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As the Dossier Scandal Looms, the New York Times Struggles to Save Its Collusion Tale The totality of the evidence undermines the Times’ collusion narrative. By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on January 2nd, 2018

Trump Adviser’s Visit to Moscow Got the F.B.I.’s Attention.” That was the page-one headline the New York Times ran on April 20, 2017, above its breathless report that “a catalyst for the F.B.I. investigation into connections between Russia and President Trump’s campaign” was a June 2016 visit to Moscow by Carter Page.

It was due to the Moscow trip by Page, dubbed a “foreign policy adviser” to the campaign, that “the F.B.I. obtained a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court” in September — i.e., during the stretch run of the presidential campaign.

You’re to be forgiven if you’re feeling dizzy. It may not be too much New Year’s reverie; it may be that you’re reeling over the Times’ holiday-weekend volte-face: “How the Russia Inquiry Began: A Campaign Aide, Drinks and Talk of Political Dirt.”

Seven months after throwing Carter Page as fuel on the collusion fire lit by then-FBI director James Comey’s stunning public disclosure that the Bureau was investigating possible Trump campaign “coordination” in Russia’s election meddling, the Gray Lady now says: Never mind. We’re onto Collusion 2.0, in which it is George Papadopoulos — then a 28-year-old whose idea of résumé enhancement was to feign participation in the Model U.N. — who triggered the FBI’s massive probe by . . . wait for it . . . a night of boozy blather in London.

What’s going on here?

Well, it turns out the Page angle and thus the collusion narrative itself is beset by an Obama-administration scandal: Slowly but surely, it has emerged that the Justice Department and FBI very likely targeted Page because of the Steele dossier, a Clinton-campaign opposition-research screed disguised as intelligence reporting. Increasingly, it appears that the Bureau failed to verify Steele’s allegations before the DOJ used some of them to bolster an application for a spying warrant from the FISA court (i.e., the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court).

Thanks to the persistence of the House Intelligence Committee led by Chairman Devin Nunes (R., Calif.), the dossier story won’t go away. Thus, Democrats and their media friends have been moving the goal posts in an effort to save their collusion narrative. First, we were led to believe the dossier was no big deal because the FBI would surely have corroborated any information before the DOJ fed it to a federal judge in a warrant application. Then, when the Clinton campaign’s role in commissioning the dossier came to light, we were told it was impertinent to ask about what the FBI did, if anything, to corroborate it since this could imperil intelligence methods and sources — and, besides, such questions were just a distraction from the all-important Mueller investigation (which the dossier had a hand in instigating and which, to date, has turned up no evidence of a Trump-Russia conspiracy).

Lately, the story has morphed into this: Well, even if the dossier was used, it was only used a little — there simply must have been lots of other evidence that Trump was in cahoots with Putin. But that’s not going to fly: Putting aside the dearth of collusion evidence after well over a year of aggressive investigation, the dossier is partisan propaganda. If it was not adequately corroborated by the FBI, and if the Justice Department, without disclosing its provenance to the court, nevertheless relied on any part of it in a FISA application, that is a major problem.

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The Left’s Hostile Takeover of Corporate America By Roger Kimball

Posted By on January 2nd, 2018

One of the things that made “Disruptive Politics in the Trump Era,” John Fonte’s recent column for American Greatness, so provocative was his insight that the depredations of the Administrative State are indissolubly allied with what he calls “the cultural leviathan,” the progressive-left-dominated institutions that define the uplands of American social and political life. Many conservative commentators have lamented the Administrative State on Monday, the cultural Left (read: “leviathan”) on Tuesday without quite making the link that Fonte makes in his column.

A second thing that makes the essay worth pondering is Fonte’s inclusive anatomy of the beast that is the cultural leviathan. “Today,” he notes, “the facts on the ground tell us that the progressive Left dominates major institutions of American life: the universities, the mainstream media, the mainline churches, the entertainment industry, and the human resources departments of the Fortune 500.”

Bingo!

Any Tom, Dick, or Harry knows that the universities, the MSM, the mainline churches, and the entertainment industry are wholly owned subsidiaries of the Left. But it took a commentator of Fonte’s insight to roll corporate HR departments into the mix. No, it’s not an entirely original observation—I seem to recall that Heather Mac Donald, for example, has made similar arguments. But the synthesis, the articulation is arresting.

I had always sensed, without quite analyzing the feeling, that HR departments were the enemy. Fonte’s taxonomy afforded one of those “Eureka” moments that made Euclid’s bath so exciting. Of course! The Orwellian-named “human resources” department: of course it is a locus of politically correct, big-nurse imposition.

Like a suppurating orifice, the human resource department provides an ideal site for the multiplication of the bacterium politicus correctus. For one thing, such departments are always organized as top-down, unaccountable bureaucracies. HR departments are known for their arbitrariness masquerading under the rubric of “policy,” Wizard-of-Oz-like impersonality, and slavish conformity to faddish diktats promulgated as “best practices,” weenie speak for “do it my way.” In this sense, HR departments are like pseudopods of progressive government bureaucracies grafted onto the pliant stock of corporate timidity. It is not surprising, then, that HR departments tend to attract meddling and astringent personalities whose most cherished delight revolves around lording it over others.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Catalan Ex-President Puigdemont Demands Spain Recognize Election Results By Michael van der Galien

Posted By on January 2nd, 2018

Former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont has called on the Spanish government to finally and officially recognize last month’s election results in Catalonia.

From his safe haven in Brussels, the city where he’s hiding from the tyrannical Madrid government, Puigdemont said that the regional government, which was disposed of by the Spanish government, has to be reinstated. And yes, he wants to once again lead his people (to independence). “What is Prime Minister Rajoy waiting for to acknowledge the result?” Puigdemont asked out loud on Old Year’s Day.

The answer, of course, is that Rajoy is simply hoping and praying that this problem disappears all by itself. He wants to prolong possible negotiations, hoping that this will eventually enable him to ignore the election results altogether. Rajoy plans to bring pro-unity party Ciudadanos and its leader Inés Arrimadas to power.

It’s now time for the international community — and especially for the European Union — to force Madrid to take the Catalonian election results seriously and to abide by them. All EU countries have signed the UN treaties guaranteeing people “the right to self-determination.” And the EU presidency has emphasized this right several times, describing it as one of the most fundamental rights “peoples” have:

The right of peoples to self-determination features prominently in the main instruments concerning human rights, such as the United Nations Charter or the two International Covenants on civil and political rights and on economic, social and cultural rights respectively.

As the United Nations Charter points out, the development of good relations between nations must be founded on the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples. This right has lost none of its relevance in the present international context and continues to claim the attention of the international community as an integral part of those human rights the observance and protection of which must be ensured by States.

This right, in accordance with which peoples freely determine their own political status and freely provide for their own economic, social and cultural development, illustrates clearly the interdependence and indivisibility of human rights recognized at the Vienna Conference on Human Rights in 1993. Making this right a reality requires full observance of all human rights and fundamental freedoms on the part of States.

That’s an official statement from the EU presidency on the right to self-determination. It was followed up by:

For this right to be effectively applied, a number of conditions need to be fulfilled. Freedom of expression and of opinion must be guaranteed to allow all individuals to debate public affairs and express themselves freely on the choices made by the State. Freedom of conscience and of religion must be ensured. And the importance of free and independent media becomes evident here. The opportunity to participate freely and fully in public life is also indispensable for the exercise of this right.

A further expression of the right of peoples to self-determination is the holding of free, regular and fair elections, which within the framework of a democratic society allow a country’s nationals to follow and support the action of the political institutions mandated by them to manage their interests and provide for public welfare. In this respect, each individual must be able to benefit from the right to assemble with others to defend his or her convictions. CONTINUE AT SITE

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The Administrative State — Size, Scope And Resistance Of The Swamp Adam Andrzejewski ,

Posted By on January 2nd, 2018

‘Adam Andrzejewski, CEO of OpenTheBooks.com, as published at Forbes.’ Andrzejewski (say: Angie-eff-ski)

“It’s hard, when you’re up to your armpits in alligators, to remember you came here to drain the swamp.” – President Ronald Reagan (1983)

“What we have to do is drain the swamp in Washington, D.C.” – Rep. Nancy Pelosi (2006)

The Republican Congress and president argue it’s time to “drain the swamp” and cut spending. It’s not a new fight, but here’s why it’s so difficult: Our OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – Mapping the Swamp, A Study of the Administrative State describes the size, scope, and power of the federal bureaucracy.

Today’s federal bureaucrats are paid $1.1 million a minute, $66 million an hour, and over $524 million a day – and that’s just the cash compensation cost. Taxpayers also pay for lucrative perks like weeks of paid time-off, performance bonuses and padded retirement pensions.

Using our interactive mapping tool, quickly review the 2 million federal employee salaries and bonuses by ZIP code across America. Just click a pin and scroll down to see the results rendered in the chart beneath the map. See your local piece of the swamp: how much are the federal employees in your backyard earning? Which agency employs them, and what is their job title?

Here are a few of our key findings:

$136 Billion in Cash Compensation – The federal government disclosed 1.97 million employees across 122 independent agencies and departments. In FY2016, these 2 million workers received $136 billion in compensation. If we could factor in another 2 million undisclosed employees – at the Department of Defense and on active military and other agencies – the cost would be much higher.
$22.6 Billion in Time Off and Benefits – After just three years of public service, federal employees receive ten federal holidays, 13 sick days, and 20 vacation days per year. That is eight and a half weeks of paid time off (43 days per year). That benefit costs taxpayers an estimated $22.6 billion annually.
$1.5 Billion to Bonuses – The federal government awarded 330,713 bonuses for $351 million (FY2016). However, the federal union agreement bars the disclosure of the $1.1 billion in performance bonuses. So, who received how much? It’s time to open the books on the billion-dollar performance bonuses. The largest federal bonus last year ($141,525) didn’t go to a rocket scientist or a doctor researching a cancer cure; it went to Bart Ferrell, a Human Resources Manager in charge of processing payroll at the Presidio Trust. Ferrell’s total pay last year exceeded $300,000.
A Six-Figure Minimum Wage? In 78 large agencies, the average employee made more than $100,00. We found 30,000 bureaucrats out-earning every governor of the 50 states with salaries exceeding $190,000. The number of federal employees making $200,000 or more has skyrocketed by 165 percent during the past six years. ‘Diet and Nutrition’ employees can make up to $207,060; ‘Food Services’ workers in the prisons system can bring in $136,622; and ‘Laundry Operations’ employees at the VA can make $101,694. Even ‘photography’ is lucrative, averaging more than $80,000 with top pay reaching $157,971

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hillary Clinton Backers Paid $500k to Get Trump Harassment Accusers to Come Forward By Rick Moran

Posted By on January 2nd, 2018

Two cronies of Hillary Clinton donated more than half a million dollars to celebrity attorney Lisa Bloom’s effort to get women accusing Donald Trump of sexual harassment to step forward.

The New York Times reports that Susie Tompkins Buell, a major Hillary donor, and Democratic attack dog David Brock both gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bloom, who was representing several of the women accusing Trump.

Fox News:

Susie Tompkins Buell, the founder of Esprit Clothing and a major Clinton campaign donor for many years, gave the money to celebrity lawyer Lisa Bloom who was working with a number of Trump accusers at the time, according to the paper’s bombshell report.

Bloom solicited donors by saying she was working with women who might “find the courage to speak out” against Trump if the donors would provide funds for security, relocation and possibly a “safe house,” the paper reported.

Former Clinton nemesis turned Clinton operative David Brock also donated $200,000 to the effort through a nonprofit group he founded, the paper reported in an article entitled, “Partisans, Wielding Money, Begin Seeking to Exploit Harassment Claims.”

Bloom told the Times that the effort was unproductive. One woman requested $2 million then decided not to come forward. Nor did any other women.

Bloom said she refunded most of the cash, keeping only some funds for out-of-pocket expenses accrued while working to vet and prepare cases.

The lawyer told the paper she did not communicate with Clinton or her campaign “on any of this.”

She also maintained that she represented only clients whose stories she had corroborated and disputed the premise that she offered money to coax clients to come forward, the paper reported.

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The Death of Academic Rigor By David Solway

Posted By on January 2nd, 2018

The notion of academic rigor has fallen on evil times. In a typical instance of continuing epistemic degradation, Donna Riley, of Purdue University’s School of Engineering Education, insists that rigor must be eliminated since rigor is a “dirty deed” fraught with “exclusionary implications for marginalized groups and marginalized ways of knowing.” It matters little, apparently, if our bridges collapse so long as “men of color and women, students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people, first-generation and low-income students” are welcomed into the new holistic community defined by “other ways of knowing” – whatever these may be. Similarly, Rochelle Gutierrez, of the University of Illinois, fears that algebra, geometry, and math perpetuate white male privilege and discriminate against minorities. Indeed, minority under-performance is often disguised as a form of “mismatching” – that is, the fault lies with the institution for being beyond the student’s intellectual means. Clearly, the dire situation we are in can only deteriorate as the concept of excellence bites the dust and students are deliberately coaxed into pre-planned intellectual darkness.

The precipitous decline in educational quality in North American schools, colleges, and universities has been amply documented in a plethora of articles and books over the last 20 or so years, including my own efforts in such volumes as Education Lost, Lying about the Wolf, and The Turtle Hypodermic of Sickenpods. One of the places where we can find real “climate change” is the educational establishment, from kindergarten to graduate school, a mind-sphere where heated rhetoric and frozen accomplishment go hand in hand. The pedagogical and scholarly climate has become almost unlivable. Like far too many teachers, I have witnessed the debacle from the trenches – as a supply teacher in the high schools, an ESL instructor, a college professor, a visiting lecturer, a guest professor on the international circuit, and a university writer-in-residence. The scenario never changed.

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Meryl Streep Gives Worst Performance in ‘Me Too’ Campaign By Robin Dolgin

Posted By on January 2nd, 2018

Meryl Streep learned a painful lesson about falling out of favor with her liberal admirers in Hollywood last year: the left eats its own.

She paid dearly for playing the dumb card when confronted about her silence on routinely collaborating with the worst serial sexual predator among the titans in Hollywood, Harvey Weinstein. “One thing can be clarified,” Ms. Streep assured her fellow thespians who were launching the “#MeToo” campaign calling out sexual predators on social media. “Not everyone knew,” she asserts. “I did not know about his having meetings in his hotel room, his bathroom, or other inappropriate coercive acts.”

Living in a bubble does have its disadvantages for the three-time Oscar-winner. Ms. Streep’s sanitary use of the words “inappropriate coercive acts” falls hopelessly short of touching on the outrage experienced by the legions of women who suffered blatant sexual assault or violent rape by the now world-famous serial abuser.

Unfortunately, Streep kept going off script, digging herself into a deeper hole as she attempted to explain herself to her colleagues. She referred to the dozens of sexual misconduct allegations against Weinstein as an “example of disrespect” to her fellow actors during a women’s conference in Boston. “No Meryl, it’s a [f——] crime,” wrote Rose McGowan, the actress who heads the “#MeToo” campaign on social media. “You are such a lie,” McGowan added, referencing the elder thespian’s claim of ignorance of Weinstein’s 30-year sexual rampage stretching across several states in the U.S., encompassing at least two countries in Europe, and impacting the lives of dozens of victims and possibly hundreds of bystanders.

The full weight of the liberal left came down to bear on Streep at the end of 2017. Humiliation is a major form of protest in the progressive community, oftentimes mercilessly targeting victims deemed un-P.C. In this case, Streep wasn’t mocked with a “pussy hat” campaign, but her likeness appeared on hundreds of posters with two words symbolically covering up her eyesight, “She Knew,” which were posted throughout the Los Angeles area (i.e., the center of Tinseltown). Repackaging the truth in attacking President Trump never hurt Streep’s professional standing, but now she’s being held accountable for her words by liberals who are diverting from the same groupthink narrative.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump Gets the U.N. to Cut Spending The U.S. uses its leverage for once to force budget reforms.

Posted By on January 2nd, 2018

Here’s something more miraculous than Congress spending less money—the United Nations doing it. Yet that’s what happened at the end of 2017 as the 193-nation General Assembly agreed to a 5% spending cut in its new biennial budget after American prodding.

The General Assembly agreed by consensus to shrink the U.N. budget by $286 million, to $5.4 billion, down 5% from the prior budget. The U.N. will save about $50 million by trimming hiring and overhead costs, and another $18 million from cutting the U.N. Department of Management, better known as human resources. The peacekeeping operations budget, which was negotiated separately earlier in 2017, was reduced by $593 million to $7.3 billion, a 7.5% cut.

The General Assembly also agreed to spending reforms, including restrictions on construction projects and an audit of the U.N.’s $60 billion staff pension fund. Starting in 2020, the U.N. will move to annual budgeting, which Secretary-General spokesman Stéphane Dujarric called “one of the most significant shifts in the programme planning and budgeting process of the Organization since the 1970s,” which says a lot about the U.N.’s accounting systems.

These reductions are hardly draconian. They don’t include cuts to the U.N.’s elevator operators, who cost about $300,000 per year, or trim the budget of the International Court of Justice’s judges and spouses, who travel first class. Committee for Programme and Coordination members, a strategic planning group for bureaucrats, holds a five-week meeting every year in New York City, rather than meet in a cheaper location or via teleconference.

Secretary-General António Guterres has supported the reforms. But none of this would have happened without pressure from the United States. President Trump called out the U.N.’s bloated bureaucracy and “mismanagement” in September, and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley has pressed the case. The U.S. has leverage at the U.N. because it provides 22% of its budget, but credit the Trump Administration for finally using it.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

About That Trump ‘Autocracy’ Remember all those progressive predictions of looming fascism?

Posted By on January 2nd, 2018

As Donald Trump heads into his second year as President, we’re pleased to report that there hasn’t been a fascist coup in Washington. This must be terribly disappointing to the progressive elites who a year ago predicted an authoritarian America because Mr. Trump posed a unique threat to democratic norms. But it looks like the U.S. will have to settle for James Madison’s boring checks and balances.

“How to stop an autocracy,” said a Feb. 7, 2017 headline on Vox, ruminating on a zillion-word essay in The Atlantic on how Donald Trump might impose authoritarian rule. Academics and pundits mined analogies to Mussolini, Hitler and Vladimir Putin.

Four political scientists even formed something called Bright Line Watch—with the help of foundation money—to “monitor the status of democratic practices and highlight potential threats to American democracy.” Readers won’t be surprised to learn that the only graver threat than Mr. Trump is the Republican Congress that refuses to impeach him.

One of the Bright Line Watch founders, University of Rochester professor Gretchen Helmke, wrote in the Washington Post on April 25, “Could Trump set off a constitutional crisis? Here’s what we can learn from Latin America.”

A year later, where are we on the road to Venezuela?
***

Far from rolling over Washington institutions like a tank, Mr. Trump seems as frustrated as other Presidents with the limits of his power. He achieved one major legislative goal in tax reform but failed on health care. His border wall isn’t built and he may have to legalize the “Dreamer” immigrants if he wants Congress to approve money for it.

Mr. Trump’s political appointees still aren’t close to fully staffing the executive branch. He’s making more headway on judges, but that’s partly due to former Democratic leader Harry Reid’s decision in 2013 to eliminate the Senate filibuster for judicial nominees. The press cheered on that partisan, mid-session change of Senate rules to pack the courts.

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Trump Backs Protesters in Iran The biggest wave of demonstrations in almost a decade has backed leaders in Tehran into a corner By Aresu Eqbal,Asa Fitch Michael R. Gordoni

Posted By on January 2nd, 2018

The biggest wave of protests to hit Iran in almost a decade has backed the country’s leaders into a corner, and the Trump administration is increasing the pressure by threatening fresh sanctions if the government forcefully cracks down on the demonstrations.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, who has been a favorite of the country’s moderates, now finds himself under fire from a young population eager for change. U.S. President Donald Trump waded into that volatile situation on Monday with a strong statement of support for the protesters.

In an early-morning post on Twitter, Mr. Trump said the Iranian people “have been repressed for many years.”

“They are hungry for food & for freedom,” Mr. Trump posted. “Along with human rights, the wealth of Iran is being looted. TIME FOR CHANGE!”

In Tehran, a 26-year-old marketing-company employee named Tamana echoed the sentiment as she joined a demonstration Monday. “We are deprived of the simplest things that are a given for people in other countries, both in terms of basic welfare and economic security and of course freedom to express opinions and complaints,” she said, declining to give her last name. She called Mr. Rouhani’s performance on issues relevant to young Iranians “very weak.”

Unrest spread on Monday through central Tehran, where security forces used tear gas and shows of force to disperse crowds, and unverified video showed protests in other parts of the country, including Shadegan, Abadan and Kangavar in western Iran and Isfahan in the center.

At least 12 protesters have reportedly died since the demonstrations began, and a policeman was killed in Najafabad on Monday, according to the semiofficial Mehr news agency. A member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was also killed during clashes near Isfahan by a shotgun blast, Mehr reported Monday, without providing further details. CONTINUE AT SITE