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Hawley said the pattern that was emerging from whistleblowers was that the rally that day was "undermanned, understaffed, they did not have people who had experience on it."
"The fact that the director will not level with the American people about what's going here is just totally unacceptable and unbelievable," Hawley declared. //
On top of what he said they were telling him from the internal Secret Service investigation, the DHS was telling them not to comply with document requests to Congress. That's incredibly problematic, and if that's true, anyone involved in that needs to be held accountable and further exposed. //
But it raises the question: What do they think those documents will reveal? And is that problem they don't want Congress to know about still continuing? Could it still expose Trump and other Secret Service protectees to further danger?
The Swiss are renowned for crafting the finest watches in the world, such as the Patek Philippe. The Swiss are now credited with inventing the most effective fiscal rules in the world, the Swiss debt brake.
The debt brake was enacted as a constitutional fiscal rule through referendum in 2001, with support from 85 percent of Swiss citizens. Like many countries, the Swiss have encountered recessions accompanied by unsustainable growth in debt. The debt brake was enacted to impose more effective constraints on federal spending and restore sustainable levels of debt. Over the past two decades, the Swiss cut debt as a share of national income roughly in half. //
Like a Swiss watch, the debt brake has several parts that are synchronized to constrain fiscal policies. The most important part is a rule that constrains the growth in federal spending to the rate of growth in potential output. This means that in the long term the federal government cannot grow more rapidly than the private sector.
Another rule is designed to stabilize spending over the business cycle. The federal government can incur deficits in periods of recession but must offset those deficits with surplus revenue in periods of economic growth. The rules cap deficit spending. If the deficits exceed 6 percent of expenditures, the excess must be eliminated within the next three annual budgets by lowering the expenditure ceiling. A compensation account is used to track deficits and surpluses over time. //
The debt brake has fostered fundamental reforms in the budget process in Switzerland. Before the debt brake was enacted, the Swiss relied on a bottom-up approach to budgeting. Each ministry proposed its own budget, and these were then aggregated into a total budget. Bottom-up budgeting is biased toward deficit spending, as each ministry lobbies for its own programs. The debt brake requires top-down budgeting. The finance minister is now required to draft a budget that conforms to debt brake rules, and that budget is then broken down into separate budgets for each ministry. //
The Swiss debt brake has proven to be the most effective of the new generation of fiscal rules enacted in developed countries. The reason is that it replaces discretionary fiscal policies with rules-based policies. ///
It only works for a moral people who have s conscience.
A new study has found that a vast majority of climate policies enacted since 1998 across 41 countries have been utterly ineffective. //
The study, published in the Journal of Science, evaluated about 1,500 climate policies implemented between 1998 and 2022 by 41 OECD countries (The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development). The study found only 63 policies (about 4 percent) that, combined, had successfully “reduced total emissions between 0.6 and 1.8 Gt CO2.” Due to the low success rate, researchers estimate the CO2 emissions from the 41 nations they studied will exceed the Paris Climate Agreement target by 23 billion metric tons by 2030.
More importantly, the study found that two popular tools most governments’ climate policies rely on — subsidies and regulations — rarely reduce emissions. Researchers found some form of carbon tax approach was more effective at reducing emissions. //
Following the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) that pledged over $110 billion in climate and energy funding, the administration introduced its Green New Deal with a grossly misleading label, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), in 2022, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote in the Senate. The IRA purported to allocate $369 billion for climate change and energy over the next decade. However, the latest Congressional Budget Office’s projection of the IRA’s climate tax credit through year 2033 has already jumped to a staggering $428 billion, a rapid 16 percent increase than the IRA originally planned. //
The Harris-Walz campaign, as pointed out by The Wall Street Journal editorial board, has shamefully used the word “freedom” to “disguise that Democratic policies seek to restrict liberty across American society.” Voters who want to be free from the government’s wasteful spending and infringement on individual rights should not fall for the Democrat’s and Harris’ deception in the upcoming election.
Some ideas are like horror movie villains. They’re dangerous, and no matter how many times they’re defeated, they never seem to die.
The misguided idea of taxing unrealized capital gains is back on the scene. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., floated a proposal to tax unrealized capital gains in 2021.
It was widely debated in 2022, when Congress was considering a multitrillion-dollar tax and spending package.
Opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., to taxing income before it’s earned helped defeat the idea then.
But the idea was far from dead. President Joe Biden included a version of the tax in his latest budget.
Vice President Kamala Harris also has endorsed the idea.
The first step in killing a bad idea is to recognize it for the scourge it is.
A realized capital gain—which we currently tax—is the difference between the price you sold an asset for and the price you paid for it. An unrealized gain, on the other hand, is an estimate of what that difference would be if you had sold an asset that you still hold.
The difference between taxing realized capital gains and unrealized gains is the difference between the government taxing people on income they’ve actually received versus the government taxing them on income they might receive later.
It would give the government the first claim on income, taking a big slice before the supposed owner of the asset ever sees a penny.
In effect, it would turn property owners into property renters, with Uncle Sam as their landlord. //
If you bought a house for $300,000, and the value rose to $500,000 a couple years later, you could be stuck paying tax on the $200,000 of gain even as you’re struggling to make mortgage payments. At a 25% tax rate, it would cost you $50,000 in federal taxes.
It would be like having a second mortgage, but in some ways worse.
At least mortgage payments end after 30 years. But you would never finish paying off your unrealized capital gains tax payments, as long as you owned the asset and its value was increasing—even if that increase was only from inflation.
And unlike mortgages, which give homeowners clearly defined payment terms, unrealized capital gains tax payments would be unpredictable, rising or falling depending on the housing market, inflation, and subjective assessments of a house’s value. //
Those in Washington who propose taxing unrealized capital gains generally include broad exemptions for certain asset classes and based on income or asset thresholds. These exceptions would give investors a path to escape from the tax, which is better than the alternative. The tax would have fewer direct victims as a result.
But the tax-induced capital flows still would wreak economic havoc—and without managing to raise much government revenue. So, the new tax would do little to satiate lawmakers’ appetite for more tax dollars.
And once a horror movie villain—or a bad idea—gets a foot in the door, it quickly can swing the door open wide and claim more victims. When the income tax was first implemented in 1913, it applied to less than 1% of the population, and most of those who paid it paid only a 1% rate. That small initial income tax spawned something far worse and more widespread over time.
Allowing the government to tax income that doesn’t exist sets an even more dangerous precedent.
When people ask me why I despise the government, stories like this come to mind.
A Falcon, Colorado, woman convicted for entering the United States Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021 while the riot was occurring was sentenced on Monday to one year of probation.
Rebecca Lavrenz, known as “J6 Praying Grandma” on social media, is also being forced to fork over $103,500 in fines after being convicted of four misdemeanor counts, the Colorado Sun reported. //
federal prosecutors asked the judge to throw Lavrenz in a cage for ten months and put her on supervised release and 60 hours of community service. They argued that she has been “one of the loudest public voices calling the prosecution of January 6 riots a corrupt exercise.”
The prosecutors acknowledged Lavrenz’s First Amendment rights but insisted that “her unrepentant promotion of the riot is powerful evidence that she continues to pose a threat to future acts of political violence like that which engulfed the nation on January 6.” //
Even further, prosecutors argued in favor of the fine because the defendant – wait for it – participated in interviews and used online fundraising accounts to supposedly seek “celebrity status” for her supposed criminality. How dare she try to raise funds for her legal defense, right? //
Unfortunately, Lavrenz is not the only one. People get railroaded by government at the federal, state, and local levels on a daily basis. //
anon-fl4c
4 hours ago
Jeff, did you catch Glen Beck today? He featured a woman that survived Yugoslavian concentration camps and has now been sentenced to 10 years in prison for violating the FACE Act. She said she is fully prepared to die in prison. This government is not the United States. We’ve already been taken over.
For those of us who have criticized Facebook for years for its role in the massive censorship system, Zuckerberg's belated contrition was more insulting than inspiring. It had all of the genuine regret as a stalker found hiding under the bed of a victim.
Zuckerberg's sudden regret only came after his company fought for years to conceal the evidence of its work with the government to censor opposing views. Zuckerberg was finally compelled to release the documents by House Judiciary Committee... //
Zuckerberg stayed silent as Musk was viciously attacked by anti-free speech figures in Congress and the media. He was fully aware of his own company's similar conduct but stayed silent.
When the White House and President Joe Biden repeatedly claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, Facebook continued to withhold evidence that they too were pressured to suppress the story before the election.
When the censorship system was recently put before the Supreme Court in Murthy v. Missouri and the justices asked about evidence of coordination and pressure from the government. In Murthy, states successfully showed lower courts that there was coercion from the government in securing an injunction.
The Biden administration denied such pressure and the Court rejected the standing of plaintiffs, blocked an order to stop the censorship, and sent the case back down to the lower court.
Zuckerberg still remained silent. //
Zuckerberg stayed silent as Musk was viciously attacked by anti-free speech figures in Congress and the media. He was fully aware of his own company's similar conduct but stayed silent.
When the White House and President Joe Biden repeatedly claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, Facebook continued to withhold evidence that they too were pressured to suppress the story before the election.
When the censorship system was recently put before the Supreme Court in Murthy v. Missouri and the justices asked about evidence of coordination and pressure from the government. In Murthy, states successfully showed lower courts that there was coercion from the government in securing an injunction.
The Biden administration denied such pressure and the Court rejected the standing of plaintiffs, blocked an order to stop the censorship, and sent the case back down to the lower court.
Zuckerberg still remained silent. //
Facebook was not silent when it came to censorship, or "content moderation" as the company prefers to call it. While Zuckerberg now expresses "regret" at not speaking out sooner, his company previously sought to sell Americans on censorship. //
For years, young people have been taught that free speech is harmful and triggering. We are raising of generation of speech-phobics and Zuckerberg and Facebook wanted to tap into that generation to get people to stop fearing the censor and love "content modification." It was time, as Joshan and his friends told us, to "change" with our computers.
Now, Zuckerberg and Meta want people to know that they were "pressured" to censor and really regret their role in silencing opposing voices.
It is the feigned regret that comes with forced exposure.
The Facebook files now put the lie to past claims of the Biden administration and many Democrats in Congress. For years, members attacked some of us who testified that we had no evidence of coordination or pressure from the government. At the same time, they opposed any effort to investigate and release such evidence.
The evidence is now undeniable. //
Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is an example of the chilling scope of this effort. Her agency was created to work on our critical infrastructure but Easterly declared that the mandate would now include policing "our cognitive infrastructure." That includes combating "malinformation," or information "based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate."
Consider that for a second: true facts are censorable if the government views them as misleading.
As I write in my book, President Joe Biden is arguably the most anti-free speech president since John Adams. His administration helped create a censorship system that was described by one federal judge as "Orwellian." Vice President Kamala Harris has been entirely supportive of that effort.
In 1800, Thomas Jefferson defeated John Adams in the only election where free speech was one of the principal campaign issues. It should be so again. Harris should have to take ownership of the censorship system maintained by the administration.
The current political climate features two sides: Those who want the government to do more for the people and those who want the government to get out of people's way. It's not necessarily a partisan issue, mind you, as there is an alarming number of folks on the right who believe that Republicans should implement more government but just wield it in a conservative way.
Whatever that means. //
We need only look at government-run programs as they exist now, because they are the best arguments against themselves.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on "Fox News Sunday" to talk about his plans to partner with Donald Trump to "Make America Healthy Again," and dropped some big truth bombs about the corruption and perverse incentives within the United States' public health agencies. //
"I wouldn't dismantle them. I would change the focus, and I would end the corruption. Right now, 75 percent of FDA’s budget is coming from pharmaceutical companies. That is a perverse incentive.
"In NIH, the - scientists and officials at NIH who work on drug development, incubate drugs for the pharmaceutical company, get to collect lifetime royalties from those products. These are regulators. They’re supposed to be looking for problems in those products.
"We have these agencies that have become sock puppets for the industries they’re supposed to regulate, so they're not really interested in public health.
"The most profitable thing today in America is a sick child. Everybody’s making money - the hospitals are making money, the pharmaceutical companies are making money; even the insurance companies make money.
"We need to end those perverse incentives, we need to get the corruption out of the FDA, out of NIH, out of the CDC, and make them function as they're supposed to function, which is to protect public health and to protect childrens' health.”
Well, let's check in with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo who was asked about this at the DNC on ABC. She was asked if she thought these new numbers could be a "potential liability for this [the Harris-Walz] campaign."
Greg Price @greg_price11
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Reporter: Nearly a million jobs "created" since Kamala took office do not exist.
Raimondo: “I don’t believe it because I’ve never heard Trump say anything truthful.”
Reporter: "It is from the Bureau of Labor."
Raimondo: "I'm not familiar with that."
5:57 PM · Aug 21, 2024
Jeff Carlson @themarketswork
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Replying to @greg_price11
I mean, holy crap...
This is the current US Secretary of Commerce.
To be unaware of this report that rewrote very jobs report the Biden Administration has trumpeted over the last year... speechless
If she's lying in such a bald face manner... also speechless
6:27 PM · Aug 21, 2024
US Oil & Gas Association @US_OGA
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We are basically being governed by a High School Student Council who think they are in charge....
Big government. Big spending. Big tax increases. //
IRS data showed that Minnesota loses “about ten households earning more than $200,000 for every six that it gains, which is the fifth worst ratio among the states.”
First, the DNA collection law at issue has been on the books since 2005, when it passed with bipartisan support. It requires the collection of DNA samples from "non-United States persons in detention for immigration violations." Per the whistleblowers, DHS is not enforcing that law — certainly not fully — and hasn't been under both Democrat and Republican administrations.
A December 2021 internal government memo from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel regarding its investigation of the charges levied by Jones, Taylor, and Wynn found that the agency had intentionally failed to implement the law — designed to protect public safety — for decades. //
Taylor, Wynn, and Jones all are confident that the continued, willful failure to enforce the law has resulted in American deaths — deaths that were preventable. //
The whistleblowers affirm that DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been notified of the failure to comply with the law, but no one at DHS has been disciplined for that failure.
The only ones who have been disciplined are the whistleblowers themselves. The internal OSC memo referenced above concluded that the agency retaliated against the whistleblowers, including denial of promotion, hostile work environment, and reputational harm. The OSC refused to disclose the memo, and the whistleblowers were only able to obtain it via discovery. They have had to spend their own money to pursue litigation to confirm that they were subject to that retaliation. //
Both Taylor and Jones have had their law enforcement credentials and firearms taken away from them. Taylor has had his law enforcement retirement stripped. Taylor notes, "In a law enforcement environment, publicly removing someone's firearm is the ultimate insult and degradation." Per Wynn, "I was basically iced — left to sit at my desk every day, do nothing but the most menial of tasks." States Jones, "I was demoted three levels. Like Mr. Taylor, my firearm was taken, my credentials were taken. And it was the final blow to a professional career. And what we did, was we came forward." This despite the fact that none of the men had ever received a written or verbal disciplinary action.
Jones sums it up thusly:
"One of the supervisors said, very matter of fact: 'The agency's goal is to bankrupt you, make you quit, die, kill yourselves, or basically, preferably, all of the above.'"
Clinical doctors smiled (actually, they grimaced) while reading two recent headlines. The first was “Wyden, Blackburn Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Tackle Health Care Workforce Shortages.” This is one more demonstration of Ronald Reagan’s prescience when he said in his 1981 Inaugural Address, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
Every direct care provider understands from painful daily experience that government regulations stemming from federal legislation are the real reason for shortages.
Federal agencies used the pretext of foreign interference in the 2020 election to surveil and suppress domestic news. //
America’s speech police are reassembling to once again influence our elections. At the same time the security state is creating potential pretexts for renewed censorship by issuing warnings of cyberattacks that could “hinder public access to election information,” they are also reprising old claims of coming Russian election interference on behalf of Donald Trump.
The little-noticed development comes in a report from the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) on the DOJ’s efforts to “Coordinate Information Sharing About Foreign Malign Influence Threats to U.S. Elections” — a euphemism for the chief law enforcement agency’s prior censorship activities.
Yashar Ali 🐘
@yashar
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The U.S. Secret Service is apologizing to a Massachusetts salon owner after an agent covered her security camera with duct tape and broke into her salon by picking the lock so that its bathroom could be used by various people for a two-hour period. //
"And then when they were done using the bathroom for two hours, they left, and left my building completely unlocked, and did not take the tape off the camera," she added. //
Dieter Schultz
3 hours ago
Powers said the Secret Service’s Boston office has apologized on behalf of the agency.
The one thing I didn't hear or read in the article that I should have was that someone was fired from the SS and they had already been charged for breaking and entering and criminal trespass.
I don't care about apologies nor should anybody else.
In a statement after Contraras' ruling, America First Legal’s executive director Gene Hamilton said:
“The Biden-Harris Administration was actively destroying the records of federal employees at the CDC in blatant violation of the law — and we are pleased that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has ordered a stop to their illegal conduct.” //
DavidW
an hour ago
Here's a question: "How many of the top bureaucrats of the CDC use "low level employee" email addresses instead of their proper email address?" Oh, I'm sure no bureaucrat or politician ever used email aliases. //
jdquick
an hour ago
I tall you what. I think all the federal agencies are broken and I don't see how we can ever recover. The bureaucrats are running the country, the constitution be damned. The USSS didn't record radio transmissions during the Trump assassination attempt. The NIH and the CDC along with the NIAID and the DOD lied about Covid and gain of function. The FBI and CIA lied about J6.... They lied about killing Ashli Babbitt and Byrd got a promotion. They go merrily on their way as the country implodes because of their decisions and yet no one is in jail. DHS lied about the border and flying ILLEGALS all over the country. They have placed an ex-congresswoman (Gabbard) on the terrorist watch list. They can find people who pray at abortion clinics and sentence them to prison. They raid a former presidents residence because of "classified" documents but the meat sack is too senile to be charged as was DJT. I could go on all day but what the hell, no one pays the price except us deplorables. What a bullshit society we are lining in today and the bureaucrats continue to run it into the ground with impunity. If this continues and I see no reason it won't....we don't have long as a country before the wheels fall off the train and we crash like never before.
A recently surfaced recording of a Zoom call between the Biden/Harris team from 2020 reveals disconcerting evidence of the team's intentional targeting and manipulation of voters and relentless bullying of media outlets to control information. //
“One of the smartest things that the party did itself was over the last couple of years, they actually invested in a team that Tim runs… to detect and track misinformation and misinformation narratives in various corners of the internet and then flag them to platforms as a violation of their policy.” //
Matt Orfalea
@0rf
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Replying to @0rf
RINKEVICH: "We targeted folks based on online behavioral cues, building out personas, based on the type of content they were consuming, what they were searching, the kinds of websites they were visiting so that we could target folks in real-time as they were exposed to that… Show more
4:11 PM · Aug 7, 2024 //
Matt Orfalea
@0rf
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Replying to @0rf
But the Biden team didn't just get the media to forward their deception, they changed real votes. According to Rinkevich, "concern around [Biden's] mental acuity in particular went down by 8 points over the course of our campaign," resulting in "about 200K" votes for Biden. /16
4:11 PM · Aug 7, 2024
In an exclusive breaking story, several Federal Air Marshal whistleblowers have come forward with information showing that former U.S. Representative and Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard is currently enrolled in the Quiet Skies program. Quiet Skies is a TSA surveillance program with its own compartmentalized suspected terrorist watchlist. It is the same program being weaponized against J6 defendants and their families. Quiet Skies is allegedly used to protect traveling Americans from suspected domestic terrorists. //
Air Marshals were first assigned to Gabbard on Jul. 23, a day after she criticized Kamala Harris, Biden, and the National Security State in an interview with Laura Ingraham. FAMs were mobilized on Jul. 24 and assigned to their first flight with her on Jul. 25.
Rep. August Pfluger
@RepPfluger
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Our country was millimeters away from a presidential assassination.
My bill ensures all presidential candidates are protected and requires the Secret Service Director to be confirmed by the Senate.
USSS Directors MUST be capable and apolitical.
12:59 PM · Aug 5, 2024 //
Robbie Mouton
@mcgmouton57
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Senators Chuck Grassley(R-IA) and Catherine Cortez Masto(D-Nev.) have introduced the 'Protect Act' that would require Senate confirmation for all future USSS Directors. This would remove it from being a presidential appointment and bring it line with other federal law enforcement… Show more
12:00 PM · Jul 27, 2024
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the president signed into law the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act, bipartisan legislation to provide a major boost to the future of nuclear energy in America. //
The ADVANCE Act will:
Facilitate American Nuclear Energy Leadership by:
Empowering the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to lead in international forums to develop regulations for advanced nuclear reactors.
Directing the Department of Energy (DOE) to improve its process for approving the export of American technology to international markets, while maintaining strong standards for nuclear non-proliferation.
Support Development and Deployment of New Nuclear Energy Technologies by:
Reducing regulatory costs for companies seeking to license advanced nuclear reactor technologies.
Creating a prize to incentivize the successful deployment of next-generation reactor technologies.
Requiring the NRC to develop a pathway to enable the timely licensing of microreactors and nuclear facilities at brownfield and retired fossil-fuel energy generation sites.
Directing the NRC to establish an accelerated licensing review process to site and construct reactors at existing nuclear sites.
Preserve Existing Nuclear Energy by:
Modernizing outdated rules that restrict international investment.
Strengthen America’s Nuclear Energy Fuel Cycle and Supply Chain Infrastructure by:
Directing the NRC to enhance its ability to qualify and license accident-tolerant fuels and advanced nuclear fuels that can increase safety and economic competitiveness for existing reactors and the next generation of advanced reactors.
Tasking the NRC to evaluate advanced manufacturing techniques to build nuclear reactors better, faster, cheaper, and smarter.
Josh Hawley @HawleyMO
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🚨🚨 NEW - Whistleblower tells me Secret Service Acting Director Rowe personally directed cuts to the USSS agents who do threat assessments for events. Whistleblower says those agents were NOT present in Butler - and some of them had warned of security problems for months
3:33 PM · Aug 1, 2024 //
According to Hawley's letter, the normal evaluation by the Secret Service Counter Surveillance Division (CSD), the division that performs threat assessment of event sites before the event occurs, was not done.
The whistleblower claims that if personnel from CSD had been present at the rally, the gunman would have been handcuffed in the parking lot after being spotted with a rangefinder.
The whistleblower also said it was Rowe who was responsible for cuts to the CSD, reducing the manpower by twenty percent, and he didn't disclose that during his congressional testimony.
The whistleblower explained there were continuing security concerns about how they were dealing with Trump coverage and that people who spoke up about it faced retaliation. //
You can see from this angle just how exposed Trump (and Copenhaver) were and you can see a person moving on the roof with a direct line to them. This is what the Secret Service coverage (or lack thereof) allowed.
In the video taken at 6:08 p.m. on July 13, the person appears on the roof of the building adjacent to where Trump is speaking and can be seen walking from the 1:00 second mark to about the 2:50 second mark.
Thomas Crooks allegedly then fired three minutes later, at 6:11.