Infrastructure Plan, Highway Grants Still Fleecing Americans

Could the American taxpayer get fleeced again on the proposed Trump infrastructure proposal? History and facts says YES. Presently this is just chatter when it comes to improvements, there is no money allocated much less a plan. Draining that swamp is not underway either…

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With Billions in Recession-Era Highway Grants, Why Were Improvements Limited?

New research examines why nearly $28 billion of recession-era funding for highway projects didn’t yield greater improvements to the nation’s road network.

Bill Dupor, an assistant vice president and economist in the research division with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, digs into the issue in the reserve bank’s latest quarterly Review.

Dupor looks at $27.5 billion funneled through the Federal Highway Administration as part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Most of that amount was directed toward grants for state governments, marking a substantial boost in federal highway aid.

But in years before and after the Recovery Act, according to Dupor, the number of structurally deficient bridges in the U.S. was close to unchanged, as was the number of workers on road and bridge projects. And, he says, over 40 percent of the nation’s population lived in states where the overall value of highway construction spending was lower in 2010 than in 2008.

“Despite the tremendous influx of federal funds, the highway system showed little improvement,” Dupor writes.

Why was this the case? An explanation Dupor offers is that as states received the federal grant funding for road projects, they could decrease their own spending on highway infrastructure—freeing up those state dollars for other uses.

“Since states were facing budget stress from declining tax revenues resulting from the recession, it stands to reason that states had the incentive to do so,” Dupor writes, referring to the shifting of state highway funding to other areas.

He found that 15 states cut their total highway capital spending between 2008 and 2010. For instance, across that timeframe, the amount of state money spent per resident on highway infrastructure went down by $109 in Georgia, $98 in Texas and $73 in Maryland.

President Trump is currently pushing for a $1 trillion infrastructure package that would involve both public and private capital. Some city leaders have argued that, if the federal government ups infrastructure spending, more money should go directly to cities rather than through states.

Dupor’s article is titled, “So, Why Didn’t the 2009 Recovery Act Improve the Nation’s Highways and Bridges?” A full copy can be found here.

*** Obama’s shovel ready jobs….remember that?

Forbes: Those with long memories will recall that the way out of the economic difficulties back a few years was to be that we had a fiscal stimulus. The US was going to borrow a whole bunch of money and invest it in those shovel ready infrastructure projects that simply littered the country side. This would pull us up out of recession pretty darn sharpish and all would be well.

No, really, this was what was going to happen:

As President Obama urges Congress to pass the $800 billion-plus stimulus package, one of his favorite selling points is the thousands of projects nationwide that he calls “shovel ready” — meaning planning is complete, approvals are secured and people could be put to work right away once funding is in place.

There is no formal definition for shovel ready. The Federal Highway Administration says it doesn’t use the phrase. Its preferred term is “ready to go,” according to acting administrator Jeff Paniati.

That means a state has already done the preliminary work for that project, he says.

“They’ve addressed all the environmental requirements as required,” Paniati says. “They’ve done the necessary public outreach. In many cases, the design work is already completed … and that they’re on an approved state list.”

One example of a shovel-ready project is the in the notoriously traffic-clogged suburbs of Northern Virginia outside Washington, D.C. The state wants to widen the roads and has done some of the preliminary work, but the project is on hold because Virginia doesn’t have the final $32 million needed to complete it.

The stimulus bill states that for a project to be considered shovel-ready, it must be ready to begin in 90 days. The has a list of almost 19,000 such projects, adding up to almost $150 billion.

I quote at such length as this really was  what was touted as the way out of the then current problems.

FT Alphaville has a nice little chart today showing what actually happened:

Err, yes. The government gears up to massively boost infrastructure spending, borrows $800 billion to go do infrastructure spending and infrastructure spending falls through the floor at the same time.

My conclusion would be rather simple: government’s just not the way to get the job done.

I agree, there are some things that must be done. There are also things that must be done that only government can do: so, let government limit itself to only those things that must be done and can only be done by government. I think we’d be better off working out the rest of it by ourselves quite frankly.

I mean seriously? They insist that they’re going to boost the economy through infrastructure spending and even when they get the money infrastructure spending falls by by a third or more?

Jeff Sessions/FBI and MS-13

Four members of the violent, foreign MS-13 gang were convicted on federal racketeering charges, some of which involved murder.

Miguel Zelaya, 20-years-old, Luis Ordonez-Vega, 36-years-old, Jorge Sosa, 24-years-old and William Gavidia, 23-years-old, were all convicted on a count of conspiracy to commit racketeering, according to the Charlotte Observer:

Zelaya, who also goes by “Most Wanted” and “Ne Ne” is a member of MS-13’s “Coronados Little Cycos Salvatrucha” clique. On Dec. 18, 2013, he shot and killed Jose Orlando Ibarra, an associate of The Latin Kings, a rival gang, the release said.

Ordonez-Vega, also known as “Big Boy,” is a member of the Brentwood Locos Salvatrucha” clique, according to the news release. On June 6, 2013, Ordonez-Vega shot and killed Noel Navarro Hernandez in a strip mall parking lot in Charlotte, believing the victim was a member of a rival gang.

Sosa, who goes by “Koki” and “Loco” is a member of the “Charlotte Locotes Salvatrucha” clique. Prosecutors say he’s been involved in multiple gang-related crimes. In Feb. 2008, he flashed MS-13 gang signs at a rival gang member’s mother and pointed a gun at her while they were stopped in traffic. In June, 2013, he was involved in a gang-related shooting where he and another person followed victims in a neighborhood in Charlotte and opened fire with a high-caliber rifle, the release said.

All of the gang members are either immigrants or the children of immigrants in the U.S. and they are also facing state charges for their crimes.

“Today’s guilty verdicts underscore that even though gang membership may in some ways ‘protect’ gangsters from outsiders, it certainly won’t protect them from the vast reach of the US. Attorney’s Office and our law enforcement partners,” U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina Jill Westmoreland Rose said in a statement.

The MS-13 gang members were four of 37 who were charged with racketeering after an investigation into the criminal activity by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. Thirty of the other gang members charged with racketeering are either awaiting sentencing or have pleaded guilty to the charges.

According to the U.S. District Attorney, Ordonez-Vega and Zelaya were convicted on charges to murder in aid of racketeering. Those charges are connected to two separate murders. Meanwhile, Sosa was convicted for attempted murder in the aid of racketeering.

***

Image result for ms-13  InSightCrime

In 2015 the U.S. Treasury Department froze the assets of three members of the gang who were funneling funds back to higher-ups in El Salvador from prison. These actions were an attempt “disrupt” MS-13’s financial network by cutting off profits from illegal activities in the United States, the Treasury Department said. In 2012 the Obama administration designated MS-13 a transnational crime organization and implemented sanctions against six members in 2013.

While the U.S. government attempts to target MS-13’s earnings, targeting its culture is proving more difficult. The fierce loyalty among members is unique, Ron Hosko, former assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, told FOX Business.

“They’re very cohesive and often directed by imprisoned bosses in El Salvador to recruit and expand in American communities. That tends to mean there’s an aggressive internal enforcement mechanism which equates to internal discipline involving physical violence and murder for disrespect or betrayal,” he said.

The FBI in El Salvador Because of MS-13:

CNN Reported Dossier Basis for Trump Surveillance, But…

The FBI last year used a dossier of allegations of Russian ties to Donald Trump’s campaign as part of the justification to win approval to secretly monitor a Trump associate, according to US officials briefed on the investigation.

The dossier has also been cited by FBI Director James Comey in some of his briefings to members of Congress in recent weeks, as one of the sources of information the bureau has used to bolster its investigation, according to US officials briefed on the probe.
This includes approval from the secret court that oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to monitor the communications of Carter Page, two of the officials said. Last year, Page was identified by the Trump campaign as an adviser on national security. More here from CNN.
Okay, so everyone remains angry with James Comey right? Okay, well hold on….this could get complicated. We cant dismiss the notion that Obama and Susan Rice had a valid reason for their surveillance
actions, at least some as the below case was provided to the White House.
Enter Evigeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev.
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U.S. v Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev et al by Brian Ries on Scribd

Bogachev was a case from 2014 investigated by CrowdStrike and then later offered help to the FBI office in Omaha and later the FBI office in Pittsburgh finally after countless months, ran a global cyber operation and succeeded in stopping international bank thefts in the millions of dollars. Many Russian immigrants located in Brighton Beach were recruited to be mules going to domestic banks, opening accounts and later withdrawing funds, cleaning all traces of the stolen millions. It should be noted that CrowdStrike was the same firm the Hillary campaign hired to investigate intrusions.

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Now it gets even more interesting.

The matter of Bogachev with his named operation of ‘Business Club’ and his global cyber operatives hacking with sophisticated bots, malware and remote servers came to the attention of the Russian Federation. They liked what the Bogachev Zeus operation had the ability to do. So, top Kremlin officials allowed the operation to continue without prosecution if they would work to gather intelligence on the global reaction to Putin annexing Crimea and moving in on Ukraine.

All of this came to the attention also of U.S. based private cyber professional where they studied the code, the IP addresses, the servers, the patterns, names and other common cyber traits. The DNC hack attributions are a dovetail to the ‘Business Club’ operation due to style, coding, networks, language and server locations.

In 2015, the Obama State Department issued sanctions and a $3 million dollar bounty on Bogachev who operated with the alias of ‘Slavik’. Russia of course is not only not cooperating but refuses to admit any such action was real and the evidence is not vetted. This is a usual response by top Russian officials.

An estimated $100 million was stolen via cyber operations by Slavik and computers infected with various versions of Zeus still exist while the FBI was able to seized all those known to their sting operation.

The FBI described the cyber sting operation as hand to hand combat with Bogachev and his operation on the Zeus case was deemed successful. It is unknown at this time who and where is he still operating. The summary of this operation was taken from the full article published by ‘Wired’ under the title ‘The Hunt for Russia’s Most Notorious Hacker’

Late last year, the DHS released a joint statement which read in part:

This activity by Russian intelligence services is part of a decade-long campaign of cyber-enabled operations directed at the U.S. Government and its citizens. These cyber operations have included spearphishing, campaigns targeting government organizations, critical infrastructure, think tanks, universities, political organizations, and corporations; theft of information from these organizations; and the recent public release of some of this stolen information.  In other countries, Russian intelligence services have also undertaken damaging and disruptive cyber-attacks, including on critical infrastructure, in some cases masquerading as third parties or hiding behind false online personas designed to cause victim to misattribute the source of the attack.  The Joint Analysis Report provides technical indicators related to many of these operations, recommended mitigations and information on how to report such incidents to the U.S. Government.

A great deal of analysis and forensic information related to Russian government activity has been published by a wide range of security companies.  The U.S. Government can confirm that the Russian government, including Russia’s civilian and military intelligence services, conducted many of the activities generally described by a number of these security companies.  The Joint Analysis Report recognizes the excellent work undertaken by security companies and private sector network owners and operators, and provides new indicators of compromise and malicious infrastructure identified during the course of investigations and incident response.  The U.S. Government seeks to arm network defenders with the tools they need to identify,, detect and disrupt Russian malicious cyber activity that is targeting our country’s and our allies’ networks.

 

Another Journalist Dead After beatings, Russia

Nicholas Andrushchenko dead after beatings.

  CBS writes the he covered human rights issues and crime.

In this photo taken on Sunday, Oct. 9, 2016, prominent Russian journalist Nikolai Andrushchenko poses in St. Petersburg, Russia.

AP

 

Those opposed to Putin or expose the Kremlin/FSB seem to have shorter lives.

Going back a few years to a major case of poisoning. With assassinations, Russian spies and rumours of the Kremlin’s dark influence back in the news, this documentary tells – for the first time – the inside story of the murder of a British citizen on British soil using the world’s deadliest poison, and of an international manhunt that led to the steps of the Kremlin. Alexander Litvinenko was killed in London with the radioactive poison polonium 210 in November 2006. The Scotland Yard detectives who led the murder investigation have never spoken publicly about it before. Together with the doctors who fought to save Litvinienko’s life – reveal the political and diplomatic obstacle course they faced in investigating the murder and tell how their quarries left a toxic trail through the heart of London.

Then there was the case of Mikhail Lesin, 59, found dead in a Dupont Circle hotel room. He was a former aide to Russian President Vladi­mir Putin.               Image result for mikhail lesin

***

Russia suspicious deaths list updated today with a journalist who died after being attacked. Putin critics highlighted in yellow.

Image: Alexey Navalny / Instagram, edited by Kevin Rothrock

The Kremlin has finally decided to take on Alexey Navalny, four sources tell the independent television station Dozhd. According to two of the sources (identified only as “individuals close to the Kremlin”), the campaign against Russia’s opposition leader will start sometime soon.

Putin’s deputy chief of staff, Sergey Kirienko, has reversed the Kremlin’s longheld position that Navalny poses no genuine threat to the regime, according to a source who regularly meets with Kirienko. The administration’s concern is reportedly that Navalny could mar Putin’s likely re-election next March, when the Kremlin is counting on a “beautiful victory,” with high turnout and without the need for open repression against the political opposition.

According to Dozhd’s report, a special team from Putin’s domestic policy crew has set up a war room somewhere outside the Kremlin to generate material designed to discredit Navalny. Dozhd says Alexander Kharichev and Andrei Yarin — two of Putin’s top domestic policy officials — will oversee the mudslinging effort.

“They’re filming videos, making viral clips, and designing little video games to discredit Navalny. They’re fighting him like he’s Hitler,” a source told Dozhd.

Political analysts told Dozhd that the public can expect the campaign against Navalny to resemble the character assassination of former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, whose race for a seat in the State Duma derailed last year, after Russian network television aired hidden-camera footage of him cheating on his wife, which also precipitated a collapse of Russia’s democratic opposition alliance.

Online, where Navalny enjoys his greatest support and popularity, Russians are already mocking the news that the Kremlin is working on “videogames” to discredit the country’s most visible anti-corruption activist. “I can’t wait for the release of the videogame that will discredit Alexey Navalny,” Perm-based artist Anton Semakin tweeted sarcastically. “After the protests against corruption, the Kremlin has decided to crack down on Navalny, not on corruption,” the Russian comedian “Bob Farber” joked.

According to Dozhd’s sources, it was last month’s nationwide anti-corruption protests, spearheaded almost single-handedly by Navalny, that provoked the Kremlin’s new response. While the crowds may have represented only an infinitesimal sliver of the Russian population, Navalny’s anti-corruption efforts have undeniably coalesced into a larger movement. See RuNet Echo’s March 28 report on “Russia’s Youngster Uprising.”

And there’s statistical evidence that supports Navalny’s rising political profile: In early April, the Levada Center polling agency recorded a 10-percent drop in Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s approval ratings after Navalny released a bombshell investigation accusing Medvedev of widescale corruption.

Packaged in a sleek and entertaining video presentation, Navalny’s allegations have attracted more than 19 million views on YouTube.

Putin’s Think Tank Crafted 2016 U.S. election Interference – documents

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Reuters: A Russian government think tank controlled by Vladimir Putin developed a plan to swing the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump and undermine voters’ faith in the American electoral system, three current and four former U.S. officials told Reuters.

They described two confidential documents from the think tank as providing the framework and rationale for what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded was an intensive effort by Russia to interfere with the Nov. 8 election. U.S. intelligence officials acquired the documents, which were prepared by the Moscow-based Russian Institute for Strategic Studies [en.riss.ru/], after the election.

The institute is run by retired senior Russian foreign intelligence officials appointed by Putin’s office.

The first Russian institute document was a strategy paper written last June that circulated at the highest levels of the Russian government but was not addressed to any specific individuals.

It recommended the Kremlin launch a propaganda campaign on social media and Russian state-backed global news outlets to encourage U.S. voters to elect a president who would take a softer line toward Russia than the administration of then-President Barack Obama, the seven officials said.

A second institute document, drafted in October and distributed in the same way, warned that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was likely to win the election. For that reason, it argued, it was better for Russia to end its pro-Trump propaganda and instead intensify its messaging about voter fraud to undermine the U.S. electoral system’s legitimacy and damage Clinton’s reputation in an effort to undermine her presidency, the seven officials said.

The current and former U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the Russian documents’ classified status. They declined to discuss how the United States obtained them. U.S. intelligence agencies also declined to comment on them.

Putin has denied interfering in the U.S. election. Putin’s spokesman and the Russian institute did not respond to requests for comment.

The documents were central to the Obama administration’s conclusion that Russia mounted a “fake news” campaign and launched cyber attacks against Democratic Party groups and Clinton’s campaign, the current and former officials said.

“Putin had the objective in mind all along, and he asked the institute to draw him a road map,” said one of the sources, a former senior U.S. intelligence official.

Trump has said Russia’s activities had no impact on the outcome of the race. Ongoing congressional and FBI investigations into Russian interference have so far produced no public evidence that Trump associates colluded with the Russian effort to change the outcome of the election.

Four of the officials said the approach outlined in the June strategy paper was a broadening of an effort the Putin administration launched in March 2016. That month the Kremlin instructed state-backed media outlets, including international platforms Russia Today and Sputnik news agency, to start producing positive reports on Trump’s quest for the U.S. presidency, the officials said.

Russia Today did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Sputnik dismissed the assertions by the U.S. officials that it participated in a Kremlin campaign as an “absolute pack of lies.” “And by the way, it’s not the first pack of lies we’re hearing from ‘sources in U.S. official circles’,” the spokesperson said in an email.

PRO-KREMLIN BLOGGERS

Russia Today and Sputnik published anti-Clinton stories while pro-Kremlin bloggers prepared a Twitter campaign calling into question the fairness of an anticipated Clinton victory, according to a report by U.S. intelligence agencies on Russian interference in the election made public in January. [bit.ly/2kMiKSA]

Russia Today’s most popular Clinton video – “How 100% of the 2015 Clintons’ ‘charity’ went to … themselves” – accumulated 9 millions views on social media, according to the January report. [bit.ly/2os8wIt]

The report said Russia Today and Sputnik “consistently cast president elect-Trump as the target of unfair coverage from traditional media outlets.”

The report said the agencies did not assess whether Moscow’s effort had swung the outcome of the race in Trump’s favor, because American intelligence agencies do not “analyze U.S. political processes or U.S. public opinion.” [bit.ly/2kMiKSA]

CYBER ATTACKS

Neither of the Russian institute documents mentioned the release of hacked Democratic Party emails to interfere with the U.S. election, according to four of the officials. The officials said the hacking was a covert intelligence operation run separately out of the Kremlin.

The overt propaganda and covert hacking efforts reinforced each other, according to the officials. Both Russia Today and Sputnik heavily promoted the release of the hacked Democratic Party emails, which often contained embarrassing details.

Five of the U.S. officials described the institute as the Kremlin’s in-house foreign policy think tank.

The institute’s director when the documents were written, Leonid Reshetnikov, rose to the rank of lieutenant general during a 33-year-career in Russia’s foreign intelligence service, according to the institute’s website [bit.ly/2oVhiCF]. After Reshetnikov retired from the institute in January, Putin named as his replacement Mikhail Fradkov. The institute says he served as the director of Russia’s foreign intelligence service from 2007 to 2016. [bit.ly/2os4tvz]

Reuters was unable to determine if either man was directly involved in the drafting of the documents. Reshetnikov’s office referred questions to the Russian institute.

On its website, the Russian institute describes itself as providing “expert appraisals,” “recommendations,” and “analytical materials” to the Russian president’s office, cabinet, National Security Council, ministries and parliament. [bit.ly/2pCBGpR]

On Jan. 31, the websites of Putin’s office [bit.ly/2os9wMr] and the institute [bit.ly/2oLn9Kd] posted a picture and transcript of Reshetnikov and his successor Fradkov meeting with Putin in the Kremlin. Putin thanked Reshetnikov for his service and told Fradkov he wanted the institute to provide objective information and analysis.

“We did our best for nearly eight years to implement your foreign policy concept,” Reshetnikov told Putin. “The policy of Russia and the policy of the President of Russia have been the cornerstone of our operation.”

(Reporting by Ned Parker and Jonathan Landay, additional reporting by Warren Strobel and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by David Rohde and Ross Colvin)

*** In part:

The wide range of scientific work is ensured by the structural subdivision of the

RISS into the Research Center of CIS countries, Center for Asia and the Middle

East Research, the Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies (‘geographical departments’),

Center for Economic Research, Centre for Defense Studies as well as the Humanitarian

Research Center (functional departments).8 The latter represents a

new department, introduced almost simultaneously with the Presidential Decree

of 2009 and it is preoccupied with “the contentious issues of the foreign relations

history and the role of the religious factor.”9 Its introduction has added a new task

of “counteracting the falsification of history in the post-Soviet space”10 to RISS

scientific activities which are determined by the need of the Russian government

to provide strategic interests in the post-Soviet space. Here, there is a serious element

of propaganda for Russian state interests. Upon the whole, we can conclude

that the Presidential Decree of 2009 has turned the RISS into a useful tool providing

abundant data and research for an appropriate “articulation of the strategic

directions of the state policy in the sphere of national security.”  Read more here.