Source: Fee.org

 

A new report outlines how intrusive Europe's high taxes are on the work life of its citizens. Is this what Americans want

What High-Tax Europe Really Looks Like

Bill Wirtz - Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Calls for Taxing the Rich Are Everywhere

Promises are mounting in the Democratic Party’s primary debates as contenders try to outbid one another on free health care, free public education, or, in the case of Andrew Yang, just free money. Senator Elizabeth Warren plans to make college free in addition to canceling student debt for millions of people at an estimated cost of $1.25 trillion over 10 years. Senator Bernie Sanders's "Medicare For All" bill would cost$34 trillion dollars over 10 years.

This bill alone would almost double the entire US government’s expenditures. Double! Current expenses include interest on the massive national debt, planes, aircraft carriers, tanks and missiles, numerous agencies, NASA and its contributions to the International Space Station, road construction, foreign aid, etc.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren often liken their tax ambitions of making the rich "pay their fair share" to tax rates in Europe.Sanders’s plan would essentially add a second US government on top of the existing one despite the fact that the current government already spends more than it takes in.

Pointing this out has been labeled a "Republican talking point" (as if the Republicans ever cared that much about balancing a budget). It is heartening, however, to see that journalists are willing to press Democrats on how they will actually pay for these extensive programs.

Both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren suggest taxing the rich as a solution to the revenue problem their proposals would engender. They often liken their tax ambitions of making the rich "pay their fair share" to tax rates in Europe. A new report on marginal tax rates offers some perspective on that claim.

The Real Cost of Taxation

EPICENTER, the European Policy Information Center located in Brussels, just released its "Taxing High Incomes" report, written in cooperation with the Swedish free-market think tank Timbro and the Tax Foundation, which answers the most interesting questions on marginal tax rates.

The marginal tax rate is the rate that applies to the last unit earned. In a progressive tax system, this is the rate at which the last portion of a taxpayer's income is taxed, meaning how much you pay on every additional dollar. A distinction is made between the marginal tax rate and the marginal effective tax rate, which also takes into account the amounts paid by the state to the taxpayer (allowances, subsidies, etc.). Thus, answering the question as to how much the rich really pay in taxes is a complicated one.

Nominally lower income tax rates do not equate to lower marginal rates.

This is why the EPICENTER report, comparing top effective marginal tax rates on labor income in 41 OECD (Office of Economic Cooperation and Development) and EU countries is so interesting. For instance, the report looks at social security contributions such as health care and pensions that are tied to previous income. As the authors explain, however, social insurance benefits are capped in most cases. Therefore, any social security contributions paid on high incomes can usually be regarded as pure taxes.

The report outlines how many taxes can hit high-income earners on every additional dollar. Nominally lower income tax rates do not equate to lower marginal rates. For example:

Hungary has a flat income tax of 15 percent while the United States has a progressive federal income tax with a top marginal tax rate of 37 percent. As payroll and consumption taxes are low in the United States, the effective marginal tax rate is not much higher, at 47 percent. In Hungary, on the other hand, substantial social security contributions are paid by both employers and employees. In addition, the country has the world’s highest VAT. The result is an effective tax rate of 57 percent—13 places higher than the United States in the country rankings.

The United States actually does not have low marginal tax rates, as they close in on 50 percent for the highest earners. A number of analyzed states, namely Cyprus, Switzerland, Turkey, Chile, Slovakia, Lithuania, New Zealand, Mexico, and Bulgaria all end up with lower marginal tax rates.

As capital flight increases and interest in investment and entrepreneurship diminishes, who will pay for these programs?

Is Sweden's 76 percent tax rate the end goal of the Democratic candidates? If so, they should tread carefully. The EPICENTER report outlines the conflict between efficiency and equity in tax systems and explains how in the long run, high marginal tax rates can affect career choices and migration decisions in addition to lowering returns on education and entrepreneurship.

As capital flight (people relocating due to high tax rates) increases and interest in investment and entrepreneurship diminishes, the question remains: who will pay for the programs Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are promising?

Dishonest or Afraid?

Source: Townhall

 

Walter E. Williams  |  Posted: Nov 20, 2019 12:01 AM

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own
and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

Scientists: Dishonest or Afraid?

The absolute worst case of professional incompetence and dishonesty is in the area of climate science. Tony Heller has exposed some of the egregious dishonesty of mainstream environmentalists in a video he's titled "My Gift To Climate Alarmists." Environmentalists and their political allies attribute the recent increase in deadly forest fires to global warming. However, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service, forest fires reached their peak in the 1930s and have declined by 80% since then. Environmentalists hide the earlier data and make their case for the effects of global warming by showing the public and policymakers data from 1980 that shows an increase in forest fires.

Climate scientists claim that rising sea levels are caused by man-made global warming. Historical data from the tide gauge in Lower Manhattan shows that sea levels have been rising from about the time when Abraham Lincoln was president to now. Heller says that sea levels have been rising for about 20,000 years. He points out that anthropologists believe that when the sea level was very low people were able to walk from Siberia to North America.

Hot weather is often claimed to be a result of man-made climate change. Heller presents data showing the number of days in Waverly, Ohio, above 90 degrees. In 1895, there were 73 days above 90 degrees. In 1936, there were 82 days above 90 degrees. Since the 1930s, there has been a downward trend in the number of days above 90 degrees. If climatologists hide data from earlier years and started at 1955, they show an increase in the number of above 90-degree days from eight or nine to 30 or 40. Thus, to deceive us into thinking the climate is getting hotter, environmentalists have selected a starting date that fits their agenda.

You might ask: "Who is Tony Heller? Does he work for big oil?" It turns out that he is a scientist and claims to be a lifelong environmentalist. From what I can tell, he has no vested interests. In that respect, he is different from those who lead the environmental movement, who often either work for or are funded by governments.

Once in a while environmentalists reveal their true agenda. Ottmar Edenhofer, lead author of the IPCC's fourth summary report released in 2007, speaking in 2010 advised: "One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world's wealth." U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres said that the true aim of the U.N.'s 2014 Paris climate conference was "to change the (capitalist) economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution." Christine Stewart, Canada's former Minister of the Environment said: "No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits. ... Climate change (provides) the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world." Tim Wirth, former U.S. Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs and the person most responsible for setting up the Kyoto Protocol said: "We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."

Global Media War on Nationalists Targets Trump, Bolsonaro

Ali Alexander for American Greatness

While the globalist media would never have you believe it, the leaders of three of the biggest economies in the world are finally putting the average working man above multinational corporations, costly trade deals, and politically correct immigration policies. The result? Lo and behold, they’re getting things done. It’s a wave that began with the election of President Donald Trump, which set a basic standard for how it happens, and how it succeeds.

Study the hows and whys of Trump’s success and it will boil down to what sticks in the craw of the liberal media more than anything: Trump has relentlessly done what he promised to do when the people elected him. On trade, immigration, and rolling back big government policies, he’s been focused on the little guy rather than on the elites, and when they try to stop him, he punches back.

The U.S. media turns its nose up at the 130 executive orders and many bills that have been signed into law that have sent our economy into turbo drive and eliminated the curse of unemployment. They can’t believe Trump is the first president trying to do something about the crisis at the border and that he is ignoring their blathering excuses for inaction. The reason Trump’s supporters are so fervent is that he never stops showing he is fighting to accomplish what he said he’d do.

In the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson has caught on. In just three months the British prime minister shook the mediocrity out of his Conservative Party’s Brexit negotiations and got closer to getting a real Brexit done than his half-baked predecessor, Theresa May.

Despite continued opposition from those whose arguments the voters rejected, Johnson got a deal with the European Union including a smarter compromise on the Irish border. Why? Because Johnson made it clear from day one that the people had already voted and Brexit was going to happen whether the globalists in Brussels or at home liked it or not, deal or no deal. Now he’s going to fight a general election on that fundamental principle and prove his point.

Last year, a new leader joined Trump in representing the interests of the people above all other concerns. Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro was elected in a landslide with a singular mission: tear apart the corruption-soaked legacy of socialism and communism that has kept Brazil on its knees and humiliated it for decades.

Like President Trump, Bolsonaro is fighting a deep state that rivals the one in the United State, with a massive bureaucracy he can’t fire, a Supreme Court stacked with corrupt holdovers, and a Brazilian media still in love with Fidel Castro. It hasn’t been easy for him in the political swamp he has to deal with, especially in having to make deals with his Congress. But as a self-described apprentice of Donald Trump, Bolsonaro should take a page from his mentor in Washington and start using his presidential powers more forcefully.

In the United States, Trump’s presidential pen has been a fruitful weapon, not only through the concrete effect on regulations but also in showing the political force behind his determination to deliver on his promises. Bolsonaro needs to do the same and punch back at his saboteurs. In fact, there is one vulnerability the socialists left behind that he can use to hit back at the politically-driven, biased, monopoly media complex in his country. Bolsonaro can use his executive powers via “provisional measure”—commonly referred to as MP—to cut back a partisan media law that holds Brazil back economically, while working against free speech and his movement. Such a move would be akin to finding the central flaw in the Death Star. Strike there, and who knows what can happen?

Socialist policies left by former President Dilma Rousseff hang over Brasilia like a thick fog, but one policy in particular—the 2014 “SeAC” law—has empowered a leftist movement against the Bolsonaro Administration that is attempting to thwart its progress, pushing fake news, and spreading disinformation.

In 2014, SeAC cut a deal that gave the country’s biggest media monopoly, Globo, carte blanche control of the airwaves, in turn, controlling how the public gets its news. This law has created a fake news firestorm much worse than the one coming from the corporate leftist mainstream media in the United States. SeAC gave Globo a legal safehouse to hide in—fueling the far Left to fabricate and broadcast an entirely false story that Bolsonaro murdered a left-wing activist.

Not only has SeAC empowered companies like Globo, but it has also blocked new media entrants. With a stroke of his pen, Bolsonaro can issue a provisional measure that would strike down the parts of SeAC that were written by his socialist predecessors to protect Globo and limit the flow of information.

What can Bolsonaro learn from President Trump and Boris Johnson? It is really quite simple. Ignore the rank file, squash corruption, and do what the people of his country—not career politicians—have elected him to do.

The FBI is the prefect example of what is a Swamp.

OMG!  Listen to this video!  Just one more reason the FBI needs purged and people like Comey need jailed.

The FBI spends 42 million dollars a year on confidential sources, over 50% of the sources don't meet the requirements to be sources.

At least one was a convicted child molester!

https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2019/a20009.pdf  Read the report!

An FBI headquarters official who was tasked with assisting that same handling agent stated that he "had never experienced such poor operational security when it came to the handling and briefing of CHSs." 

Perfect example of the quality of the Obama Administration and clowns like Comey being in charge!

 As mentioned previously, the Inspection Division conducted a 2013 National Program Review. Although the 2013 National Program Review did not identify explicit non-compliance with the AG Guidelines, it observed that existing CHS policies were disjointed, inadequate, and out of date. Further, it highlighted that a draft Validation Manual was pending at the time of the 2013 National Program Review but had not been implemented.

Another example of the inadequate ability of Bureaucrats hired during the Obama Administration!

The entrenched bureaucracy hate Trump because he wants ineptitude and inefficiency like this stopped.

It is time to purge the FBI of the totally inept leadership and get real Law Enforcement personnel who have walked beats and done real law enforcement. It is quite obvious the lawyers and political science majors with Masters are useless.

Biden: To address domestic violence, we have to keep ‘punching at it’

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 10:47 AM PT — Thursday, November 21, 2019

Joe Biden is receiving backlash after he said the way to solve domestic violence is by “punching” it. During the Democrat debate Wednesday, Biden discussed how he would approach domestic violence if he were elected, but didn’t realize why the audience laughed when he said he would “punch at it.”
Prior to this, Biden talked about initiatives regarding domestic abuse and how to overcome it on college campuses. However, his repeated statement of “punching at” domestic violence along with punching gestures with his hand are what drew the audience’s attention.

This comes amid a slew of gaffes from the former vice president, including his email sent out to supporters to reflect on the most recent debate before it even happened.
Meanwhile, President Trump’s campaign said the fifth Democrat debate shows the Democrat party is working to remove the president from office at any cost. In a statement Wednesday, campaign press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the 2020 candidates are “short on solutions and heavy on their unhealthy obsession with taking down the president with an illegitimate coup.”
She went on to say the Democrats know they cannot beat the president’s record-breaking economy, criminal justice reform, and historic trade deals at the ballot box. Therefore, they are attempting to defeat him in the halls of Congress.
 Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a Democratic presidential primary debate, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2019, in Atlanta.

https://www.oann.com/biden-to-address-domestic-violence-we-have-to-keep-punching-at-it/

All Eyes On Judge In Flynn Case...

Source: The Federalist

All Eyes On Judge
In Michael Flynn Case
After Weeks Of
Shocking Developments

If federal prosecutors made such a basic blunder concerning key evidence,

what other mistakes lay buried in the undisclosed evidence?

 

After a flurry of court filings and blockbuster developments last month, the Michael Flynn criminal case has been dormant for nearly three weeks. The parties and the public now await word from presiding Judge Emmett Sullivan on the pending motion to compel and motion for sanctions filed by Sidney Powell, the lead attorney who took over Flynn’s case shortly after the special counsel team disbanded.

Powell’s motion seeks to force federal prosecutors to provide Flynn an array of documents withheld from his attorneys and to sanction government lawyers for their failure to provide relevant evidence to the defense team in a timely manner. When and how Judge Sullivan will rule is unclear.
 
A Flurry of October Surprises

In late October, Judge Sullivan issued a short order canceling a hearing on Flynn’s motions previously scheduled for November 5, 2019, prompting predictions that the long-time federal judge had already made up his mind. This development also triggered a panicked filing by the government complaining that Flynn’s lawyers had raised new issues in their reply brief and cautioning the court not to rule without hearing more from the prosecutors. Sullivan okayed a response by the government and a final rebuttal by Flynn’s attorneys, but added a terse endnote that no more briefing would be had on the issue.

Then, mere days after the final briefing came in, federal prosecutors found themselves forced to admit that for nearly three years, they had wrongly identified the authors of the handwritten notes taken by the FBI agents during their January 24, 2017, interview of then-National Security Advisor Flynn. Prosecutors had told defense counsel (and the court) that the notes written by Peter Strozk had been compiled by FBI Agent Joe Pietka, and those taken by Pietka had been written by Strozk.

This embarrassing mea culpa surely added strength to Powell’s plea for access to other withheld evidence. After all, if federal prosecutors made such a basic blunder concerning key evidence, what other mistakes lay buried in the undisclosed evidence?

Foreshadowing a Motion to Dismiss

While the currently pending motion concerns only the question of access to evidence and sanctions for the never-provided, or the late-provision of, evidence, Powell’s briefing foreshadows the filing of a motion to dismiss the indictment. In her briefing, Powell teases several factual and legal theories supportive of such a motion.

At a minimum, that would also support the withdrawal of Flynn’s guilty plea—something Powell does not appear to be considering at this time—including: Flynn’s original attorneys had a conflict of interest preventing them from representing Flynn in the criminal case; Flynn did not intentionally make false statements to the FBI agents; the FBI agents entrapped Flynn; Flynn’s purported misstatements were immaterial to the investigation into supposed-Russia collusion and thus no crime occurred; the government engaged in selective prosecution and charged Flynn solely because of his relationship to Trump; prosecutors used threats to induce Flynn’s plea; the prosecutors’ failure to timely disclose exculpatory and impeachment evidence invalidates Flynn’s plea; and that egregious prosecutorial and government misconduct mandates dismissal of all charges against Flynn.

The government’s response to the myriad issues Powell raises remains static: Flynn pleaded guilty, so none of these finer points matter. To cement their point, federal prosecutors remind Judge Sullivan in their brief that at Flynn’s December 18, 2018, sentencing hearing, “the court indicated that it needed to ‘first ask Mr. Flynn certain questions to ensure that he entered his guilty plea knowingly, voluntarily, intelligently, and with fulsome and satisfactory advice of counsel.’”

Government attorneys then note that Flynn “was sworn in and answered a series of questions from the Court. For instance, when asked by the Court, the defendant declined to withdraw his plea based on the fact that DAD Strzok was being investigated for misconduct (which the defendant knew before his initial guilty plea).”

The government also stressed that the court had previously questioned Flynn’s defense attorney, asking whether Flynn was “entitled to any additional information that has not been provided to you.” “No, your honor,” his then-attorney responded. “Only after the Court exhaustively questioned the defendant and his counsel about discovery,” federal prosecutors stressed in their briefing, “did the Court ask the defendant if he would like to proceed to sentencing, ‘[b]ecause you are guilty of this offense,’ to which the defendant responded, ‘Yes, Your Honor.’”

That is all true, and given his detailed exchange with Flynn a year ago, which included an offer to provide the retired general outside counsel for a second opinion, Judge Sullivan may bristle at Powell’s position. But several developments and revelations since those December 2018 exchanges should arouse a different reaction from Sullivan: one of outrage—and not at Flynn, but at the government.

The Government Deserves Serious Censure

At the time he questioned Flynn during the December 2018 hearing, Judge Sullivan had no idea of the serious—and likely unwaivable—conflict of interest Flynn’s then-attorneys had. The government had pushed Flynn’s previous attorneys at Covington and Burling LLP, in February 2017, to quickly file a registration statement under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), for Flynn Intel Group (FIG). Federal prosecutors later obtained indictments against Flynn’s FIG business partners for supposed FARA violations, and still later the prosecutors branded Flynn a co-conspirator in the FARA case. There was a clear conflict of interest, which the government failed to mention to Judge Sullivan.

Further, since Flynn last appeared before Sullivan, the government’s FARA case against his FIG partners has imploded. Following a six-day trial, a jury had convicted Flynn’s former business partner, Bijan Rafiekian, of acting as an unregistered agent of Turkey, conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of Turkey, and conspiring to make willful and material false statements and omissions in a FARA filing.

But federal judge Anthony Trenga stepped in and tossed the guilty verdict, concluding that no “rational jury could conclude that Rafiekian conspired with Alptekin or anyone else.” Judge Trenga further held that “there is no evidence of discussions or suggestions, let alone an agreement express or implied, to either avoid filing under FARA or to cause the filing of a false FARA registration statement.”

That the government’s FARA case against Flynn’s business partner proved bogus should also trouble Sullivan because, according to Powell’s earlier court filings, the special counsel’s office had informed Flynn’s “counsel in the summer of 2017 that it was going to indict the FARA case then, had obtained authorization to target Michael Flynn, Jr.—who had a newborn—and had seized all his electronic devices.”

The threat was clear: Plead guilty and cooperate or we will prosecute your son. And given Judge Trenga’s conclusion in the Rafiekian case that there was no evidence of a FARA crime, there is an added postscript: We will prosecute your son on bogus charges.

Government Threats and Obfuscation

The threat also wasn’t a one off: After Powell took over representation of Flynn, federal prosecutors attempted to force Flynn to testify at Rafiekian’s trial that Flynn had knowingly made false statements in the FARA filings—something Flynn denies. When Flynn refused to lie, federal prosecutors abruptly added Michael Flynn Jr. to the witness list for the Rafiekian trial, but then never called him to testify.

The government, according to Powell, also had an FBI agent contact Flynn Jr. directly, even though the younger Flynn was represented by counsel. These maneuvers corroborate the prosecutors’ earlier use of Flynn Jr. as a pawn to pressure his father to plead guilty.

It is possible that Judge Sullivan will take umbrage at Flynn for telling the court he was pleading guilty because he was guilty. But the retired general’s statements, made while being represented by attorneys encumbered by a serious conflict of interest, appear in a different light when considered against the prosecutors’ threat to target his son for a non-existent crime.

Or as Powell put it to The Federalist, “When Flynn appeared before Judge Sullivan, he and counsel were expecting a 30 minute sentencing–not a second plea proceeding. Aside from being represented by completely conflicted counsel, what Defendant has ever spoken off script and called a halt to his sentencing? In thousands of federal cases, I’ve never seen it happen. He was a hostage–more than a dozen members of the special counsel were in the courtroom that day, the indictment just unsealed in Rafiekian—purposely to threaten him and Mike Jr.—the ultimate hostage situation and for which he was unprepared and effectively unrepresented.”

Powell added, “In large part, it was the alarm bells Judge Sullivan sounded that day that began the process that led to consulting and retaining new counsel and uncovering the truth. Judge Sullivan is to be commended for that and for giving him additional time to cooperate. That process also clarified many things.”

That additional time has indeed clarified many things and exposed a well-constructed plot to ambush Flynn, quiz him on a telephone call the inquisitors already knew the content of, and later make material changes to the 302 interview summaries to establish a basis for criminal charges. Judge Sullivan will be considering those new revelations, and not merely Flynn’s previous statements, when he rules on the currently pending motions and those to come.

Pardons, Military Discipline and the Burden on Our Troops

written by Kurt Schlicter for Townhall

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own
and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall

The predictable elite wailing and gnashing of teeth over President Trump’s pardons of various American warriors accused or convicted of alleged war crimes is typically tiresome. To our elite, the only good soldier is one who goes full Deep State – never go full Deep State – and collaborates with the ruling caste, or one who is in jail. That’s it. The rest are expendable pawns to be deployed to protect vital American interests like [Kurt consults his notes to make sure he has this right] obscure border disputes between significantly communist militias and a NATO ally on the side of the significantly communist militias.

I care nothing about what bow-tied bureaucrats, posing pols, and media hacks think. I care about our troops – but caring about our troops does not necessarily mean being ecstatic about this turn of events.

To the extent the pardons show that the president will back our troops where there is any doubt whatsoever, good. Our troops have a politically correct chain of command that the force perceives as far too willing to sacrifice them on the altar of field grade and flag officer careers when they make tough decisions.

To the extent the pardons show that he will square away those convicted in the ridiculous witch hunts that followed Trump’s outrageous crime of beating Stumbles McMyturn, good. When it’s politically safe, Trump should pardon everyone caught up in Mueller’s crusty coup.

To the extent the pardons irritate the elite, good. This presumptively makes them something we should support, though that presumption is rebuttable. Real war crimes must be punished.

To the extent that these pardons send a message that it is okay to violate military rules and the laws of war, it is less clear. Here’s the thing: we have a hyper-partisan political culture and the military brass is not immune, as we have seen in Congress lately. Its conduct in some of these cases has been utterly shameful.

For example, in the case of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, the JAGs literally used malware to spy on the defense team. Think about that. The JAGs literally used malware to spy on the defense team. Judge Schlichter – me in a hypothetical, not my mom in reality, since she was a judge – would have dismissed the entire case and referred the lawyers for prosecution themselves. It’s craziness. And it’s corrupt. A corrupt prosecution cannot stand – let’s put Adam Schiff aside for a moment – even if the accused is guilty of offing some ISIS punk. 

But, of course, the Navy JAGs’ prime witness got on the stand testified that he, not Gallagher, offed the ISIS punk. As a lawyer, this would have been kind of embarrassing. It was the ultimate Perry Mason moment, if Perry Mason was an idiot.

So, Gallagher had to be entirely exonerated because of prosecutorial misconduct, and since the military justice system did not have the integrity to enforce the standards – for shame – then it was right for the president to do so. 

Now, it does appear that Gallagher did take pics of and with dead enemies. This corpse desecration thing seems to come up a lot. On one hand, it’s against the regs, so you shouldn’t do it because it’s against the regs and NCOs should not violate the regs. On the other hand, I’m not convinced that the thought process behind these regs – we don’t want to make the enemy mad by expressing contempt for the scumbags we kill – is particularly coherent. Perhaps demonstrating our contempt for the dishonored dead makes more sense than prissily observing respect for them, respect their living pals would never show us (See, e.g., the treatment of our dead in Somalia in 1993). Disposing of the likes of Bin Laden and al-Baghdadi with respect instead of dropping their maggoty carcasses into a pig sty has not seemed to earn us any cred with the jihadi gang, so why not send a different message: “This is your fate if you screw with us.”

But it was against the rules, and Gallagher apparently did take a selfie with a stiff, and rules are important – vitally important in warfare. A military force has a structure of commissioned and non-commissioned officers for several reasons (planning, organization, logistics), but also, vitally, to impose control over a bunch of young men with deadly weapons. History is replete with examples of what happens when young men in the middle of war slip out of control.

Military discipline matters. But so does backing your guys’ play when they make tough, ugly calls.

Major Matt Golsteyn, an ex-Green Beret, was accused of killing an Afghan bomb maker. It was not in a firefight. He apparently sought the guy out and shot him. If they guy was a bomb maker, Golsteyn probably saved the limbs and lives of many Americans (and Afghans). But you are not allowed to freelance hits on the enemy, which itself seems odd since it is a war. 

And this all comes at a time when our elite forces are wracked with indiscipline. Look at the Mali murder, or the SEAL platoon withdrawn from deployment for drinking and other bad acts. Military discipline is essential. Do these pardons undercut it, or should these acts have been addressed outside the legal system? Golsteyn lost his Silver Star, his Special Forces tab and his career for this. Was that enough? Did they have to try to put him away for life?

Again, he apparently violated the rules, but then we have a rule which apparently means you can’t kill an enemy in a war zone. The fact that it’s a war zone and this enemy is drawing breath and we can’t take him out seems…troubling. Are we serious about this being a war or not? If it’s war, you kill the enemy, and if the enemy happens to be home in bed so what? But then, there are rules of engagement and you can’t have field grade officers ignoring them. See the problem?

I led soldiers. I know the importance of discipline. I also know history and human nature. We can’t put our troops out into a hostile fire zone where the enemy has no rules but can hide in plain sight behind ours, killing at will but being immunized from being killed by regulations, and not expect that status quo to grow untenable. 

Similarly, Army First Lieutenant Clint Lorance was pardoned after doing six years of a 19-year stretch for having his troops shoot an alleged Taliban dirtbag outside the rules of engagement. Members of his own platoon testified against him, while the testimony of local Afghans was, shall we say, controversial. Even if he did it, was two decades in stir right? Or was six appropriate? Or maybe just a discharge? Or should he have got a medal?

I might care more if any of them would be doing time by Bowe Bergdahl, but they wouldn’t. He arguably caused American injuries and deaths, and he walked because Bergdahl was the kind of soldier our elites love.

It’s also important to understand that these cases are outliers. Some war crimes are so obviously wrong and dishonorable no one in uniform has a second thought frying the perpetrators. At the other extreme are the men and women in uniform who do their job every day within the bounds of rules and regulations that often make no sense.

These pardons come in cases that are not crystal clear, where the alleged acts brought no personal gain but arguably protected our troops even if they allegedly violated military law. Unlike Bergdahl, who the military justice system essentially let off, none were traitors. I guess I’m happy that these nightmares have ended for these warriors and their families. I remain unhappy that they were put in that situation in the first place. 

‘Coup’ Concerns Suddenly Don't Seem So Far-fetched

written by Victor Davis Hanson for Townhall

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own
and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall

For most of the last three years, Donald Trump's critics have scoffed at supposed "conspiracy theories" that claimed a "deep state" of bureaucrats were aborting the Trump presidency. We have been told the word "coup" is hyperbole that reveals the paranoid minds of Trump supporters.

Yet oddly, many people brag that they are proud members of a deep state and occasionally boast about the idea of a coup.

Recently, former acting CIA chief John McLaughlin proclaimed in a public forum, "Thank God for the deep state." Former CIA director John Brennan agreed and praised the "deep state people" for their opposition to Trump.

Far from denying the danger of an unelected careerist bureaucracy that seeks to overturn presidential policies, New York Times columnists have praised its efforts to nullify the Trump agenda.

On the first day of the impeachment inquiry, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff called his initial two witnesses, career State Department diplomats William Taylor Jr. and George Kent. Far from providing damning evidence of criminal presidential behavior, Taylor and Kent mostly confined themselves to three topics: their own sterling resumes, their lack of any firsthand knowledge of incriminating Trump action, and their poorly hidden disgust with the manner and substance of Trump's foreign policy.

Oddly, both had little clue that their demeanor and thinly disguised self-importance were a perfect example of why Trump got elected -- to come up with new ideas antithetical to the conventional wisdom of unelected career bureaucrats.

Taylor and Kent announced that they are simply high-minded civil servants who serve the presidential administrations of both parties without bias.

But by nature, the huge federal bureaucracy counts on bigger government and more taxes to feed it. So naturally, the bureaucracy is usually more sympathetic to big-government progressives than to small-government conservatives.

Taylor and Kent cited their anguish with Trump's foreign policy toward Ukraine -- namely that it did not go through official channels and was too unsympathetic to Ukraine and too friendly to Russia. If so, one might have thought the anguished bureaucrats would have similarly gone public during the Obama administration.

After all, Vice President Joe Biden took over the Obama administration's Ukrainian policy at a time when his son Hunter was knee-deep in Ukrainian affairs. As a consultant for a Ukrainian natural gas company, Hunter Biden made a reported $80,000 a month without expertise in either the energy business in particular or Ukraine in general.

Also, Trump's policies have been more anti-Russian and pro-Ukrainian than those of the Obama administration. Trump armed the Ukrainians; Obama did not. Trump imposed new sanctions against Russia, used force against Russian mercenaries in Syria, beefed up NATO defenses, pulled the U.S. out an asymmetrical missile treaty with Russia, and pumped more oil and gas to lower world prices -- much to the chagrin of oil-exporting Russia.

In contrast, Obama was the architect of "reset" with Russia that reached its nadir in a hot mic exchange in which Obama offered a quid pro quo, vowing more flexibility on issues such as U.S.-sponsored missile defense in Eastern Europe in exchange for Russia giving Obama "space" to concentrate on his re-election.

Trump's critics have also radically changed their spin on "coups." To them, "coup" is no longer a dirty word trafficked in by right-wing conspiracists. Instead, it has been normalized as a possibly legitimate means of aborting the Trump presidency.

Mark Zaid, the attorney representing the Ukraine whistleblower, boasted in two recently discovered tweets of ongoing efforts to stage a coup to remove Trump.

"#coup has started. First of many steps. #rebellion. #impeachment will follow," Zaid tweeted in January 2017. Later the same month, he tweeted: "#coup has started. As one falls, two more will take their place."

Retired Admiral William H. McRaven recently wrote an op-ed for The New York Times all but calling for Trump's ouster -- "the sooner the better."

No sooner had Trump been elected than Rosa Brooks, a former Defense Department official during the Obama administration, wrote an essay for Foreign Policy magazine discussing theoretical ways to remove Trump before the 2020 election, among them a scenario involving a military coup.

In September 2018, The New York Times published an op-ed from an anonymous White House official who boasted of supposedly widescale efforts inside the Trump administration to nullify its operations and subvert presidential directives.

Such efforts to oppose Trump are often self-described as "The Resistance," a reference to the underground French fighters resisting the Nazis in World War II.

Trump's opponents often have praised the deep state precisely because unelected career officials are seen as the most effective way to sabotage and stymie his agenda.

A "coup" is no longer proof of right-wing paranoia, but increasingly a part of the general progressive discourse of resistance to Trump.

In these upside-down times, patriotism is being redefined as removing a president before a constitutionally mandated election.

DOJ IG Report Documents Misuse...

Source: The Federalist

DOJ Inspector General Repor
Documents FBI
Misuse Of Secret Sources

The government watchdog of the Department of Justice released a report Tuesday that found “numerous issues” with the FBI’s handling of confidential sources.

The 63-page report covers 2012 to 2019, which includes the time-frame of the 2016 presidential election and former FBI Director James Comey’s entire tenure at the law enforcement agency. It indicted the FBI’s management of secret sources as noncompliant with attorney general guidelines.

“Ineffective management and oversight of confidential sources can result in jeopardizing FBI operations and placing FBI agents, sources, subjects of investigation, and the public in harms way,” said DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz in a two-minute video announcing the findings of the report.

The inspector general’s report said that FBI headquarters lacked adequate staff and oversight and provided unclear guidance to conduct its operations involving confidential human sources.

The confidential human source program is important to the FBI’s efforts to carry out its mission, the report says, and such sources are hired for a wide range of objectives in addition to counterintelligence.

The FBI used confidential human sources in its 2016 investigation of the Trump campaign to determine whether campaign staff were colluding with the Russian government. Yet the allegations of Russian collusion turned up to be a hoax following a two-year investigation with unlimited resources by a congressionally appointed special counsel.

The inspector general’s report determined that the FBI lacked the proper processes to maintain the necessary levels of oversight among such long-term sources, allowing some to continue operating when they should not have.

“We found that the FBI lacked an automated process to analyze the threat areas in which is has CHS coverage and relied on an ineffective process that could result in outdated information,” the report said. “Without clear guidance, we believe there is increased operational security risk that could result in agents and (sources) being put in harm’s way.”

The report also found faults in the FBI vetting of confidential sources that did not comply with Justice Department rules, and noted that the FBI has problems aligning the right sources with the appropriate threat priorities.

 
The Justice Department’s office of inspector general has offered the FBI 16 recommendations to fix the program and until then, has ordered the agency to place tighter restrictions on information related to the program to personnel with a need to know.

Sen. Josh Hawley’s Striking Critique of American Life

 Article by Michael Brendan Dougherty in "National Review":

Missouri senator Josh Hawley might be the most interesting thinker the U.S. Senate has seen since Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Or at least, he’s the senator today who most resembles Moynihan as a sweeping and adventurous social critic.

Last night, at a dinner held by the American Principles Project Foundation, Hawley gave a remarkable speech. Like most good political speeches, it was straightforward and accessible. But unlike most good political speeches, it was also a searing piece of cultural criticism, an indictment of America’s economic and social arrangements. This is notable because at the moment, the president of the United States — a man who happens to belong to Hawley’s party — is touting the unparalleled success of the American economy.

Near the top of his remarks, Hawley denounced the emergence of an American “oligarchy”:

Discontent is the theme of our politics, the preoccupation of our popular culture. It is the very air we breathe.
But why? Why — in the words of another American senator — is this most prosperous of nations so troubled in spirit, so rent by division, so anxious and uncertain?
The statistics tell us that we are living in a new age of inequality. The divide between the wealthy and working Americans is wide, and growing wider.

You’ve heard the numbers. As to wealth: The top 10 percent of the country’s earners control 77 percent of the country’s total wealth. As to wages: Over the last several decades, inflation- adjusted wages for the working class have barely budged, while income for those at the very top has soared.

But the most telling economic divide in the country is between Americans with a high-school degree and those who have four-year-college degrees or more. A bachelor’s degree now earns a household in this country double the median income of a high-school diploma. As of 2016, families with a four-year degree or higher controlled roughly three-quarters of the country’s wealth. That’s a 50 percent increase since just 1989.

We are witnessing the rise of a new oligarchy of wealth and education. And not surprisingly, the leaders of this country’s government, its press, its corporations, and most of its popular culture most all belong to this same class.

Perhaps that is sobering to you, perhaps not. But Hawley’s discussion of the rise in “deaths of despair” — suicides, drug overdoses, alcohol-related deaths — certainly should be. Working from a report by Congress’s Joint Economic Committee, Hawley uttered a few sentences that made me shudder when I read them:

The number of 15- to 24-year-olds committing suicide is greater than at any other time since the government began tracking the data over 50 years ago.
For girls and young women, suicide rates have doubled during the 21st century. Doubled.
Taken altogether, nearly 36,000 American millennials died “deaths of despair” in 2017 alone.
There is now a death from drugs or alcohol or suicide every four minutes in this nation.

For basically my entire adult life, the default mode of Republican speechifying has been a kind of reheated “optimism” with lots of waxing poetic about the great reserves of American can-do waiting to be tapped. These attempts to recapture “Morning in America” have been delivered through clenched, Prozac-like smiles by men who promptly enter black SUVs to be hurried off back to their gated communities. I’ve always accepted that this is the way of electoral politics, which doesn’t have much to do with a conservative intellectual disposition that tends to be more dour, or at least skeptical.

But Hawley’s speech went from those baleful statistics to a prophetic critique of a cult of the individual and self that is “so thoroughly ingrained in American culture.”

Hawley called it the Promethean idea: “This is the individual as creator, as self-creator, maker of meaning and author of reality, rather like Prometheus who in the ancient myth created all mankind. So call this view of the human person the ‘Promethean self.’” He added that both parties have embraced some version of Promethean politics:

It is preached in our universities, celebrated in our music, rehearsed in our literature and film. It’s even the stuff of judicial decisions.
Remember this? “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” That’s Justice Anthony Kennedy in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992. I doubt you needed the citation.

Hawley went on to say that “the Promethean ambition leaves us lost and unmoored. And the market worship and cultural deconstruction the Promethean vision has inspired have failed this country.”

This is likely to be met with disdain or active resistance by many Republicans, including some of my own colleagues here at National Review. So too is Hawley’s mention of labor unions as one of the institutions that bring people together and ground them in their communities. But that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.

Hawley ended with a rousing call for “a new politics of family and neighborhood, a new politics of love and belonging, a new politics of home.” On a personal note, it would be wrong not to notice that his critique of contemporary life largely overlaps with my own. My book, My Father Left Me Ireland, is about recovering a vision of “home” in our political imagination that inspires the kind of selflessness our society and its institutions — including institutions of the state — need from us. So naturally, Hawley’s vision intrigues me.

Of course, I don’t know if speeches like this will make Hawley an effective senator or an agent of change within his party — though Moynihan was somewhat famous for writing like an intellectual with views somewhere between William F. Buckley and Christopher Lasch, his votes never distinguished him all that much from Ted Kennedy. But they certainly mark the Missouri freshman as a man to watch in the Senate.

 

Likewise, the heart of the question Hawley is getting at — the one that has sparked fierce intra-conservative debates for months — isn’t going away: It’s all well and good to thunder from Olympus, but what precisely is to be done? The answer in my book was personal and small-scale, if also foundational: Accept more children into our lives, and be good fathers to them.

Hawley has started to give his own answer, pioneering a new, adversarial approach to the titans of Silicon Valley. But what would he do to revive a healthy role for the labor unions he lauded last night? What will he do to revive neighborhoods and churches? What can he do to accomplish these things as a senator? The Scriptures say that if Christ’s disciples are silent, the very stones will cry out. The fact that Hawley is stepping in to give a prophet’s or a theologian’s reading of the times is remarkable, and I certainly wish him well. But I’m not yet sure if his emergence is reassuring or a sign of how deep our problems are and how mixed-up our institutions have become.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/josh-hawleys-striking-critique-of-american-life/

 

Trump leads top 2020 Democrats in Wisconsin

Justine Coleman reporting for The Hill

President Trump leads top 2020 Democratic White House hopefuls in theoretical match-ups in Wisconsin, a poll released Wednesday found.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg all trail Trump in Wisconsin, according to the new Marquette Law School poll. Last month, all of these candidates except Buttigieg beat Trump.

Trump topped Biden, 47 percent to 44 percent, in the new poll. 

Trump also holds a 3-point edge over Sanders in Wisconsin, 48 percent to 45 percent. 

Trump's lead is wider against Warren, at 48 percent to 43 percent, and Buttigieg, at 47 percent to 39 percent, pollsters found.  

The results come as the House impeachment inquiry against Trump unfolds. Democrats launched the inquiry in September after a whistleblower reported Trump asked the Ukrainian president to look into Biden and his son. 

Trump won Wisconsin, along with Michigan and Pennsylvania, in the 2016 election, allowing him take the White House.   The Democratic Party hopes to win these battleground states back in 2020. 

White House photo shows alleged whistleblower with Obama

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 3:10 PM PT — Wednesday, November 20, 2019

A newly surfaced photo of the alleged whistleblower in the impeachment inquiry is fueling concerns about partisanship. The Washington Examiner has obtained an image which shows Eric Ciaramella shaking hands in the Oval Office with former President Barack Obama. It was discovered on a website for a friend’s 2018 wedding.

The image has reportedly been making the rounds among the president’s GOP allies, who claimed it shows a political bias against the president.
“This picture raises serious questions about how this sham impeachment process started,” a senior Trump administration official told The Washington Examiner. “It’s no surprise that Schiff has now changed his story about letting the falsely labeled whistleblower testify.”
At the time the photo was taken, Ciaramella allegedly worked as the National Security Council’s Ukraine director. Critics of the impeachment inquiry have raised questions about Ciaramella’s ties to other Obama-era officials.
“Certain of the media released information about a man that they said was the whistleblower—I don’t know if that’s true or not,” stated President Trump. “What they said is he was an Obama person…he was like a big anti-Trump person.”
House Intel Chair Adam Schiff has repeatedly rejected calls by Republicans to call the alleged whistleblower to testify before the House, citing efforts to protect the individual’s identity. During Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman’s testimony on Tuesday, he interrupted the proceedings to make sure the official didn’t mention the name.
https://www.oann.com/white-house-photo-shows-alleged-whistleblower-with-obama/