[American Thinker] Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, published in 1866, explored the theme of morally justifying crime for its greater good and benefit to society. Fast forward 150 years from Russia to the American political deep state, where similar righteous themes are playing out.
Former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, in May 2017, was in the middle of a Deep State coup to try to remove President Donald Trump from office using the 25th Amendment. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was also part of the plan, allegedly offering to "wear a wire" to record the lunatic rantings of President Trump to use as justification to nullify the results of the recent presidential election. The latest is that two more Trump cabinet members may (or may not) have signed on to the coup.
Someone from the New York Times might call this patriotism, acting out of a higher moral calling to stop someone unfit and unsuited to be president, an outsider not from the establishment club. As Trump once said of himself during the campaign, he was an "existential threat" to the deep state establishment. "Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt establishment with a new government controlled by you the American people." A clear and present threat to the Deep State.
Others will call McCabe’s actions a coup, a treasonous attempt to subvert an election. Then having failed, ramped-up effort to remove a duly elected president from office, either by impeachment or by considering invoking the 25th Amendment.
Former FBI Director James Comey, an integral part of this coup attempt, wrote a book entitled Higher Calling: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, a title justifying his transgressions for the so-called greater good to society. His greater good was suppressing justice when it suited him and his establishment peers by ignoring or suppressing the legitimate investigation into Hillary Clinton’s illegal handling of classified email. This evolved into subverting justice by initiating a FISA warrant and spying -- first on a presidential candidate, then president -- based on unverified political opposition research presented to a FISA court as verified intelligence.
[Free Beacon] According to a new report produced by the Government and Accountability Office (GAO), at least $1 billion in food stamp benefits are "trafficked annually," meaning they are fraudulently used. The extent of the fraud is uncertain, the GAO warns, estimating the abuse of the program could be as high as $4.7 billion.
About 20 million lower-income households receive benefits from the $64 billion Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, to buy food. But GAO found that instead of being used for food, many stores are defrauding the program by "selling" cash instead of food.
"For example, a store might give a person $50 in exchange for $100 in benefits ‐ then pocket the difference," GAO explains.
The Food Nutrition Service (FNS) within the U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees SNAP and is responsible for authorizing and overseeing retailers.
#3
Well, yeah, fewer clients collecting the same or more benefits. In Washingtonese, that's a "cut..."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/20/2019 8:41 Comments ||
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#4
Don't forget about the EITC fraud, though it's hard to pin down an accurate annual fraud total - suffice to say it starts at $1 billion per annum. This is known as a 'refundable credit', which means you get the credit / refund even if you have little to no Federal tax liability.
Oh - and Google buries the critical search results amongst the Mother Jones type articles telling us there's no fraud to see here, move along.
#6
I was standing in line at a gas station convenience store outside of Richmond VA off of route 95. A woman attempted to purchase cartons of cigarettes with EBT cards. She requested the cashier to ring up an eligible purchase. The cashier would have none of it and basically kicked her out of the store. As I exited the store I noticed New York plates and a backseat full of cigarette cartons. Probably a very profitable scam as they buy the EBT cards for less than 50 cents on the dollar and then buy low tax smokes to be sold in New York at 200% plus mark up.
#8
The proposed solution will be to allow the EBT cards to be used like any other debit card, for toilet paper...and beer.
Don't forget marijuana.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/20/2019 12:53 Comments ||
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#9
Food stamps are a joke. People used to come in all the time at the gas station I was working at, buying mounds of pop and junk food and whatnot on their EBT cards, all at incredibly high gas station prices mind you. I was at a big corporate store that would never do the cash fraud itself, but all the locally owned Arab stores will do it, at least in the poorer areas of town. 50% is what a store will do, a lot of people will sell them for a better price to people that don't work for a store though (think a friend or family member).
Satire? Perhaps.
[Babylon Bee] KANSAS CITY, MO‐After a lengthy dispute with his wife this morning, local man Lee Branscom expressed his great sorrow and regret over whatever he did in her dream last night that had her so ticked off at him, sources confirmed Tuesday.
He attempted reasoning with her, using the "lame excuse" that he had no control over what dream Lee does, but after that failed, he resigned himself to apologizing for every action of the imaginary version of himself.
"Honey, I know in your dream I hijacked a school bus, blew up the Empire State Building, and cheated on you with every other eligible woman in America, and for that, I am deeply sorry," he said, putting his arm around her. "What else did I do again? Well, whatever it was, I apologize."
"I love you so much, and I'm so sorry that I hurt you in that way," he said.
"I'm just not really sure you mean it," she replied. "You don't seem like you really regret telling me you're leaving me to join the UFC and then laughing as your head turned into a hot air balloon and you vomited out hundreds of 1-Up mushrooms and then disappeared down a green pipe." She insisted that Branscom list off each of the things his dream self did and apologize for them individually.
#6
For a long time when conflict broke out on the home front I would tell Mrs Cesare that she was approaching the frontier. Finally after a protracted difference of opinion, I told her she was right on the border. Never having asked before she demanded to know, Border of what exactly?
I replied 'The Magical Land of I don't Care How Big Your F-ing Tits Are'. Ever since she has only probed the frontier seemingly to make sure that the border still exists.
#8
Personal favorite is being asked for an opinion, in a what is your opinion? form, when the decision is already made, mapped, diagrammed, and concluded.
The real fun is when I can sniff out the trap, and purposefully take a devil's advocate position.
[The National Interest] Led by Formosa TV (FTV) chairman Kuo Pei-hung’s Formosa Alliance, pro-independence advocates in Taiwan have recently sparked controversy with a call for a referendum on whether the democratic island-nation should declare de jure independence. Deeply unsatisfied with what they regard as President Tsai Ing-wen’s far too cautious, if not "concessionary," approach to China, the Alliance, along with like-minded members within Taiwan’s deep-green camp, is likely to field its own candidate in next January’s general elections and has pressured Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to select someone else for the race.
Through their calls for a more muscular response to Chinese encroachment and for a referendum on sovereignty, the Alliance has attracted firm responses from a number of American academics (among them Richard Bush of the Brookings Institution) as well as the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the United States’ de facto embassy in the absence of official diplomatic ties‐and those responses have been highly unfavorable to the referendum cause. In both cases, the principal source of concern is the belief that a unilateral change to the "status quo" in the Taiwan Strait, such as could occur should a referendum be passed, would be both potentially destabilizing and contravene the United States’ longstanding "one China" policy.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) has also indicated it would deal "carefully" with the referendum issue, adding that "as a responsible government, the administration has to take into consideration Taiwan's role in maintaining peace and stability in the region." Revisions to referendum laws enacted by the Tsai administration, which have lowered the thresholds for the initiation and passage of referenda, have strategically left out plebiscites on constitutional change and anything that touches on the Republic of China’s (Taiwan’s official designation) sovereignty.
#1
It's much more complicated in Taiwan than external viewers understand.
First never forget the high high high illegal alien contingent who can't vote. These are in the main ChiCom tourist who just stayed for various reasons. In the small nation these folks are not included in the census counts but likely number between 10 to 12 million out of an population of 23.5 million. That makes the real population closer to 35 million with 1/3 illegals.
The Taiwanese native populations and tribes tend to be pro-independence as they were ruled by non-Chinese for most of their history and see no special relationship with China.
The Nationalist (KMT) and others came over under the US 7th Fleet protection when the KMT lost the civil war in China to the communists. At this point in time Taiwan was only under Chinese rule for 4 years. The people in Taiwan tended to see the KMT and Nationalist refugees as invaders. My parents saw this directly in their first landlord when they went to Taiwan. He had been an iron and steel kingpin under the Japanese rule. The KMT came over starving poor and with weapons. Generals took his iron and steel factories for themselves and treated him like a war criminal when he complained. Secret police, shakedowns, beating theft the whole nine yards. He had an antique hobby and gold so he would buy, likely looted, antiques from the same KMT refugees with gold so they could eat. He moved the antiques out of the region. Eventually, my parents helped him buy his way out of the country with bribes. He ended his life an old man in Cleveland painting endless works of pigs representing the KMT and Chinese refugees. His kids did fine here with PHDs from MIT.
The dislike between the two groups is intense enough that many of the Chinese who came with the civil war or their children have moved elsewhere. The Taiwanese background are now strongest in the south half of the nation and have no longing to be part of China.
This division is on glaring display in their Whitehouse. It was the Japanese Governor's palace when it was part of Japan. The US and the English bombed it. They have exhibits of the wartime bombing and display them as war crimes by America. Of course most KMT don't see it that way but were not the population bombed. The displays exist for internal political reasons. I was pretty disgusted when I saw them.
Tourism: For China, Taiwan is their Florida in the wintertime. A place for Chinese Snowbirds where the food and written language are culturally similar and all the people can speak Mandarin. (It doesn't mean all will speak Mandarin to the ChiComs and the written language is Classical Chinese characters and not the simplified stuff Mao forced on China)
[Daily Caller] The United States is forecast to reach another milestone in oil output next month thanks to rising production in the country’s biggest shale formations.
The Energy Information Administration (EIA), a government agency that tracks U.S. energy production, is expecting the country’s seven major shale formations to increase output by 84,000 barrels per day in March. The increase will bring total oil production in the U.S. to a record of around 8.4 million barrels per day (bpd).
The Bakken region in North Dakota, for example, is expected to reach a record-setting 1.45 million bpd by March. The Eagle Ford region in Texas is projected to climb to 1.44 million bpd ‐ the highest monthly output that formation has seen since January 2016. The Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico is slated to see the highest rate of increase, with analysts expecting the region’s production rate to reach a record 4.024 bpd.
The EIA also projected major growth for gas production. The agency expects U.S. natural gas output to reach a record 77.9 billion cubic feet per day by March. If those numbers reach fruition, it would be the 14th consecutive monthly increase in U.S. gas production.
The record-setting numbers come at the heels of President Donald Trump’s "energy dominance" agenda.
[THE LID] Victor Davis Hanson had a superb article at American Greatness on Monday, proclaiming the death of the Deep State coup attempt against Trump and offering an autopsy of it. The autopsy is gripping, and I can’t recommend strongly enough that you read it in full. The scope of what was attempted, and the losses in institutional trust and integrity, are breathtaking. There’s another issue however, all of the legitimate counterintelligence investigations that were ignored while the Deep State was trying to overturn the Trump presidency.
I do think Hanson is right to say that the coup attempt, as we can legitimately call it ‐ since there was never any evidence of Russia-Trump "collusion" to interfere with the 2016 election ‐ has failed. The attempt he outlines, involving the Department of Justice, the FBI, and a slew of Obama officials at the NSC and other vital agencies (e.g., State, CIA), has been too thoroughly exposed to continue.
Indeed, Hillary Clinton is in no position to keep paying anyone to pump air into it. And whatever the DNC’s involvement was in 2016, the leadership has changed since then, and the party itself is undergoing a transformation only dimly understood right now. If DNC HQ is pulling strings in a current effort to unseat Trump in an untimely, extra-electoral way, there’s no sign of it.
#1
If Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff (Ds-CA) and others have their way, the Democrat-led House will spend the next 23 months invading the lives of as many Trump associates and family members as necessary to draw blood from Trump himself.
Look into the House investigator's (Waters, Schiff, etc.) backgrounds and dealings. There is most likely plenty there. Why else are they getting so aggressive when going after Trump? Cover up. Meanwhile, prosecutions need to move ahead rapidly. If the Trump admin. doesn't cut out the cancer, the country's future looks dim.
Either Hillary or an evil twin of Hillary will return to do evil.
#2
I do not consider the discussion of implementation of the 25th Amendment to be a coup attempt. The people who would have to participate would largely be the President's own appointees and a majority of them would have to agree that he was not capable of discharging his duties. It is not an unreasonable thing for discussion, and in this case came nowhere near implementation.
[Daily Beast] CNN staffers are upset and confused about the network’s decision to hire a partisan political operative to oversee its 2020 campaign reporting.
On Tuesday, a CNN spokesperson confirmed to The Daily Beast that the network has hired Republican political advisor Sarah Isgur as the politics editor helming CNN’s 2020 coverage. The move was first reported by Politico.
Throughout her decade-long career in Republican politics, Isgur has served as an advisor to Ted Cruz and Mitt Romney, and was Carly Fiorina’s deputy campaign manager for the 2016 Republican primary. Until last year, Isgur was a top spokesperson for former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Department of Justice.
A CNN spokesperson said Isgur will not be involved in the network’s DOJ coverage, but will guide TV and digital coverage of the 2020 election, occasionally offering on-screen analysis.
The hiring was met with a negative internal reaction, especially because many CNN staffers have been largely left in the dark on the controversial decision. While other marquee hires are often announced internally, as of Tuesday afternoon the company has not circulated any guidance to staff about Isgur’s new role, leading employees to wonder how much of a role she will have in day-to-day political reporting.
#2
CNN staffers are upset and confused about the network’s decision to hire a REPUBLICAN partisan political operative to oversee its 2020 campaign reporting.
That's whats really ticking them off
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/20/2019 6:49 Comments ||
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#3
No institutional bias there. (do I need to put a /sarc on that?)
CNN staffers are upset and confused about the network’s decision to hire a partisan political operative a person of color to oversee its 2020 campaign reporting.
Now that is made clear of what intolerance is about.
#6
The hiring was met with a negative internal reaction, especially because many CNN staffers have been largely left in the dark on the controversial decision.
h/t Instapundit
Jesse Singal points out that most black Virginians want Gov. Ralph "Blackface" Northam to stay in office (58 percent ‐ more support than Northam has among whites). Most Latinos don’t want to be called "Latinx". Only nine percent of Native Americans want the Washington Redskins to change their name. This signals that progressives have a class problem.
#2
conservative whites in the U.S. are, on average, so conservative that it’s hard to argue in good faith a different progressive communication strategy could sway anything but a tiny subset of them.
But that hasn't stopped the media's quest, has it.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/20/2019 14:56 Comments ||
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h/t Instapundit
The Jussie Smollett case, in which a young black, gay actor has apparently concocted a tale of being attacked by two white men wearing MAGA hats and shouting anti-gay slurs, is just the latest example of how desperately media elites want to confirm their favored narrative about America: that the country is endemically and lethally racist, sexist, and homophobic, and that the election of Donald Trump both proves and reinforces such bigotry.
The truth: as instances of actual racism get harder and harder to find, the search to find such bigotry becomes increasingly frenzied and unmoored from reality. IMO, if you keep looking for something, you'll eventually find it.
In 2013, a black was six times more likely than a non-black to commit murder, and 12 times more likely to murder someone of another race than to be murdered by someone of another race.
In 2013, of the approximately 660,000 crimes of interracial violence that involved blacks and whites, blacks were the perpetrators 85 percent of the time. This meant a black person was 27 times more likely to attack a white person than vice versa. A Hispanic was eight times more likely to attack a white person than vice versa.
In 2014 in New York City, a black was 31 times more likely than a white to be arrested for murder, and a Hispanic was 12.4 times more likely. For the crime of “shooting” — defined as firing a bullet that hits someone — a black was 98.4 times more likely than a white to be arrested, and a Hispanic was 23.6 times more likely.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Free Beacon] According to a new report produced by the Government and Accountability Office (GAO), at least $1 billion in food stamp benefits are "trafficked annually," meaning they are fraudulently used. The extent of the fraud is uncertain, the GAO warns, estimating the abuse of the program could be as high as $4.7 billion.
[Daily Caller] The United States is forecast to reach another milestone in oil output next month thanks to rising production in the country’s biggest shale formations.
