How Soros’s Secret Network Used Ukraine to Cover for Hillary, Hunter, and Target Donald Trump

This exclusive except from Matt Palumbo's forthcoming book shines more light on the backdrop of the attempts to use Ukraine to oust President Trump.

posted by Matt Palumbo at The National Pulse

The Soros Circle: AntAC

In 2014, Soros’s International Renaissance Foundation (IRF) and its grantees were active supporters in the creation of the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC) of Ukraine, a powerful NGO. Through the end of 2018, 17 percent of AntAC’s funding was coming from Soros’s group.

AntAC is run by Daria Kaleniuk, an American-educated lawyer. White House logs show Kaleniuk visited on December 9, 2015, reportedly meeting with Eric Ciaramella, the CIA employee many suspect is the anonymous whistleblower that sparked Trump’s first impeachment, the source of which was a faultless phone call with Ukraine’s president.

AntAC was responsible for creating the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), a law enforcement group separate from the prosecutor general’s office that was tasked with handling the biggest corruption cases. It has investigatory powers but cannot indict suspects. Only when it passes its findings to prosecutors does a subject of its inquiry become part of a criminal case. The agency was established in 2014 at the behest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after its predecessor, the National Anti-Corruption Committee, was deemed a failure. Western governments funded NABU, which also enjoyed the backing of the FBI. Like all the Orwellian names of groups Soros had a part in, NABU acts independently in name only.

With the Obama DOJ’s launch of the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, aimed at battling large-scale public corruption in foreign states, the State Department, DOJ, and FBI began outsourcing some of their own work to AntAC.

In February 2015, Viktor Shokin was appointed prosecutor general of Ukraine, and was soon scrutinized for helping the owner of the energy company Burisma. Shokin had helped owner Mykola Zlochevsky regain control of $23 million that was frozen by British authorities. Burisma was made famous by Hunter Biden’s involvement in the company, and Zlochevsky was the one who struck the deal to appoint Hunter to the company’s board of directors in 2014 at a reported salary of $83,333 per month.

AntAC’s stance on Shokin was made clear; it tweeted on December 2015 that “One of the major goals of #AntAC for 2016 is to force #Shokin to resign.”

Shokin attempted to begin a probe into Burisma that “included interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden.”

This never materialized because Joe Biden (then Vice President) threatened to withhold a $1 billion loan to Ukraine unless Skokin was removed as prosecutor general. Biden even bragged about it on video to the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018, stating that when he attended a meeting with Ukraine’s president and prime minister, he said, “‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”

Biden insisted the U.S. wanted Shokin removed over corruption concerns shared by the European Union. But in tapes released by Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Derkach, Biden and Poroshenko reveal that the Ukrainian president admitted to doing Biden’s bidding. The quid pro quo is proven.

“Despite the fact that (Shokin) didn’t have any corruption charges, we don’t have any information about him doing something wrong, I especially asked him…to resign.”

In another recording from March 22, 2016, the two allegedly discussed who would be appointed prosecutor general of Ukraine, and then who would be their eventual replacement. Former prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko was mentioned. The White House issued a press release confirming the pair talked again on this date.

At the end of the call, Biden said, “I’m a man of my word. And now that the new prosecutor general is in place, we’re ready to move forward to signing that new $1 billion loan guarantee.”

Derkach would later be punished for allegedly exposing Biden’s call with Poroshenko.

After the audio was made public, Poroshenko’s successor Volodymyr Zelensky called for an investigation into the recordings, and the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Derkach, describing the audio as “unsupported information” part of a campaign to “discredit U.S. officials.” They also accused Derkach, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, of being a “Russian agent.” 

The sanctions came less than a year after Derkach met with Rudy Giuliani in Kiev, which reports at the time said was to discuss possible misuse of U.S. tax dollars by Ukraine’s government.

“I can’t think of anything [Derkach] gave me that you could consider meddling in the election. Indicting [Steve] Bannon is a lot more meddling in the election than this. My best recollection is it was all information we had already. I know I kind of got bored during the deposition because I had already heard it.”

– Rudy Giuliani

“I can’t see how you can be accused of meddling in an election that is more than a year away,” Giuliani continued. “The only new piece of information he gave… is the report that $5.3 billion in foreign aid [to Ukraine] is unaccounted for, $3 billion of which is American money and a big portion of that went to nongovernmental organizations controlled by George Soros,” he continued.

As the 2016 presidential race began to intensify, Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office began an investigation into AntAC about the alleged misuse of $2.2 million of funds. An inquiry was sent to former U.S. ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt. George Kent, the second-in-command at the embassy, responded to Deputy Prosecutor General Yuriy Stolyarchuk with a two-page letter stating that the U.S. had “no concerns about the use of our assistance funds.”

Kent pressured Stolyarchuk about AntAC in the letter, writing: “The investigation into the Anti-Corruption Action Center, based on the assistance they have received from us, is similarly misplaced.” That was written on April 4, 2016—less than a week after Shokin was removed.

A few months later, Yuriy Lutsenko was named prosecutor general and met with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Lutsenko recalls being stunned when the ambassador gave him a list of people who shouldn’t be prosecuted. The list included a founder of AntAC, and two members of Ukrainian Parliament who supported AntAC’s anticorruption agenda (while benefitting from corruption themselves).

As John Solomon puts it, the implied message to Lutsenko was clear: “Don’t target AntAC in the middle of an American presidential election in which Soros was backing Hillary Clinton to succeed another Soros favorite, Barack Obama.”

So what was motivating George Kent and Ambassador Yovanovitch to influence investigations in Ukraine of all places?

The fact that Ukraine dealt with an organization created with the backing of the Obama administration, State Department, FBI, and George Soros. An investigation into AntAC could expose a whole chest of secrets—the least of which being that they’re not all concerned with corruption like they claim.

Memos uncovered by John Solomon from Soros’s Open Society Foundations before the 2016 election make that obvious. One advocates U.S. involvement in Ukraine and offers “behind the scenes advice and support to Ukrainian partner AntAC’s efforts to generate corruption litigation in Europe and the U.S. respecting state assets stolen by senior Ukrainian leaders.”

Another memo describes AntAC’s strategy of developing friendships in key government agencies to leverage within the countries Soros operates in.

“We have broadly recognized the importance of developing supportive constituencies in order to make headway in tightening the global web of anti-corruption accountability. We first conceived of this in terms of fostering and helping to build a political environment favorable to high-level anti-corruption cases.”

One such contact was Karen Greenaway, an FBI supervisor who was one of the lead agents in investigating Paul Manafort in Ukraine. She’s appeared at Soros-sponsored events and conferences before and joined AntAC’s supervisory board after retiring from the FBI. The FBI also separately confirmed her contacts with AntAC before she joined them, saying they were part of her “investigative work.”

One memo reportedly had a chart of Ukrainians that should be investigated, including people with ties to Paul Manafort.

While not mentioned by name, one of those mentioned is likely Dmitro Firtash, a Ukrainian billionaire with competing energy interests in Europe as Soros. Firtash previously beat civil charges alleging he had engaged in money laundering with Manafort.

All of this pressure on Ukrainian prosecutors was happening in the spring of 2016 as Manafort joined the Trump campaign.

At this time, Fusion GPS was just starting to conduct opposition research on Trump, and the DNC’s Ukraine expert Alexandra Chalupa was searching for dirt on Manafort. Meanwhile, Soros-funded AntAC was looking to probe Manafort’s Ukraine associates, and the U.S. embassy was trying to stop any and all inquiries that risk derailing AntAC’s work. With AntAC having the potential to “uncover” more dirt on the prime contender to Hillary Clinton, the motivations become obvious.

Prosecutor General Lutsenko himself suggested that the embassy applied pressure because it didn’t want Americans to see who was being funded with our tax dollars. “At the time, Ms. Ambassador thought our interviews of the Ukrainian citizens, of the Ukrainian civil servants who were frequent visitors in the U.S. Embassy, could cast a shadow on that anti-corruption policy.”

Another Soros-funded group targeted Firtash in 2018.

The Open Society-backed Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the FEC alleging that Ukrainian businessman Igor Fruman and Russian-born businessman Lev Parnas created a shell company called Global Energy Producers, LLC to anonymously donate $325k to a pro-Trump super PAC. The investigation that followed uncovered a $1 million payment to Parnas’s wife from Firtash’s lawyer.

The hunt for any information that could possibly damage President Trump or anyone connected to him was now on. 

X22, Christian Patriot News, and more-March 14

 

NCIS LA is back to making my head spin. Here's tonight's news:

'You're lost out there and you're all alone. A light is waiting to carry you home!!' 

🥺 (in case you can't guess, that's part of the opening song from Full House)

My review of that episode: https://wwwp-lives.blogspot.com/2022/03/ncis-la-season-13-episode-11-review.html

Ukraine and the NGO Archipelago

Western oligarchs funded an ecosystem of influence 

in order to pull Ukraine into Europe, 

setting it on a collision course with Russia.

posted by Dave Reaboi at Late Republic Nonsense

I’ve half-written several pieces on the unfolding Ukraine crisis—mostly as I see things through the lens of the information warfare business in the West—but my posts on Twitter might be the best place to get quick analysis on it, alongside everything else. The effectiveness of writing think-pieces at all about fast-developing stories is now an open question; the old TLDR (“Too Long, Didn’t Read”) dynamic seems to’ve been replaced by, simply, DR.

Even for Americans who, rightly, are opposed to US government involvement in the conflict, the Ukraine issue is massive knot of nearly every important concern: energy, economy, foreign policy, communications and censorship, the end of American hegemony, the Deep State, the limits of knowing, etc. All those intersections are fertile ground for pundits and analysts and citizens to consider.

Most of all, I’ve been alarmed at the predictable onslaught of one-sided propaganda and over-the-top lies coming from Western outlets, and the totalizing moral panic that discourages sober thought about the conflict. Putin’s Russia was certainly the aggressor—but American media from Fox to CNN and NBC supply an airbrushed narrative, a black-and-white morality tale. Not only is the truth in this conflict a shade of gray—but the implications are, as well. 

Like BLM, Covid, and other the media and politicians of both parties have locked arms around a consensus. Allegiance to the the narrative must come before independent thought, which brings with it the possibility of questioning that narrative. Dissenters—heck, even questioners—have been shouted down and called, “traitors.”

The agitprop is so thick because Ukraine is ground zero for an ecosystem of influence that, for about a decade, has been able to wield tremendous consensus-making power within the American and western foreign policy community. Influencing the public and policy debate on Ukraine and Russia is precisely what this ecosystem was built to do.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has been a cash machine for western oligarchs. With a very low standard of living and rampant corruption, the country was the perfect place for the very wealthy to make a buck. Unlike Eastern Europe, which had gotten far more expensive by then, Ukraine was a relative badland; pennies-on-the dollar investments in Ukrainian business and infrastructure would produce a windfall if the country moved towards NATO and the European Union. 

In 2014, the western-backed Maiden uprising was a Color Revolution regime change effort in order to ensure this glide-path toward NATO and the EU would continue. But that’s only half the battle; the effort required the commitment of American policymakers who would push it aggressively from within the world’s most powerful government, as well. 

Western oligarchs invested in Ukraine funded a massive infrastructure of information and influence operations I often refer to as the “NGO Archipelago.” These non-governmental organizations serve many functions in an information war: as a network of experts who interface and consult with governments or media, influencers, academics, lobbyists, muckraking journalists, and both originators or disseminators of propaganda. 

Over time, this ecosystem expanded to envelop the entire cadre of decision-makers of both parties in Washington—not just professional staff at the Pentagon and State Department (like Alexander Vindeman), but political appointees (like Fiona Hill and John Bolton), as well. 

A constellation of people orbited in and out of the same circles, changing jobs or parties along the way. In my book, Qatar’s Shadow War, I wrote about this kind of information infrastructure in service of the Islamist Emirate. It’s important to understand that this kind of ecosystem is not a conspiracy; there’s no command-and-control, and almost nobody views their contribution to the effort as transactional. It’s a whole lot of people with interlocking social and professional lives who all think pretty much the same thing.

The insularity of this world of senior fellows, congressional staffers, reporters and editors, etc. led quickly to a consensus that Russia and its leader were not just competitors or adversaries but enemies capable of boundless evil. Just about every “serious” expert on Russia inside the Beltway is funded by either George Soros or Paul Singer, and is a fanatical anti-Putin partisan. They were united in their commitment to (1) Ukraine’s move toward the West, and (2) to adversarial relationship with Russia, which they took for granted was an aggressive, anti-gay, neo-Soviet bastion of authoritarianism and expansionist awfulness.

Seen through this lens, Russia had no legitimate security concerns or interests; the West could expand NATO and cut into the Russian sphere of influence with impunity. NSC staffers and State Department officials—think Nuland, Vindeman, Hill—often were more hawkish with Russia than their Ukrainian counterparts, pressing Kiev to escalate its conflict with Moscow by yanking it further westward. Dissenting voices (like John Mearsheimer’s) were quickly shouted down. If you were a Congressional staffer, academic, or journalist who questioned the orthodoxy on Russia, you quickly found yourself without friends, allies, or even a job.

Crucially, they all seemed to make the same deadly analytical mistake, born of unchecked hostility: because their enemy is personified evil, any evil thing they can imagine their enemy doing is both probable and likely. Once they’ve gotten themselves into this trap, their very active imaginations become obstacles to dispassionate analysis—and they’re no longer much use in predicting their enemy’s actions and combatting them.

Unsurprisingly, these same people were the targets—the very easiest of marks—when the Clinton campaign launched its RussiaGate conspiracy theory narrative in the summer of 2016. They hated Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin both with such fury, they ate up the most fanciful tales of collaboration. It’s not an accident that the most degenerate of Russia fabulists are now in the news again, as if they hadn’t corrupted their analysis and betrayed the trust of their audiences.

The Ukraine issue is complicated, and it’s easy to get lost in the hall-of-mirrors. Being able to identify and weigh the propaganda emerging from the NGO Archipelago is crucial. These people all fell for an obvious hoax; they have no legitimate claim to expertise on Russia. They deserve nothing but your contempt.

What If Everyone Is Wrong About The Russian Military?

 What If Everyone Is Wrong About The Russian Military?

Derek Hunter - Townhall

Source: Alexei Nikolsky, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

As a kid, the only thing close to as tough as the United States military was those communist bastards they were protecting us from. We were tougher, of course, but since we were the good guys, we didn’t even consider invading them. Should they invade us, which we knew they wanted to do, we’d be ready to kick some commie ass! At least, that’s what we told ourselves, mostly to avoid thinking about the complete, total and worldwide nuclear annihilation. Times have changed, and so has the Russian military…or has it?

We always assumed they were as strong militarily as we were, but mostly because of parades and their size. Everyone has seen the footage of battalions marching through Red Square, huge intercontinental ballistic missiles rolling along with them in a sea of soldiers and tanks. They sure projected strength and readiness. But maybe they weren’t ready?

All we really had to go on was the Soviet Union’s word, their propaganda videos, and the fact that they could push around so small countries. But maybe they were a super-power based solely on their huge nuclear arsenal? 

We never really saw the Soviets take on another organized military, their power was largely acquired through propping up dictators and intimidation – they were very good at disappearing the disloyal and beating up the weak. 

We were told they were strong, minus the nukes, mostly because they were big, and that assumption continues to this day. But their actions in Ukraine are not that of a world-class military, not by a long-shot. It’s more like a drunken douchebag indiscriminately launching rockets, quite possibly because they lack anything with precision. We can drop a missile down a chimney with the accuracy of Santa Claus, but what if the Russians couldn’t even hit a brick in a brick factory? 

Remember what we were told about the Republican Guard in Iraq? They were the “best of the best.” Pick your Gulf War, when they started, the story was about how we’d have no real issues with the regular Iraqi troops, but when we encountered the Republican Guard, things would get hairy. They never did. The Republican Guard was as insignificant as the regular army. Both times the people in charge were completely wrong about what we were up against, the RG folded like a cheap tent. Could history be repeating itself with Russia?

They have a lot of nuclear weapons, so we have to respect that (though maybe the geniuses who’ve been wrong about everything else were also wrong about that?), but as far as their army goes, they seem pretty terrible. It’s tough to say if they’re targeting civilians or simply launching wildly because they can’t target anything – Putin being a monster doesn’t help with this. But logistically, they are absolutely a joke.

A competent military doesn’t get a 40-mile long convoy, on which most of their alleged strategy depends, stuck in the mud and out of gas for three weeks.

What I think might be at play is pretty simple: the military leadership in Russia is just as corrupt as the political leadership, because why wouldn’t it be? When the people giving you orders are dipping their hands into the pie, why wouldn’t you when whatever is left gets to you? That leads to corners being cut, to laziness. 

That’s all well and good, and you can get away with that for a very long time. But every once in a while, a propaganda video is needed or a parade must occur. Well, it’s pretty easy to get people to march in a line, especially when you get to pick the people best at it and can hide the rest. While those bad-ass, ripped soldiers in those Russian military videos clearly exist, there doesn’t seem to be that many of them. Take a look at any of the pictures of captured Russian soldiers in Ukraine. Do they look ripped or do they look pregnant and ready to retire? 

What if our government has been wrong about the Russian military all along like they were about the Iraqis? And if they were wrong about that, could they also be wrong about China?

Having a billion and a half people and a willingness to sacrifice as many as needed to achieve your objective is as much of a military strength at it is evil, but what if that’s all the Chinese military has going for it too? 

It’s hard to tell, and I don’t want to find out the only way we can every really know, but it’s something worth pondering. Maybe we’re the only military in the world that projects its actual strength? Our politicians don’t allow its use – we failed in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan because the politicians put such stupid restrictions and rules of engagement on our troops that might as well have blindfolded them – but we have the capabilities, we don’t just parade and edit videos well. 

Mao famously called the United States a “paper tiger” – appearing strong but nothing really to be afraid of. What if that applies to our enemies? I’m not sure how that changes how we act as a nation, but I can’t imagine it not having some impact. 

How to get ahead of escalation in the Russia-Ukraine war

How to get ahead of escalation in the Russia-Ukraine war

Benjamin Jensen for The Federalist

Russia’s failure to achieve its military objectives alongside increasing diplomatic and economic isolation create new escalation risks. By all accounts, Russian President Vladimir Putin is isolated and emotional, increasing the probability of miscalculation and risk-acceptant behavior, as seen in the false claims about weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine. World leaders need to start planning now for a dramatic turn and how best to disincentivize multiple escalation vectors. The world must balance punishing Russia and helping Ukraine with finding off ramps to the crisis before it’s too late.

Putin is pulling the world up the escalation ladder to compensate for the lackluster performance of the Russian military. In crisis and war, escalation refers to an increase in the intensity or scope of contention, often in a manner that crosses a key threshold. Escalation can be deliberate coercion, such as bombing civilian targets in a sadistic effort to force Ukraine to capitulate, or it can be inadvertent and even accidentalbecause of the fog, friction and miscalculation endemic in war. 

In seeking to maintain his coercive leverage, Putin is employing multiple forms of escalation. In academic literature, there are three primary means of instrumental escalation adversaries use to change the cost-benefit calculation of adversaries. First, states can violate common norms of war through acts such as seizing nuclear power plants as a form of political escalation. Second, states can increase the intensity of violence through vertical escalation, such as expanding ballistic and cruise missile strikes. Third, states can expand the geographic scope through horizontal escalation, such as Russia’s threats on display to target countries that offer Ukraine fighter jets. 

Despite its tactical setbacks, Russia retains multiple options to expand the conflict. Moscow could extend its mobilization and attack additional territory. Russia deployed roughly 50 percent of its Western Military District to Ukraine. That still leaves as much as 75 percent of its total land forces available. In Ukraine, Russia could open an additional front to cut lines of communication currently being used to move weapons through Poland to Ukraine. This attack also would pull combat forces away from Kyiv if Russian ground forces threaten Lviv. Though unlikely while it’s bogged down in Ukraine, Russia could gamble and attack a non-NATO European country such as Moldova or Finland to challenge the West. 

While all these options seem irrational given the stalled pace of the Russian war in Ukraine, they may be appealing to isolated leaders in the Kremlin afraid of appearing weak and convinced — as ridiculous as it sounds — that this is their last chance to confront the West.

Rather than escalate on land, Russia could opt for a series of air and missile strikes to signal its capabilities. Given the logistical and command and control challenges on display in the ground offensive in Ukraine, a series of surgical strikes is likely more appealing. Russia already has fired over 775 missiles in the conflict and used cruise missiles to attack bases in western Ukraine likely used to receive foreign weapons. Russia could escalate further and launch a surgical strike against an airbase in Sweden or Finland as a signal beyond NATO of the costs of supporting Ukraine. Russia could even attack a Polish airbase used to channel weapons into Ukraine. Seen in this light, recent troop movements by NATO, including deploying additional air defense assets to the Polish border make sense.

Beyond horizontal escalation, there is the risk of vertical escalation. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union used atmospheric nuclear tests to signal the West. In Ukraine, Russia has been building a web of lies to justify the use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. It is not hard to imagine a beleaguered Russian force using a tactical nuclear strike against a Ukrainian military target, more as a means of signaling the West than winning the war in Ukraine.

NATO can take actions now to shape Russian decision-making and reduce the prospects of horizontal and vertical escalation. First, diplomats and world leaders need to make sure Putin understands the consequences of using a weapon of mass destruction through both public and private communication. Diplomats must prepare and signal the suite of coercive responses in advance to make it credible. It must be a multilateral diplomatic effort that includes getting China’s buy-in. The same holds for attacking another country. Putin needs to understand the risk of moving the conflict beyond Ukraine. Just as important, his inner circle, which is likely shrinking by the day, needs to know they will pay a price for vertical and horizontal escalation.

Second, the NATO alliance must continue aggressive intelligence sharing with Ukraine and key countries such as Finland and Sweden. Sharing threat information will help these nations adopt the right military posture to make any attempt at horizontal or vertical escalation less likely to succeed. 

Last, directly and through intermediaries, NATO member states need to communicate the types of off-ramps that will end the conflict based on their consultations with Russia and Ukraine. Absent a near-term off-ramp and brokered peace deal, escalation will, counterintuitively, become more likely with each Ukrainian gain and Russian loss. 

Benjamin Jensen, Ph.D., is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Ivan Vinnyk, the former secretary of the Ukrainian Parliament Committee on National Security and Defense, and Carolina Ramos, a research associate at  CSIS, contributed to this article.

Crazy Aunt Nancy Pelosi Delivers a Riveting Commentary on the Deficit

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

Some days ago, I pondered whether Nancy Pelosi had gotten drunk before a recent presser. I’m starting to feel a lot better about that theory, after her latest performance.

The Speaker of the House had some deep, riveting thoughts on the federal budget deficit. For example, did you know that government spending actually lowers the deficit? I know, wonders never cease.

This is actually a talking point that has clearly gone out to the White House as well. On Friday, Joe Biden slammed Americans for blaming government spending for the current inflation crisis, claiming that massive, dollar-printing boondoggles like the American Rescue Plan have had no impact.

Regardless of who is saying it, though, it’s absolutely a false contention. The federal government spent $6.82 trillion in 2021 under Joe Biden. That clocks in at around 50 percent more than the United States was spending pre-pandemic (2019 spending was $4.4 trillion). To suggest that blowing that much funny money into the economy isn’t inflationary is so absurd as to call into question the pronouncer’s mental sanity.

Besides, we don’t have to wonder about this topic. With inflation now at 7.9 percent year-over-year, it is not debatable that the exploding federal budget is the major variable in increasing prices compared to the pre-pandemic years. Nothing else has changed. Yes, demand has increased following the lockdowns, but there was high demand prior to the pandemic–and inflation still remained between 1-2 percent.

As to the notion that the government spending being called for by Democrats reduces the deficit, that’s also totally false. The CBO scored the Biden-Pelosi agenda as adding several hundred billion dollars to the deficit, which was already super-sized from the prior pandemic spending mentioned above. To the extent that the deficit is being reduced at all right now, it’s only because spending is slowly returning to what are still record highs compared to pre-pandemic budgets.

For any politician to claim that government spending lowers the deficit, when it still remains at astronomical levels, is insane. It’s gaslighting of the highest order. Democrats are going to have to come up with a better way to explain why commonly bought items are so expensive right now than pretending we can spend our way out of the inflation boom the nation is suffering under. Of course, no better explanation exists because to suggest such is nonsense, so you get the outright lies Pelosi is pushing here.

Will any of the fact-checkers take her on? Of course not. They haven’t even bothered to fact-check Biden’s comments on inflation I mentioned earlier in this article. Regardless, I don’t think Pelosi’s “crazy aunt” act is very convincing for most Americans, no matter how the media covers it.

Sunday Talks, El Erian Predicts, Accurately, Inflation To Climb Beyond Ten Percent This Year

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

Mohamed El-Erian, the chief economic adviser for Allianz, got the inflation problem correct; states a forecast in line with CTH Main Street review, but then falls short on his political outlook for the solution.

Within the interview, El-Erian predicts inflation at the current CPI measure will increase from current 7.9% to over 10% this year.  That aspect is in alignment with CTH review at ground level.

Current real inflation is more than 15% across the board, if you use the CPI methodology we were using in the 70’s and 80’s.  Both the scale and the speed of the current price increases are historic.  That is why you are seeing prices on retail items jumping so high, so fast.  The price increases on highly consumable goods are in the 15 to 20% range.  WATCH:

An increase to over 10%, using current CPI measures, equals an increase of 25 to 30% in actual price (using historic measures).  Keep in mind, we have already passed through a wave of backward-looking inflation in the 25 to 30% range.  El-Erian is predicting a duplication of that scale into the remainder of 2022, I agree.  The 2020 $3 item became the 2021 $4 item, which will now become the 2022 $5.50 item.  That is our reality. It will not get better.

Where we differ from El-Erian is on the wage side and the political analysis.  Any political intervention to create govt subsidy with the goal to generate a higher workforce will backfire – bigly.  Recent historic employment statistics have not yet reflected the demand side decline in goods.  The employment data is skewed and useless because of the COVID mitigation impact on jobs.

The employment picture is only just now starting to reflect the demand side drop.  Wages will not grow and will not provide fuel for inflation.  The currently hidden workforce reductions are generating downward pressure on wages naturally.  Adding subsidies (childcare etc), to generate a higher workforce into an environment with declining available jobs, will backfire.

Sector specific unions negotiating for higher wage contracts will find themselves trying to get wage increases while the top line of the organization is dropping due to lack of demand.   Unfortunately, the AFSCME is generally immune to this problem – government spending can always expand.

This is where El-Erian’s connection to Wall Street is his blind spot.  If what he suggests were carried out, govt will print money to cover even more deficit spending (the BBB agenda). That increased money supply will create even more inflation at the same time real life wage pressures are going down because the economy is contracting, and workers are getting laid-off.

The economy, quantified by the goods/services generated (minus imports), has been contracting since mid 2021.  The govt COVID subsidies created artificial and unnatural demand for goods.  If you take the massive COVID expenditures ($5+ trillion) out of the 2021 economy, the result is a recession that began mid 2021.

That bloated chicken, which carried the inflation created by the printing, is coming home to roost.  There ain’t no way in hell to avoid it.  The recession exists, regardless of our desire to ignore it or fill the hole with more QE printing.

The inflation problem is now magnified by the need for the Fed to raise interest rates and stop purchasing our own debt.  Raising interest rates will lower investment and naturally create fewer jobs.  The economy will contract further and faster.  El-Erian accurately notes there is no positive way out of this scenario, there are bad options and worse options.  The difference between them is how slow or fast we want to take off the bandaid.

$3 – $4 bread in 2020, became $4 – $5 bread in 2021, which will become $5.50 – $6.50 bread mid-summer 2022.  Other food store averages will follow a similar rate of price increase.  The processed food inflation is settling down, however, fresh foods inflation will now take over and has only just begun.  Fresh fruits and vegetables will increase in price at roughly twice the rate of processed goods.

Chemical product price increases should level off mid-summer; however, with unleaded gasoline still on target for $7/gal [diesel $8/$9 (range)] the packaging, transportation and distribution costs will continue putting upward pressure on finished good prices.

All of these things were going to happen this year, regardless of Russia and Ukraine.  The European conflict is now just a convenient excuse to avoid blame for outcomes of the underlying policies.

This economic reality is not exclusively a U.S. issue; however, the scale of the economic problem is exclusively a U.S. issue.  The globe may drop into a recession, but our hole will be far worse.

Americans Feel Less Free and Don’t Trust Public Officials in Post-COVID Poll

Americans Feel Less Free and Don't Trust Public Officials in Post-COVID Poll

Rick Moran - PJ Media

AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

A new poll conducted by YouGov and Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and released exclusively to the New York Post reveals that a substantial percentage of Americans believe their basic freedoms are less secure than before the pandemic, and trust in our elected officials has declined substantially.

While the legal basis for our rights is unquestioned thanks to the Constitution, how those rights are protected is causing people to question whether they mean anything anymore. The poll showed that 42% feel less secure about voicing their opinions, 43% feel less secure about their freedom to protest, and 36% feel less secure about their freedom to exercise religious beliefs.

While a healthy skepticism of government power is wise in a democracy, in a true crisis public officials must make snap decisions to protect the public. Whether people follow those decisions depends, in part, on their confidence in the leaders making them. Unfortunately, when asked about every single institution or office in the YouGov/AFP poll, the majority of respondents said their trust in those institutions had dropped.

Nearly three in five Americans said the government did a “somewhat” or “very poor” job clearly communicating to the public about data or reasoning regarding any pandemic restriction or requirement. And 54% thought government officials did a “somewhat” or “very poor” job applying any restrictions or requirements to all people (including themselves) equally.

None of this is much of a surprise except, perhaps, the margins that say they feel less secure in their rights. When more than four in ten Americans feel less secure about speaking their minds or protesting, the essence of freedom is under attack.

Another surprising bit of information from the poll is the percentage of Americans who aren’t buying the necessity of the government’s crackdown on “misinformation.”

While 30% of respondents, including a bare majority of Democrats, believe the government should ban the posting of misinformation online, most Americans in the YouGov/AFP poll say they shouldn’t. And the youngest cohort in the survey, those 18 to 24, were least likely to call for an outright government ban of misinformation.

At some point in the future, there will be another crisis where public officials have to make time-sensitive trade-offs, and Americans will need to trust them to do their jobs correctly and appropriately. Sadly, after the experience of the last two years, those officials will begin with a citizenry predisposed not to trust that their civil liberties are safe in their hands.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to trust a government that doesn’t trust its citizens with the ability to tell the difference between misinformation and the truth.

Ever Wondered How Your Tax Dollars Make It To Those In Need? Check Out This Step-By-Step Guide

Babylon Bee🐝

As everyone knows, the only possible way to help the underprivileged is to give money to the government and let them do it for you. But have you ever wondered how bureaucrats help your hard-earned dollars make it all the way to the people who need it most?

Let The Babylon Bee break down the whole process for you:

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1) The IRS asks you to please take a wild guess at how much money you should pay them.

2) The IRS takes this amount of money. If you guessed the wrong amount, straight to jail!

3) Your money goes to the IRS, who then rolls a 20-sided die to see if they should use your money to pay an auditor to see if you gave them the correct amount of money. 

4) If your money makes it past this step, it goes to the Treasury Department. They will then use your money as collateral to borrow a larger sum of money from China.

5) China will use this holding of debt to ensure no one opposes their heinous crimes against humanity. Clever! 

6) Before giving it to those in need, the government allocates the money for the following important uses:

• Predator drones to defeat international aid workers and their families
• NIH funding for a new deadlier coronavirus
• Transgender surgery for indigenous preschoolers 

7) Now, it's time to help the underprivileged! If there's any money left over, the government uses it to fund a massive bureaucracy that oversees helping the underprivileged. 

8) After paying the salary and benefits of the 287,000 people in the bureaucracy, oh no! There's no money left! It's time to raise taxes!

9) We need to raise taxes to help the poor! Give us more money! What's that? You're out of money? 

10) The government declares that Elon Musk is a freeloader and we need to raise his taxes.

11) The underprivileged are reminded to vote for Democrats so they can raise taxes to repeat steps 1 through 10.

Congratulations! You now know where your money is going! Doesn't that make you feel better? Now make sure and start saving money for the next tax season!