Thursday, June 29, 2017

A Citizen Speaks Out About The Trump-Hating Liberal Media


Below are the comments by a citizen, with the moniker “EightBelles,” when President Trump was criticized for punching back on Twitter against the vicious comments made against him by MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. Trump called them "low I.Q. Crazy Mika" and "Psycho Joe."
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EightBelles🐎 

I understand how Trump got elected. But the election is over and has been for 8 months. If you haven't noticed, in political terms, last November might as well have been 10 years ago.
Now we have a president who was chosen by the people, however reluctantly, and he's doing the job he was elected to do - the extent he can, when the MSM and activist judges aren't getting in the way.
The MSM hates this president because he doesn't curry their favor. They hate his policies because they are out of touch with reality. The MSM has become an enemy to this country. They stopped caring about the voters years ago. They think voters are stupid, especially for choosing Trump. They think it's their job to tell us how to exercise our rights, like some unelected fourth branch of the federal government. A propaganda ministry. And they attack the POTUS personally, attacking his character, his family, etc., all because he's not their Chosen One like Obama was.
This is what you don't seem to understand: This is not just an attack on the POTUS - it's an attack on the voters who put Trump in office. And the people are sick and tired of an arrogant propaganda ministry inserting their opinions over the will of the voters. All you have to do is turn on the TV, internet, read the newspaper, etc., and our will in choosing Trump is being attacked constantly. Our intelligence in choosing our own leaders is constantly being criticized. And we are fed up.
So if the POTUS wants to fight fire with fire - guess what? It's the only thing that works.
 Like I said, the MSM doesn't listen to the people anymore. Only the POTUS can stand up to them now.
Acting "above the fray" has never worked. GWB did that and what did we get in return? 8 years of Obama.
The country cannot afford to let the MSM continue to attack the POTUS with impunity. Something must change.
So I don't care how reluctantly the people chose Trump last November. Come 2020, that will be ancient history.
I'm done with this discussion. Have a good day.

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

The Democrats’ War on Minimum Wage Workers


Report: Minimum Wage Hike in Seattle Causing Job Losses, Lower Paychecks

By Alice Greene
In June 2014, Seattle became the first city in the nation to increase its minimum wage to $15 per hour. 
The increase, pushed for by the "Fight for 15" movement, is designed to be implemented in phases over the course of seven years (to be completed by 2021).
Seattle's minimum wage is currently at $13, and we’re already seeing the negative effects.
According to a University of Washington report, low-level workers are taking home less money than they were before the wage hike.
Employers have dealt with the 3% increase in minimum wage by reducing the number of employees and cutting the hours of those still employed.
On average, minimum wage workers are now making $125 less per month than they were before the increase. Meanwhile, Seattle has lost a whopping 5,000 jobs.
“This is a two-edged sword,” explains Jacob Vigdor, a researcher currently studying the effects of the wage hike. “If you raise this minimum wage the way Seattle did you run the risk of actually taking money away from the people you are trying to help.” 
Seattle saw an abrupt increase in the number of workers making over $19 an hour following the hike; this is because some businesses responded to the increase by hiring more skilled workers in hopes they could generate more revenue.
This is bad news for less experienced workers trying to find a job.
“Basically, what we’re doing is we’re removing the bottom run of the ladder,” says Vigdor.
-- 
We’re seeing similar effects in New York, which lost 1,000 restaurants last year following an increase in minimum wage.
Restaurants in the Big Apple are forced to pay employees $12 an hour, which is $1 more than other minimum wage employers.
Employment growth at fast-food restaurants in New York City shrank to just 3.4% in 2016, compared to 7% from 2010-2015. The number of jobs available for servers, cooks, and dishwashers grew by a measly 1.4% in 2016, compared to a 4.4% annual growth between 2010 to 2015.
Jillian Henze, a member of the Seattle Restaurant Alliance, says the “business model is evolving” thanks to the wage increase. “Some of our members are reducing the number of employees or hours,” said Henze. Others are adding fees and service charges to checks to make up for the increased labor cost.
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, who supports the Fight for 15 movement, denies the hike is a problem and insists that “Seattle’s economy is booming, with wages increasing and restaurants and retail among our fastest growing job sectors.”
When you look at the data, you see that job growth is strong only for those making more than $19 per hour.
Editor's note: The whole notion that every job has to provide a "living wage" is wrong headed and dangerous. From a practial standpoint, one doesn't support a family of four working at entry level at McDonald's, there is not enough value there. However, these jobs can be very useful for teens and college students and provide entry level responsibility. We are about to take that opportunity away from them. Remember the real minimum wage is $0.
From a philosophical point of view, individuals and families should be allowed and required to take care of themselves.
A minimum wage designed to take entry level jobs and make them into career positions interferes with businesses, but also signals a false "entitlement" message, that if you bother to show up at work, then you are automatically entitled to more than you produce.
This disconnect between value provided and wage returned is a very socialist idea. And you know how we feel about socialism.

Monday, June 26, 2017

An epidemic of lawlessness

By Scott Johnson

 
According to a new report, Obama personally confronted Putin about messing with the U.S. presidential election. But he didn’t stop him.Photo: Alexei Druzhinin/AFP/Getty Images
Yesterday’s Washington Post carried the Russia story of the day. Post reporters Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima and Adam Entous purport to deliver the goods on “Obama’s secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin’s election assault.” It’s a long, long story that is of interest from a variety of perspectives.
The Post purports to give us the inside story on the collection of intelligence on Russian interference in the presidential election and serve up the apologetics explaining the Obama administration’s passive response. Based on highly classified intelligence related to the Post, the CIA discovered Russian interference in the election while it was in process within months of the election in the last year of the Obama administration. According to the CIA intelligence, the interference came on the order of Vladimir Putin and furthered Putin’s desire to aid the election of Donald Trump as president.
The Post dates the critical intelligence “bombshell” obtained by the CIA to August 2016. The Post reports that CIA Director John Brennan deemed it so confidential that he withheld it from the President’s Daily Brief and conveyed it directly in writing to Obama by hand delivery.
The intelligence provided Obama administration officials time to foil Putin’s plans and/or punish Putin’s deeds. Indeed, administration officials concocted plans to punish and deter Russia from interference. The Post reports that “Obama administration secretly debated dozens of options for deterring or punishing Russia, including cyberattacks on Russian infrastructure, the release of CIA-gathered material that might embarrass Putin and sanctions that officials said could ‘crater’ the Russian economy. But in the end, in late December, Obama approved a modest package” (emphasis added). In other words, President Obama declined to take any action while it might still have done some good in 2016.
One might infer from story that President Obama “colluded” with Putin to defeat Hillary Clinton and elect Donald Trump. One might support the inference with Obama’s own comment open mic comment to Dmitri Medvedev that during Obama’s second term he would have more “flexibility” to cooperate with Putin.
To be fair, we might consider the explanation that Obama was just a pusillanimous pussy disinclined to protect the interests of the United States from our enemies. Perhaps Obama’s passivity was overdetermined and other hypothetical explanations apply. Certainly some explanation beyond any offered by the Post’s sources is called for. The possibilities are endless.
By contrast, however, the Post’s reportage offers no evidence of Trump’s “collusion” with the Russian interference intended to assist Trump’s election. Zero. Nada. Not even by inference.
Perhaps evidence of Trump “collusion” with Russia is beyond the scope of the Post’s story. If the Post had obtained such evidence from its numerous sources, however, it would certainly have found a place for it in the story.
So far as I can tell, sophisticated commenters on the story take it at face value and consider it on the terms presented by the Post. See, for example, David French’s NRO column and Tom Rogan’s Examiner column.
The story comes complete with this revelation: “Obama also approved a previously undisclosed covert measure that authorized planting cyber weapons in Russia’s infrastructure, the digital equivalent of bombs that could be detonated if the United States found itself in an escalating exchange with Moscow. The project, which Obama approved in a covert-action finding, was still in its planning stages when Obama left office. It would be up to President Trump to decide whether to use the capability.”
I’m sure Putin is grateful for the heads-up from the Post. You don’t have to be a CIA officer or analyst to figure that out.
Now like much of the Post story, this is a piece of highly classified intelligence whose disclosure violates the oaths of those who gave it to the Post. The violation of a solemn oath by a witness is commonly taken to detract from the credibility of the witness’s testimony. Consider, moreover, that the sources for the story were not under oath when they confided in Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima and Adam Entous. The intelligent reader would be well within his rights not to believe a word they say.
If we believe it, however, this pertinent fact should be added. The disclosure of highly classified intelligence by government officials also violates the espionage laws of the United States. It is in all likelihood felonious several times over in the case of each of the Post’s numerous anonymous sources.
The Post and its reporters are accomplices to the crimes committed by their sources. They have disseminated highly classified intelligence to the enemies of the United States — as the left has lately discovered Putin and Russia to be.
Taking the story at face value, we can conclude that the Post and its sources have done great damage to the national security of the United States. The Post attributes the leaks on which the story is based to “three dozen current and former U.S. officials in senior positions in government, including at the White House, the State, Defense and Homeland Security departments, and U.S. intelligence services. Most agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity…” As for the requirement of anonymity imposed by the Post’s sources, see the paragraph above.
Again, taken at face value, the story buries this bombshell. Three dozen current and former U.S. officials in senior government positions have undertaken a campaign of gross lawlessness for their own purposes undermining the national security of the United States beyond anything Vladimir Putin can do.
 ____________________________

Trump says Obama did 'Nothing' to Stop Russian Meddling
By Alice Greene
 


With his heart set on Hillary Clinton becoming the nation’s next president, you would think Obama would have made more of an effort to stop the alleged Russian meddling.
"If Russia was working so hard on the 2016 election, it all took place during the Obama Admin. Why didn’t they stop them?" asked Trump last week on Twitter.
"If he [Obama] had the information, why didn't he do something about it?" said Trump during a recent interview with Fox News. "The CIA gave him information on Russia a long time before they even – before the election. And I hardly see it. It’s an amazing thing,” said Trump.
On October 7th, the Obama Administration announced that the theft and subsequent release of DNC emails was part of a larger campaign “intended to interfere with the US election process" - but it wasn’t until after Trump won the election that the administration started to take the threat seriously.
A detailed timeline of events published last week in the The Washington Post suggests the Obama Administration dragged its feet in order to prevent politicization of the Russia threat during an election that was already rife with scandal. “It is the hardest thing about my entire time in government to defend,” an Obama administration official has ben quoted as saying. “I feel like we sort of choked.”
Even the Dems are frustrated by Obama’s lack of action regarding Russia's “attack” on the election. “It was inadequate. I think they could have done a better job informing the American people of the extent of the attack,” complained Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA). “I understand the analysis, but look where we are right now. This was the worst mess our democracy has been in since the Civil War.”
The penalties Obama levied on Russia were “barely a slap on the wrist,” adds Senator John McCain (R-AZ).
President Trump has admitted that it is possible the Russians tried to interfere in the election process, but continues to criticize the Russian collusion investigation as a “witch hunt.”
Author's Note: The "Russia collusion" story is indeed a witch hunt. It is a rumor started by the Democrats to wound Trump's presidential campaign.
But apparently the meddling was an Obama Administration failure. Experts and analysts from both parties have confirmed that the Russian meddling had no effect on votes, but Obama still should have made protecting the election a priority.

____________________________

 Other News


The Supreme Court Upholds First Amendment Freedom Of Religion Rights

Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Missouri, wins First Amendment appeal at the Supreme Court, with a 7-2 majority saying the state may not deny public money to religious institutions competing for grants along with private secular groups. 

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Trump travel ban: Supreme Court reinstates key parts of executive order



In a victory for the Trump administration, the Supreme Court on Monday lifted key components of an injunction against President Trump's proposed ban on travel from six majority-Muslim nations, reinstating much of the policy and promising to hear full arguments as early as this fall.

The court's decision means the justices will now wade into the biggest legal controversy of the Trump administration -- the president's order temporarily restricting travel, which even Trump has termed a "travel ban." The court made clear that a limited version of the policy can be enforced for now.
"An American individual or entity that has a bona fide relationship with a particular person seeking to enter the country as a refugee can legitimately claim concrete hardship if that person is excluded,” the court wrote. “As to these individuals and entities, we do not disturb the injunction. But when it comes to refugees who lack any such connection to the United States, for the reasons we have set out, the balance tips in favor of the Government’s compelling need to provide for the Nation’s security.”
The justices decided to review the broader constitutional issues over executive authority on immigration with oral arguments to be held in the fall.
Trump has been incensed since his original executive order, signed on Jan. 27, was partially blocked by a federal court.
"What is our country coming to when a judge can halt a Homeland Security travel ban and anyone, even with bad intentions can come into U.S.?" Trump tweeted on Feb. 4.
He added on Feb. 11: "Our legal system is broken!"
In early March, Trump issued a revised executive order -- which also had key provisions blocked by federal courts.
Trump has been spoiling for the Supreme Court to take up the case and eager to get it out of the hands of what he sees as more liberal appellate judges.
Four days after signing the original ban, Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated when Antonin Scalia died. Gorsuch, who has since been confirmed, is largely seen as a conservative, originalist justice in the Scalia mold and could help Trump claim an even more definitive victory after arguments.
The Government has made a strong showing that it is likely to succeed on the merits – that is, that the judgments below will be reversed,” wrote Justice Thomas, supported by Alito and Gorsuch. “The Government has also established that failure to stay the injunctions will cause irreparable harm by interfering with its ‘compelling need to provide for the Nation’s security.’”
At issue is whether the temporary ban violates the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment, the Due Process Clause of the Fifth and 14th Amendments, and the ban on nationality discrimination in the issuance of immigrant visas contained in a 65-year-old congressional law.
Federal appeals courts in Virginia and California in recent weeks have ruled against the administration. A majority of the 4th Circuit appeals court cited then-candidate Trump's campaign statements proposing a ban "preventing Muslim immigration."
The White House, on the other hand, frames the issue as a temporary move involving national security. A coalition of groups in opposition call the order blatant religious discrimination, since the six countries involved have mostly-Muslim populations: Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.
A major sticking point for the justices will be navigating how much discretion the president really has over immigration. Courts have historically been deferential in this area, and recent presidents dating back to Jimmy Carter have used their discretion to deny entry to certain refugees and diplomats -- including those from nations such as Iran, Cuba and North Korea.
A 1952 federal law -- the Immigration and Nationality Act, passed in the midst of a Cold War fear over Communist influence -- historically gives the chief executive broad authority.
"Whenever the president finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may, may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary," Section 212 (f) of the law states, "suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or non-immigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate."
In his opinion, Thomas criticized the majority for the compromise nature of Monday's ruling, indicating he would have allowed the order to be enforced in full. Thomas said he feared "the Court's remedy" would inspire a flood of new litigation.
"Today’s compromise will burden executive officials with the task of deciding -- on peril of contempt -- whether individuals from the six affected nations who wish to enter the United States have a sufficient connection to a person or entity in this country," Thomas wrote. "The compromise also will invite a flood of litigation until this case is finally resolved on the merits, as parties and courts struggle to determine what exactly constitutes a 'bona fide relationship,' who precisely has a 'credible claim' to that relationship, and whether the claimed relationship was formed 'simply to avoid §2(c)' of Executive Order No. 13780.”
Fox News' Bill Mears contributed to this report.
 
 

Sunday, June 25, 2017

A Window Into The Heart Of President Trump

From: John Porter
To: Americans Everywhere


 
A Photo of the President, worth a thousand words.
Please try to understand the weight of this image.
This soldier lost both arms. 
The feeling of a handshake is now lost to him.
President Trump realized this, and so touched his face in order for the soldier to be able to feel the human connection, this is what I see when I think of Trump's motives.
He gave up a billionaire lifestyle to now be insulted, dragged through the mud, and lied about, on a daily basis.

All to save this Republic and people he loves.
 

Saturday, June 24, 2017

Violent Democrats: Attacking And Killing Republicans Since 1866

Commentary

By Frances Rice
As author Michael Scheuer wrote, the Democratic Party is the party of the four S’s: slavery, secession, segregation and now socialism.
In contrast, as one pundit wrote, the Republican Party is the party of the four F’s: faith, family, freedom and fairness.
From the inception of the Republican Party in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, Democrats have viscerally opposed the values of Republicans.
Imbued with deep-seated hatred of Republicans, Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan in 1866 that became the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.
The Klan killed over 3,000 Republicans, 1000 white and over 2,000 black Republicans.
In his book, A SHORT HISTORY OF RECONSTRUCTION, Dr Eric Foner wrote:
 “Founded in 1866 as a Tennessee social club, the Ku Klux Klan spread into nearly every Southern state, launching a ‘reign of terror‘ against Republican Party leaders, black and white.
“In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party, the planter class, and all those who desired the restoration of white supremacy.
“Jack Dupree was a victim of a particularly brutal murder in Monroe County, Mississippi.
“Assailants cut his throat and disemboweled him, all within sight of his wife, who had just given birth to twins.
“Jack Dupree was ‘president of a Republican club‘ and known as a man who ‘would speak his mind.’”
Today, Democrats continue their reign of terror against Republicans, as demonstrated in the below article.
___________________

By Pamela Geller
We know this but they are saying it, they are telling us with impunity.
They want a civil war or surrender.
Below is an alarming article.
______________
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: ANTI-TRUMP ‘RESISTANCE’ LEADERS SAY THEY WANT TO MAKE AMERICA ‘UNGOVERNABLE’
By Peter Hasson


Behind the mass protests, choreographed chants and acts of violence, leaders of anti-Trump “resistance” efforts are communicating the same simple but dark message: they want to make America “ungovernable” for the president of the United States.
These protesters say they will do whatever it takes to keep Trump from enacting his agenda, and many of them have shown a willingness to destroy public property, assault law enforcement officers and inflict violence upon their fellow citizens.
In the days and weeks leading up to the inauguration, DisruptJ20 publicly advertised an invitation to “Join us in refusing to normalize Trump’s presidency, smashing his facade of legitimacy.”
DisruptJ20 advocates using “direct action” tactics, which the group describes as taking “collective action to make social change without giving power over to an authority or middle person.”
“We don’t ask permission or put our faith in electoral politics, instead, we use our bodies to stop the smooth operation of the system we oppose,” the group’s website states, citing Black Lives Matter’s efforts to shut down highways as an example of the kind of disruption they have in mind. The group is open about its aim to become “an ungovernable force this winter.”
A website called Ungovernable 2017 helped coordinate DisruptJ20’s DC efforts with anti-Trump protests around the country. Some groups endorsed a pledge to never give Trump the “chance to govern.”
“As we resist, we will create new governing institutions, new economic relationships, and new ways of being human,” the pledge reads.
The pledge was endorsed by a number of left-wing figures including: the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, a black nationalist organization with chapters in eight cities across the country; activist and 2008 Green Party vice presidential nominee Rosa Clemente; and Lamis Deek, lawyer and a New York board member for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Mass demonstrations against Trump have continued around the country in the weeks since his inauguration. Over a week ago featured an activist calling for murder over a megaphone. The activist, reportedly associated with the Black Lives Matter movement, said that protesters “need to start killing people” and “start killing the White House.”
Milo Yiannopoulos, an editor at pro-Trump website Breitbart, was forced to cancel a speech at UC Berkeley last week after mobs of protesters started fires, assaulted bystanders and pepper sprayed suspected Trump supporters as part of an organized effort to shut down the speech.
Those protests were spear-headed by a national group calling themselves Refuse Fascism. The group is open about its apparent alliance with Princeton professor and DNC platform committee member Cornel West, who is listed as one of Refuse Fascism’s “initiators.” A spokesperson for West did not return a request for comment.
Video posted to Refuse Fascism’s Facebook page last week features one of the group’s leaders whipping a throng of protesters into a frenzy with calls of revolution. “We need to make this country ungovernable,” she declares. “We need to do what the German people should have done when Hitler was elected.”
Far-left activist group Occupy Oakland also took part in last week’s Berkeley riots. The group, a local spinoff from the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests, declared victory after Milo’s speech was cancelled due to their mob-like tactics. The group circulated a picture on Twitter of two of its banners from the protest reading, “Become ungovernable” and “This is war.”
“We won this night. We will control the streets. We will liberate the land. We will fight fascists. We will dismantle the state,” Occupy Oakland captioned the photo. “This is war.”
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Geller Report. 

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Why Should We Trust Mueller?

By Kurt Schlichter


What really stinks is that Robert Mueller may very well be as squared away as people say he is, and it doesn’t matter. The guy is a Purple Heart, Bronze Star Marine, and not a soldier-trashing fraud like John Kerry either. He’s served his country and may be trying to do it again in the context of a fake scandal that has degenerated from “Trump made a pact with Putin BECAUSE TREASON!” to “Trump almost made Comey cry BECAUSE OBSTRUCTION!”

All that’s left of Felonia von Pantsuit’s original lie, created to ease the searing pain of her utter rejection, is the establishment’s wishcasting that Trump somehow obstructed an investigation of nothing.
Regardless, I don’t want to be cynical, though bitter experience compels it. I hope Mueller is as honest as people keep saying he is. I hope he has the integrity people keep telling me he has. I hope that not everyone who has ever held a position of responsibility within the Beltway is an establishment agenda-driven hack trying to squelch Trump and the voices of all those peons who voted for him.
But hope isn’t enough.
The establishment is praising Mueller up and down. They tell me he’s honest. They tell me he’s incorruptible. But they also told me Jim Comey was a towering paragon of virtue instead of a towering pile of Harry Reid.
Everything else the establishment tells us is a lie, so why not this? How has the establishment earned our trust on Mueller when it has lied to our faces for decades?
The establishment demands our trust, so it bears the burden of proving this isn’t just another scam.
What, exactly, is the evidence that the fix is not already in, that no matter what, Robert Mueller isn’t going to come out with some bunch of nonsense and innuendo that will give the impeachment-addict Democrats and the puff-boy Republicans, who don’t really want to drain the swamp they prosper in, the green light to go along with the soft coup the establishment’s been dreaming of?
Why should we believe this isn’t rigged? Because people in D.C. promise us that “Hey, this guy is honest?”
I guess we’re supposed to think “Yeah, well this time they’ve got to be telling us the truth. They’re totally due.”
But here’s the problem – we now have lots of new facts that change the original picture of our esteemed special counsel.
Yes, as the Democrat steno pool that is the media has pointed out as we got woke to what’s happening, a lot of conservatives (including me) were initially satisfied with Mueller when he was appointed to investigate the Trump/Russia connection that everyone now admits doesn’t exist.
But then came some troubling revelations which – whoa! – made us re-evaluate our prior understanding. So we – brace yourselves! – changed our minds in the face of new evidence.
Let’s look at all of the evidence.
Mueller seems like a good guy. War hero. No scandals as FBI director. Not a known scumbag or skeevy perv. In Washington terms, the last one alone puts him miles ahead of the competition.
But now we find out that he’s Leaky Jim Comey’s bestest buddy there ever was. These guys are pals, and now Mueller is going to investigate the dude who fired his amigo? Does that seem cool to you?
If the HR Department at work is investigating you, do they pick as the lead investigator the guy you go drink Budweiser with?
Sure they do, unless Chet the Unicorn is free, because the only thing more unlikely than picking a key player in the investigation’s friend to do it is picking a damn unicorn to do it.
So, Jim Comey – whose hurt feelings seem to be the only thing left of this Schumer-show of a scandal – is the key guy in the pseudo-scandal, and he’s got a motive to shaft the president, yet his friend is investigating it and somehow that’s supposed to be A-OK?
Didn’t Comey admit that he leaked info after getting fired in order to get a special counsel appointed?
And didn’t Comey say he’s been meeting with Mueller and they’ve been chatting it up secretly? Did Mueller read him his rights? Why not?
Sounds super above-board.
And Comey says Mueller is awesome. So do the Democrats.
I’m feeling pretty confident this isn’t rigged.
What do you think, Chet the Unicorn?
What’s that, Chet?
You have your doubts?
Bad, wicked, cynical unicorn, listening to fake news!
Oh, and it gets better.
My intrepid fellow Townhall columnist and friend Derek Hunter dug up the fact that Mueller did exactly the same thing as Trump is accused of doing with regard to the Waco massacre. Of course, in the case, such as it is, of Flynn, no one barbecued any children.
Hey, if someone accuses me of a bogus non-crime (because what Honest Jim says Trump did is not remotely a crime), can Derek investigate me? If not, why not?
But let’s put aside that the pal of a potential perjurer is heading the investigation of something he himself did.
Let’s look closer.
Hey, who’s helping Mueller out?
I bet it’s another bunch of pros with no agenda we can put our confidence in because elite insiders are incorruptible.
Well, Mueller’s hiring some folks and their donation histories are on that helpful Federal Election Commission web site.
Now guess what they are.
Go ahead. Guess.
Well, luckily there’s so little partisanship these days that this makes no difference, say the people who support their party.
After all, these are public servants of impeccable integrity and stuff who won’t let party get in the way of blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Let me offer you a complete list of non-conservatives who have stood up against this fascist witch hunt and the Deliverance-esque canoe trip that liberals are taking with the concept of justice:
Alan Dershowitz. Jonathan Turley.
That is all.
Hmmm.
Nope, neither one of them is on the Mueller Team.
What’s up with that?
But hey, I’m sure that a president who has made a point of attacking the establishment will get a fair shake from a special counsel who is as establishment as establishment comes and who is a close friend of the main accuser and who heads a team that is composed entirely of establishment Democrat donors.
Seems legit.
Well, D.C. legit.
Mueller needs to resign – that’s what a guy with unimpeachable integrity does when he realizes his personal relationships give the appearance of impropriety.
It’s also what someone who conforms to the applicable regulation does.
That regulation is 28 CFR 45.2, and it says that Justice Department employees cannot participate in a “criminal investigation or prosecution if he has a personal or political relationship with …Any person or organization substantially involved in the conduct that is the subject of the investigation or prosecution.”
I hope this is merely the appearance of impropriety, though that is enough to trigger the regulation, and that this isn’t just another Deep State scam designed to subjugate forever the half of the country that, in desperation, sent Donald Trump to Washington to try and break the establishment’s death grip on power. Because if this is a scam, we’re going to know it, and if they try to cancel out our votes what follows is going to make my recent novel’s dystopian vision of America torn apart look like Happy Bunny Meets Fluffy Puppy at the Hugging Factory.
Mueller’s simply got to go, because there’s simply no way they can satisfactorily answer the question, “Why should we trust Robert Mueller?”
I don’t know him. You probably don’t know him. All we know is he was a heroic Marine, which is a plus, and which is frankly my only source of hope that he’s not just another loathsome establishment tapeworm.
But he is also a Washington insider, one who just happens to be besties with the guy his crew of freaking Democrat donors would be fitting for an orange jumpsuit if this wasn’t just another establishment okey doke.
Worst of all, the media hacks and politicians tell us we have to trust him. That’s pretty close to case closed right there.
Here’s the conundrum. If Mueller is honest, he quits because of his massive conflict of interest, and we lose an honest investigator. And if he doesn’t quit, we know the fix is in.

Monday, June 19, 2017

Why Obama’s presidency didn’t lead to black progress

By Jason Riley


Since the 1960s, black leaders have placed a heavy emphasis on gaining political power, and Barack Obama’s presidency represented the apex of those efforts. The assumption — rarely challenged — is that black political clout must come before black social and economic advancement. But as JASON L. RILEY argues in this excerpt from his new book, “False Black Power” (Templeton Press), political success has not been a major factor in the rise of racial and ethnic groups from poverty to prosperity.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was followed by large increases in black elected officials. In the Deep South, black officeholders grew from 100 in 1964 to 4,300 in 1978. By the early 1980s, major US cities with large black populations, such as Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Washington and Philadelphia, had elected black mayors. Between 1970 and 2010, the number of black elected officials nationwide increased from fewer than 1,500 to more than 10,000.
Yet the socioeconomic progress that was supposed to follow in the wake of these political gains never materialized. During an era of growing black political influence, blacks as a group progressed at a slower rate than whites, and the black poor actually lost ground.

In a 1991 book, social scientist Gary Orfield and his co-author, journalist Carole Ashkinaze, assessed the progress of blacks in the 1970s and ’80s following the sharp increase in black officeholders. The thinking, then and now, was that the problems of the cities “were basically the result of the racism of white officials and that many could be solved by black mayors, school superintendents, policemen and teachers who were displacing white ones.” The expectation, they added, “was that black political and education leaders would be able to make large moves toward racial equity simply by devising policies and practices reflecting their understanding of the background and needs of black people.”

But the integration of these institutions proved to be insufficient. “Many blacks have reached positions of local power, such as mayor, county commission chairman or superintendent of schools, positions undreamed of 30 years ago,” they wrote. Their findings, however, showed that “these achievements do not necessarily produce success for blacks as a whole.” The empirical evidence, they said, “indicates that there may be little relationship between the success of local black leaders and the opportunities of typical black families.”
When Michael Brown was shot dead after assaulting a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, a large fuss was made over the racial composition of the police department and city leaders, which supposedly explained the subsequent civil unrest.
A Justice Department report responding to the incident noted that although the city’s population was 67 percent black, just four of its 54 police officers fit that description.
“While a diverse police department does not guarantee a constitutional one, it is nonetheless critically important for law-enforcement agencies, and the Ferguson Police Department in particular, to strive for broad diversity among officers and civilian staff,” said Justice.
But if racial diversity among law enforcement and city officials is so “critically important,” what explains the rioting in Baltimore the following year after a black suspect there died in police custody?
At the time, 63 percent of Baltimore’s residents and 40 percent of its police officers were black. The Baltimore police commissioner also was black, along with the mayor and a majority of the city council.
Contentious relations between the police and ghetto communities are driven mainly by high crime rates in those areas, something that the political left doesn’t like to acknowledge.
 
The sharp rise in violent crime in our inner cities coincides with the increase of black leaders in many of those very same cities, which makes it hard to argue that racist or indifferent authorities are to blame.
What can be said of Baltimore is also true of Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta, New Orleans and Washington, where black mayors and police chiefs and city councilmen and school superintendents have held sway for decades.
In her 1995 book, “Facing Up to the American Dream,” political scientist Jennifer Hochschild examined data from the late-1950s to the early-1990s — an era that covers not only growing black political clout but also the implementation of the War on Poverty and two full decades of affirmative-action policies in hiring and college admissions.
Hochschild reported that between 1959 and 1992, poverty fell from 55 percent to 33 percent for blacks and from 18 percent to 12 percent for whites, which means that the “ratio of black to white poverty has remained at 3 — hardly a victory in the war on racially disproportionate poverty.”
The absolute numbers, she added, “tell the same story: there are now about 4 million fewer poor whites than 30 years ago, but 686,000 more poor blacks.”
‘Germans, Jews, Italians and Asians saw economic gains precede political gains in America.’
Moreover, low-income blacks lost ground to low-income whites over the same period. Between 1967 and 1992, incomes for the poorest fifth of blacks declined at more than double the rate of comparable whites.
This history should have served to temper expectations for the first black president. Without taking away anything from Barack Obama’s historic accomplishment, or the country’s widespread sense of pride in the racial progress that his election symbolized, the reality is that there was little reason to believe that a black president was the answer to racial inequities or the problems of the black poor.
The proliferation of black politicians in recent decades — which now includes a twice-elected black president — has done little to narrow racial gaps in employment, income, homeownership, academic achievement and other areas.
Most groups in America and elsewhere who have risen economically have done so with little or no political influence, and groups that have enjoyed early political success have tended to rise more slowly.
“Group cohesion, expressed in political pressure and bloc voting, is often regarded as axiomatically the most effective method of promoting group progress,” explains the economist Thomas Sowell.
But historically, “the relationship between political success and economic success has been more nearly inverse than direct.”  Germans, Jews, Italians and Asians are among those who saw economic gains precede political gains in America.
Similarly, the ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia, the English in Argentina and Jews in Britain, among many other examples, all prospered economically while mostly shunning politics.
A counterexample is the Irish, whose rise from poverty was especially slow even though Irish-run political organizations in places like Boston and Philadelphia dominated local government. The Irish had more political success than any other ethnic group historically, according to Sowell. “Yet the Irish were the slowest rising of all European immigrants to America. The wealth and power of a relatively few Irish political bosses had little impact on the progress of masses of Irish Americans.”
Even if a group has the ability to wield political influence, they don’t always choose to do so.
German immigrants to the US in colonial times were not lacking in numbers. In Pennsylvania they were one-third of the population, a situation that was not lost on non-Germans. “Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens, who will shorty become so numerous as to Germanize us instead of us Anglifying them?” wrote Benjamin Franklin in 1751.
Nevertheless, Germans, many of whom arrived as indentured servants and focused initially on paying off the cost of their voyage, had other priorities and were well known for avoiding politics. Germans began entering politics only after they had already risen economically.
Viewed against this history, many blacks were expecting Obama’s presidency to deliver more prosperity than political clout tends to deliver for a group — in the US or anywhere else.
The black experience in America is of course different from the Irish experience, which in turn is different from the Chinese or German or Jewish experience. Indeed, we can’t even generalize about all blacks in the US, since the experience of black natives is different from the experience of black immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa. But that doesn’t mean group cultural traits that show patterns of success or failure should be ignored.
Even if we can’t make perfect apples-to-apples comparisons, it doesn’t mean we can’t make any comparisons or draw any conclusions. Many different racial and ethnic minority groups have experienced various degrees of hardship in the US and in other countries all over the world. How those groups have dealt with those circumstances is something to study closely and draw lessons from going forward — even if the only lesson is to manage expectations.
One of the clear lessons from this history is that human capital has proven to be far more important than political capital in getting ahead. And that reality helps to explain why blacks fared the way they did not only in the Obama era but also in the preceding decades.
Obama’s election was the end product of a civil-rights strategy that prioritized political power to advance blacks, and eight years later we once again learned the limitations of that strategy.