Category Archives: DOJ, DC and inside the Beltway

Democrat Legislation is Remaking American using MMT

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Government Jobs for Everyone….consider this –>

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is a heterodox macroeconomic framework that says monetarily sovereign countries like the U.S., U.K., Japan, and Canada, which spend, tax, and borrow in a fiat currency that they fully control, are not operationally constrained by revenues when it comes to federal government spending. MMT was pioneered by American economist and theorist Warren Mosler in 1992, along with Bill Mitchell, a university professor based in Australia and a key developer of the theory.

Modern Monetary Theory & Why Central Banks are lost in the ...

AIER: Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) offers some unconventional policy recommendations based on the United States’ monetary sovereignty. MMT proponents also advocate government guaranteed jobs paying a living wage for all Americans. What would be the consequences of such a guarantee?

The Public Service Employment program detailed in a 2018 paper from the Levy Economics Institute would be funded by Washington and administered by states. It would offer full and part-time jobs paying $15 per hour plus benefits. The program’s spending would be mandatory, like other entitlement programs. The jobs would “provide public services in nonprofit community organizations, public schools, and state and local governments.”

The program could accomplish three distinct ends. The first is stabilizing aggregate demand during economic downturns. The second is instituting work-relief in place of cash assistance. The third is implementing a “living wage” for all Americans.

When the economy slips into recession, businesses lay off some workers and cut others’ wages. Reductions in these workers’ spending produce second-round (and third-round) effects: landlords, for example, cut back their spending after not receiving rent. Many economists support macroeconomic stabilization.

Stabilization works much better when automatic. Discretionary stabilization spending, like 2009’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, can take months to enact. Laid off workers can start a guaranteed government job immediately.

Today unemployed workers receive cash assistance. While I do not advocate government make-work jobs, work-relief has two advantages over cash assistance. First, work requirements effectively control fraud, as revealed by the 1990s welfare reforms. People working while on the welfare rolls never showed up for mandatory job training.

Work-relief also denies recipients the leisure of staying home. People will compare the full value of their options. Suppose a person values the freedom of not working at $30,000 a year. If they also receive $10,000, only a $20 per hour job matches the full value of the cash assistance.

The MMT jobs program also implements a living wage providing a “just” level of compensation. Economics shows how workers in a competitive labor market get paid the value they create for businesses. The “problem” of low wages is then inadequate job skills.

The living wage is redistribution disguised as work. Market wages and salaries are not charity; the prices customers willingly pay for goods and services cover workers’ pay. Market-based salaries come entirely from voluntary payment and workers earn their pay by helping produce goods and services.

Guaranteed jobs effectively set a minimum wage because few Americans will work for businesses offering worse compensation packages (wages and benefits). Government jobs would be far more effective in assisting low-wage workers because a minimum wage ends up pricing many out of the labor market altogether.

Government jobs paying $15 an hour plus benefits would likely cost $40,000 per job annually. MMT proponents project 15 million government jobs would be needed even when the economy is strong. MMT can advocate such a budget-busting program because in its view monetary sovereignty renders Federal spending costless under most circumstances.

The biggest potential problem with the jobs guarantee, even at a lower wage, is whether people will have to work. What exactly is a government “guaranteed job?” The term job suggests a person must work satisfactorily or be fired. The guarantee suggests anyone fired must then be given another position.

Government guaranteed no-show jobs would blow up the labor market. If you had a “job” paying $30,000 plus benefits not requiring work, how much would you need to be paid to take a real job? Guaranteed $15 per hour no-show jobs would effectively be a $30 or $40 per hour minimum wage.

The United States is prosperous because we produce goods and services people want in large quantities. Yet production requires real work, not government make-work jobs. By diverting millions out of productive private sector jobs, the MMT jobs guarantee seems guaranteed to impoverish America.

Durham’s Next Arrests Could Snag Some Hillary Operatives

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Keep a close watch for names like Fiona Hill, a top witness in the first Trump impeachment.  Fiona currently serves as a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. Next up could be Strobe Talbot, a top Clinton operative and head of the Brookings Institute, a left-wing political think tank. Strobe became friends with future President Bill Clinton when both were Rhodes Scholars at the University of Oxford;Then there could be a Mr. Charles Dolan Jr., who was the state chairman of the Clinton-Gore campaigns in Virginia in 1992 and 1996 and was appointed to a position in the State Department in the Clinton administration.

Dolan has years of political and communications experience to kglobal in his role as senior vice president. He has advised or managed Presidential and Congressional campaigns, state party conventions and platform committee hearings. He is also an adjunct professor at the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs, and a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he earned a B.A. and of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, where he earned an M.P.A. in Government and Business.

Prior to joining kglobal, Chuck was an executive vice president at Prism Public Affairs and formerly a senior vice president for public affairs at Ketchum Public Relations and also worked as a senior vice president at the government relations firm, Cassidy and Associates. He served as vice-chairman of the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, a seven-member commission that advises the U.S. government on press and information activities of U.S. missions abroad, and the government’s international radio and television operations. And, he is a former executive director of the Democratic Governors Association. He also worked as a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill.

These people circle around DC block by block and year after year.

 

 

 

Exactly where was all of this during the Mueller investigation?

Another item that should have your blood boiling is the matter of paying off Andrew McCabe a few weeks ago. Remember that? Those on the top floor of the FBI remain dirty in this whole fake operation include McCabe. He was fired by Trump and sued. Merrick Garland, the head of the Department of Justice rather quietly settled with McCabe restoring his full reputation, pension and attorney’s fees. This tells you that Garland knew of Durham’s soon to be arrest of Igor Danchenko and how the FBI was so complicit in the whole affair. Better pay off McCabe now before more heads roll under the Durham investigation.

More details below…

  1. In part from the New York Times:

    Most of the important claims in the dossier — a series of reports written by Mr. Danchenko’s employer, Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent — have not been proven, and some have been refuted, including by Mr. Mueller. F.B.I. agents interviewed Mr. Danchenko several times in 2017 when they were seeking to run down the claims.

    The first false statement charge in the indictment concerns Mr. Danchenko’s interactions with a person the indictment describes as a public relations executive with strong ties to the Democratic Party.

    The indictment said Mr. Danchenko falsely told the F.B.I. that he had not discussed the claims in the dossier with the public relations executive. But, the indictment said, the executive — who in his professional career frequently interacted with Eurasian clients, with a particular focus on Russia — was a source for some of the claims, including gossip about the ouster of Paul Manafort as Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman.

    The indictment did not name the person it called “PR Executive-1,” but its description matched the career of Charles Dolan Jr., who was the state chairman of the Clinton-Gore campaigns in Virginia in 1992 and 1996 and was appointed to a position in the State Department in the Clinton administration.

    Mr. Dolan was earlier named in a declaration by Olga Galkina, one of Mr. Danchenko’s sources, as someone to whom Mr. Danchenko had introduced her; the indictment also said that the executive and a source who appears to be Ms. Galkina had regular interactions, including in ways that indicated they supported Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.

    Mr. Dolan’s lawyer, Ralph D. Martin, confirmed in an email that his client was the executive named in the indictment, but said that Mr. Dolan, as a potential witness in the case, would have no comment.

  2. The sordid and insipid details TF:

3. Lastly from top Jonathan Turley:

Danchenko is not someone who immediately comes across as an apex defendant — the highest target in an investigation. He was a key source used by others to advance false or unsubstantiated claims against Trump. He is the type of defendant that prosecutors pressure to flip against those who retained him or used him in this effort. In other words, he strikes me as someone who can be used as a building block to apex defendants.

Potential apex targets above him in the investigation range from Steele himself to Clinton general counsel Marc Elias to Clinton campaign officials.

The indictment circles around an unnamed figure called PR-Executive-1 who was a close Clinton adviser who held high positions in the Democratic party and prior Clinton campaigns. Most embarrassing are references to the Clinton adviser meeting with possible Russian intelligence figures and other Russian sources, including this line:

PR Executive-1 gifted to Russian Sub-Source-1 an autobiography of Hillary Clinton, which he signed and inscribed with the handwritten message, “To my good friend [first name of Russian Sub-Source-1], A Great Democrat.”

That is one book I think Hillary Clinton would like back.

The indictment describes the individual in this way:

“PR Executive-1 had served as (1) chairman of a national Democratic political organization, (2) state chairman of former President Clinton’s 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, and (3) an advisor to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Presidential campaign. Moreover, beginning in or about 1997, President Clinton appointed PR Executive-! to two four-year terms on an advisory commission at the U.S. State Department. With respect to the 2016 Clinton Campaign, PR Executive-! actively campaigned and participated in calls and events as a volunteer on behalf of Hillary Clinton.”

There is no indication if Durham has possible evidence of criminal acts by those figures but there is every indication that he is not done by a long shot with this investigation.

 

CIA Director in Moscow Did not Stop 90,000 Russian Troops at Ukraine Border

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Senator Marco Rubio appears to be the only person really concerned about a Russian invasion of Ukraine. While CIA Director Bill Burns took a delegation to Moscow for what is said to be high level meetings, it has proven to be ineffective in altering Russian operations versus Ukraine. Top Russian security chief met with CIA director Burns ...

As usual we have this –>The Ukrainian Defense Ministry sent a release saying that about 90,000 Russian troops are stationed close to the border in areas east of the country controlled by rebel forces. This comes two days after Ukraine denied that Russian military personnel were in the area.

Eastern Ukraine has been a contentious area for years. In 2014, Moscow annexed the Crimean Peninsula shortly after the Ukrainian Revolution. Over 14,000 people have died as a result of the conflict.

Russian officials said the troops were present due to maneuvers. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “Russia maintains troops presence on its territory wherever it deems necessary.”

The ministry’s statement said specifically that units of the Russian 41st army have remained in Yelnya, about 260 kilometers (about 160 miles) north of the Ukrainian border.

On Tuesday, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Andriy Taran submitted his resignation and Ukrainian lawmakers quickly approved it Wednesday. Davyd Arakhamia, the head of the parliamentary faction of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party, said Taran had health problems.

Ukrainian media reported however that Zelenskyy’s office was behind the resignation of Taran and four other ministers, who were also dismissed by parliament on Wednesday.

Russia has cast its weight behind a separatist insurgency in Ukraine’s east that erupted shortly after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

A massive buildup of Russian troops in Russia’s west have been fueling fears of an escalation of large-scale hostilities.

Russian officials said that the troops were deployed as part of measures to counter security threats posed by the deployment of NATO forces near Russian borders. Russia and the alliance also have blamed each other for conducting destabilizing military exercises near the borders.

****CIA director makes rare trip to Moscow for talks on Russia ...

The CIA and the delegation came back empty handed it seems.

THE DIRECTOR OF THE United States Central Intelligence Agency has returned to Washington from a surprise visit to Russia, where he led a high-level team of American officials in meetings with their Russian counterparts. The two-day visit was announced almost simultaneously by both the American and Russian governments, following the arrival of the CIA director, William Burns, to Moscow on Tuesday.

Little information has emerged about the participants in the meetings. A statement from the American embassy in Moscow said simply that Burns had traveled there at the request of President Joe Biden, and that other United States officials had traveled with him. It is believed that Karen Donfried, the State Department’s assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, traveled with Burns. According to the American embassy, the meetings were held on Tuesday and Wednesday and concerned “a range of issues in the bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia.

A minute-long video, which was posted on social media by the Russian TASS news agency on Tuesday, showed a group of five American officials meeting with five Russian officials. The latter appeared to include Nikolai Patrushev, a close political ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who heads the Security Council of Russia —a body that is roughly equivalent to the United States National Security Council. Prior to his current role, Patrushev served as director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).

It is worth noting that Burns speaks Russian and served twice as a diplomat in Russia, most recently as the American ambassador there. Some observers noted that Burns’ trip to Moscow is part of a broader pattern of increasingly frequent meetings between American and Russian officials in recent months. The last four months have seen at least four visits to Russia by senior officials in the Biden administration.

Dads on Duty in Public Schools has Remarkable Results

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Primer: In 2020, USAToday published in part the following:

Schools are safe, safer in fact than they’ve been for decades, and not because of the presence of an armed police officer in the hallways. Rather, schools provide structure and supervision that many kids lack during their out-of-school hours.

Although SROs may give parents some sense of comfort that their children are protected while at school, students actually face certain perils because of constant police presence. The well-traveled school-to-prison pipeline has been documented by research in terms of greater reliance on the justice system in response to student infractions, especially for minority youngsters.

***'The School has Just Been Happy': Concerned Fathers Form ...

If children are not punished in some form with violence and criminal activity it adds to the already broken juvenile justice system.

SHREVEPORT, La. — A group of fathers in Shreveport are taking safety into their own hands after repeated violence broke out in one school, where 23 students were arrested over a short three-day period. “Dads on Duty” showed up and the daily brawls suddenly came to an end.

One of the father’s, Michael LaFitte, launched a group called “Dads on Duty.” It ignited a desire in 40 fathers to sign up and take shifts at Southwood High School in Shreveport. Their goal is to simply maintain a peaceful environment, and thus far, it’s been profoundly successful, CBS News reported.

Although none of the fathers have a “pedigree” of expertise, i.e. degrees in school counseling or criminal justice, they do have some relevant experience, namely concerned parents who have a shared, invested interest in a safe learning environment for their kids.

“We’re dads. We decided the best people who can take care of our kids are who? Are us,” LaFitte told the news outlet.


School violence increased last month, when ongoing fights resulted in 23 teen arrests over three days. Sept. 16 was an extremely violent day, which led to 14 arrests after two major fights erupted, requiring the school’s resource officer to call for backup officers to respond, Fox reported.

“We had a fight at 9:30,” Caddo Parish Sheriff Steve Prator said at the time, according to KSLA. “I believe that there were seven kids that were. I call them kids, that sounds innocent. Seven of these thugs were expelled or sent home.”

However, since “Dads on Duty” was launched and deployed, there have been no instances of violence. Moreover, some students said their presence has helped the environment at the school, CBS reported.


“I immediately felt a form of safety,” one of the students said. “We stopped fighting; people started going to class.”

“You ever heard of ‘a look?’” one student asked while describing a “power” the student said all fathers have.

Furthermore, students say the fathers bring a sense of security as they crack “dad jokes” while interacting with teens in the hallways.

“They just make funny jokes like, ‘Oh, hey, your shoe is untied,’ but it’s really not untied,” one student told CBS.

“The school has just been happy — and you can feel it,” another student said.

As teen violence has also increased in other locales, the fathers said they will keep with the program indefinitely and would like to start chapters throughout Louisiana and even the country.

“Because not everybody has a father figure at home – or a male, period, in their life. So just to be here makes a big difference,” the group of dads said.