Oct. 1, 2020
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Biden’s Green New Deal Trojan Horse
Among the many strange moments at the first presidential debate of 2020 on Sept. 29, perhaps the strangest of all was Joe Biden’s flip-flop on the Green New Deal. On the one hand, he said, “The Green New Deal will pay for itself,” but then seconds later told moderator Chris Wallace, “No, I don’t support the Green New Deal.” Huh? Biden is either a liar, or a clueless tool who doesn’t know what’s on his own official campaign website which states: "Biden believes the Green New Deal is a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face[.]" His campaign website goes on to promise to cut carbon emissions in half by 2035, with coal, oil and other fossil fuels squarely in the crosshairs.
Video: Kamala's Capers: China would be proud of her record as a prosecutor
Kamala Harris had a career before politics and it was one of rounding up a labor force using prisoners. We also look at her fling with an older married man and hear her opinion about younger people.
Advancing Liberty by Divesting from China
Recently, and in addition, the Trump administration through the Thrift Savings Plan Board has made the all-important decision to exclude risky Chinese state-owned, non-transparent assets from the federal employees’ 401(K) Thrift Savings Plan. On May 13, the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board delayed implementation of switching the I Fund benchmark to the Morgan Stanley Capital International All Country World Ex-U.S. Investable Market Index, which would have included China. The obvious question is if Chinese assets are too risky for inclusion in the federal TSP, why would they be allowed to be included in private 401(K) investments where the same argument directly applies?
Video: Biden Tax Returns Blockbuster!
Joe Biden released his 2019 tax returns on debate day to divert from his failed record. Here’s what we learned: Biden has been collecting a government paycheck for 47 years. He’s still collecting a generous federal retirement pension. One thing we know about President Trump’s tax return is that it won’t show a penny earned from taxpayers.
Was Comey Duped by Russian Agents?
The primary sub-source used by former British spy Christopher Steele in 2016 to produce false allegations that President Donald Trump and his campaign were really Russian agents, paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign, was himself suspected by the FBI of being a possible Russian agent in 2009, according a Sept. 24 letter by Attorney General William Barr to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). In it, Barr revealed that in the Dec. 2019 report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, a now-declassified footnote stated, “[t]he Primary Sub-source was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation from 2009 to 2011 that assessed his/her documented contacts with suspected Russian intelligence officers." And former FBI Director James Comey says he had no idea his agency was potentially trafficking in Russian
disinformation. Naturally.
Video: Trump's right, China ate Joe's lunch. Trade deficit with China was higher in 2015 when Biden was VP.
Former Vice President Joe Biden wishes he had President Donald Trump’s record on trade. With Trump’s 25 percent tariff on $250 billion of goods and another 7.5 percent on the remaining $300 billion of goods being levied, the trade in goods deficit with China in 2020 is at its lowest level since 2011.
Biden's refusal to answer court-packing, ending filibuster reveals true character
Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning: “Joe Biden revealed that there will be no place for competing points of view should he become President when he refused to denounce Senate Democrats' plan to end the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court… The message from Joe Biden is clear, he will pick as many Supreme Court Justices as it takes to get the judicial outcomes that he demands. For Biden, as someone who spent a lifetime in the Senate, including his stint at the Senate Judiciary Committee, to so cavalierly dismiss judicial independence is shocking and revealing about his true character. While some claim that they didn't learn anything at the debates, the sad truth is, we learned that a Joe Biden presidency will not be constrained by the fundamental minority rights that were set forth by the Constitution and James Madison."
Biden’s Green New Deal Trojan Horse
By Catherine Mortensen
Among the many strange moments at the first presidential debate of 2020 on Sept. 29, perhaps the strangest of all was Joe Biden’s flip-flop on the Green New Deal. On the one hand, he said, “The Green New Deal will pay for itself,” but then seconds later told moderator Chris Wallace, “No, I don’t support the Green New Deal.”
Huh?
We fact-checked him. Biden is either a liar, or a clueless tool who doesn’t know what’s on his own official campaign website which states: "Biden believes the Green New Deal is a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face[.]" His campaign website goes on to promise to cut carbon emissions in half by 2035, with coal, oil and other fossil fuels squarely in the crosshairs.
The Twitter universe called him out immediately for the contradiction. Townhall.com posted a video of the exchange at the debate and tweeted, “Does Joe Biden know what he’s talking about?”
Ambassador Richard Grenell called for the media to fact check Biden, pointing to his website and writing, “The media won’t Fact Check @JoeBiden’s lies. His website says he supports the Green New Deal. @realDonaldTrump is right.”
Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning blasted Biden in a statement, saying Biden was trying to have it both ways: “While it’s little wonder why Biden would want to run away from an idea that ultimately endorses eliminating the internal combustion engine plus coal and other fossil fuels as a source of electricity, it is beyond belief that the former Vice President is not familiar with his own campaign’s economy-killing policy proposals. Maybe it really is the Harris-Biden campaign.”
To be certain, under Biden’s Green New Deal, America would lose its energy independence, something made possible for the first time in 60 years by President Trump’s America First energy policies. Under Biden, we’d be almost entirely reliant on foreign sources of energy because China and Russia control the supply chain for almost all the green energy infrastructure.
Biden’s dim bulb energy policies are a disaster. He oversaw the failed 2009 Recovery Act, part of the Obama Administration’s economic stimulus. That’s nothing to be proud of considering that under this program taxpayers lost more than three-quarters of a billion dollars in loans to startups including Fisker Automotive, Abound Solar and Solyndra, which all went bankrupt after receiving large government loans intended to help them bring green technologies to market.
The only alternative, if Biden isn’t lying to us about his energy policies, is that he really doesn’t know what’s on his campaign website and can’t remember what he says from moment to moment, then we have a bigger problem. Biden may not be running the campaign. He may be a front man—with he and the Green New Deal as a Trojan Horse. Or he could be in the early stages of dementia. Whatever the truth is, it can’t be good for America.
Catherine Mortensen is the Vice President of Communications at Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: http://dailytorch.com/2020/10/bidens-green-new-deal-trojan-horse/
Video: Kamala's Capers: China would be proud of her record as a prosecutor
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90KAyW1iMFU
Advancing Liberty by Divesting from China
By Rick Manning
No President in our lifetimes has been tougher on China than President Donald Trump. The Trump administration has courageously and steadfastly taken on China’s many trade abuses, threats to national security and human rights abuses. His Art of the Deal got China to agree to a phase one trade agreement even though it left tariffs of 25 percent on $250 billion of goods and another 7.5 percent on the remaining $300 billion of goods. The administration have made it clear to Beijing that its continued actions that threaten Hong Kong and Taiwan will not go unchecked. And the Defense Department has named 31 companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges that are either owned or controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and military.
Recently, and in addition, the Trump administration through the Thrift Savings Plan Board has made the all-important decision to exclude risky Chinese state-owned, non-transparent assets from the federal employees’ 401(K) Thrift Savings Plan. On May 13, the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board delayed implementation of switching the I Fund benchmark to the Morgan Stanley Capital International All Country World Ex-U.S. Investable Market Index, which would have included China.
Significantly, U.S. Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia stated that stopping the inclusion of Chinese assets in the Thrift Savings Plan was necessary because it, “would place millions of federal employees, retirees, and service-members in the untenable position of choosing between forgoing any investment in international equities or placing billions of dollars in retirement savings in risky companies that pose a threat to U.S. national security.”
Secretary Scalia’s statement matters because the Labor Department also has a legal responsibility to ensure that private retirement investments are suitable, and under the same rationale used to urge federal retirement accounts be protected from unsafe Chinese investment, the Department should immediately end all private retirement investments in Chinese assets. The Secretary can do this simply by amending the current pending “Financial Factors in Selecting Plan Investments” regulation to disqualify all companies that do not adhere to the transparency requirements of Dodd-Frank and Sarbannes-Oxley.
The obvious question is if Chinese assets are too risky for inclusion in the federal TSP, why would they be allowed to be included in private 401(K) investments where the same argument directly applies? The answer is that they are not, and under ERISA it is the Labor Department’s job to protect private sector retirement specific investments or pensions from choices that are unsuitably risky.
In a July 7 letter from National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien and Larry Kudlow, Director of the National Economic Council to the head of the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board, they state,d “The NRRI’s Trust’s investment in the PRC exposes the retirement funds of railroad workers to significant and unnecessary economic risk.”
Once again the question is why should private pension investments be allowed to be put into this risk when other public retirement funds are being urged to protect their retirees by ending these investments?
O’Brien and Kudlow continue by citing the exact transparency risk which directly puts Chinese assets in conflict with both the letter and intent of ERISA, “Another key reason why the NRI Trust’s investments in PRC companies expose American railroad retirees to substantial economic risk is because the Chinese government prevents companies with Chinese operations listed on U.S. exchanges from complying with applicable U.S. securities laws, leaving investors without the benefit of important protections.”
In addition, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs annually issues a report on countries which use child and slave labor in the manufacture of goods. China is listed not once, not twice but twelve times in the latest report for using children and slaves to make goods, many of which find their place on the shelves of U.S. retailers like Walmart. Artificial flowers, bricks, Christmas decorations, coal, cotton, electronics, fireworks, footwear, garments, nails, textiles and toys are all listed as being made with child or slave labor in China. The very Christmas ornaments we put on our trees, the toys, clothing under that tree including the latest Colin Kaepernick shoe, and the phone or other Chinese made electronics are likely the product of the blood and toil of children and slaves.
The Department of Defense has also condemned the vast concentration camp system in China said to be housing up to 3 million Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province alone. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs Randall Schriver told a Pentagon briefing, “The [Chinese] are using the security forces for mass imprisonment of Chinese Muslims in concentration camps,” justifying the use of the term because “given what we understand to be the magnitude of the detention, at least a million but likely closer to three million citizens out of a population of about 10 million”.
Finally, there is the ongoing genocide for organs of political prisoners including Falun Gong, the Uighurs and others, according to the Independent Tribunal Into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China.
Currently, according to the U.S. Treasury, U.S. investors have $381 billion invested in Chinese and Hong Kong stock exchanges and bonds, an estimated $251 billion of which is held by mutual and pension funds. While moral determinations are not part of ERISA, American pensions and 401(k) investors are unquestionably underwriting the grotesque abuse of helpless and oppressed Chinese religious minorities and political dissidents, and capitalizing slavery. Americans would be appalled to learn that they were effectively providing the capital for the enslavement of their fellow man, and President Trump can stop it.
While China’s tyrannical regime would certainly make a case for sanctions historically under any other circumstances to prevent all U.S. investment into Chinese companies — including China’s refusal to come clean about the true origins of COVID-19. In the very least, blocking non-transparent, risky assets whose reliance on slavery rightfully offends our national sensibilities is obligated under the Labor Department’s statutory responsibility under ERISA — and it is the right thing to do.
The American people can be grateful that President Trump is the first President ever to take on the China threat. Nobody has a stronger record on this issue, making the determination that Chinese assets and other risky non-transparent assets have no place in America’s retirement portfolios an easy one for the President. The stand he takes will not only protect national security and our nation’s economic prosperity — it will advance the cause of human liberty.
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: http://dailytorch.com/2020/10/advancing-liberty-by-divesting-from-china/
Video: Biden Tax Returns Blockbuster!
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FaYMfVkuk4
Was Comey Duped by Russian Agents?
By Robert Romano
The primary sub-source used by former British spy Christopher Steele in 2016 to produce false allegations that President Donald Trump and his campaign were really Russian agents, paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign, was himself suspected by the FBI of being a possible Russian agent in 2009, according a Sept. 24 letter by Attorney General William Barr to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
In it, Barr revealed that in the Dec. 2019 report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, a now-declassified footnote stated, “[t]he Primary Sub-source was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation from 2009 to 2011 that assessed his/her documented contacts with suspected Russian intelligence officers."
And former FBI Director James Comey says he had no idea his agency was potentially trafficking in Russian disinformation. Naturally.
Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 30, Comey was asked by Sen. Graham “Are you aware of the fact between October [2016] and January [2017] the FBI had found that the Russian sub-source was on the payroll of Mr. Steele, was suspected of being a Russian spy by the FBI all the way back to 2009?”
Comey replied, “I don't remember learning anything additional about Steele's sources…”
Nor did Comey recall any verification of the dossier’s sources taking place in October 2016, prior to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant application being accepted by the FISA Court, which falsely alleged that President Donald Trump, Carter Page and Paul Manafort had conspired with Russia to hack the DNC and put the emails onto Wikileaks in July 2016.
Steele had reported, based on these sources, that “there was a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation” between then-candidate Donald Trump and Russia, and that starting in July 2016, “This was managed on the TRUMP side by the Republican candidate’s campaign manager, Paul MANAFORT, who was using foreign policy advisor, Carter PAGE, and others as intermediaries. The two sides had a mutual interest in defeating Democratic presidential candidate Hillary CLINTON, whom President PUTIN apparently both hated and feared… Inter alia, Source E, acknowledged that the Russian regime had been behind the recent leak of embarrassing e-mail messages, emanating from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), to the WikiLeaks platform. The reason for using WikiLeaks was ‘plausible deniability’ and the operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of TRUMP and senior members of his campaign team.”
Nor did Comey remember that the sub-source was interviewed by the FBI in Jan. 2017. That was the interview that debunked Steele’s reporting, according to Inspector General report, which stated, “the Primary Sub-source made statements during his/her January 2017 FBI interview that were inconsistent with multiple sections of the Steele reports, including some that were relied upon in the FISA applications. Among other things, regarding the allegations attributed to Person 1, the Primary Sub-source’s account of these communications, if true, was not consistent with and, in fact, contradicted the allegations of a ‘well-developed conspiracy’…”
Comey seemed to know a lot more or was more willing to speculate when he told Fox News’ Chris Wallace on Dec. 15, 2019 that the sub-source interview did not necessarily debunk the Steele dossier: “that doesn’t drive a conclusion that Steele’s reporting is bunk. I mean, there’s a number of tricky things to that. First, you’re interviewing the sub-source after all of the reporting has become public. And so, as a counterintelligence investigator, you have to think, ‘Is he walking away from it because it’s now public?’… This is when it blew up, when it was published by whatever the outfit is — BuzzFeed. It was all over the news and had become a big deal.”
Even then, Comey said he was unaware of the particulars including the sub-source interview: “As the director, you’re not kept informed on the details of an investigation. So, no, in general, I didn’t know what they’d learned from the sub-source. I didn’t know the particulars of the investigation.”
Maybe he didn’t want to know.
According to the sub-source interview, Steele’s sub-source said when he was asked in March 2016 to look into then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, that he and his contacts came up with nothing. Per the FBI, the source “carefully asked around some of his… friends. He said he may have asked friends and contacts in Russia, but he couldn’t remember off-hand. He added that, for this topic, his friends and contacts in Russia couldn’t say very much because they were ‘too far removed’ from the matter.”
The sub-source said when he asked to get information from Russia on Trump “He was nervous and cautious when asking around about the topic in Russia , but he felt like he had to report something back to Steele about it.”
As for President Trump’s supposed encounter with prostitutes in a Moscow Ritz-Carlton, the source, per the FBI interview, “said that he reported Trump’s unorthodox sexual activity at the Ritz as ‘rumor and speculation’ and that he had not been able to confirm the story.”
On validating the material for the dossier, the source, per the FBI interview, said “Steele pushed [him] to try and either follow-up with people or corroborate the reporting, but [he] wasn’t able to do so. Moreover, [he] added attempts at getting corroboration on these subjects made him uncomfortable — he was nervous about the Russians finding out about it.”
On the core allegation of the Trump campaign conspiring with , the source told the FBI, per the Jan. 2017 interview, “the individual said that the Kremlin might be of help to get Trump elected but [he] did not recall any discussion or mention of Wikileaks.”
And yet, the sub-source interview was never shared with the FISA court. It could have stopped this investigation before President Trump was ever sworn into office.
Graham blasted Comey at the hearing, stating, “Not only, Mr. Comey, is it inadequate, it is criminally inadequate. You have a document central to getting a warrant against an American citizen. It is falling apart. The CIA says it's internet rumor. The person who prepared it was on a jihad against Trump, on the payroll of Democratic party. The primary sub-source was a Russian agent. When that person was interviewed by the FBI, he disavowed the reliability of the document to the point that it should never have been used again. And my question is, how could the system ignore all that? And how could it be used again in April and again in June? Do you know how that's possible?”
Comey would only respond by pointing to the Horowitz report: “Again, I'm not going to respond to your preamble. I think Mr. Horowitz found that it was not disclosed ... that a variety of facts were not disclosed. He didn't find intentional misconduct, but he found concerning failures to disclose.”
Failures, this author would add, that call into question whether there should be a FISA.
It also raises the legitimate question: Was it all a Russian disinformation campaign? Was it Clinton and the DNC that were either knowingly or unwittingly colluding with Russians?
Certainly, the Justice Department appeared to discount the possibility at the time that the Steele sub-source was a Russian agent planting Russian disinformation in the dossier, according to the Inspector General report : “According to an FBI memorandum prepared in December 2017 for a Congressional briefing, by the time the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was transferred to the Special Counsel in May 2017, the FBI ‘did not assess it likely that the [Steele] [ election reporting] was generated in connection to a Russian disinformation campaign.’ [Former assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division William] Priestap told us that the FBI ‘didn't have any indication whatsoever’ by May 2017 that the Russians were running a disinformation campaign through the Steele election reporting.”
Priestap added he “tried to explain to anybody who will listen is if that's the theory [that Russian Oligarch 1 ran a disinformation campaign through [Steele] to the FBI], then I'm struggling with what the goal was. So, because, obviously, what [Steele] reported was not helpful, you could argue, to then [candidate] Trump. And if you guys recall, nobody thought then candidate Trump was going to win the election. Why the Russians, and [Russian Oligarch 1] is supposed to be close, very close to the Kremlin, why the Russians would try to denigrate an opponent that the intel community later said they were in favor of who didn't really have a chance at winning, I'm struggling, with, when you know the Russians, and this I know from my Intelligence Community work: they favored Trump, they're trying to denigrate Clinton, and they wanted to sow chaos. I don't know why you'd run a disinformation campaign to denigrate Trump on the side.”
So, what really happened here?
Was Steele embellishing what the sub-source told him or not, raising the possibility that Steele was reaching an outcome predetermined by his DNC and Clinton handlers? That’s a possibility that the Inspector General report and the sub-source interview raise.
Did the sub-source tell the truth to the FBI in Jan. 2017? Or was the sub-source saying Steele made it all up actually a Russian agent not to be trusted? That’s what the Barr letter to Graham and Comey interview to Fox News suggest.
More importantly, if the sub-source was potentially a Russian agent, and this was known to the FBI, couldn’t that suspicion have added gravity to the Steele dossier, since his sub-source’s connections to the Kremlin could have been verified, creating a plausible basis for the FBI investigation and Comey keeping it going in 2017? Priestap’s skepticism of the sub-source being traced to a Russian intelligence operation seems to cut against that. The Justice Department did not believe it was dealing with Russian disinformation, even if the sub-source was once the subject of a counterintelligence investigation from 2009 to 2011.
That is what the Durham investigation needs to find out. And it needs to be wary of jumping down another Russia collusion rabbit hole, only this time pointed at Clinton, the DNC or the Justice Department. Many Republicans would certainly like to go in that direction. Stick with verifiable facts. They are surely bad enough.
Is there more to come? Or is this it? Without arrests of major principals in this whole affair, which has torn this country apart, so far it looks like the protections afforded under FISA to the American people against phony investigations are practically non-existent, creating a perverse incentive for bad cops to use the system to take out their political opponents. This is neither due process nor probable cause under the Constitution.
If FISA allowed a legal coup to be waged against the duly elected President, perhaps it is time to simply repeal FISA — before we lose the Constitution and our country.
Otherwise, this will happen again.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: http://dailytorch.com/2020/10/was-comey-duped-by-russian-agents/
Trump's right, China ate Joe's lunch.
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh-wRKKE
Biden's True Character
Sept. 30, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement responding to former Vice President Joe Biden's refusal to answer the question about court-packing and eliminating the filibuster at the first presidential debate of 2020:
"Joe Biden revealed that there will be no place for competing points of view should he become President when he refused to denounce Senate Democrats' plan to end the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court.
"It is no surprise that the Senate would plan to eliminate the filibuster rule they have used to thwart President Trump's legislative agenda. The abuse of this process is one of the primary reasons why our budget deficit is out of control with dramatic increases in spending under the threat of shutting down the government. If they win, they don't want to be constrained by the filibuster the same way Trump and Senate Republicans were.
"While ending the filibuster could at least be rationalized, packing the Supreme Court would be a wholesale attack on the independence of the Judiciary. The message from Joe Biden is clear, he will pick as many Supreme Court Justices as it takes to get the judicial outcomes that he demands. For Biden, as someone who spent a lifetime in the Senate, including his stint at the Senate Judiciary Committee, to so cavalierly dismiss judicial independence is shocking and revealing about his true character. While some claim that they didn't learn anything at the debates, the sad truth is, we learned that a Joe Biden presidency will not be constrained by the fundamental minority rights that were set forth by the Constitution and James Madison."
To view online: https://getliberty.org/2020/09/bidens-refusal-to-answer-court-packing-ending-filibuster-reveals-true-character/
