Category Archives: Legislation

The Plan: Five for Freedom

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Bringing government spending under control.

NRO: At the last Republican presidential debate, I presented the Simple Flat Tax — which, for a family of four, exempts the first $36,000 from all income tax, and above that amount collects one low rate of 10 percent for all Americans. It eliminates the death tax, the payroll tax, the corporate income tax, and the Obamacare taxes; ends the corporate carve-outs and loopholes; and requires every business to pay the same simple business flat tax of 16 percent.

That plan will unleash unprecedented growth, create millions of new jobs, raise after-tax incomes for all income levels by double-digit percentages — and abolish the IRS as we know it. But eliminating the IRS is only the first step in my plan to break apart the federal leviathan that has ruled Washington and crept into our lives. We can’t stop there. In addition to eliminating the IRS, a Cruz administration will abolish four cabinet agencies. And we will sharply reduce the alphabet soup of government entities, beginning with the ABCs that should not exist in the first place: The Agencies, Bureaus, Commissions, and other programs that are constitutionally illegitimate and harmful to American households and businesses. It’s time to return to a federal government that abides by our constitutional framework and strips power from unelected bureaucrats.

The need is urgent.

The total federal debt currently stands at $18.6 trillion, larger than our entire economy. That is up 75 percent since the current president took office, and by the end of his tenure, he is expected to have added almost as much to the national debt as all past presidents combined. And what does the Obama administration have to show for its uncontrolled spending? A stagnant economy, lagging job creation, and the lowest labor-force participation since the Carter administration. The Obama economy has burdened each American household with the equivalent of $57,000 of federal debt. Under such stifling circumstances, it’s no wonder that 84 percent of college graduates do not have a job lined up after graduation, and 13.2 percent of young adults are out of work. The current level of spending is not only irresponsible, but immoral and unjust to future generations.

It is time for bold change. Change that stops Washington from squandering Americans’ money; that creates jobs and restores growth with a single, fair, low rate for everyone; that reins in Washington’s costly regulations; that honors the people’s work with the dignity it deserves; and that finally gets the government out of our pockets and off our backs. Of course, because entitlements constitute roughly two-thirds of federal spending, no government spending plan is complete without addressing entitlement reform. And in the coming months, I will be laying out a detailed plan to do just that, to strengthen and preserve Social Security and Medicare and to ensure their fiscal strength for decades to come. But we should start with federal discretionary spending.
First, to begin the process of reducing the scope and cost of government, I have identified the Five for Freedom: During my first year as president, I will fight to abolish the IRS, the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. To do that, I will press Congress relentlessly. And I will appoint heads of each of those agencies whose central charge will be to lead the effort to wind them down and determine whether any of their programs need to be preserved elsewhere because they fall within the proper purview of the federal government. I do not anticipate the lists to be long. The IRS and these cabinet agencies are unnecessary and will be shuttered for the following reasons:
Internal Revenue Service – to dramatically simplify the tax code and enable everyone to fill out their taxes on a postcard or smartphone app. Department of Education – to return education to those who know our students best: parents, teachers, local communities, and states. And to block-grant education funding to the states.
Department of Energy – to cut off the Washington cartel, stop picking winners and losers, and unleash the energy renaissance.
Department of Commerce – to close the “congressional cookie jar” and promote free enterprise and free trade for every business.
Department of Housing and Urban Development – to offer real solutions that lift people out of hardship, rather than trapping families in a cycle of poverty, and to empower hurting Americans by reforming most of the remaining programs, such as Section 8 housing. Second, besides these unnecessary cabinet agencies and the IRS, we will sharply reduce the agencies, bureaus, commissions, and other programs that are harming American households and businesses — including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Together with the four departments and the IRS, our conservative estimate of the effects of these eliminations and reductions is a savings of over $500 billion over ten years. And that’s just a start. The true savings — of scaling down the scope of the federal government, of restoring to the states their rightful authority, and of unleashing the people’s ingenuity — cannot be measured by a number. We are uprooting the centralized power that we have lived under for far too long. Third, we will bring back a proven approach from the prosperous days of the Reagan administration: a private-sector panel to assess federal spending levels and evaluate areas of waste and fraud for removal. At President Reagan’s behest, the Grace Commission recommended 2,478 “cost-cutting, revenue-enhancing” suggestions, without raising taxes, weakening defense, or harming social welfare. It was a major success among other policies that created a great economic boom, and it deserves a reprise. Fourth, we will hold Congress accountable; it too often delegates its authority to unelected bureaucrats. We will enact a strong Balanced Budget Amendment. And, by enacting the REINS Act, we will require that a majority of members approve any major, cost-inducing regulations. Fifth, we will put in place a hiring freeze of federal civilian employees across the executive branch. For those agencies in which it is determined that a vacant position needs to be filled, I will authorize the hiring of a maximum ratio of one person for every three who leave. And rather than automatically increasing federal workers’ pay annually, workers will have more opportunities for merit-based pay increases.
The full details of this plan can be found at www.tedcruz.org. It’s past time to dramatically reduce the size of government and restore congressional accountability to the people. Doing so, along with instituting fundamental tax reform and regulatory reform, will reignite the promise that has made this the freest and most prosperous nation in the world.

 

Do You Know Gilbert Chagoury or Rajiv Fernando? Hillary Does

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Rajiv Fernando and  Gilbert Chagoury are very good friends of Hillary and known to Barack Obama as well. Yikes, more emails? This is a story, scandal that seems to have no end. Perhaps it is time to start prosecuting people at the State Department for non compliance, obstruction of a federal investigation and falsification of government documents.

Primer:

ABC: For one of President Obama’s top fundraisers, the appointment last year to an elite group of State Department security advisors appeared to be an odd fit.

Rajiv Fernando, a Chicago securities trader, has never touted any international security credentials, yet he was appointed alongside an august collection of nuclear scientists, former cabinet secretaries and members of Congress to advise Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on crucial security matters.

PBS: Chagoury is a diplomat representing the tiny island nation of St. Lucia. He is also a friend of former President Bill Clinton and a generous philanthropist, who, since the Abacha years, has used his money to establish respectability. He appeared near the top of the Clinton Foundation donor list in 2008 as a $1 million to $5 million contributor, according to foundation documents. (His name made the list again in 2009.)

Release of Clinton Documents Delayed After State Department Discovers ‘Thousands’ of Unsearched Records

Citizens United, Judicial Watch lawsuits affected by development

FreeBeacon: The State Department’s recent discovery of thousands of unsearched records from Hillary Clinton’s tenure has delayed several public records lawsuits and could keep many of the documents out of the public sphere until next fall.

The watchdog groups Citizens United and Judicial Watch, which are suing the State Department for Clinton-related records, are two plaintiffs that have been affected by the discovery. The State Department said the new documents could take months to process, a time period that extends well beyond its court-ordered deadlines.

Citizens United said the State Department has yet to explain how the electronic files were overlooked for the past two years, raising questions about whether this was a stonewalling effort. The group is seeking records related to Clinton donors Gilbert Chagoury and Rajiv Fernando.

“With this 11th hour revelation, the State Department has missed its court-ordered deadline to finish the production of documents in this case,” said David N. Bossie, president of Citizens United. “These newly discovered records could impact document production in other Citizens United FOIA lawsuits as well as cases involving other plaintiffs.”

On Jan. 14, the State Department disclosed in a Judicial Watch case that officials had recently found shared and individual electronic files in the executive secretary’s office that were not previously searched in response to the lawsuit. Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit last May.

Although the court had ordered the State Department to turn over all relevant records by last October, attorneys said they would need until this spring to process the new documents.

State filed a nearly identical status report in the Citizens United lawsuit on Feb. 29, the same day as its court-ordered deadline to turn over all requested documents.

Attorneys for the department told Citizens United the discovery of unsearched records could set back the processing schedule until next fall. The State Department said it had not informed Citizens United earlier because its attorneys did not know about the new sources of records until Feb. 11—even though they had been disclosed to Judicial Watch in early January.

“Neither State’s agency counsel nor undersigned counsel for State was aware of this issue until February 11, 2016,” said the State Department in a Feb. 29 court filing.

According to court statements, the new sources of information come from the executive secretary’s office, which acted as the liaison between Secretary Clinton’s office and the rest of the State Department, the White House, and national security agencies.

One of the new sources is a series of “shared office folders,” computer folders that were used by multiple staff members. State Department public records officials said they first discovered this source in November. They said the files had previously been overlooked because they had been “retired” and removed from the executive secretary’s office last year.

The second new source is “individual folders,” which contain word documents, PDF documents, and the emails of Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Jake Sullivan. These emails had already been processed, but officials said they did not realize until last December that there were other types of documents in these folders.

The late findings have impacted at least two additional Judicial Watch lawsuits, according to court documents. The House Benghazi Committee last week received over 1,600 pages of documents related to Libya from the new files, which the committee said it had requested nearly a year ago.

The State Department said it could not comment on whether other public records lawsuits could be impacted, or why Citizens United wasn’t informed about the new files at the same time as Judicial Watch.

“The State Department does not comment on matters in litigation,” a State Department official said. “We can confirm that State recently located documents from electronic sources not previously searched that are potentially responsive to certain FOIA cases involving records originating from the Office of the Secretary during Secretary Clinton’s tenure. As a result, the Department is undertaking additional searches of those files.”

“These unsearched materials include a variety of file types, but do not include the email accounts of former Secretary Clinton’s senior staff, which we have been searching for some time,” the official said.

The State Department noted that it has been taking steps to improve records management and hired a transparency coordinator last fall.

Sources also pointed to another recent personnel change at the State Department—the departure of attorney Catherine Duval, who had been involved in processing Clinton’s emails for release last year. Duval was previously in charge of document production at the IRS when many of the agency’s emails were destroyed. Congressional Republicans have accused Duval of obstructing their efforts to obtain Clinton documents.

Duval left the State Department last September. A few weeks later, the Republicans on the House Benghazi Committee released a statement praising increased transparency at the State Department.

“It’s curious the Department is suddenly able to be more productive after recent staff changes involving those responsible for document production,” committee spokesman Jamal Ware said in a Sept. 25, 2015 press release.

But the latest disclosure of unsearched records will still have an impact on groups like Citizens United, which first filed its public records request in 2014 and could be waiting until after the presidential election before it receives all its documents.

In light of the new discovery, the court pushed back the State Department’s production deadline until next August. Citizens United said it would not be surprised by additional delays.

“The public has a right to inspect records that are in the possession of their government,” Bossie said. “These delay tactics by the Obama Administration look like nothing more than an assist to former Secretary Clinton.”

“This latest declaration is more of the constant ‘drip, drip, drip’ that [D.C. District Court] Judge Sullivan spoke of last week,” he added. “Unfortunately, when dealing with the State Department, it’s not a matter if this will happen again, it’s a matter of when.”

WH Conference Calls on SCOTUS Nominations

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White House Reaches Out to Asian-American Leaders About Supreme Court Seat

NationalLawJournal: A White House official held a conference call Thursday evening with Asian-American and Pacific Islander leaders to discuss the U.S. Supreme Court. Several Asian-American judges have been discussed as leading candidates for the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat.

Judges considered possible nominees include Sri Srinivasan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Jacqueline Nguyen of the Ninth Circuit and Judge Denny Chin of the Second Circuit.

(l-r) Denny Chin, Sri Srinivasan, and Jacqueline Nguyen.

Invitations to join the call—which was off the record, according to a copy of the invitation email obtained by The National Law Journal—were disseminated by email and on social media. The Asian American Bar Association of New York posted a notice about it on its Facebook page.

Tina Tchen, an assistant to President Barack Obama and chief of staff to First Lady Michelle Obama, led the Thursday call, according to the email invitation.

The email invitation about the call from the White House did not include details about what would be discussed. A lawyer who was on the call said that Tchen did not identify possible nominees. The call was focused generally on motivating and organizing the Asian American community to support the president’s nominee.

Tina Matsuoka, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association in Washington, said the call signaled the White House’s acknowledgement of excitement in the Asian-American community that the next Supreme Court justice could become the first Asian-American to sit on the high court.

“This meeting is consistent with this administration’s engagement with various constituent groups,” Matsuoka said. “I think it’s consistent with their efforts to focus on diversity inclusion on the federal bench.”

At a press briefing earlier this week, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that officials were “going to engage with outside groups as the President makes a decision about who to put forward for a nomination to the Supreme Court” and would continue to engage those groups after a nominee was announced “in terms of making the case that the Senate should fulfill its constitutional obligations.”

“The truth is the engagement on the part of the White House with outside organizations that are interested in being involved in the political process is something that happens every day on a wide variety of issues,” Earnest said. “Obviously the Supreme Court is different and unique because it’s not something that comes up every year, it only comes up every once in a blue moon. And sometimes, like this year, it can come up unpredictably, without any advance warning.”

The White House has not said when President Obama will announce a nominee for Scalia’s seat. Obama was traveling in Milwaukee on Thursday afternoon. A White House spokesman, Eric Schultz, told reporters on Thursday that “this is something the president is spending a lot of time on … reviewing potential candidates, meeting with his team, and really looking for the best person for the job.”

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Jane Kelly, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, was being considered. The NLJ reported last week that the White House was also reviewing Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Matsuoka said she and other members of the Asian-American community were looking for assurance from the White House that Asian-American candidates are “seriously considered for the vacancy.”

“We’ve been really excited that there’s a number of Asian-Americans who have been talked about in the mainstream press, and it’s really galvanized the community,” Matsuoka said.

The White House has met with constituent and advocacy groups in the leadup to Supreme Court nominations in the past. As Obama considered candidates for the seat that would eventually go to Justice Sonia Sotomayor in 2010, the White House met with liberal advocacy groups, including Hispanics for a Fair Judiciary Coalition, CNN reported at the time.

Read more: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202751291108/White-House-Reaches-Out-to-AsianAmerican-Leaders-About-Supreme-Court-Seat#ixzz41tBs0TR6

 

When Sharia/ISIS Goes Capitalist and Trading

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Islamic State ‘earning millions by playing the stock market’

Group using cash looted from banks in Mosul to speculate on international currency markets

Telegraph: Isil is making millions of dollars for its war chest by playing foreign currency markets under the noses of bank chiefs, it was revealed today.

The terror group is earning up to $20m (£14.29m) a month by funnelling dollars looted from banks during its takeover of the Iraqi city of Mosul into legitimate currency markets in the Middle East.

It then makes huge returns on currency speculation, which are then wired back via unsuspecting financial authorities in Iraq and Jordan, a parliamentary committee was told on Wednesday.

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (Isil) extraordinary venture into white collar crime is now a major source of income, along with oil smuggling and extortion from people living in Isil-controlled areas.

Details of the scam emerged during a hearing of a specially-convened Foreign Affairs sub-committee set up to examine Britain’s role in Isil financing.

The hearing was told that Isil finance chiefs would play the international stock markets using cash looted during their 2014 take over of Mosul, in which the group got its hands on an estimated $429m from the city’s central bank.

They also used money “siphoned off” from pension payments that are still being made by the Iraqi government to civil servants living in the city.

The details were revealed to the hearing by John Baron, the sub-committee’s chair, who demanded to know whether the British government – which has pledged to help cut off Isil’s finance networks – was taking proper action against it.

“The cash that Isil has looted, along with siphoned off pension payments, is routed into Jordanian banks and brought back into the system via Baghdad,” he said. “That allows the system to be exploited by Isil, in that they take a turn (profit) on the foreign currency actions and siphon that cash back.”

The profits were channeled back into Isil coffers by “hawala” transfers, an unregulated system of money transfer whereby cash payments are made via agents in one country after a similar amount is presented as collateral in another.

Infographic: How Does ISIS Fund Itself? | Statista

Tobias Ellwood, a junior Foreign Office minister, admitted to the committee that there was a “porousness” in the local financial system but said that work was now underway to shut it down. It had been done without the active connivance of bank staff, he added.

In December, the Central Bank of Iraq named 142 currency-exchange houses in Iraq that the US suspected of moving funds for Islamic State. It banned them from its twice-monthly dollar auctions in a bid to stop the terror group getting its hands on the cash – a main source of exchange in war-torn Iraq.

But Mr Ellwood conceded: “Iraq could have moved faster on this”. Asked if the similar moves had been made in Jordan, he said he was unable to give an answer.

“Jordan plays an important role in the (anti-Isis) coalition,” he added. “Work is being done to close it down, I don’t think there is anything near as much from that source of revenue as before.”

The committee heard claims that Isil’s “rake off” from foreign currency speculation was a “significant part of their income stream”, although Mr Ellwood said he thought that estimates of $20m were excessive.

**** 

Spiegel: Some members of the intelligence community even view spying in the global financial system with a certain amount of concern, as revealed by a document from the NSA’s British counterpart — the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) — that deals with “financial data” from a legal perspective and examines the organization’s own collaboration with the NSA. According to the document, the collection, storage and sharing of “politically sensitive” data is a highly invasive measure since it includes “bulk data — rich personal information. A lot of it is not about our targets.”

Indeed, secret documents reveal that the main NSA financial database Tracfin, which collects the “Follow the Money” surveillance results on bank transfers, credit card transactions and money transfers, already had 180 million datasets by 2011. The corresponding figure in 2008 was merely 20 million. According to these documents, most Tracfin data is stored for five years.

Monitoring SWIFT

The classified documents show that the intelligence agency has several means of accessing the internal data traffic of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a cooperative used by more than 8,000 banks worldwide for their international transactions. The NSA specifically targets other institutes on an individual basis. Furthermore, the agency apparently has in-depth knowledge of the internal processes of credit card companies like Visa and MasterCard. What’s more, even new, alternative currencies, as well as presumably anonymous means of payment like the Internet currency Bitcoin, rank among the targets of the American spies.

The collected information often provides a complete picture of individuals, including their movements, contacts and communication behavior. The success stories mentioned by the intelligence agency include operations that resulted in banks in the Arab world being placed on the US Treasury’s blacklist.

In one case, the NSA provided proof that a bank was involved in illegal arms trading — in another case, a financial institution was providing support to an authoritarian African regime. Full article here.

Freed Dealer, Obama Released, Kills 3

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Crack Dealer Freed Early Under Obama Plan Murders Woman, 2 Kids

JW: A convicted crack dealer who left prison early as part of the Obama administration’s mass release of federal inmates has been indicted by a grand jury for fatally stabbing his ex-girlfriend and her two kids in Columbus, Ohio. The gory crime drew national attention because the children, ages 7 and 10, were murdered to eliminate them as witnesses in the brutal massacre of their 32-year-old mother.

This week a grand jury in Franklin County returned a 10-count, death-penalty indictment against the ex-con, 35-year-old Wendell Callahan, for the triple murders. Callahan broke into his ex-girlfriend’s apartment and stabbed the three victims, according to a statement issued by Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien announcing the indictment. The bloody crime scene was discovered by the woman’s current boyfriend, who subsequently engaged in a fight with Callahan before he fled. The indictment includes charges of aggravated murder with prior calculation and design and aggravated murder of victims under the age of 13. “There are multiple charges regarding the three victim deaths because there are different methods to commit the crime of murder and the Prosecutor’s Office typically charges all methods”, O’Brien stated. Callahan is in jail on $3 million bail and is scheduled to be arraigned later this week.

Callahan should have been in jail when the crimes occurred, but he was released four years early because federal sentencing guidelines for crack dealers got reduced. The change is part of President Obama’s effort to reform the nation’s justice system as a way of ending racial discrimination. The initiative was technically launched back in 2010 when the president signed a measure that for the first time in decades relaxed drug-crime sentences he claimed discriminated against poor and minority offenders. This severely weakened a decades-old law enacted during the infamous crack cocaine epidemic that ravaged urban communities nationwide in the 1980s. As part of the movement the U.S. Sentencing Commission lowered maximum sentences for drug offenders and made it retroactive, leading to the early release of thousands of violent thugs like Callahan.

In November the administration began releasing 6,000 drug convicts coined “non-violent” offenders whose sentences were too long under the old guidelines. News reports quickly surfaced contradicting the administration’s assessment that the newly released convicts were not violent. Among them was the leader of a multi-million dollar operation that smuggled drugs from Canada to Maine. Prosecutors refer to the 29-year-old con as a “drug kingpin” who was one of “America’s Most Wanted.” Shortly before the administration’s mass release of drug convicts, federal prosecutors warned that drug trafficking is inherently violent and therefore the phrase “non-violent drug offenders” is a misnomer. The nation’s prosecutors also cautioned that reducing prison sentences for drug offenders will weaken their ability to bring dangerous drug traffickers to justice.

As if it weren’t bad enough that the administration is rewarding thousands of criminals with get-out-of-jail cards, huge amounts of taxpayer dollars are being spent on programs to help them find housing and jobs. In the aftermath of the mass release of federal prisoners Judicial Watch reported on two “re-entry” programs to ease the transition from jail. One received $1.7 million and ordered public housing facilities not to reject tenants with criminal records. The other allocated $20 million to the Department of Labor (DOL) to help ex-cons find work and thus end the “cycle of poverty, criminality and incarceration.”

More here including photos.

Hillary calls for sentencing reform too.

This all began in 2013 between Obama and Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch continues to carry the baton.

VOA: WASHINGTON— U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has announced a major shift in how the federal government plans to prosecute nonviolent criminals involved in drug crimes, with the aim of easing overcrowding in the nation’s prisons.

Holder outlined several policy changes in a speech to the American Bar Association meeting in San Francisco.

The attorney general said too many Americans go to prison for far too long and for no truly good law enforcement reason.  His main focus was low-level drug crimes that can often bring minimum mandatory sentences of five or 10 years in prison.

Holder says the federal government will now follow the lead of several states that emphasize drug treatment and community service programs as alternatives for non-violent drug offenders who are not associated with criminal gangs or drug cartels.

“Widespread incarceration at the federal, state and local levels is both ineffective and unsustainable,” he said. “It imposes a significant economic burden totalling $80 billion in 2010 alone and it comes with human and moral costs that are impossible to calculate.”