07/19/18

Webinar Podcast: Rick Green and Catherine Engelbrecht Support Patrick Colbeck for Governor of Michigan

The United West

What Other Candidate for Governor Has This 
Depth of Understanding and Respect for the Uniqueness of the Constitution
Plus a Principled Solution to Preserve It Via the Education of our Children?

PATRICK COLBECK FOR GOVERNOR OF MICHIGAN


Why is it important that Constitution experts such as Rick Green and Catherine Engelbrecht support a 2018 Michigan candidate?   They will tell you the answer and explain why Patrick Colbeck is the leader that Michigan needs to keep it focused on Constitutional values.  They will explain why America was founded as a REPUBLIC, NOT a Democracy and how Patrick will stand against the liberals that are trying all they can to change us!

Catherine Engelbrecht and Rick Green Join Patrick Colbeck

Catherine Engelbrecht is the Founder and President for the True the Vote, a conservative vote-monitoring organization based in Houston, Texas whose stated objective is stopping voter fraud.

Rick Green is a former Texas State Representative, national speaker, author, and radio host.  He travels the nation speaking for David Barton’s WallBuilders organization and Rick and David co-host the national daily radio program, WallBuilders Live!


Patrick Colbeck is Michigan’s greatest hope for remaining strong in the Constitutional values we were founded on!

He is strong on Constitutional values, has the background needed to manage a state, and  is NOT afraid to address issues that undermine his state!   He is a proven leader, no matter what names he is called!  Unafraid, strong in the face of adversity, and willing to take on very difficult issues!

A good read from Patrick: Wrestling Gators: An Outsider’s Guide to Draining the Swamp

Please support Patrick Colbeck in Michigan!

Go here to support Patrick: https://colbeckforgovernor.com/

07/19/18

Pork Still Lives in the Swamp

By: Denise Simon | Founders Code

Primer:

On January 17, 2018, Rep. Rooney stated, “you can’t do jack s— for your constituents” without earmarks. Perhaps Rep. Rooney’s successor will find a way to do his or her job without resorting to the most wasteful and corrupt practice in congressional history.

$11,000,000 for the aquatic plant control program, an increase of 22.2 percent from the $9 million earmarked in FY 2017, and the largest amount ever earmarked for this program.

Since 1994, there have been 24 earmarks worth a total of $58.1 million for aquatic plant control projects, including three by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and one each by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.).

Watchdog exposes $14.7B of pork-barrel spending, including ‘brown tree snake eradication’ project

FNC: The federal government is spending millions to save Pacific Coast salmon. And it’s doling out more than $600,000 to kill brown tree snakes in Guam.

A watchdog group, Citizens Against Government Waste, on Wednesday released its annual Congressional Pig Book of what it considers the most egregious examples of pork-barrel spending in Congress, drawn this time from fiscal year 2018 appropriations bills.

According to the group, earmarks in 2018 totaled $14.7 billion, an increase of 116.2 percent from $6.8 billion in 2017.

Among the most blatant examples of pork flagged by the group:

— $65 million for “Pacific coastal salmon recovery.” According to its website, the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund “was established by Congress in 2000 to reverse the declines of Pacific salmon and steelhead, supporting conservation efforts in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska.”

— $11 million for an “aquatic plant control program.” The group said that since 1994, there have been 24 earmarks worth $58.1 million for aquatic plant control projects.

— $663,000 for a “brown tree snake eradication program.” According to Citizens Against Government Waste, the snakes are “native to northern Australia, Indonesia and many islands in Melanesia, and have caused damage to the ecosystem of Guam, where they were likely introduced by the U.S. military following World War II.”

— $10 million for “high-energy cost grants” within the Rural Utilities Service.

– $2.8 million for the National Capital Arts and Cultural Affairs grant program, which funds arts and cultural institutions in Washington, D.C.

A number of Republican lawmakers attended Wednesday’s press conference on the list, including Sens. Jeff Flake, Ted Cruz and Joni Ernst, of Arizona, Texas and Iowa, respectively.

To be considered for listing in the group’s annual book, an earmark must meet at least one criterion, including whether it was requested by only one chamber of Congress; if it was not specifically authorized; if it was not competitively awarded; if it was not requested by the president; if it greatly exceeds the president’s budget request or the previous year’s funding; if it was not the subject of congressional hearings; or if it serves only a local or special interest.

07/19/18

Russia’s Operations Against the US Explained at Aspen Security Forum

By: Denise Simon | Founders Code

Associated Press

Published on Jul 18, 2018

(19 Jul 2018) FBI Director Christopher Wray says Russia is trying to influence opinions and sow discord and divisiveness in the U.S. Wray spoke at the opening event of the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. (July 19)

Meanwhile, there has been substantial theories and responses due to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of the 13 Russians from February.

Add in the second round of 12 Russians that SC Mueller indicted just this month. So, we are currently at 25. Now, consider Ms. Maria Butina who was arrested last Sunday.

Butina, 29, was indicted by a grand jury Tuesday on charges she served in the United States as an agent of the Russian government without notifying the Justice Department. In the court filing Wednesday, prosecutors said Butina maintained constant contact with Russian intelligence officials and “loyally” carried out a years-long conspiracy to advance the Kremlin’s interests. They described her plan as “calculated, patient” and directed by a Russian official believed to be Alexander Torshin, who was sanctioned by the Treasury Department earlier this year.

Perhaps, one should consider that Mueller is for sure simply trying to clean up a Russian mess left behind by the Obama administration. All of this happened during his administration. For an exceptional summary on the matter of Butina and what FBi Director is referring to at the Aspen Security Forum, click this link.

Security agency professionals are in attendance at the Aspen Security Forum to include DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Daniel Coats, Director of National Intelligence, Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General and Christopher Wray, Director of the FBI.

Further, there are real concerns that the federal and state governments are not doing enough to protect whole election architecture and systems. That is a false assertion by the Democrats as there have been hearings on the Hill explaining the work/collaboration between DHS and individual states. Admittedly, there are issues at the state level where databases, computers, voter rolls and more all take place. The bell first rang on state vulnerabilities beginning in the 2016 general election, where the cyber professionals at the FBl were placed in states known to be under brute force cyber attacks. State officials were warned then and provided advice on how to harden their respective systems going forward.

Those discussions and activities continue today including at the Aspen Security Forum.  A specific session is dedicated to this issue as noted:

Defending Democratic Institutions: Election 2018 and Beyond

Though the motivation and the effects are disputed, nearly everyone agrees that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, and security experts agree that it is already interfering in this year’s mid-terms. Though efforts are underway to stop them, what more can be done to put an end to Russia’s interference in our elections and democratic institutions?

Monika Bickert, Head of Product Policy and Counterterrorism, Facebook
Tom Burt, Corporate Vice President for Customer Security and Trust , Microsoft
Michael Chertoff, Former Secretary of Homeland Security
Jeanette Manfra, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Cybersecurity and
Communications
Kim Wyman, Secretary of State, Washington State
Moderator: Michael Isikoff, Chief Investigative Correspondent, Yahoo News

Meanwhile, Senator Rubio introduced legislation last year to further add sanctions on Russia due to Russian interference. Due to the most recent political scandals, some noted above, Rubio’s bill is getting renewed attention and support in Congress.

Briefly from the Miami Herald:

Rubio and Van Hollen’s bill, called the Defending Elections from Threats by Establishing Redlines (DETER) Act, is the first bill since the 2016 presidential election that sets specific punishments for the Russian government and other countries that interfere in U.S. political campaigns.

“Congress has already taken various steps when it comes to Russia and its interference in 2016, this will just be one moving forward that hopefully would deter future attacks, which I believe is the real threat here ultimately,” Rubio said on Tuesday. “It’s not what happened, but what could happen in the future. Hopefully we’ll get to a critical mass and momentum that we can get going on it and get it passed.”

Rubio’s bill, if passed, codifies specific penalties for the Russians that must be implemented within 10 days if the Director of National Intelligence determines that interference took place.

The penalties include “sanctions on major sectors of the Russian economy, including finance, energy, defense, and metals and mining” and blacklisting every senior Russian political figure or oligarch identified in the Russian sanctions bill that became law in 2017 over the initial objections of Trump after a supermajority in Congress approved it.

The bill lays out specific acts by foreign governments that constitute election interference. Foreign governments are forbidden from purchasing advertisements to influence elections, using social and traditional media to spread “significant amounts” of false information, hacking election or campaign infrastructure such as voter registration databases and campaign emails, and blocking access to elections infrastructure such as websites that provide information on polling locations. Read more here.

07/19/18

Socialists Unite! Bolshevik Bernie And Ocasio-Cortez Campaign Together In Kansas

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Just as I predicted, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, fresh off her win in New York against Democratic incumbent Rep. Joseph Crowley, has hit the campaign trail with big name leftists. This time it’s in Kansas with Bolshevik Bernie Sanders. It’s a socialist dream come true. Ocasio-Cortez may not be able to tell you the difference between socialists and Democratic Socialists of America (there really is none), and she may be math challenged when nonsensically dissing Trump’s low unemployment rate, but she’s got her socialist creds in with Bernie.

No one knew who Ocasio-Cortez was a few weeks ago. Now, she’s the fresh, young, communist millennial face of the Democratic Party. From bartender to brunette Evita… a Marxist Cinderella is born. On one hand, you have a cult-of-personality geriatric figure such as Bernie Sanders, born in 1941, and on the other, you have the telegenic and propagandic Ocasio-Cortez, born in 1989. Quite the spring/winter pairing there. “This week, I am traveling to Kansas with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to rally in support of James Thompson’s and Brett Welder’s campaigns for Congress — two great progressive candidates who will prove our message can win anywhere,” Sen. Bernie Sanders wrote in an email to supporters. Hopefully not… Kansas is conservative Trump country, I hope it still is.

Sanders waxed socialist in his email:

If Democrats want to win elections up and down the ballot in 2018, 2020 and beyond, we have to run progressive candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez everywhere, even in states Donald Trump and the Republicans won in 2016.

Because the issues Alexandria campaigned on — Medicare for all, a $15/hour living wage, free college tuition at public colleges and universities, fighting climate change and promoting racial, social and environmental justice — are not just popular in Vermont, Queens and the Bronx, they are popular everywhere. At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, and when real wages for ordinary workers continue to decline, these are the issues working families feel strongly about.

https://twitter.com/Ocasio2018/status/1019726769295970305

In a statement, Sanders said, “All across this country people understand that we need a government that represents all of us, and not just billionaire campaign contributors. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, we need health care for all, we need to make public colleges and universities tuition-free and we need to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. These are popular ideas in Vermont, in the Bronx, in Kansas and in every state in the country. Candidates who run on a progressive agenda can and will win.”

Ocasio-Cortez followed by saying, “The political revolution is alive and well in Kansas. James Thompson and Brent Welder know that policies like Medicare for All, Tuition-free College and Trade School, and a living wage can win across the country — including the Midwest. They have committed the organizing power to show that if Democrats run on a clear, committed platform for working class Americans, while rejecting dark money, we can win. I am proud to join Senator Sanders to let voters in Kansas know they have this option here at home.”

Then came the obligatory asking for money… they always do. Bernie is struggling with the rest of us you know. It’s a burden having to care for three homes and never work a day in your life. America can relate… not. No doubt, Ocasio-Cortez, who paints herself as one with the working class, but who in reality isn’t, will soon get her own lakefront mansion, so she can suffer in luxury, like all good socialist elitists do.

Progressives smell blood in the political waters of Kansas these days:

But Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders have more expansive aims than turning the 3rd [Congressional District] blue. They want to prove their theory of the progressive case.

On Friday, they will rally for Brent Welder, a former labor lawyer running on a platform of “Medicare for All,” a $15 an hour minimum wage, tuition-free public college, and reducing big money’s influence in politics. “Brent can win, he can win,” Ocasio-Cortez said on The Dig, a podcast from Jacobin magazine. “And he can not only win his primary, but he can win in a red-to-blue district on a progressive vision. And I think that’s so exciting.”

Indeed, a February poll of the district gave Welder a 7-point lead against Yoder, with broad support for many of Welder’s ideas. “People say, ‘How can you win in Kansas on progressive policies?’” Welder told The Intercept in an interview. “I’ve learned that the only way to win in Kansas is on progressive policies.”

[…]

Kansas holds a special place in the hearts of progressives, and running and winning there on an unapologetic platform has long been a goal. The love affair goes back to “bleeding Kansas,” when abolitionists such as John Brown moved west to Kansas to do battle with slave owners in an effort to turn Kansas into a free state. The bloodshed there was a forerunner to the Civil War. Later, Democrats running as prairie populists dominated the state. Modern progressivism could be said to date to a speech delivered by Teddy Roosevelt in 1910 in Osawatomie, Kansas. Just over a century later, Barack Obama returned there at the height of the Occupy Wall Street protests to deliver his own version.

Hello Kansas? You have socialists in your midst.

For the socialists to overcome though they’ll have to get past EMILY’s List first. It’s a commie face-off. Last week, the group’s Super PAC Women Vote! dropped $400,000 on an ad to support Sharice Davids, a lesbian, Native American, amateur mixed martial arts fighter who was a fellow in the Obama administration. The ad plays on Davids’ MMA background: “She never backs down; not in the ring, not to the NRA, or Trump and the Republicans in Washington. … She’s fierce, she’s progressive, and she’s a fighter.” This will get bloody. Hopefully, the conservative candidates will let them beat each other to a pulp and step over them to win the race.

Ocasio-Cortez is a political climber. There are whispers in the Democratic Party that Bernie Sanders will run again with her as his vice presidential running mate. But make no mistake, Ocasio-Cortez wants to be president herself and makes no bones about it. Her proud mom told the New York Post, “Her aspiration is to be the president.”

This is their schedule for tomorrow in Kansas:

  • 1:00 p.m. Rally with Ocasio-Cortez and James Thompson, Orpheum Theatre, 200 N Broadway St., Wichita, Kansas. Information for the public: Doors open at noon. This event is free and open to the public, but an RSVP is strongly encouraged.
  • 6:00 p.m. Rally with Ocasio-Cortez and Brent Welder, The Reardon Convention Center, 520 Minnesota Ave., Kansas City, Kansas. Information for the public: Doors open at 5:00 p.m. This event is free and open to the public, but an RSVP is strongly encouraged.

Tickets are sold out for the events. I would go anyway. Kansas, you need to take a stand against these socialists and vote in those on the Republicans ticket. Your freedom is at stake here… don’t answer the siren call of freebies and the lying utopia of socialism.

07/19/18

The Return Of Ludditism Via Universal Basic Income

By: Kent Engelke | Capitol Securities

I believe the mid-term elections will soon become the focus of the markets. I am certain the vitriol will rise to near unprecedented levels. The question at hand… will people listen outside of a concentrated group? Historically, the electorate votes their pocket books and if their pocket books are light, attention is then also focused upon social/cultural issues.

I would like to comment briefly upon President Obama’s remarks in South Africa. The President tentatively endorsed the idea of universal basic income (UBI). This is not the first time he’s spoken of such an initiative. UBI is a potential platform issue with some Democratic candidates.

Simplistically speaking, UBI is the government sending a check to its citizens to “provide dignity and structure and a sense of place and a sense of purpose in life,” according to Obama.

Obama, as with several others, has commented about the potential job losses because of increased technology. This is not the first time leaders focused upon technology and possible job losses in an election.

For example and perhaps most famous is the anti-technology movement led by Ned Ludd in the early 1800’s. His party was called the “Luddities” who believed technology… aka the cotton gin… was destroying jobs. The Luddites destroyed technology in an attempt to protect jobs under the simple premise that the ends justifies the means.

There are several billionaire tech barons who support UBI including Amazon’s Bezos and Facebook’s Zuckerburg. The irony is Amazon did not pay any federal taxes last year and it has been good at minimizing tax payments in Europe. Recently, Amazon vehemently fought Seattle’s employee head count tax, a tax that was deemed as a possible solution to Seattle’s growing homeless problem.

Those endorsing UBI point to Norway as a potential UBI model. The issue at hand, according to Bloomberg, is to have a fund similar to that of Norway, the US would need one totaling $33 trillion. The total net worth of all US households is $100 trillion. The wealthiest 0.1% of Americans holds 22% of the nation’s wealth according to UC Berkley.

Simplistically speaking, even a mass scale expropriation, which would be undesirable and unpopular at best, would not be enough.

Some supporters of the UBI have suggested a “Robot Tax” to pay for workers that are dislocated via technology. To write the obvious, this “robot tax” would predominately fall upon tech companies, some of which pay little or no taxes.

As noted, Amazon vehemently fought Seattle’s head count tax just as Facebook and others fought the Bay Area’s version of its head count tax.

As commented above, workers first vote their pocket book and social/cultural issues only become a primary issue if the pocket book becomes an issue.

A question at hand… will Silicon Valley’s unwavering support for progressive causes wane because of pocket book issues, aka increased taxes to pay for the causes they support vocally, but not financially?

Wow! If this does materialize, today’s tectonic change will take upon an entirely new dimension.

Radically changing topics, the markets were mixed led by gains in financials and industrials. The second day of FRB Chair’s testimony had little impact. Oil ended about 1.2% higher on conflicting interpretations of the inventory data. The 10-year was essentially unchanged.

Last night the foreign markets were down. London was up 0.17%, Paris was down 0.47% and Frankfurt was down 0.41%. China was down 0.53%, Japan was down 0.13% and Hang Sang was down 0.38%.

The Dow should open moderately lower. Some are pointing to trade concerns, others to the strengthening dollar, while others to mixed earnings reports and a strengthening economy, which signals higher interest rates. In my view, it is a combination of all the above. The 10-year is off 4/32 to yield 2.89%.