RedBear is my motorcycle bear, who rides to adventure in the physical world. RedBear is also me, who rides on thoughts about motorcycling, sport shooting, sailing, and politics.
I suggest you Google "Milton Friedman" and then just start
watching as many of the short videos you find. There are many topics, all still relevant today.
Best Quote:“What do
you mean Give Back?” when talking about reducing taxes.
Too bad Milton misses it on the prediction for government size in 2009.
Catherine Herridge has some good reporting at Fox about the email scandal and the FBI investigations. This article discusses the background to the latest developments about Pagliano and the servers he set up in Hillary's home(s).
I especially like how Herridge describes the confusion around the word "classified." The MSM has allowed this confusion to proliferate. They have egregiously allowed Hillary to get away with using the prevarication that, "Nothing I sent or received was marked classified." Of course, nothing is marked classified because it is not an official description of materials that have national security value. Those things are marked Confidential, Secret, Top Secret or Top Secret SAP. And as always, a marking on the document is not necessary for it to be any of those classifications.
Brian Pagliano, who set up Hillary's email servers in her home, seems willing to talk now. Normally immunity isn't granted unless charges are imminent on someone, probably Pagliano. He had to know that he was doing something not kosher by going around State Department rules on security and secure systems.
From the Washington Post: "The Justice Department has granted immunity to a former State Department
staffer, who worked on Hillary Clinton’s private email server, as part
of a criminal investigation into the possible mishandling of classified
information, according to a senior law enforcement official."
In a Daily Caller interview yesterday, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn (Ret.)
said he thought the former Secretary of State should leave the Democratic
presidential race: ”I think Hillary Clinton, for the good of the country,
should step down and let this FBI investigation play out.”
Flynn is an Obama appointee and was Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for two years. He and other officials are concerned that the documents on Hillary's servers contained materials with SAP classification, which can jeopardize agents and US officers in the field. He also said it is likely Russia, North Korea, Iran and other nations have that information now.
He maintaned that moving the documents off the official servers (which are so heavily protected that users must use separate secure rooms, called Special Compartmentalized Information Facilities or SCIFs, required a considerable amount of work and probably a conspiracy. The 22+ documents with SAP classification can only be viewed by about 15 people in the country. None of Hillary's staff had clearance and possibly Clinton herself did not. At least one of the emails contain human intelligence.
The full Daily Caller report uses much more strident descriptions of the seriousness of this crime than the language that I have.
Assembly Member Jim Patterson represents the 23rd District, which includes portions of Fresno and Tulare counties.
Tuesday, February 9th, 2016
Last week the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Resources and
Transportation heard testimony from several of the state’s water
bureaucrats about how they are spending water bond funds. Surprising to
me was that after all the back-patting, there was not one mention of all
the water we are wasting.
According to the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, more than 208,000 acre feet of water was
flushed out to the ocean during the month of January. We should be
pumping that water out of the Delta to refill and replenish the
reservoirs we will rely on for our next dry season.
Fresno County Farmer Wayne Western has been crunching numbers to keep
the public aware of all the water waste. “The people of California
have been conserving for a major drought for over three years. We’ve
also been paying for it by lost jobs, fallowed fields,” Western said.
“It’s time for the government to end the man-made drought and start
pumping and saving water.”
Unfortunately, pumping restrictions have drastically limited pumping
from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. I joined several of my
legislative colleagues last week to call
on the State Water Board to work with the necessary agencies to at
least allow for some pumping after drenching winter storms.
If our voices are not heard and action is not taken we will lose millions of acre feet of water this year. FAST FACTS ON WATER RELEASES
During the month of January 208,000 acre feet was lost to the ocean
That’s enough to supply 462,000 families for a year
Resulting in 69,000 acres of fallowed farmland and 16,000 lost jobs
I joined a new and interesting web site lately. It is called Medium.com. It is a collection of writers on diverse topics. Some things caught my eyes and this topic is one. Now I don't profess to be writing at the level of these folks, but follow the links and be prepared to think.
It began with a discussion about Trump, Cruz and Rubio and why my friends and I would or would not vote for them. One of us wants a moderate who can forge compromises at an adult level so as to actually get something done in Washington...he thinks Rubio fits that bill. Another is totally focused on immigration and amnesty, and thus Trump's hard line appeals and Rubio's former complicity with the Gang of 8 and their amnesty leanings gets his goat. One of us is sympathetic to the first point of view, but likes the constitution purity represented by Cruz. Now we are not all single-issue voters, but these are the principle things driving us. These issues and a hatred of Clinton's perfidy and a fear of Sander's socialist ideology leave us with only Republican choices.
So this is where a writer named Umair Haque caught my eye, who writes on Medium.com. He is an economist. The first article by Umair discusses Extremism and Fascism and how the world in general is moving once again toward Fascism because of a move toward extremist views by both political sides, left and right,
I think all of this puts an interesting context on the campaigns of Clinton and Sanders and explains their movement to the far left. As for Trump and Cruz, it puts a concerning light on their campaigns. Maybe Rubio is the winner in all of this?
Okay, so maybe it is not a crime. But certainly a gross failure to perform her duty.
Hillary went 5 years are the Secretary of State...and she failed to appoint a permanent Inspector General of the State Department.
And why should we care? Because it is likely that having an IG would have prevented her email scandal, and she would not be in the "state" she is in now.
So maybe her failure to appoint was a premeditated choice? Hmmmm?
And why didn't President Obama exercise his duty and make her appoint an IG? Now do we have a conspiracy?
Also four days ago, CNN's Chuck Todd asked Senator Ben Sasse, "What is
Conservatism?" Sasse responded what a forceful defense of our
Constitutional Republic, the American People, our economic system and
personal responsibility.
Best of all, he mentioned
Rotary Clubs. "What makes America great is Rotary Clubs, it's small
business, it's churches, it's schools, it's fire departments, it's
little leagues..."
Sasse: "We need Washington to faithfully execute the laws."
Four days ago, CNN polled Bernie Sanders' supporters in Iowa. They asked people to define Socialism. They had no real clue. Frankly, the responses are downright scary.
See the next post for Senator Ben Sasse's definition of "What is Conservatism?"
To be fair, here is an explanation of American democratic socialism from Peter Dreier, a professor of Politics at Occidental College. See: dreier-democratic-socialism/
To me, socialism is simply the step between heavily regulated capitalism (like we have now) and communism.
If you read between the lines in Dreier's description, you can see the the democracy part of his socialism is antithetical to our Constitutional Republic and its Constitution. The United Sates was founded on the principles of individual freedom and responsibility, strong property rights and that the person knows best how to run their own lives.
Unfortunately, many democracies eventually end as some sort of a tyrannical state, because even with the best of intentions, democracies give their power to bureaucracies that begin to function for their own well-being, not that of the people. That is happening currently in the US.
Further reading between the lines, one can see that the appeal of socialism is based on envy and greed. The futile quest for equality and equity is instigated by envy of the smarter, the better off, the harder worker. That leads to re-distributionist laws that destroy the freedom concept of the Founders. That is a key point for Bernie Sanders...for 40 years he has had the same speech, that the rich are the problem and he wants their stuff. Unfortunately, this road also leads to him wanting your stuff, via huge taxes, big government, and over-regulation.
Oh yeah, one last point: The Tax Foundation last week published their evaluation of Sanders' tax proposals, applied to the next ten years. It results in about 9.5% reduction in GDP and 6 million fewer FTE jobs. His tax increases would be 13.5%, but only produce 9.8% after considering the reduction in GDP. There would be a 10.5+% reduction in income for bottom 99% of earners, which turns into 12.8% after considering the reduction in GDP.
Well, it seems that Hillary Clinton's vast experience at State rubbed of onto John Kerry so that he also flaunted Federal law and send classified emails hither and yon.
The State Deptartment announced on February 2 that then Senator and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kerry sent at least one email (now classified as "secret") from a "non-official account" on his ipod to Hillary's home email server.
So the question is: Does anyone in the Obama Administration have any knowledge of, or respect for, the laws on national secrets and protocols for using government email systems?
Michael Mukasey, the US Attorney General from 2007-2009, produced an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Jan 22, 2016 about Hillary's email mess. The title is "Clinton's Emails: A Criminal Charge is Justified."
Mukasey discusses the email scandal and concludes that Hillary knew enough about the material she handled to support a conviction for at least mishandling classified information. That is the charge brought against General Petraeus.
Further, he suggests that more severe grades of bad acts may apply and attract a criminal charge:
Knowledge of what she was doing regarding mishandling classified information relating to national defense
Gross negligence in the case of mishandling classified information relating to national defense
Bad intent relating to actual or attempted destruction of email messages
Corrupt intent relating to State Department business
He finishes by saying, " our public officials will do their job."
Crime # 1005: Mukasey also mentions recent reporting by Catherine Herridge at Fox, where she says the FBI are now looking at "the possible intersection of Clinton Foundation donations, the dispensation of State Department contracts and whether regular processes were followed."
Continuing the miserable story of Hillary and her criminal email servers and mail forwarding.
#1003: It is becoming more and more clear that Hillary transmitted top Confidential, Secret and Top Secret documents. Many of them appear to have had the classification designations removed by her staff, who are thus also complicit. In one discovered email. she instructs a staffer to convert from paper to "paperless" and send in the clear.
The FBI now says about 3000 emails are in this situation. In addition, there are some 24 document that were in the four categories of Top Secret, including some in the SAP (Secure Access Programs) level of Top Secret. These are documents that have information and often names of foreign operations and operatives and informers.
Yesterday, several generals were interviewed on TV and they were furious that she had not already been charged. They also said it is 80% probable the SAP information is now in the hands of Iran and North Korea. They claim Hillary's actions are much worse than what Edward Snowden did.
And what does Hillary say to all of this? She is dismissive that it is a Republican plot and nothing bad happened. She says that nothing marked "Classified" was transmitted. This is a prevarication: nothing is ever marked "Classified."
For instance, Top Secret information is that "...reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security..."
#1004: Hillary will ruin careers if her transgressions are not moved forward. There are about 100 to 150 FBI employees working on the Clinton Email Scandal. The leaks and rumors are that there is more than enough evidence to indict Hillary. Further, if the FBI Director James Comey does not recommend indictments, these staff people are angry enough to resign. If he recommends and Attorney General Loretta Lynch does not levee charges, the reaction will be widespread and nasty.
There are so many Hillary crimes that I just arbitrarily started at 1000. Close enough for government work.
1001: So, this week we learned that she had previously told the FBI that she started using her home email server for her personal email in March of 2009. But now we find out the FBI has recovered emails to Gen. Petraeus that occurred before then. Just another in the long line of Hillary perjuries...ah...what difference does it make!
1002: Today Bill and Hill gave an interview about the email scandal on TV (Meet the Press?). As I heard it, their campaign manager tweeted that the whole matter is now settled, or words to that effect. At almost the same time, a manager in the Hillary Super PAC also tweeted the same message to her folks. Same words, same commas! Sounds like coordination of at least cut and pasting a message sent to both. So sad for them, that kind of coordination is a crime. Campaigns and PACS cannot coordinate, or plan together or even coomunicate. (Think they'll get busted? Nah, because the laws for ordinary people don't apply to her highness Hillary.)
Here is an interesting discussion with a former Federal Marshall about Hilliary's emails. See video embedded in this Breitbart report about Hillary staff in Nevada conducting suspicious campaign voter registration actions, which Nevada's Attorney General in now investigating.
In the perspective of the Michael Brown incident, and the vilification of Officer Wilson, this video by the Milwaukee police chief makes an oft-missed point about the realities of violence in the black community and in some large cities.
As counterpoint to all the protestations that are being made across the country by those who misguidedly believe that Micheal Brown needs to be avenged, why is it that there is so little caring, or indeed news coverage, for the 29 teenagers (13 - 19) who died in Chicago since Micheal Brown died? Maybe because most of the murderers were also black?
See Breitbart: Media-Ignore-224-Teenagers-Killed-in-Chicago-Since-Michael-Brown-Was-Shot
(It appears this number is not really correct, and that the author grabbed the wrong number. See the comments to the Breitbart article, and below on the heyjackass site.) However, the expression of wonderment at the lack of publicity is the key point.
It is interesting that these sites disagree on actual numbers. EXCEPT, that the numbers are horribly high.
So, continuing my investigation, here is another site that has numbers similar to Brietbart, but the 244 number is for teens were shot and injured, while 29 teens were killed and total murders of all ages were 155 (74% black males). http://heyjackass.com/ My impression is that Heyjackass has the best numbers, but I have not tried comparing to Chicago PD stats.
An scary stat on the Heyjackass site is the clearance rate for murders. Only about 1/3 result in charges.
Another stat of note: Almost 80% of victims are black, while almost 69% of attackers are black.
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch
announced today that it received from the Obama Department of Justice
(DOJ) on November 18, 2014, a large production of documents pertaining
to Operation Fast and Furious. The documents were forced out of the
Obama administration through a June 2012 Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) request and subsequent September 2012 FOIA lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. Department of Justice (No. 1:12-cv-01510)).
A total of 10,112 documents, comprised of approximately 42,000 pages,
were disclosed to Judicial Watch in the new production. The documents
are being posted and most are now available on the Judicial Watch
Internet site at http://www.judicialwatch.org/fast-furious-documents-released/.
Judicial Watch is asking people, in a crowdsourcing manner, to search for interesting things (read illegal) in these documents.
Also note that many of these documents just released by the "most transparent administration in history" are completely or almost completely redacted.
Also note that no one has yet seen any of these documents display a desire to get to the bottom of what happened in F&F. It is all about CYA, attacks on Sharyl Atkisson, and attempts to justify the assertion of executive privilege, etc.
Disparate impact is a dismal theory of political racial policy used by the Obama Administration to accomplish political ends and punish businesses.
It makes the bad assumption that statistics can explain the results of, principally, lending practices and housing and business practices "without showing evidence of actual discriminatory intent."
This is like being declared guilty before being proven innocent, the opposite of the foundational American legal principle of innocence until proven guilty.
He's been doing it for years. Yet the people of Las Vegas keep electing him because the casino union workers think he brings them bacon. In reality, he brings bacon to his rich friends and government cronies. In reality he has been impeding the work of the Senate and is the real reason very little is getting done in Washington.
More evidence of the lies and cover-ups coming from President Obama and Harry Reid. Check out the stats coming from Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-KS) office… At the weekly press conference with Republican leaders
Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins (KS-02) highlighted the 352 bills – 98% which
passed with bipartisan support in the House – that Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid refuses to bring up for a vote. The numbers never lie… The numbers never lie. Currently, 352 bills that passed the House are awaiting action on Harry Reid’s desk. Of these bills:
- 98% passed with bipartisan support
- Nearly 70% passed with 2/3rds support or more
- Over 50% passed with no opposition at all
- And 55 were introduced by Democrats
And still, Harry Reid refuses to bring them up for a vote.
Why does the media continue to allow the unpatriotic laziness from
Harry Reid to continue? Perhaps if the media spent a little more time
being a government watchdog and a little less time being cheerleaders
for the Democrat Party… our Congress would be getting more done?
(Specifically, maybe Harry Reid would be getting more done?)
Unions have been used to having their own way for a long time. Finally, in cases across teh country, some balance is being re-instated. In Wisconsin, the right of speech once again trumps the desire of unions to force members to support their political campaigns by providing union dues.
Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin had quite a good day on July 31
when the state supreme court upheld not only Wisconsin’s voter ID law,
but also the 2011 budget legislation that severely curtailed the power
of public unions to control the lives and salaries of state and
municipal government employees.
In Madison Teachers, Inc. v. Walker,
a majority of the court overturned a lower court decision that had
enjoined various parts of the law and upheld it in its entirety. The
2011 law (Act 10)
prohibited public unions from bargaining on issues other than base
wages; prohibited municipalities from deducting union dues from the
paychecks of public employees; imposed annual recertification
requirements for unions; and prohibited any union agreement that would
require employees who are not members of a union from having to pay
union dues.
Various unions, including the AFL-CIO, challenged these provisions,
claiming they violated their associational rights under the First
Amendment and their equal protection rights under the 14th Amendment.
This ruling represents a huge victory for both Wisconsin taxpayers and the recipients of government services.
In tossing out these claims, the Wisconsin Supreme Court pointed out
that, as the U.S. Supreme Court itself has said, public employees have
no “constitutional right to negotiate with their municipal employer on
the lone issue of base wages, let alone on any other subject.”
Collective bargaining is “a creation of legislative grace and not
constitutional obligation.” According to the court, “the plaintiffs’
associational rights are in no way implicated” by the law’s change to the state’s collective bargaining framework.
Union member are not restricted in any way from exercising their
First Amendment right to associate together: they “remain free to
advance any position, on any topic, either
individually or in concert, through any channels that are open to the
public.” But the union has no constitutional right to force the
government to listen to what it has to say – or to require the
government to negotiate only with the union.
Furthermore, unions can’t force the government to subsidize them
through paycheck deductions for union dues from public employees who are
members of the union – “no constitutional right exists for the
deduction of dues from a paycheck to support membership in a voluntary
organization.”
Unions also have no constitutional right to force employees who do
not want to be members of a union to pay union dues. Because none of the
challenged provisions involves constitutional rights and public
employees are not a protected class, the unions’ equal protection
challenge also failed under the court’s rational basis review.
The court also threw out an additional challenge to another Wisconsin
law that prohibited the City of Milwaukee from paying the employee
share of contributions to the city’s retirement plan.
This ruling, which removes the last legal challenge to Act 10,
represents a huge victory for both Wisconsin taxpayers and the
recipients of government services. Before Act 10, the Wisconsin state
and local governments could not manage their workforces without union
consent. Collective bargaining meant government unions had to agree with
any changes to how the government operates. Government unions often use
this power to hijack the government and make it serve their interests
ahead of the public good.
Unions in the private sector cannot ask for too much without their
companies prohibitively raising prices and losing customers to competing
firms. But the government has no competition—it has a monopoly.
Government unions do not have to worry
about holding costs down or operating efficiently because the public
has nowhere else to go. Without Act 10, Walker would have to either
raise taxes or cut programs to balance Wisconsin’s budget.
Unions
can’t force the government to subsidize them through paycheck
deductions for union dues from public employees who are members of the
union.
Government unions could live with either option, of course. What they
did not want was what actually happened – eliminating the deficit by
trimming their members’ benefits. Wisconsin government employees must
now contribute toward their pension benefits and pay a larger portion of
their healthcare premiums. They still make more than
comparable private sector workers, but that gap has narrowed. These
reforms allowed Walker to close a $3.6 billion budget hole and cut taxes by $2 billion.
Eliminating collective bargaining also allows governments to operate more efficiently. Local school districts saved tens of millions
of dollars by shopping for more competitive health plans. The Wisconsin
Education Association used to force districts to buy health benefits
from WEA Trust. This plan charged inflated premiums. School districts
can now spend those savings to better educate children.
Similarly union seniority systems meant Wisconsin schools had to lay
off the newest teachers first—no matter how well they taught. In 2010
Megan Sampson won statewide recognition for excellence as a first-year
English teacher. A week later Milwaukee Public Schools laid her off
because the union contract required her to be let go first. That system
benefited senior union members at the expense of new hires and children
who need the best education possible. Act 10 eliminated this
restriction. Wisconsin school districts can now hire and fire on the
basis of what works best for the children, not the union members. Act 10
means the government can serve the public instead of unions.
