? Good grief, humans had that figured out long before universities were formed and degrees granted. They had to have known the difference or all of us wouldn’t be here!

So now a stallion has to have a degree in biology to recognize a mare? A degree as a veterinarian is necessary to recognize a dog? A degree in geology is necessary to identify a rock? A degree in law is necessary to know this candidate is not worthy of a seat on the Supreme Court?

What condescending drivel!

Since the case of Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who “identified” as being black and became the head of the Seattle area NAACP a few years back, some felt a person’s race can be changed by mere declaration or affirmation. Interestingly, the NAACP was not among those that felt that way as they fired her promptly.

Senator Elizabeth Warren at least did not “identify” as a Native American, she simply lied about her family background in order to advance her academic and political career. She may have actually believed her family stories about the origins of high cheekbones.

Those positions are less breathtaking than the idea that sex can be “changed” by a simple declaration. Progressives seem to believe this can be done, while Conservatives generally believe that one’s sex is biological and genetic makeup, is not a function of self-declaration.

The genetic difference between one white female and one black female is very slight.  But the difference between a man and a woman is much greater.  But in neither case can one’s internal identification and later public declaration change the facts of sexual organs, the hormones they produce, and DNA.

But thanks to “Gender Studies” at universities, we find ourselves as a society questioning our own sanity.

If I declare that I now identify as Peter Pan, does that mean I can fly? Does it mean I can remain a child for the rest of my life? This is fairy tale stuff, not reality. Need proof?  Let our newly identified Peter Pan jump off a building and see if gravity cares one wit about personal identification.

Thus, if a person’s self-declaration of what they are determines their sex, how would being a biologist help? If anything, a biologist would be confused because the physical evidence and DNA could conflict with the declaration of the person being examined. As a biologist, you are not trained to weigh psychotic statements any better than the rest of us. So, why does Judge Brown even make that argument?

Joe Biden says he wants to appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court. This should not be the criteria for such an important appointment, but Biden has made his political calculations and made his choice based on the idea that he can find a black female for the job. How can that be done if the President is unable to define what both a black and a woman are? Moreover, if he is able to determine what a black woman is, but his candidate for the Supreme Court cannot, what does that tell you about the process? Perhaps the President is a biologist?

Either the President is terribly wrong or the judicial nominee is mistaken. You can’t have it both ways.

It is time, well past time, for both women and men to stand up and say to the transgendered advocates that your declarations or affirmations do not change reality. It is not prejudiced in any form to resist being sucked into another person’s mental illness. Delusional behavior is bad enough on the individual level, without elevating it to the societal level. None of us are under any moral or ethical requirement to join in this dangerous fiction. Rather, we have a moral and ethical obligation to resist it.

Our position should be as follows: We are sorry for your sexual confusion and we hope you get help. But your psychosis is damaging to the rest of us, our families, our children, and we will not accept as fact your emotional outbursts, no matter how sincerely felt.  You may do what you wish with your own life, but we will not change our laws, customs, and manners, just to accommodate your psychosis.

The transgendered have the rights to be treated as a human beings and be free of violence and coercion. But we also have the right not to share their mental illness. We also have the right to be free of violence and coercion from the transgendered. Seen any videos lately of campus behavior among this crowd?

If one cannot determine what a woman is even for the purposes of sport, how is this inability going to influence the functioning of the law?

We have Title 9 and other laws creating opportunities for women in sport and education. But if women cannot be identified, then how do these benefits get allocated?

What the heck does “women’s rights” even mean, if there is no ready way to know what a woman is?

Equal pay for men and women?  How could you possibly know how to apply such a concept if you cannot determine who is male and who is female?

Sexual harassment of women? How can one harass something that does not exist, except in the mind of whomever? Only biologists can know it would seem and thus be guilty or not.

Generally, women get benefits from marriage and justified or not, get additional economic support in divorce, and usually child custody. Well, how can that be accomplished if you don’t know the difference between the man and the woman?

If a Federal judge cannot define what is a man or a woman, how are the rest of us supposed to enforce those employment and family laws that apply particularly to either men or women?

So, do today’s feminists have any idea how damaging this embracing of transgenderism is to their cause?

On an even more prosaic level, if a Federal judge cannot define what is a man or a woman, how are we supposed to describe a criminal to the police if we cannot either determine their sex or race? Kind of hard to provide a description, would it not? We could not know unless we interviewed the perp and got to know how they identified.

If it is impossible to know the difference between a man and a woman, who will be eligible for the draft, should that be needed again?

Besides her inability to answer a simple question, it would appear the candidate selected by President Biden is very soft on crime, particularly sexual crimes involving children, and very much has bought into the sexual insanity in vogue at universities. On other matters, she seems to side with criminals embracing the fashionable left-wing notions that society is at fault and thus, no one is really a criminal.

Our Senators should vote NO on her nomination.

Republicans will no doubt waver, afraid as always, they might in any way confirm the racist calumny Democrats have hung on them.

This really has nothing to do with the race of the candidate. This is a clear-cut case of poor judicial judgment, activism, and temperament.

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American Elites Have Deep Ties To A New Chinese Spy Chief

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By Philip Lenczycki

The new deputy head of a propaganda and espionage agency in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has documented ties with business tycoons, university heads, and other elite members of American society.

Chen Xu, former party secretary of one of the PRC’s most prestigious universities, Tsinghua, was promoted to deputy head of the United Front Work Department (UFWD), according to an updated leadership roster on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) portal, which was first reported in Chinese media on Feb. 28.

The United Front Work Department

The Department of State described the operations of the UFWD as including “the use or threat of physical violence, theft and release of private information, espionage, sabotage, or malicious interference in domestic political affairs, academic freedom, personal privacy, or business activity” in a 2020 press statement.

The general secretary of the CCP, Xi Jinping, labeled the UFWD a “magic weapon” for “realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” in a 2014 speech celebrating the 65th anniversary of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a state organ which oversees the UFWD.

Recently, Beijing’s espionage operations have garnered increased scrutiny in the U.S. following the FBI’s charging of five individuals with “transnational repression schemes” on Mar. 16, crimes which allegedly included the targeting of a Congressional candidate.

The Justice Department’s announcement comes just two months after MI5 named a London solicitor, Christine Ching Kui Lee, as an alleged UFWD operative acting to financially influence British politicians in a January “security service interference alert” issued to the House of Commons.

Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, who is the lead of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and chair of the group’s China Task Force, spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation about the dangers of associating with CCP, UFWD, and CPPCC members.

“The Justice Department’s indictments this week are yet another wakeup call that the CCP is actively reaching into American society and trying to limit our freedoms,” McCaul said, making reference to the FBI’s Wednesday press conference as evidence of the looming espionage threat. “Years of law enforcement activity, including this week, clearly show that this transnational repression can raise to the level of criminal activity, and Americans should be aware when they are dealing with entities who carry out the CCP’s objectives abroad.” (RELATED: DOJ Kills The China Initiative, Kowtowing To A Chinese-American Group With Documented CCP Ties)

CEO of Blackstone, Stephen Schwarzman, has met with Chen Xu on a number of occasions. [YouTube/Screenshot/SchwarzmanScholars]

Blackstone’s Chinese Communist Party-Backed IPO

The UFWD’s new deputy, Chen, has spent years cultivating relationships with U.S. politicians, leaders in the Chinese-American community, student associations, and other high-profile individuals, such as the billionaire CEO of The Blackstone Group, Stephen Schwarzman.

Schwarzman’s connections to individuals tied to the CCP began years before meeting Chen at Tsinghua University.

Schwarzman began traveling to China in 1990, but by 2007, when his global investment business, Blackstone, opened its second Asia-Pacific office in Hong Kong, Schwarzman had already begun keeping regular company with figures directly and indirectly associated with the CCP, such as Antony Leung.

Before heading up Blackstone’s Hong Kong office, Leung was employed as the financial secretary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. In that capacity, Leung reported to the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Tung Chee-hwa, a man linked to PRC influence operations across America and someone the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission reports is “clearly associated with the United Front.”

Mao Zedong’s right-hand man, Zhou Enlai, was the first person appointed to the position of vice-chairman of the CPPCC, a title Tung now holds.

Schwarzman credits Tung’s subordinate, Leung, with the lion’s share of Blackstone’s success in the PRC.

Schwarzman said it was Leung who was by his side when he first met with Xi Jinping during the future president’s short stint as party secretary of Shanghai in 2007, and it was Leung who helped arrange for $3 billion in funding for Blackstone’s June 2007 IPO from China Investment Corp (CIC), a sovereign wealth fund created by the CCP.

“When we were going public in 2007, we were planning a $4 billion IPO, and the government of China came in and asked can we buy $3 billion of the $4 billion IPO?” Schwarzman told The Economic Times in 2020. “This was sort of a shock because I have not been to China since 1990 and nobody buys three-quarters of an IPO.”

“So, what we did is, we just increased it to $7 billion and we became the world’s second-largest IPO of the decade after Google,” Schwarzman told The Economic Times. “As a result of this, it was for the first time China had bought an equity interest in a public company outside of China since modern China was established in 1949.”

After going public, Blackstone’s first earnings report arrived in August 2007, showing the firm’s profits had tripled over a year.

Today, Blackstone’s revenue sits north of $22 billion a year, up from just over $3 billion in 2007, according to their annual report, with the company now proclaiming itself the “largest owner of commercial real estate globally.” (RELATED: ‘Beat Him Until He Cannot Run For Election’: Chinese Secret Police Target Congressional Candidate And Other Americans)

A figure linked to many malign PRC influence operations across the United States, Tung Chee-hwa is the vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which controls the United Front Work Department (UFWD) to which Chen Xu has been promoted. [YouTube/Screenshot/CGTN]

The Tsinghua Clique

Schwarzman also credits Leung with helping him set up the 2013 deal for Schwarzman Scholars, a one-year English-language international program at Tsinghua University which required $300 million in fundraising. 

As a one-party government, the political power to control the PRC has historically been fought over by competing intra-party “cliques,” of which there are known to be at least three: the Shanghai Clique, the Communist Youth League Clique and the Tsinghua Clique, which Xi is said to lead.

Chen Xu was promoted to party secretary of Tsinghua University in December 2013 and thereafter became an important and frequent point of contact for Schwarzman time and time and time again.

As Tsinghua’s party secretary, Chen held an important position for both the university and the CCP, with Tsinghua serving as both a fertile training ground for domestic and international talent, as well as a capable vehicle for projecting the PRC’s soft power.

According to her station, Chen was expected to promote the interests of both her university, as well as the CCP, which more often than not were indistinguishable.

When Xi arranged for President Vladimir Putin to receive an honorary doctorate degree from Tsinghua University in 2019, it was Chen who “presided over the ceremony and read out the address of honor,” welcoming the Russian dictator into the “Tsinghua family,” according to a Chinese state-run media Global Times report. (RELATED: Below Their Lines: American Corporations Cancel Russia But Remain Silent On Uyghur Genocide)

The vice premier of the PRC and head of the United Front Work Department, Liu Yandong, gave a speech at the annual opening ceremony for Schwarzman Scholars at Tsinghua University in 2016. [YouTube/Screenshot/SchwarzmanScholars]

Schwarzman Scholars

When the opening convocation for Schwarzman Scholars was held, the Great Hall of the People — Beijing’s prime CCP venue for “state affairs and diplomatic activities” — was selected to host the event in April 2013.

From its inception, Schwarzman Scholars attracted high-level CPPCC and UFWD attention.

David Daokui Li, a member of the CPPCC of which Tung was the vice chairman, was appointed in 2013 as the dean of Schwarzman Scholars. Among other things, Li would chair a seminar for the program’s admissions attended by CCP cadre from the UFWD, Communist Youth League and central committee, while Tung himself sat on the advisory board for the program.

Schwarzman sat beside the CCP’s highest-ranking female, Liu Yandong — the vice premier and former head of both the UFWD and Confucius Institute project — during the program’s opening convocation in April, then again in November 2013 when Liu visited Washington D.C., and again in 2016 when the program began its first semester.

“The Schwarzman Scholars program is extremely fortunate to have the support from China’s top leadership, exemplified by the gracious congratulatory letter from President Xi Jinping and by the unwavering support of Vice Premier Liu Yandong,” said Tsinghua University President Chen Jining in April 2014.

Liu reappeared in Schwarzman’s life again and again, with Schwarzman labeling Liu a “special friend” in the acknowledgment section of his 2019 book “What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence.”

Schwarzman also thanked many other “friends and colleagues in the Chinese government” in his book, such as “President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang, Vice President Wang Qishan” and high-ranking influence operatives, such as Sun Chunlan, another vice premier and former head of the UFWD, with whom Schwarzman Scholars engaged at least once or twice.

Chen was also thanked in the acknowledgment section of Schwarzman’s book.

“Party Secretary Madame Chen Xu at Tsinghua has also been an essential part of the senior leadership who created the opportunity for Schwarzman Scholars to occupy a unique position at the university,” reads Schwarzman’s acknowledgment. “She and President Qiu have helped create broad support for the program within the Chinese government. I always enjoy meeting with her and President Qiu on my frequent visits to Beijing.”

While Chen and Tung worked off and on together over the years, Schwarzman and Tung also continued to stay in touch.

As honorary chairman of the China General Chamber of Commerce (CGCC) — characterized as a type of UFWD front organization in a 2018 Jamestown Foundation report — Tung often appeared at the body’s annual galas in New York, including with Schwarzman in 2017 and the following year.

On stage during the 2018 gala, Tung praised Schwarzman for “his remarkable and impactful contributions to a constructive and cooperative China-U.S. relationship,” before personally presenting the billionaire with the “Goodwill Ambassador for China-U.S. Exchange” award.

While Schwarzman Scholars did not immediately respond to request for comment, a spokesperson for Blackstone told the DCNF: “The insinuations are false and misleading. Schwarzman Scholars is an internationally recognized program designed to foster dialogue between nations.” (RELATED: Congress Urges Amazon CEO To Aid Tortured Chinese Whistleblower)

Stephen Schwarzman stands at the podium while Tung Chee-hwa waves to the audience around him during the 2018 China General Chamber of Commerce New Year gala. [YouTube/Screenshot/ChinaGeneralChamberOfCommerceUSA]

‘The UFWD And CPPCC Are Not Benign Entities’

Not long after helping establish Schwarzman Scholars, Schwarzman’s partner, Leung, left Blackstone in November 2013.

Today, the senior managing director of greater China for Blackstone is a man named Liping Zhang, another member of the CPPCC.

The addition of Schwarzman Scholars to Tsinghua was no less than a watershed moment for the university, coinciding with a sharp spike in the institution’s international prestige, an event which also dovetailed with Xi Jinping’s rise, offering Chen unprecedented access to a surplus of global elite and ample opportunity to advance her personal, professional, and political interests.

“The UFWD and CPPCC are not benign entities,” Rep. McCaul told the DCNF. “They are elements of the CCP charged with carrying out political subversion. Americans should be aware of their own exposure to the CCP, which is distinct from ordinary foreign ties.”

“Whether it’s spreading CCP propaganda, exporting sensitive technology to China, or lobbying for United Front groups, there are many activities that benefit the CCP that are legal in the United States — at least for now,” said McCaul. “As we saw with the passage of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which banned the importation of Uyghur slave labor goods, things can change fast as the CCP threat comes into focus. Even in areas where federal intervention isn’t appropriate, cooperation with the CCP is carrying increasing reputational, financial, and moral costs as Americans better understand our adversary.”

Blackstone and Schwarzman Scholars are just two of countless entities that became acquainted with Chen before she was elevated to deputy head of the UFWD, and this article is just the first in a series investigating the ties Chen cultivated with America’s elite. (RELATED: Congress Urges Amazon CEO To Aid Tortured Chinese Whistleblower)

*****

This article was published by The Daily Caller and is reproduced with permission.

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Did You Ever in Your Wildest Dreams Think They Could Mess Up Things This Much This Fast?

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By Bruce Bialosky

Whenever I have lunch or dinner with someone – especially with recent events — I ask a very straightforward question. “In your wildest dreams did you ever believe they would muck things up this bad, this fast?” I use more vivid language, but I am against using such language in a public forum so I will leave it to your imagination. Sit back and think about the question yourself and derive your own answer.

In a little over a year, the Biden Administration has opened our border to an estimated two million illegal aliens who have been spread throughout the country with very little hope of ever tracking them; shut down a significant amount of our home grown energy production by killing a major pipeline deal costing 3,900 full-time equivalent jobs and pausing oil production on all federal government land which is 25% of national production; taken sanctions off Nordstream 2 to continue the flow of Russian gas to Europe; had a radical withdrawal from Afghanistan that is roundly considered a disaster for the United States; engineered policies that lead to inflation levels not seen in over 40 years which caused a severe depression; and has the world involved in a war in Europe which is destroying a sovereign nation and killing hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people. In addition, there is an explosion of crime throughout the country that Biden has not caused, but his party has, and he has done little to combat it.

But Biden has solutions. Real solutions.

One of the countermeasures to pressure the Russians to stop their war on Ukraine is to stop the import of Russian oil. Over the last seven months in 2021, we imported 670,000 barrels of oil daily from Russia. Though 73% of that was in process products, we could have easily replaced this production with one policy decision. Had Biden not stopped the Keystone pipeline, we would have a flow of 850,000 barrels a day from friendly neighbor Canada. Biden decided to tell our Canadian neighbor’s “tough luck” and we now have our adversarial supplier – Putin.

Telling the world that America is going to turn on the spigot, produce oil, and gas that will supply us and our allies what we need for energy independence would be a logical and effective solution. We are down an estimated million-plus barrel a day. A simple announcement clearing the regulations for that to occur would crash the price of oil as pricing is based on future expectations.

Uncle Joe has a better idea. Why don’t we engage the Venezuelans and the Iranians to replace the oil and gas from Russia? Nothing like replacing supplies from one murderous despot with two murderous despots. Biden tried to engage the Middle Eastern countries including Saudi Arabia, but they will not even talk to Biden because he is negotiating with the Iranians – who are hated by the Arab countries of the Middle East.

Biden reopened negotiations with Iran even while it was on the verge of collapse because American imposed sanctions decimated its cash supplies leaving it on the edge of bankruptcy. Not only is Biden at the table with Iran, but part of the negotiations is – you guessed it — the Russians. Do you think the Russians believe we really want to crush their invasion over here while negotiating with them over there? The Saudis are looking at turning to the Chinese since this American administration antagonizes them at every turn.

You just cannot make this stuff up. If your head is spinning, it is completely expected at this point.

Makes you thankful for small things. Thank God North Korea has a completely dysfunctional economy or Biden would be asking them for some help.

Biden also has a solution for inflation.

President Biden, the very definition of a career politician, tries to find others to blame for his own failings. He angrily states “I am sick of this stuff. We have to talk about it. The American people think the reason for inflation is the government spending more money. That is simply not true. Make no mistake, inflation is largely the fault of Putin. Democrats did not cause this problem. Vladimir Putin did.”

Uncle Joe is right. Adding more than $3 trillion into the economy with made-up money had nothing to do with inflation. Biden missed the class where supply and demand were explained. When there are more dollars chasing fewer products, that does not cause inflation – it is Putin. When people get free money and produce nothing that does not cause inflation – it is Putin. When the federal reserve injects additional money into the economy and holds interest at historically low rates, that does not cause inflation – it is Putin.

We have not even touched on the ridiculously lax border. That would take a whole other column.

Fourteen months into the Biden presidency and you come to your own conclusion. Did you ever in your wildest dreams think that he could muck this up so badly so quickly? We thought it might be bad. We can only pray for the next 34 months.

*****

This article was published in Flash Report and is reproduced with permission from the author.

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Justice Reporter Who Called Constitution ‘Trash’ Heads Up Dark Money Group Spending Millions To Support Jackson SCOTUS Nomination

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By Jennie Taer

A pundit who called the Constitution garbage is a leader of a dark money group funding a million dollar campaign to confirm President Joe Biden’s nominee to the Supreme Court, according to tax documents provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation by Americans for Public Trust.

Demand Justice seeks to nominate left-wing judges to American courts. Most recently, the group is pushing for the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.

Elie Mystal, who is listed as a director on a Demand Justice IRS application that was submitted in May, according to a document obtained by the DCNF, said in a March 4 appearance on ABC’s “The View,” that the U.S. Constitution “is kind of trash.”

Mystal made the comment in response to a question of whether he believed the Constitution is a “living document or is it a sacred document?”

The idea is also part of Mystal’s new book, “Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution.”

The day before his appearance on “The View,” Mystal suggested throwing out the Constitution for something “more inclusive.”

“You don’t need to be a legal scholar to understand your own rights. You don’t need to accept the ‘whites only’ theory of equality pushed by conservative judges. You can read this book to understand that the Constitution is trash, but doesn’t have to be,” the book’s publisher states on its website.

Mystal couldn’t be reached for comment.

It’s unclear how Demand Justice squares Mystal’s latest remarks about the Constitution with the organization’s push for Jackson’s confirmation to the high court. The organization did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Before Biden took office, Demand Justice included Jackson on its “shortlist” for suggested nominees to the bench, and in February, the organization announced an initial $1 million campaign to fund an ad campaign supporting her nomination.

Demand Justice Initiative, a charity associated with the organization, told the IRS it will bring in $4,250,000 in 2022 that will go directly to Demand Justice.

Some Republicans in the Senate, including South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, have criticized Biden’s nominee for being too far left.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley has also criticized Jackson, specifically for her record on criminal justice issues, which includes when she represented Guantanamo Bay detainees.

*****

This article was published by the Daily Caller and is reprinted with permission.

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Democrats Can’t Solve Energy-Related Problems Because They Don’t Understand They Are Causing Them

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By H. Sterling Burnett

With oil prices topping $125.00 per barrel and gasoline prices averaging $4.17 per gallon nationwide for regular as I write, the White House and Democrats in Congress persist in the delusion that the economy can rapidly transition completely to green energy.

Their belief that wind, solar, batteries, and electric vehicles can effectively and cheaply power the nation while ending the use of energy sources that emit greenhouse gases in their use is foolish and belied by the evidence. Biden et al. are so obsessed with the vain idea that they can control the weather 100 years from now that even a war, ongoing pandemic, rapidly rising inflation, and economic and geopolitical perils looming around the world won’t make them reconsider their ongoing war on fossil fuels.

Therein lies the problem. The first step to getting out of a hole is to stop digging. This is especially true if the hole is one you dug yourself. As applied to America’s energy situation, Biden and the Democrats have put us in a hole, and they won’t stop digging. They can’t solve America’s current energy and energy-driven inflation problems if they don’t understand the source of the problems is, in fact, the energy policies they’ve imposed on the nation.

Biden finally caved into growing bipartisan political pressure and agreed to ban Russian oil. In doing so, he admits this will further raise prices in the United States. I cheer this gesture as morally correct even though it is largely futile. We should not be helping fund Russian aggression, but we should also be savvy enough to recognize this action will have little or no impact on Russia’s budget or its ability to wage war and will have a significant impact on the United States, and in Europe should its governments follow suit.

Oil is a fungible commodity, traded on world markets. Unless the ban is global, Russia will just sell its oil to willing buyers in China, India, North Korea, and wherever else oil demand is high and people are not so choosy about it origins—at a discount price if necessary.

Which brings us back to the United States. Oil prices began a steep ascent shortly after Biden became president, long before the Ukraine war began. This was caused in part by the reopening of the economy after the pandemic. However, as detailed in a recent report from The Heartland Institute, the most important factor driving higher oil and gas prices has been the series of anti-fossil-fuel measures implemented by the Biden administration. Heartland’s analysis found the average American household spent $1,000 more on energy costs in 2021 than the year prior, largely because of Biden’s energy policies.

Biden and company fail to understand the basic fact that their climate policies are producing the high prices and shortages apparent across the U.S. economy and their boosting of oil prices increased the funding for Putin’s war machine.

Biden’s response to high oil prices in his State of the Union address was to dig deeper into the hole, doubling down on the failed energy policies that put us in the current crisis.

“Let’s provide investments and tax credits to weatherize your homes and businesses to be energy-efficient and you get a tax credit; double America’s clean energy production in solar, wind, and so much more; lower the price of electric vehicles, saving you another $80 a month because you’ll never have to pay at the gas pump again.” Biden said.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s tone-deaf response to high energy prices was to tweet, “Production is up, rising, and approaching records, yet Russia’s actions still leave our consumers vulnerable. It’s a reminder that real energy security comes from reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) showed complete ignorance of America’s energy dependence on Russia, at a recent press conference. In response to a reporter asking, “What do you make of Sen. Manchin’s proposal to have more domestic oil production?” Schumer replied, “The U.S. is a major oil producer; we only get 1 percent of any imports from Russia.” Schumer was flat wrong! Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows U.S. oil imports from Russia grew to more than 8 percent of all imported oil in 2021, during Biden’s first year in office.

The same EIA report revealed oil imports from Russia to the United States in 2021 grew by more than 24 percent from the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency. Oil imports from Russia in 2021 exceeded the oil imported from Russia in each of Trump’s four years in office, and they were approximately 79 percent greater than the amount imported during the lowest-volume year recorded under Trump.

The plain fact is, the amount of oil that would have been shipped daily through the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, 850,000 barrels per day, could have more than supplanted all the oil imported from Russia daily, had Biden not cancelled its permits on his first day in office.

Donald Trump understood energy issues. He correctly saw climate change as something manageable and recognized fossil fuels remain critical for economic progress. Trump charted a course not just for American energy independence but energy dominance, with his policies making us a net energy exporter for the first time since the 1950s. Biden has been reversing these policies as fast as he can sign orders between naps.

Republicans understand the problem. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and other Senate and House Republicans are offering bills to rescind the executive actions Biden has imposed to prevent pipeline development and delay new oil and gas exploration and production. The congressional Democrats say these bill won’t see the light of day as long as they are in control. The Democratic leadership doesn’t get it. Because they don’t get it, they may not be in control of Congress much longer.

The energy and space entrepreneur and social media darling Elon Musk gets it. Despite leading the largest, most successful electric vehicle manufacturer in the world, Tesla—a company that benefits from higher oil and gas prices—Musk recently called for increasing U.S. oil and gas production.

“Hate to say it, but we need to increase oil and gas output immediately. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures,” Musk tweeted to his nearly 63 million Twitter followers. “Obviously, this would negatively affect Tesla, but sustainable energy solutions simply cannot react instantaneously to make up for Russian oil and gas exports.”

In calling for increased oil and gas production, Musk is putting the nation’s well-being ahead of his self-interest. He’s an energy realist. In this climate-woke day and age, that makes him a both a champion of reason and a patriot.

Democrats deny energy reality. What that makes them, I’ll let the reader decide, but in my opinion it paints them as fools or traitors.

The cartoon character Pogo’s famous statement, “We have met the enemy, and he is us,” was meant to be humorous. His quip has rarely captured a political situation more aptly than with the high prices Americans face today because of Biden’s climate and energy policies. It’s not funny at all.

This can be remedied over the course of the next two election cycles, though sooner would be better.

*****

This article was published by the Heartland Institute and is reproduced with permission.

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The Ruling Class’s Response To Inflation Tells You It’s Only Going To Get Worse

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By Joy Pullmann

Claims by officials that inflation is transitory or caused by Vladimir Putin are confirmation that it will continue.

Every time some member of the ruling class says “inflation is transitory” or “we predict it will come down by the end of the year,” I read it as confirmation things are going to get worse. That’s because these are the same people who told us just a few months ago that inflation wasn’t happening until it was so obvious that the screen people had to switch narratives.

It’s also because U.S. corporate media, which today drives national politics, has been for some time the American Pravda. You have to read between the lines, sometimes backward, to understand what is really going on.

These are, recall, the same people who also tell us every election is questionable except 2020’s, some men are women, babies aren’t people, war is bad but we should get into another one, and critical race theory is a mirage. They simply can’t be trusted on anything.

In fact, a rule of thumb I’ve developed based on watching the media lie so many times is that whenever the ruling class insists on something, it’s a pretty good bet to assume the opposite is closer to the truth. It works extremely well to combat propaganda stampedes.

The people telling us that inflation’s not happening — but it’s Vladimir Putin’s fault — do so in direct contradiction to empirical demonstrations of the opposite. Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, for one, demonstrated that inflation is “always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon” — i.e. directly caused by governments essentially printing money.

It’s the money supply, stupid. And hoo boy, has our government been printing money. It’s not only gone on a money-printing bender using the magical blank-check excuse of “covid,” but hundreds of billions of deficit-funded dollars Congress already chucked out of helicopters hasn’t even gone into circulation yet. Massive Federal Reserve money creation likely hasn’t finished hitting the markets, and the minuscule interest rate hikes on the Fed’s table this week aren’t close to the levels needed even to start addressing that situation.

In addition, state and local governments are hoarding some $800 billion of already passed “Covid stimulus.” Approximately $1 trillion more in “infrastructure” spending is also still not out the door. This is all yet to be spent while the federal government has already expanded the dollar supply (M2) more than 40 percent since February 2020. So we’re seeing historic inflation right now long before Congress has finished blowing up the balloon.

This is the same Congress telling us that balloon needs even more air. Besides Democrats’ constant insistence that we need trillions more in unfunded spending for an even bigger welfare state, Republicans just helped them pass another pork fest “omnibus” that keeps all the palms greased and the country’s structural problems unaddressed, like usual. This is a Congress that sends billions to a foreign country while our own is in complete disarray.

Washington’s complete dysfunction and constant, dangerous denials of reality indicate that more inflation and other crises are already baked into the economic cake. Anyone saying otherwise is an idiot or lying.

Another confirmation that inflation is going to continue for the foreseeable future is that the people whose responsibility it is to get this situation under control seem to live in la-la land. Congress is completely controlled by magical thinking and has been for so many years, to the point it’s legit to wonder if they all live in an alternate universe inside Meta headsets. Given how much power Twitter hashtags have over government priorities, this metaphor is already pretty close to reality.

In Congress’s alternate universe, spending trillions of dollars Americans and their grandkids don’t have and can’t possibly ever earn is not only a great idea, it will solve the problem of… not having enough money. Spending is saving!

The decades-long persistence of this type of unserious abdication of leadership underscores that it is a systemic problem. Along with Democrats, Republicans voted for the legislation that gave us today’s inflation, and they help maintain the conditions under which it will continue. The same system giving us historic inflation and other unaddressed national crises is not exactly positioned to solve those crises.

Anyone with half an education who did not live in congressional la-la land could see that bombing the supply chain under Covid and then blanketing the most in-debt country in the history of humankind with even more fake dollars would cause an economic crisis. It doesn’t take fancy degrees to understand that spending a lot of money you don’t have is for fools. Plenty of hillbillies and high-school dropouts know that.

Since all Congress apparently knows how to do is spend money Americans don’t have, that’s what they did in historic amounts “because Covid,” thereby directly causing historic inflation. Witless Republicans willingly assisted in the fake panic Democrats fanned over Covid to shower campaign donors with piles of cash and Americans with just enough leftover bits of cash to shut them up about trading their constitutional rights for this mess of government pottage.

The same people who got us into this mess sure as shootin’ ain’t going to get us out. People in the ruling class make enough income that they can buy Teslas that run on coal-fired electricity while the rest of us stay home because we can’t afford to fill up our Camrys. They also self-insure from the national crises they create by using those crises to gain even more power.

The ruling class loves creating crises, because destroying their fellow citizens’ lives and livelihoods allows them to seize more power while other people panic. Until enough Americans get wise to this bipartisan dynamic and amass enough effective pushback for long enough to stop it, things are only going to get worse.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

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It Takes a Village of Bureaucrats to Implement Despotism

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By Barry Brownstein

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is committed to a vaccine solution for COVID-19. Bureaucrats at the CDC believe you can’t be trusted to see “critical” data on COVID hospitalizations or the effectiveness of the COVID vaccine boosters; you might “misinterpret” the findings and be less inclined to get vaccinated or boosted. The NewYork Times reports, “The performance of vaccines and boosters, particularly in younger adults, is among the most glaring omissions in data the C.D.C. has made public.” Perhaps the withheld CDC data mirrors recent Israeli data, which shows, for the second booster, vanishing efficacy.

When the new FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, says his top priority is to fight “distortions and half-truths,” he wasn’t referring to misinformation coming from government bureaucrats.

By withholding information, the CDC has been complicit in the firing of thousands of Americans from their jobs, many of them health professionals. You can hardly mandate something that doesn’t work as advertised and doesn’t prevent you from infecting others.

Dr. Pierre Kory explains how edicts from politicized bureaucrats have led to hospital protocols calling “for treating [COVID] with ineffective, expensive, and potentially unsafe drugs like Remdesivir.”

Ryan Cooper writes the “practice of shading the truth or telling straight-up falsehoods in service of some half-baked political end started from the first moments of the pandemic.”

University of California professor of medicine Dr. Vinay Prasad also decries the lies:

Throughout the pandemic, public-health officials have omitted uncomfortable truths, made misleading statements, and advanced demonstrably false assertions. In the information era, where what one says is easily accessible and anyone may read primary literature, these falsehoods will be increasingly recognized and severely damage the field’s credibility.

Prasad writes, “We must carefully remove the power we have granted public health, which has often been misused.”

Swinish Unconstitutional Behavior

In Vasily Grossman’s great Russian novel Life and Fate, two scientists are talking about their frustration navigating the highly politicized bureaucracy where a political error could result in being purged. Of the current bureaucrat in charge of their lab, one scientist says, “he’s not such a bad type.” Grossman, through another character, adds this teaching lesson: “By the way, do you know the difference between a good type and a bad type? A good type is someone who behaves swinishly in spite of himself!”

Generalizing the lesson, bureaucracies incentivize employees to betray the public trust. Employees may feel bad about what they do, but they do bad things, anyway.

Grossman was writing about Stalinist Russia, but his observations can be easily applied to the CDC or Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Federal regulatory agencies and the bureaucrats running them are trampling on your rights. Columbia University Law School professor Philip Hamburger is one of the leading authorities on constitutional law. According to Hamburger, writing in his short book, The Administrative Threat, “Administrative power is a preconstitutional mode of governance— the very sort of power that constitutions were most clearly expected to prevent.” American bureaucrats are not fundamentally different from their counterparts in totalitarian societies. They are both unbounded by constitutional constraints; the only difference is in degree.

Before the Supreme Court decisions on vaccine mandates, Hamburger left no doubt about where he stood: “Rather than merely evaluate the Biden administration’s misdeeds—serious as they are—the Court should reflect upon its own wayward doctrines. Its departures from the Constitution have authorized, even normalized, the government’s departures. For this, the Court is to blame.”

Hamburger is referring to the normalization of administrative power. In The Administrative Threat, he is clear: “The Constitution establishes only regular avenues of power, and thereby blocks irregular or extralegal power. To be precise it blocks extralegal lawmaking by placing legislature powers exclusively in Congress, and it prevents extralegal adjudication by placing judicial power exclusively in the courts.”

Administrative mandates and rules are unconstitutional. “Through administrative power,” Hamburger argues, there now exists a third but “unconstitutional” way by which the “the executive purports to create legal obligation.” Administrative lawmaking is not justified as “delegated power.” Congress has no power to subdelegate its responsibilities to bureaucratic administrators. In short, administrative power, Hamburger writes, is “the very sort of power that constitutions were expected to prevent.” He warns that power wielded through government bureaucracies “binds Americans and deprives them of their liberty.”

Many citizens yield to administrative power believing we need experts, such as Fauci, to guide us. Hamburger cautions, “A person with specialized expertise will tend to overestimate the importance of that area and underestimate the significance of others. As a result, although experts can be valuable for their specialized knowledge, they cannot be usually relied upon for decisions that take a balanced view of the consequences.”

Hamburger was writing before COVID. Clearly, of the administrative agencies and bureaucrats threatening our liberties today, Dr. Fauci has led the charge. Fauci is arguably one of the most powerful unelected officials in American history.

To stem the tide of rising administrative power, Hamburger recommends that we “should bar judicial deference to agencies on questions of law or fact, as this violates due process and other constitutional limitations. Further, he recommends, “Congress should remove immunity for administrators — beginning with those who have desk jobs and agencies with a track record of violating constitutional rights.”

As Hamburger explains in his book Is Administrative Law Unlawful?, “Administrative law evades not only the law but also its institutions, processes, and rights.”

The Amorality of Bureaucracies

Among the horrifying passages in Life and Fate are those where Grossman describes in detail what went into building the gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps. Hitler, Himmler, and Eichmann didn’t pluck these horrors from thin air. Gas chambers were not among products sold in the marketplace. Thousands of actions had to be coordinated by a bureaucracy and military willing to follow insane and criminal orders. Tens of thousands of highly educated individuals had to follow orders.

Grossman has the character Obersturmbannführer Liss visit the Voss engineering works:

The Voss works had been entrusted with an important part of the order and Liss was satisfied with their work. The directors had devoted considerable thought to the project and were keeping precisely to the specifications. The mechanical engineers had improved the construction of the conveyors, and the thermal technicians had developed a more economical system for heating the ovens.

Writing in his illuminating but understated style, Grossman brings home the point that many well-educated individuals had to engage in this depraved process:

Liss refused an invitation to observe the experiments being conducted in the laboratory. He did, however, look through pages of records signed by various physiologists, chemists and biochemists. He also met the young researchers responsible for the experiments: a physiologist and a biochemist (both women), a specialist in pathological anatomy, a chemist who specialized in organic compounds with a low boiling-point, and Professor Fischer himself, the toxicologist who was in charge of the group.

Still, much more was needed. Grossman explains:

A railway track had been laid down, leading directly off the main line to the construction site. The tour of inspection began with the depots alongside the railway line. First, under an awning, was the sorting depot. This was filled with component parts of a variety of machines, tubes and pipes of every diameter, unassembled conveyor belts, fans and ventilators, ball-mills for human bones, gas and electricity meters soon to be mounted on control panels, drums of cable, cement, tip-wagons, heaps of rails, and office furniture.

Grossman continues with construction details and descriptions of people operating the camps. One such person was Private Roze, whose “job was to watch through the inspection-window; when the process was completed, he gave the order for the gas chamber to be emptied. He was also expected to check that the dentists worked efficiently and honestly.” The dentists were extracting gold dental work from those murdered:

At the end of each day one of the dentists would hand Roze a small packet containing several gold crowns. Although this represented only an insignificant fraction of the precious metal taken every day to the camp authorities, Roze had twice handed over almost a kilo of gold to his wife. This was their bright future, their dream of a peaceful old age. As a young man, Roze had been weak and timid, unable to play an active part in life’s struggle. He had never doubted that the Party had set itself one aim only: the well-being of the small and weak. He had already experienced the benefits of Hitler’s policies; life had improved immeasurably for him and his family.

The Party looked out for “the small and weak,” Roze reasoned. If Roze’s conscience was pricked, he could think, I am not a criminal; I am merely serving the “common good.” Grossman writes, “People struggling for their particular good always attempt to dress it up as a universal good. They say: my good coincides with the universal good; my good is essential not only to me but to everyone; in achieving my good, I serve the universal good.”

Complying with orders of bureaucrats to commit unimaginable atrocities, people can rationalize away their criminality. Grossman writes, “The air is full of the groans and cries of the condemned. The sky has turned black; the sun has been extinguished by the smoke of the gas ovens. And even these crimes, crimes never before seen in the Universe—even by Man on Earth—have been committed in the name of good.”

There are no gas chambers in America, and it is unlikely there will ever be. Yet, exercising extralegal power, an army of bureaucrats working for the CDC, FDA, OSHA have terrorized America, dividing Americans into the clean and unclean. As Laurie Williams writes, “An unelected government agency was allowed to classify us into ‘critical infrastructure’ and ‘nonessential,’ and confine many of us to our homes.” These bureaucrats, Williams adds, helped to teach us “to see each other as potential contagions, not potential collaborators.” These bureaucrats don’t have the terrible powers of bureaucrats in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, yet I shudder to think what would happen if they were so empowered.

As with Private Roze, life is good for some who cooperate with COVID bureaucrats. Some have a vested interest in perpetuating the pandemic. Musa al-Gharbi, a sociology fellow at Columbia University, recently observed why academics and bureaucrats don’t want to let go of COVID:

A constellation of scholars, bureaucrats and pundits seem invested in COVID remaining a “crisis” indefinitely. As the political scientist Oren Cass put it, many have been granted more money, prestige and institutional power than they have ever had in the wake of the pandemic. For them, a “return to normal” would mean a return to being largely ignored and exerting marginal influence over society. It would mean losing new revenue streams they have grown accustomed to, and so on. In light of this reality, it is perfectly natural that many experts, administrators and “talking heads” would be disinclined to return to “normal” – loss aversion is a powerful cognitive bias. However, recognizing these impulses as banal (rather than nefarious) does not render them unproblematic. They can skew policymaking and expert advice towards continued invasive policies and a continued sense of panic in ways that are excessive and pernicious.

Ending Our Silence

The will of the voting public will often do little to reverse policies of unbridled bureaucracies. In his seminal Democracy in America, written in 1840, Alexis de Tocqueville explained that in Europe the basis of power was “the upper echelons of society,” whereas power in America began with individuals acting in associations, local governments and then states. Today Tocqueville wouldn’t recognize an America where power resides so significantly in an unconstitutional federal bureaucracy.

Yet, Tocqueville saw that centralization might one day lead to “administrative despotism:”

After having thus taken each individual one by one into its powerful hands, and having molded him as it pleases, the sovereign power extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules, which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot break through to go beyond the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces action, but it constantly opposes your acting; it does not destroy, it prevents birth; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

The despotism of which Tocqueville warned is dawning. Overcoming it may seem hopeless, but the power of bureaucratic despots depends on the power we give them. Perhaps thousands of scientists working for the CDC and NIAID know they are enabling the lies of their bureaucratic leaders. Among them may be those who remain silent and do their jobs, as did Grossman’s scientists, chemists, thermal technicians, and mechanical engineers. Some will find their courage. When we find our voice and say enough is enough, perhaps Congress will restrain bureaucracies according to the recommendations of Hamburger. Some states are already acting to rein in the power of their state health bureaucracies.

Of Stalin’s crimes, Grossman shows how silence was an enabler of lies and horrors: “We remained silent in 1937 when thousands of innocent people were executed. Or rather some of us—the best of us—remained silent. Others applauded noisily. And we remained silent during the horrors of general collectivization.” Is that what the battle for freedom has come to, that the “best of us” remain silent?

As we find our voices, the pendulum of power will shift back in a Tocquevillian direction. In America today, a decentralization movement is growing, advocating greater local control. Continued erosion of public trust in federal agencies and government experts will hasten that movement. 

While we wait for others to wake up, Grossman believes we can choose “everyday human kindness.” “Ordinary people bear love in their hearts,” he wrote. “are naturally full of love and pity for any living thing. At the end of the day’s work they prefer the warmth of the hearth to a bonfire in the public square.” Kindness, Grossman adds, “is what is most truly human in a human being. It is what sets man apart, the highest achievement of his soul. No, it says, life is not evil!”

Life is not evil, but bureaucracies often are cruel. America is regressing back to the early seventeenth century, Hamburger observes, in the manner of King James of England who governed via edicts from his Star Chamber. Of administrative power, Hamburger warns, “It is difficult to think of a more serious civil liberties problem for the twenty-first century.”

*****

This article was published by AIER, American Institute for Economic Research and is reprinted with permission.

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Marsha Blackburn Previews GOP Strategy To Vet Ketanji Jackson

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By Emily Jashinksy

All the way back in 2008, Marsha Blackburn recalled an anecdote from her first congressional campaign. A man in a coffee shop asked, “Little lady, what qualifies you to run for the United States House of Representatives?”

Blackburn, so the story goes, “quickly ticked off her time as a choir director and Girl Scouts cookie mom.”

After a brief exchange, the man asked another question. “Little lady, if you win this thing, what we gonna call you — congresslady? Congressgirl?”

“Sir, congressman will be just fine,” Blackburn replied.

And it was. In the House, Blackburn famously went by “congressman” instead of “congresswoman,” although she never made a big deal of it.

When I asked the senator on Tuesday why it matters that she’ll be the only Republican woman on the Judiciary Committee during Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Blackburn’s answer was that she plans to “give voice to the questions and concerns that conservative women have as they look at the federal bench and the individual that is going to take the seat.”

Those concerns, according to Blackburn, involve Jackson’s “respect” for the Constitution and rule of law. She’s convinced Democrats’ reprehensible conduct during the Kavanaugh confirmation is “why now people want it to be focused on the issues. They want it to be very thorough, they want to go into someone’s record.”

Blackburn, a mother of two who’s been married to her husband since the 1970s, worked her way from a career in sales and marketing up to Tennessee’s state senate and then to the House of Representatives, where she served from 2003 until voters sent her to the upper chamber in 2019. (Against the wishes of Taylor Swift.) In the Senate, Blackburn has become a reliable voice for the new GOP, zeroing in on big technology companies and America’s enemies in the Chinese government.

The Kavanaugh confirmation undoubtedly marked a turning point for many Republicans, not just in Washington. Blackburn joined the judiciary committee in time to question Amy Coney Barrett and, ultimately, vote in favor of her advancement to the court. In an empty meeting room on Capitol Hill, spring sunshine pouring through the windows, Blackburn and I briefly revisited those ugly confirmations during an interview less than a week before the start of Jackson’s time in the hot seat.

“Tennesseans,” Blackburn told me, “were just shocked at the conduct of some of the Democrats” during Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation. They watched Barrett’s confirmation “intently.”

Rightfully so, given how Democrats and their allies in media accused Kavanaugh of gang rape with no credible evidence. Justice Barrett faced heinous attacks on her faith and family from the press. One best-selling author implied she was akin to a “white colonizer” for adopting black children.

With that in mind, I asked for Blackburn’s response to an increasingly popular sentiment on the right. “If Democrats are going to break all of these norms, why should we not fight their norm-breaking with our own norm-breaking? If they’re fundamentally transforming the country with activist judges—and I think it Judge Jackson’s record suggests that’s the kind of jurist that she is—if they’re doing that, is the only way to stop it not breaking norms on our own?”

“The way to stop it is to show the record,” said the senator, “of the individuals, whether it is Judge Jackson, whether it is nominees for any of the other federal courts. Sunlight is the best on this. And to bring attention to the records, to the writings, the rulings, the opinions, the number of times that have been overturned, respect for the Constitution, respect for the rule of law. That is the best way to bring attention to an issue and preserve this nation’s founding and the fundamentals of the Constitution which have kept us as a democratic republic.”

I then asked Blackburn about the particular norm I had in mind as a potential sticking point for Jackson’s confirmation. Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee killed Sarah Bloom Raskin’s nomination to the Federal Reserve this week by boycotting a committee vote, denying Democrats the quorum needed to advance her nomination. Raskin pulled out of the running.

Months ago, Rachel Bovard explained in The Federalist how Senate Republicans could use the same rule to leave Biden’s Supreme Court nominee in procedural limbo.

“By failing to show up to vote on the nomination in committee, Republicans could prevent the nomination from reaching the Senate floor by appealing to the Senate’s Rule 26, which requires that a majority of members, physically present, report the bill out of committee,” Bovard wrote.

Referencing the Raskin case, I asked Blackburn, “Are there any circumstances in which you could envision Republicans denying Judge Jackson a quorum depending on how the hearing goes?”

“The best thing for us to do right now is to prepare for opening statements, prepare for our questions, and approach next week in a thorough vetting mindset process,” she told me.

I started to push one more time on the question of norms, noting how Senate Republicans haven’t forced Vice President Harris to break many ties and even voted to confirm some of President Biden’s nominees. Blackburn politely interrupted me. (It was fair, I was rambling.)

“Republicans,” she said pointedly, “should lead the way in saying, ‘This is the Constitution. This is what we’re required to do by the Constitution. This is where the Constitution places responsibility. And this is what is required of us.’ And I think that it is a very good thing for Republicans to show that we believe in the Constitution and the rule of law and have respect for the Constitution and the rule of law.”

Somewhere in the middle of our conversation, I asked Blackburn about another norm, one she’s challenged very effectively. When Justice Breyer announced his retirement, I noted, some voices on the left were lamenting the corporate bias in Breyer’s record on antitrust, an issue on which Blackburn has become a major leader in challenging GOP orthodoxy.

“We are looking very closely at her record with companies and anything that she has written or said about antitrust,” the senator replied.

The effort to vet Jackson is an “all-hands-on-deck operation for us,” Blackburn explained.

Democrats are scrambling to confirm the judge before Easter. “Democrats really want to push this forward,” said Blackburn. “They are afraid. We’re at a 50-50 Senate. And they may not have the votes at some point. So they’re wanting to get the hearing out of the way and get her ready to go to the floor while they still have the votes.”

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

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