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Fri., Jan. 18, 2019
All Gave Some~Some Gave All
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SIMPLY ELEGANT
DEEP STATE GATE: Corrupt Trump-Hating DOJ Official Bruce Ohr Shared Fake ‘Intel’ From Phony ‘Dossier’ in 2016 With Robert Mueller’s Democrat Witch Hunters Seeking to Frame Trump for Non-Existent ‘Russian Collusion’
BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY
The utility of the Mueller investigation has not been the uncovering of collusion, or even in the badgering of an Administration perceived as loathsome. Rather, it has allowed American elites to avoid facing uncomfortable questions about the factors that put Trump in the White House.
Icannot contemplate the havoc of Russiagate without a shudder of horror not only of my country, but also for myself. How very different my life would have been over the past year or more if I had been one of those Trump volunteers assembled in early 2016 to give the campaign the pretense of having a foreign-policy team. For that matter, it would probably have been enough for me to have volunteered as a neighborhood canvasser to get out the Trump vote (what precious little of it there was) in my community in Fairfax County, Virginia.
Once the charge of collusion with the Kremlin had been leveled against Team Trump, my 40-year association with Russia, much of it as a diplomat, would have made me a prime suspect. A swarm of reporters would have descended on my quiet suburban street, observing my comings and goings and pumping the neighbors for information and pithy sound bites (“He seemed like a quiet, unassuming guy; I would never have thought him capable of such a thing.”).
The fact that I am a nonentity would not have spared me, any more than it has spared Carter Page or George Papadopoulos. Certainly, all my personal and business contacts had been with ordinary, working-level Russians, not the ruling elites. Nevertheless, a few of the Russian diplomats I knew 20 years ago have by now risen through the ranks, and no doubt some of them have presumed intelligence links that could have been used to cast aspersions on my patriotism. And although I knew no one at, say, Rosneft or Gazprom, I’m sure I must have known someone who knows someone in those organizations. A veritable cottage industry could therefore have arisen to contrive a daisy chain of connections, however tenuous and improbable, linking me with the inner sanctum of the Kremlin—the conduit along which cash and information presumably flowed in the supposed collusion that many people deem the only plausible explanation for Trump’s electoral victory.
Perhaps some creative journalist would even have fingered me as the American who explained to the Russians what a purple state is.
My sudden notoriety would have come as a most unwelcome embarrassment to my employer, who might well have felt obliged, however reluctantly, to let me go. Combining unemployment with the imperative to “lawyer up,” I would have been staring bankruptcy in the face and contemplating the disheartening prospect of having to crowdfund my children’s college education, and perhaps even my own retirement.
But this would have been only the beginning of my troubles. Ostensibly looking for evidence of collusion, the FBI would have subpoenaed my e-mails, financial records, and computer hard drive, then questioned me on their contents. Failing to find the slightest evidence of collusion (since there would have been none), the FBI would have sought to bring whatever other charges it could engineer in order to secure my cooperation in the broader investigation against Trump. I imagine a conversation along the following lines:
Ah, Mr. Bennett, we see that you sold $50-worth of firewood to your neighbor seven years ago. You don’t seem to have declared that income on your federal or state income taxes. That makes two counts of tax evasion, which is a felony. Oh, and you told us that your last contact with your Russian friend Misha was in 2011, but we’ve located an email you sent him in February 2012. I’m afraid that lying to the FBI is also a felony.
Having no funds to fight a protracted legal battle and hence no real recourse, I would have pleaded guilty to whatever charges the FBI chose to bring against me and proclaimed my willingness to cooperate. The mainstream media, without detailing my precise “crimes,” would have crowed that another Trump associate had pleaded guilty to multiple counts of tax evasion and lying to the FBI. Right-thinking people across the country would have savored the spectacle of yet another Trumpling receiving his just desserts, while speculating whether perhaps this Bennett guy would finally be the one to spill the beans on the whole collusion caper.
But I was not a member of Team Trump, indeed, not even a Trump supporter, and for that reason alone I dodged that hail of bullets.
If you think I’m exaggerating, read the charges against George Papadopoulos and consider the sheer triviality of his “lies to the FBI,” which really consisted of misremembering several incidents nearly a year after the fact. None of his actions during his brief and inconsequential association with the Trump campaign amounted to collusion or any other illegal activity. The situation is similar with Michael Flynn, who, despite all of last year’s hyperventilation about the Logan Act, was charged only with misrepresenting the content of his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The failure to prosecute Flynn under the Logan Act was tacitly to concede that Flynn’s interactions with Kislyak were neither collusion nor a violation of any law. Paul Manafort stands accused of truly substantial crimes in connection with his work for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, but they also have nothing to do with collusion, or even with Russia.1 Moreover, it seems clear that the investigation of Manafort is not the beginning of a long-overdue effort to clean up the reputed cesspool of lobbying activities in this country; rather, it’s a one-off effort driven not by Manafort as an exemplar of all that is wrong with the lobbying profession but as an associate of a certain widely detested political figure.
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Setting aside the visceral hatred of Trump and making an objective assessment of the Mueller investigation to date, one cannot fail to be struck by the complete lack of charges related to collusion, the uncovering of which was supposed to be the whole point of the investigation in the first place. What we find instead is a pattern of entrapment and selective prosecution with regard to matters unrelated to collusion. Entrapment and selective prosecution have long pedigrees in international legal practice. In most countries governments employ them against opposition figures and groupings, but in the United States, for perhaps the first time in history, they are being used against a sitting government. Three cheers for American exceptionalism!
The curious spectacle of an elected government under sustained attack by virtually the entire political elite of the country has given rise to the theory of an American Deep State—a collection of bureaucrats, politicians, and members of the chattering classes whose power is supposedly threatened by Trump’s promise to drain the Washington swamp, and who accordingly are hell-bent on destroying his presidency by any means.
Let’s be realistic—it would be absurd to suppose that the swamp denizens would welcome the hydraulic engineer coming to town with the express purpose of destroying their habitat. Certainly, even by the standards of Republican presidential candidates, Trump fared exceptionally badly throughout the Washington, DC metropolitan area in the 2016 elections.
The Deep State, however, is not so much a conspiracy as a reflex. It is the comprehensible reaction of a skilled engineer/master craftsman who sees his life’s work—the imposing, carefully calibrated, and lovingly constructed machinery of state—being approached by some lummox with a monkey wrench in one hand and a crowbar in the other.
But let’s be clear—the lummox in question is not even Donald Trump so much as the electorate that made him President.
What is wrong with those people? Do they not appreciate both the purity of our motives and the consummate skill of our work in fashioning this edifice, this object of wonder and admiration? Or is it conceivable that one could gaze upon the Federal government and perceive neither a well-oiled machine nor an awe-inspiring work of art, but a massively over-engineered, out-of-control behemoth whose onerous expense far exceeds its utility? Could it be that this wondrous mechanism of government simply doesn’t perform the functions that the unwashed masses in the flyover states impertinently expect?Could it be that this wondrous mechanism of government simply doesn’t perform the functions that the unwashed masses in the flyover states impertinently expect? Notwithstanding the plaudits and critical acclaim accorded to our masterpiece, has the public given it a resounding thumbs-down?
Perish the thought! Russiagate ensures that we need never face such distressing questions. We can proceed serenely in the conviction that Trump’s election was a fluke engineered by the Kremlin, not a repudiation of American elites by distraught, disenchanted working-class voters. Our grim, relentless campaign to topple Trump is a patriotic effort to reclaim America from Putin’s clutches, and not at all an attempt to overturn a democratic election or to preserve the bureaucracy’s accustomed and supremely comfortable way of running things.
Our frame of reference, it seems, can accommodate all manner of changing facts. We were convinced that Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections was massive and sophisticated. Mueller’s indictment of the culpable Russians, however, makes clear that the Kremlin’s disinformation campaign was highly amateurish, even bumbling. Rather than conclude that Moscow’s interference was irrelevant to Trump’s election, we deprecate the obtuse American working classes for their gullibility in falling for such crude Russian disinformation. “The masses are asses” is the operative mentality. We get the double satisfaction of demonstratively claiming to save the American people at the same time that we patronize them. With a nod to Bertolt Brecht, we perceive that the people have lost the confidence of the elites, and it is therefore time to elect a new people—or at least, as a step in the right direction, to remove their President.
And so, with our fixation on Russian interference, we need never confront the question of why people really voted for Trump. Nor need our minds be troubled by the thought that things like globalization, the explosive growth of government, and the sort of international activism labeled “American leadership” have not been such an unalloyed blessing for people in the heartland as they have been for us swamp-dwellers.
But the self-delusion doesn’t stop there. Even—in fact, especially—for people who pride themselves on defending civil liberties and upholding the notion of equal justice, Russiagate justifies domestic surveillance, entrapment, and selective prosecution in our pious hope that a critical mass of convictions for unrelated crimes will magically crack open the whole Trump collusion conspiracy and ensure the President’s impeachment.
However, this approach is akin to believing that we can unlock the secrets of witchcraft if we just indict enough suspected witches for lying to the FBI.
Still, it seems that no matter how many witches we burn (or at least, convict of perjury and tax evasion), the cattle remain sickly, and the crops are still failing. Obviously there are still some witches out there whom we haven’t caught yet. And so the hunt continues.
As the indictments of individuals directly (though often distantly) associated with Trump have failed to expose any collusion, the Mueller investigation has had to cast an ever-wider net. The last witch suspect identified by the American media is Konstantin Kilimnik, an alleged former intelligence officer employed in Manafort’s Kyiv office for many years, apparently as his local factotum. Without the slightest scrap of evidence, he has already been proclaimed as “very likely Manafort’s spy-handler.” It remains to be seen whether Kilimnik will prove to be the devoutly hoped for bombshell, or just another in a long series of duds. In the latter case, rest assured that someone else, at an even greater remove from Trump, will be identified as the collusion conspiracy’s Missing Link—and so forth as long as Trump remains in office.
There is no need for a Deep State conspiracy when the way forward is blindingly self-evident to all right-thinking people. In order to save the country, Trump must be removed. And Trump will be removed, even if we have to tear the Constitution and the country to shreds in order to do it.
Alas, the method of burning a village in order to save it has never been a particularly winning strategy. And Russiagate will be no exception.
For readers unfamiliar with the subtle distinction between Russia and Ukraine, I offer this link to an explanatory map prepared in 2014 by the Canadian NATO delegation. I would add that the notion of Yanukovych as a puppet of Putin is a grossly misleading oversimplification of a complex and mostly fraught relationship. Moreover, Manafort’s relationship with the Yanukovych government ended in early 2014, well before Manafort’s association with the Trump campaign—indeed, before the Trump presidential campaign was even a glint in the Donald’s eye.
Published on: April 16, 2018
Kirk Bennett is a retired Foreign Service Officer and long-time swamp-dweller who spent most of his career working on Russia and the post-Soviet space.
Massachusetts School Children Build Lego Portrait of Brady, Belichick
What happens when you leave a couple hundred Massachusetts children alone with thousands of lego’s during the NFL playoffs? You get lego portraits of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, that’s what you get.
Though, the final outcome was predetermined.
Artist Rob Surette brought the project to Brown Elementary School in Peabody, Massachusetts. Where some 400 teachers and students worked to piece together the elaborate lego puzzle he had constructed. The final result, was not revealed to the students. They had to work to figure out what the 20,000 double-sided lego blocks would show.
However, after the final pieces were put into place, they revealed two very familiar faces.
Liam Martin ✔@LiamWBZGuys, watch what happens when you walk to the other side of this mural made out of Legos. Mind blown.
Students at Brown Elementary School in Peabody made it. CC @Patriots and @Edelman11 #WBZ“The whole point of the project is to empower the kids,” Surette said. “I want them to feel inspired. I want them to feel motivated, to chase after their dreams.”
The dreams of all Patriots fans involve another Super Bowl championship. Though, in order to pull that off the Pats will have to defeat a very talented Chiefs team in the midst of an arctic blast and lunar eclipse. However, if there’s anyone that can pull that off it’s the two guys on either side of that lego wall.
Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter @themightygwinn
Angel Moms Storm Chuck Schumer’s Office: ‘Get the Wall Done’
Mary Ann Mendoza — whose son Brandon Mendoza, a Mesa, Arizona police officer, was killed by an illegal alien with a criminal record in 2014 — was one of the leaders of the protesters.
Angel Moms storm Chuck Schumers office https://www.pscp.tv/w/bw4yOTF4ZUtXeEdWcnJhalB8MU93eFdPUHBxZ054UUO-ANFP4xRKfThwNMpdFOzIqH4VIew-lQTZp1E7KUuF …
She noted that the ranks of the Angels Moms sadly continues to grow, citing the recent deaths of California police officer Ronil Singh and 22-year-old Tennessee native Pierce Cochran.
Dominic collided with the car and was thrown from his motorcycle, dying on the spot, The Press-Enterprise reported.
The women also went to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, but she also refused to meet with them, Breitbart reported.
Last month following the death of Officer Singh, Mendoza told Fox News, “I look at Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, that they’re actually committing treasonous acts against the American people when they are placing illegal aliens and their rights for and their protection above their fellow American citizens who have actually voted them into office and are paying their salaries in DC.”
The government has remained partially shut down since before Christmas over the issue of border security.
Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrumpWhy is Nancy Pelosi getting paid when people who are working are not?
190K
In a Twitter post on Tuesday, Trump chided Pelosi for not being willing to negotiate on border security tweeting, “Why is Nancy Pelosi getting paid when people who are working are not?”
Sec. Nielsen: DHS, Secret Service 'Fully Prepared to Support and Secure' SOTU
Sec. Nielsen: DHS, Secret Service 'Fully Prepared to Support and Secure' SOTU
DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen publicly rejected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) claim that President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address to Congress needs to be postponed for “security reasons” during the partial government shutdown over the border wall funding dispute.
Pelosi made news earlier in the day Wednesday when she released a letter to Pres. Trump telling him he should postpone his address due to “security concerns” caused by the shutdown:
“Both the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security have not been funded for 26 days now – with critical departments hamstrung by furloughs.
“Sadly, given the security concerns and unless government re-opens this week, I suggest that we work together to determine another suitable date after government has re-opened for this address or for you to consider delivering your State of the Union address in writing to the Congress on January 29th."
Sec. Nielsen flatly denied Pelosi’s claim, responding in a statement on Twitter that both DHS and the Secret Service are "fully prepared" to secure the president's address to Congress:
“The Department of Homeland Security and the US Secret Service are fully prepared to support and secure the State of the Union. We thank the Service for their mission focus and dedication and for all they do each day to secure our homeland.”
Study: Dem Wage Hike Will Cut 2 Million Jobs
Study: Dem Wage Hike Will Cut 2 Million Jobs
$15 minimum wage would cut entry-level jobs
BY: Bill McMorris
Getty Images Academics, workers, and small business owners say the Democratic push to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour could cut 2 million jobs and hurt the workers lawmakers are claiming to help.
On Wednesday, Democrats led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) introduced a bill to raise the minimum wage wage from $7.25 an hour to $15 by 2024, while also eliminating the tipped wage credit by 2027.
"The current $7.25 an hour minimum wage is a starvation wage," he said. "We're going to have a minimum wage that is a living wage."
Prof. David Macpherson, chairman of Trinity University's economics department, said that such an increase would be unprecedented, but not in the manner Sanders describes. While only 3 percent of hourly workers work under the minimum wage today, the increase would instantly bring 44 percent of them under that umbrella. Despite that large increase, it would not alleviate the poverty rate as employers, particularly small businesses, eliminated jobs to offset the increased costs. Macpherson, using Congressional Budget Office methodology, found that 2 million jobs would be lost under a $15 rate with the most heavy losses coming in poorer states.
"The job loss would be greater in Mississippi than wealthier states like New York," he said.
Heidi Mann, who operates a small franchise business of Subway restaurants in Washington state, said that the threat of lost jobs and shuttered businesses is real. She was forced to lay off four of her seven employees at a Seattle location after the city passed a $15 minimum wage and shortened the business hours to make do. Her Seattle location will most likely shutter by March of 2020 as customers go elsewhere. She expects the same thing will happen across the country if the $15 rate becomes the law of the land. Workers will bear the burden, she said, pointing to the fact that she can no longer take a gamble on inexperienced employees. Most workers at her suburban Kirkland location are teenagers, compared to the pair of middle aged workers that staff her Seattle Subway.
"These significant [increases] will not only lead to job loss, but our workers will lose out on building their work experience," she said. "It's been frustrating and deflating to watch."
Susan Kochevar, the owner of 88 Drive-In Theatre in Colorado, said her business has already taken a hit since the state raised the minimum wage to $12 an hour. She has been forced to cut her workforce to deal with increasing labor costs and payroll taxes. The move to $15 an hour could prove fatal for small business owners.
"The tax cuts … really helped a lot of small businesses in Colorado, and that will help us ride that minimum wage increase, but to increase it again will [hurt] small businesses," she said. "My labor expenses have already gone up, and I've had to get by with fewer people."
Democrats unsuccessfully pushed for minimum wage hikes under the Obama administration with the more modest goal of $9 and $10.10 an hour nationwide, but were unsuccessful in a Republican-controlled Congress. The measure has not only raised the dollar amount, but the scope of the hike. The new measure seeks to eliminate the tipped credit by 2027. Tipped employees, such as waiters and bartenders, earn $2.13 hourly, though businesses pay them the full minimum wage if they fail to reach it through tips.
Valerie Graham has worked in restaurants for more than 20 years and is a bartender at Jack Rose Saloon in Washington, D.C. She helped organize restaurant workers to oppose a referendum to eliminate the tipped credit in D.C. in 2017. After voters approved the measure, she successfully lobbied the Democratic City Council to overturn the results and preserve the current rates. She said the $15 wage rate would cause a "massive upheaval" for restaurants and force businesses to close.
"It is one of the few fields where someone without a high school diploma or experience … can earn a middle class life," she said. "The most vulnerable people in our industry will not be helped by the reckless disruption of our industry."
Graham said she "it was disheartening" that the legislation is being pushed by politicians that many restaurant workers support. She did not expect to have to fight the same battle before Congress that she did at the city council and hopes that workers will be given a seat at the table instead of the labor activists who claim to advocate for their interests.
"So many of us in the industry identify as progressive and liberal and to see luminaries of the progressive movement stake a position that is anti-worker is daunting," she said.
What the fight over Trump's border wall is really about
Stef W. Kight
Here's what gets lost in the fight: This wouldn't be the first time we ever built border barriers or beefed up security. There's already fencing along as much as 690 miles of the border between the U.S. and Mexico, and the number of border agents has almost tripled in the past two decades.
Why it matters: That still leaves more than half of the almost 2,000-mile border uncovered, and there are gaps and dilapidated fencing in the barriers that are in place. The fight that has shut down the government is basically about 234 miles of new border wall that President Trump wants, according to the Trump administration's latest request.
By the numbers: Less than half of the border between the U.S. and Mexico has man-made barriers, according to Reveal News.
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Only 403 miles of fencing is intended to keep out pedestrians, while the rest just keeps out vehicles, according to a study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an immigration group that advocates for lowering immigration levels.
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For 36 miles, there is a second tier of pedestrian fencing.
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And for 14 miles, there are three layers of fencing.
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In October, the Department of Homeland Security unveiled the 2.5-mile-long, 30-foot-tall steel slatted barrier in Calexico, California, dubbing it the first completed border wall project — despite the fact that it just replaced existing fencing.
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The border also runs through the rugged, mountainous terrain of Big Bend National Park for 118 miles.Many local government officials fear that a wall would negatively impact wildlife and look bad in the beautiful park, NPR has reported.
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62 miles of the border are part of the Tohono O'Odham Nation reservation in Arizona. The nation has historic ties to Mexico as well as current tribe members there, and they'd be further cut off from each other if a wall was built, according to USA Today.
Trump wants $5.7 billion to build new steel barriers along 234 miles of the southern border, according to the latest letter sent by the White House to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby earlier this month.
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Details: The priority would be to build a barrier along 104 miles in the Rio Grande Valley, which is a popular crossing point and has few barriers, Vox's Dara Lind reported. Next, the administration would focus on putting up barriers in a 27-mile stretch in Yuma, Arizona; 14 miles in El Centro, California; and 55 miles in Laredo, Texas.
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What to watch: The government would have to use its powers of eminent domain to take private land from Americans at the border to build the wall — something that would likely spark a flurry of legal battles. Around 100 Texans have already received letters from the government asking for access to their land to look at how and where a wall could be built, the Washington Post reported.
Background: Trump has often changed his mind about the wall, at one point pitching Republicans that it could be covered in solar panels, another time insisting that it be "see-through," claiming it would be "artistically designed steel slats," and then insisting that "an all concrete Wall was NEVER ABANDONED."
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Helen and Moe Lauzier
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