“New Report Shows Teen Abortion Rate Has Dropped a Whopping 82%”
“Last week, the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute released long-term data on rates of pregnancies, births, and abortions in the U.S. The national data range from 1973 to 2017 and include breakdowns by age demographics, and the state-level data range from 1988 to 2017.
These statistics are especially helpful because, while the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) provide some information about the age demographics of women obtaining abortions, their data are incomplete. For instance, the CDC’s 2018 Abortion Surveillance Report did not include data from California, Maryland, New Hampshire, and Wyoming.
As a result, this new Guttmacher report provides interesting information for understanding U.S. abortion trends. In 2012, my Lozier Institute colleague Susan Wills analyzed CDC data and found that the largest abortion-rate declines were taking place among younger age demographics.
These new data suggest that the trend is continuing, as the report shows that between 1980 and 2017, the abortion rate for females between the ages of 15 and 19 fell by more than 82 percent. The abortion rate for 35-to-39-year-olds fell by only 8.5 percent during the same timespan.
The large reduction in the teen abortion rate is partly the result of a higher percentage of pregnant teenagers choosing life for their preborn children. According to these new statistics, the percentage of pregnancies carried to term by women ages 15 to 19 between 1980 and 2017 increased by more than 10 percent.
An even more important reason for the drop in the teen abortion rate is that teenagers are now much less likely to become pregnant in the first place. According to Guttmacher, the teen pregnancy rate peaked in 1990 at 117.6 pregnancies per thousand teenaged females (girls 15 to 19). Since then, the teen pregnancy rate has declined by a whopping 73 percent.
This substantial long-term decline in the teen pregnancy rate in the United States is an important public-policy success story. Groups that support legal abortion and their allies in the mainstream media are quick to credit increases in contraception use for these changes. But even some left-wing media outlets such as Vox have admitted that there are other factors, such as the significant, durable, long-term decline in teenage sexual activity.”
“There is no tactic pro-abortion Democrats in Congress won’t use to impose their radical agenda on an unsuspecting public. Once again they’re trying to revive the Equal Rights Amendment by obliterating a deadline that clearly expired four decades ago.
The reason could not have less to do with true equality. As written, the ERA would insert a right to abortion on demand, paid for by taxpayers, in the U.S. Constitution. Pro-abortion lobbying groups and even courts in states like New Mexico already interpret it that way, and efforts to make the amendment abortion-neutral have been rebuffed.”
——-
“In 1972, when the state General Assembly ratified the ERA, its momentum seemed unstoppable. Understandably so – the ideal of equality under the law is our heritage as Americans. But then came Roe. The possibility that, in a single day, the court could strike down pro-life protections across the country and even force taxpayers to fund abortions must have seemed remote to many Americans at the time. Suddenly, it was a stark reality.
By 1974, Tennessee took back its ratification, joining Nebraska. Two more states followed, and one allowed a sunset provision to expire. The deadline set by Congress came and went, and the ERA was not added to the Constitution.
Fast-forward to the present day. Three states that belatedly “ratified” the ERA sued to try to force its adoption – a key element of pro-abortion Democrats’ strategy. Tennessee moved to intervene in the case, arguing that our vote to rescind should be honored. Earlier this month, we won. A federal court judge appointed by President Obama agreed that the deadline was valid and the old ERA null and void.
Pelosi Democrats’ attempt to do an end run around the constitutional process violates the rights of all Americans, in service of an agenda that is deeply anti-life and anti-woman. This is the very opposite of equality. We are disappointed that the resolution to revive the ERA passed the House but proud of those who voted no. We stand together in urging every member of the Senate, on both sides of the aisle, to say no to the ERA.”
“Wisconsin Assembly to Vote on Election Investigation
The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Assembly plans to pass a resolution that will authorize an investigation into the 2020 presidential election that President Joe Biden narrowly won in the state.
The resolution, opposed by Democrats, is needed to give the committee authorization if it decides to issue subpoenas to compel testimony and gather documents, said Rep. Joe Sanfelippo. He is vice-chairman of the Assembly elections and campaign committee that would conduct the probe.
Voting to authorize an investigation comes after Republicans last month ordered an audit of the election results. Biden defeated Donald Trump by fewer than 21,000 votes in Wisconsin. The election outcome was affirmed by a partial recount and several lawsuits brought by Trump and his allies alleging wrongdoing were rejected by state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. No significant problems were found with the state’s voting machines after audits and recounts in both 2016 and in 2020.
Earlier this month, Republicans raised new questions about how the election was administered in Green Bay and Brown County. The Assembly elections committee held a hearing on those issues, but did not invite any election officials accused of wrongdoing to testify. Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich called it a “Stalinist show trial” and defended his city’s handling of the election.
Democratic Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz said the Assembly committee investigation was an attempt to undermine the public’s trust and faith in elections.
Sanfelippo said at a news conference Tuesday that he hoped the committee would not need to subpoena anyone to testify. He said it was in everyone’s best interests to be open and forthcoming.”
Like I said all along, she violated her professions ethics and rules, and deserved to be fired for it.
“Yale Psychiatrist Who Declared Trump Mentally Unfit Has Been Fired, and She’s Suing
“your repeated violations of the APA’s Goldwater Rule and your inappropriate transfer of the duty to warn from the treatment setting to national politics raised significant doubts about your understanding of crucial ethical and legal principles in psychiatry”
Former professor says Yale fired her over tweet on Trump, Dershowitz
Bandy Lee MED ’94 DIV ’95, a formerly Yale-affiliated faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry in School of Medicine, filed a complaint against the University on Monday alleging “unlawful termination… due to her exercise of free speech about the dangers of Donald Trump’s presidency.”
University spokesperson Karen Peart declined to comment on the specifics of the case. Yale was the only named defendant.
Lee’s complaint alleges that Yale fired her in response to a January 2020 tweet that characterized “just about all” of former president Donald Trump’s supporters as suffering from “shared psychosis” and said that Alan Dershowitz, a lawyer on Trump’s legal team, had “wholly taken on Trump’s symptoms by contagion.” Dershowitz responded to the tweet with a letter to Yale administrators, in which he complained that Lee’s tweet constituted “a serious violation of the ethics rules of the American Psychiatric Association” and requested that she be disciplined.
Diagnosing people from afar is a big no-no in psychiatry. They even have a description for that. It’s called the ‘Goldwater Rule.’
Lee’s superiors at Yale warned her about it, and it looks as though that was one of the factors in her firing:
“Although the committee does not doubt that you are acting on the basis of your personal moral code,” the letter read, “your repeated violations of the APA’s Goldwater Rule and your inappropriate transfer of the duty to warn from the treatment setting to national politics raised significant doubts about your understanding of crucial ethical and legal principles in psychiatry.”
The American Psychiatric Association’s Goldwater Rule states that it is unethical for psychiatrists to comment on a public figure’s mental faculties in an official capacity unless granted permission or after a medical examination.”
LOL. @RoyBlunt just nuked the Democrats by asking a Dem witness why a Utah law removing dead voters based on Social Security numbers was “voter suppression.” Witness: because federal government makes mistakes. Blunt: so why do you want feds to run elections? @amyklobuchar was mad
“The Los Angeles Times revealed late Tuesday it is receiving a $10 million loan from the Paycheck Protection Program — the maximum allowed under a series of federal bailouts designed to help businesses devastated by the pandemic.
LA Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong and the paper’s president, Chris Argentieri, have scheduled a virtual town hall for Thursday morning. While sources said the town hall will likely focus on plans for the fresh funds, some insiders speculated that the long, drawn-out search for a new top editor also might be over.”
——–
“When Soon-Shiong acquired the LA Times and San Diego Union Tribune from Tribune Publishing for $500 million in June 2018, the paper was throwing off $50 million a year in profit.
Sources estimate the papers are now losing $50 million a year.”
“Grassley To DoJ: Why Has No One Been Charged With Crimes Over False Kavanaugh Allegations?”
“Good question, especially since this happened two and a half years ago. Will the Department of Justice enforce false-statements laws consistently, or only when special counsels are involved? Thanks to Senate Democrats’ sandbagging in the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process, a number of people came out of the woodwork to make clearly false allegations to the Senate as a way to derail his appointment to the Supreme Court.
Grassley wants to know when they will face charges — and it’s not the first time the ranking Senate Judiciary member has asked (via John Hawkins and Dan Bongino):
On October 8, 2019, several colleagues and I wrote a letter to Attorney General Barr and Director Wray requesting an update concerning their handling of criminal referrals made by the Committee following its investigation into allegations of decades-old misconduct by then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh.[1] To date, the Justice Department and FBI have failed to respond to our letter and have failed to apprise the Committee whether, and to what extent, any steps have been taken to investigate and hold accountable those individuals who criminally interfered with the Committee’s investigation.
These failures are entirely unacceptable. As my colleagues and I stressed in our previous letter, the Committee’s four criminal referrals, dated September 29, 2018, October 25, 2018, October 26, 2018, and November 2, 2018, were not made lightly. Those referrals highlighted serious cases in which individuals made materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements to Committee investigators.
For example, one of the referrals related to an individual from Rhode Island who falsely alleged to Congress that Judge Kavanaugh had assaulted a friend on a boat, only to later admit on social media that he lied about the event.[2] Two referrals related to allegations made by Mr. Michael Avenatti and his client, Ms. Julie Swetnick, who accused Judge Kavanaugh of being involved in gang rape activities. The Committee identified no verifiable evidence to support the allegations. The Committee found that Mr. Avenatti, who has since been convicted on felony extortion charges, and his client, Ms. Swetnick, had a long history of credibility issues and may have criminally conspired to mislead the Committee regarding those allegations and obstruct its investigation.[3] A final referral related to Ms. Judy Munro-Leighton, a woman who claimed to be the author of an anonymous letter stating that Judge Kavanaugh and a friend raped her “several times each” in the back seat of a car. Ms. Munro-Leighton later admitted that she falsely claimed that she was the author of the letter and its allegations and only claimed authorship of the letter “as a way to grab attention.”[4] These false allegations materially impeded the Committee’s work and diverted important Committee resources during its time-sensitive investigation.
Note well that while Grassley names names, there is one name missing from this letter. The Judiciary Committee never referred Christine Blasey Ford for prosecution, for the same reason that her testimony shouldn’t have been offered at all — there is no evidence to either corroborate it or disprove it. The witnesses Ford cited in her allegation all deny ever witnessing any such assault or even recalling Ford and Kavanaugh together at the same party. Ford’s allegations are too vague to credit and also to challenge in any legal form.
What about the others? It seems quite strange that nothing has been done about Avenatti. The now-disgraced attorney went waaaaaaay out of his way not just to represent Swetnick and her absurd rape-gang allegations, but to use those to promote himself into media celebrity-hood and a brief moment of being a potential Democratic presidential contender. The other false-testimony suspects apparently admitted to lying for their own purposes, which should make for easy prosecution, if the DoJ was so inclined.
Why weren’t they so inclined for the last two years? ”
“5 of the biggest for-profit colleges that were accused of defrauding their students”
“Last week, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona canceled $1 billion in student loan debt for about 72,000 defrauded borrowers.
The decision, his first major one as President Joe Biden’s education chief, came after a series of investigations over the past decade of for-profit schools for engaging in fraudulent behavior related to federal loans. Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute were the main institutions connected with the canceled debt, but others were similarly accused, according to a series of legal settlements.
Since 2015, more than 200,000 defrauded students filed claims for a complete discharge of their loans, and the Education Department approved nearly 28,000 claims in the six-month period before January 2017. Yet under former President Donald Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, claims processing slowed dramatically and in many cases halted. Cardona said the new process will streamline debt relief determinations for about 72,000 borrowers with approved claims to date.
Under Cardona’s new rule, anyone with a previously approved claim is now eligible for 100% student-loan forgiveness. Those who haven’t submitted claims but believe they have been defrauded can apply for forgiveness on the borrower defense website.
“For more than four years, defrauded borrowers and their families have lived under a cloud of education debt that they should not have to repay,” House Education and Labor Committee Chair Bobby Scott said in a statement. “I applaud the Biden Administration for doing the right thing by making these borrowers whole, and I can only imagine the mixture of joy and relief they are feeling today. This announcement is life-changing for tens of thousands of people across the country.”
Here’s what Corinthian and ITT did, along with the other notable investigations of fraud among other major for-profit schools:
Corinthian Colleges
Founded in 1995, Corinthian Colleges once had more than 100 campuses across the country, with 74,000 students enrolled. In 2014, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau accused it of illegally collecting high-interest private loans that it marketed to students.
The CFPB’s action coincided with the filing of more than 100 lawsuits in federal court about Corinthian’s practices, and the company lost federal funding because of deceptive marketing and lying about its graduation rates, with high loan defaults being one result. It filed for bankruptcy protection in 2015.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts found in a 2016 investigation that 80,000 former Corinthian students are still under some form of debt collection from the government.
When it shut down, the company was liable for $531 million in student loans.
ITT Technical Institute
In 2016, the government cut off ITT’s access to millions of dollars in federal loans and grants, and the institution shut down shortly afterward, ending its 50-year history.
The Securities and Exchange Commission had taken ITT to court in 2015 for deceiving investors about high rates of late payment and defaults on student loans.
Last year, 48 state attorneys general and the CFPB secured more than $330 million in private student-loan forgiveness for 35,000 former ITT Tech students. “
Teen abortion/pregnancy: and so we learn that social media and gaming are good things! Children too busy on their phones and lacking social skills to get pregnant.
My son-in-law has tried twice to get some student loan reimbursement. He qualifies (as a teacher in a minority school) according to all they have read. They were promised to get them, but nothing both times. I told them to contact their representative, but they have not done so. I think many of these programs only go to certain people. They sound good on paper, but….
Kathleena, my BFF Dave Ramsey frequently gets calls from folks asking if they should count on those programs for student loan reimbursement and he says that the success rate is dismal.
I just watched most of that “news conference “ of Biden’s. That was not a news conference! It was sickening, orchestrated, outrageous. How many “news reporters” were in that room? 5?! When are people going to wake up ?!
Wandering Views 
Good news.
But consider the source….
https://www.lifenews.com/2021/03/23/new-report-shows-teen-abortion-rate-has-dropped-a-whopping-82/
“New Report Shows Teen Abortion Rate Has Dropped a Whopping 82%”
“Last week, the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute released long-term data on rates of pregnancies, births, and abortions in the U.S. The national data range from 1973 to 2017 and include breakdowns by age demographics, and the state-level data range from 1988 to 2017.
These statistics are especially helpful because, while the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) provide some information about the age demographics of women obtaining abortions, their data are incomplete. For instance, the CDC’s 2018 Abortion Surveillance Report did not include data from California, Maryland, New Hampshire, and Wyoming.
As a result, this new Guttmacher report provides interesting information for understanding U.S. abortion trends. In 2012, my Lozier Institute colleague Susan Wills analyzed CDC data and found that the largest abortion-rate declines were taking place among younger age demographics.
These new data suggest that the trend is continuing, as the report shows that between 1980 and 2017, the abortion rate for females between the ages of 15 and 19 fell by more than 82 percent. The abortion rate for 35-to-39-year-olds fell by only 8.5 percent during the same timespan.
The large reduction in the teen abortion rate is partly the result of a higher percentage of pregnant teenagers choosing life for their preborn children. According to these new statistics, the percentage of pregnancies carried to term by women ages 15 to 19 between 1980 and 2017 increased by more than 10 percent.
An even more important reason for the drop in the teen abortion rate is that teenagers are now much less likely to become pregnant in the first place. According to Guttmacher, the teen pregnancy rate peaked in 1990 at 117.6 pregnancies per thousand teenaged females (girls 15 to 19). Since then, the teen pregnancy rate has declined by a whopping 73 percent.
This substantial long-term decline in the teen pregnancy rate in the United States is an important public-policy success story. Groups that support legal abortion and their allies in the mainstream media are quick to credit increases in contraception use for these changes. But even some left-wing media outlets such as Vox have admitted that there are other factors, such as the significant, durable, long-term decline in teenage sexual activity.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
So Democrats have already found away to increase those numbers. Molech will be pleased with them.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/03/24/revived_era_push_is_an_end_run_by_abortion_advocates_145463.html
“There is no tactic pro-abortion Democrats in Congress won’t use to impose their radical agenda on an unsuspecting public. Once again they’re trying to revive the Equal Rights Amendment by obliterating a deadline that clearly expired four decades ago.
The reason could not have less to do with true equality. As written, the ERA would insert a right to abortion on demand, paid for by taxpayers, in the U.S. Constitution. Pro-abortion lobbying groups and even courts in states like New Mexico already interpret it that way, and efforts to make the amendment abortion-neutral have been rebuffed.”
——-
“In 1972, when the state General Assembly ratified the ERA, its momentum seemed unstoppable. Understandably so – the ideal of equality under the law is our heritage as Americans. But then came Roe. The possibility that, in a single day, the court could strike down pro-life protections across the country and even force taxpayers to fund abortions must have seemed remote to many Americans at the time. Suddenly, it was a stark reality.
By 1974, Tennessee took back its ratification, joining Nebraska. Two more states followed, and one allowed a sunset provision to expire. The deadline set by Congress came and went, and the ERA was not added to the Constitution.
Fast-forward to the present day. Three states that belatedly “ratified” the ERA sued to try to force its adoption – a key element of pro-abortion Democrats’ strategy. Tennessee moved to intervene in the case, arguing that our vote to rescind should be honored. Earlier this month, we won. A federal court judge appointed by President Obama agreed that the deadline was valid and the old ERA null and void.
Pelosi Democrats’ attempt to do an end run around the constitutional process violates the rights of all Americans, in service of an agenda that is deeply anti-life and anti-woman. This is the very opposite of equality. We are disappointed that the resolution to revive the ERA passed the House but proud of those who voted no. We stand together in urging every member of the Senate, on both sides of the aisle, to say no to the ERA.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Late to the party.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/wisconsin/articles/2021-03-23/wisconsin-assembly-to-vote-on-election-investigation
“Wisconsin Assembly to Vote on Election Investigation
The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Assembly plans to pass a resolution that will authorize an investigation into the 2020 presidential election that President Joe Biden narrowly won in the state.
The resolution, opposed by Democrats, is needed to give the committee authorization if it decides to issue subpoenas to compel testimony and gather documents, said Rep. Joe Sanfelippo. He is vice-chairman of the Assembly elections and campaign committee that would conduct the probe.
Voting to authorize an investigation comes after Republicans last month ordered an audit of the election results. Biden defeated Donald Trump by fewer than 21,000 votes in Wisconsin. The election outcome was affirmed by a partial recount and several lawsuits brought by Trump and his allies alleging wrongdoing were rejected by state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. No significant problems were found with the state’s voting machines after audits and recounts in both 2016 and in 2020.
Earlier this month, Republicans raised new questions about how the election was administered in Green Bay and Brown County. The Assembly elections committee held a hearing on those issues, but did not invite any election officials accused of wrongdoing to testify. Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich called it a “Stalinist show trial” and defended his city’s handling of the election.
Democratic Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz said the Assembly committee investigation was an attempt to undermine the public’s trust and faith in elections.
Sanfelippo said at a news conference Tuesday that he hoped the committee would not need to subpoena anyone to testify. He said it was in everyone’s best interests to be open and forthcoming.”
———
Yeah, good luck with that.
LikeLiked by 1 person
GrandPa needs a nap.
https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1374805707069984770
LikeLiked by 1 person
Compare and contrast.
The media is garbage.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Couldn’t happen to a better fraud. 🙂
Like I said all along, she violated her professions ethics and rules, and deserved to be fired for it.
“Yale Psychiatrist Who Declared Trump Mentally Unfit Has Been Fired, and She’s Suing
“your repeated violations of the APA’s Goldwater Rule and your inappropriate transfer of the duty to warn from the treatment setting to national politics raised significant doubts about your understanding of crucial ethical and legal principles in psychiatry”
https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/03/yale-psychiatrist-who-declared-trump-mentally-unfit-has-been-fired-and-shes-suing/
“Yale Daily News reports:
Former professor says Yale fired her over tweet on Trump, Dershowitz
Bandy Lee MED ’94 DIV ’95, a formerly Yale-affiliated faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry in School of Medicine, filed a complaint against the University on Monday alleging “unlawful termination… due to her exercise of free speech about the dangers of Donald Trump’s presidency.”
University spokesperson Karen Peart declined to comment on the specifics of the case. Yale was the only named defendant.
Lee’s complaint alleges that Yale fired her in response to a January 2020 tweet that characterized “just about all” of former president Donald Trump’s supporters as suffering from “shared psychosis” and said that Alan Dershowitz, a lawyer on Trump’s legal team, had “wholly taken on Trump’s symptoms by contagion.” Dershowitz responded to the tweet with a letter to Yale administrators, in which he complained that Lee’s tweet constituted “a serious violation of the ethics rules of the American Psychiatric Association” and requested that she be disciplined.
Diagnosing people from afar is a big no-no in psychiatry. They even have a description for that. It’s called the ‘Goldwater Rule.’
Lee’s superiors at Yale warned her about it, and it looks as though that was one of the factors in her firing:
“Although the committee does not doubt that you are acting on the basis of your personal moral code,” the letter read, “your repeated violations of the APA’s Goldwater Rule and your inappropriate transfer of the duty to warn from the treatment setting to national politics raised significant doubts about your understanding of crucial ethical and legal principles in psychiatry.”
The American Psychiatric Association’s Goldwater Rule states that it is unethical for psychiatrists to comment on a public figure’s mental faculties in an official capacity unless granted permission or after a medical examination.”
—-
Like I said…..
LikeLiked by 2 people
You mad Amy?
Good. 🙂
———
https://twitter.com/SavageNoMore/status/1374749659638431744
——–
LikeLiked by 3 people
They need taxpayer money because their product is mostly garbage.
Maybe fix that, you won’t need taxpayer cash. Just a thought…..
“LA Times receives $10M PPP loan amid rumors editor search is over”
https://nypost.com/2021/03/24/la-times-receives-10-million-ppp-loan/?utm_source=NYPTwitter&utm_medium=SocialFlow&utm_campaign=SocialFlow
“The Los Angeles Times revealed late Tuesday it is receiving a $10 million loan from the Paycheck Protection Program — the maximum allowed under a series of federal bailouts designed to help businesses devastated by the pandemic.
LA Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong and the paper’s president, Chris Argentieri, have scheduled a virtual town hall for Thursday morning. While sources said the town hall will likely focus on plans for the fresh funds, some insiders speculated that the long, drawn-out search for a new top editor also might be over.”
——–
“When Soon-Shiong acquired the LA Times and San Diego Union Tribune from Tribune Publishing for $500 million in June 2018, the paper was throwing off $50 million a year in profit.
Sources estimate the papers are now losing $50 million a year.”
LikeLike
Good question.
The answer: Because we have 2 systems/standards of justice in this country. One for the connected, and one for the rest of us.
https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2021/03/24/grassley-doj-no-one-charged-crimes-false-kavanaugh-allegations/
“Grassley To DoJ: Why Has No One Been Charged With Crimes Over False Kavanaugh Allegations?”
“Good question, especially since this happened two and a half years ago. Will the Department of Justice enforce false-statements laws consistently, or only when special counsels are involved? Thanks to Senate Democrats’ sandbagging in the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process, a number of people came out of the woodwork to make clearly false allegations to the Senate as a way to derail his appointment to the Supreme Court.
Grassley wants to know when they will face charges — and it’s not the first time the ranking Senate Judiciary member has asked (via John Hawkins and Dan Bongino):
On October 8, 2019, several colleagues and I wrote a letter to Attorney General Barr and Director Wray requesting an update concerning their handling of criminal referrals made by the Committee following its investigation into allegations of decades-old misconduct by then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh.[1] To date, the Justice Department and FBI have failed to respond to our letter and have failed to apprise the Committee whether, and to what extent, any steps have been taken to investigate and hold accountable those individuals who criminally interfered with the Committee’s investigation.
These failures are entirely unacceptable. As my colleagues and I stressed in our previous letter, the Committee’s four criminal referrals, dated September 29, 2018, October 25, 2018, October 26, 2018, and November 2, 2018, were not made lightly. Those referrals highlighted serious cases in which individuals made materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements to Committee investigators.
For example, one of the referrals related to an individual from Rhode Island who falsely alleged to Congress that Judge Kavanaugh had assaulted a friend on a boat, only to later admit on social media that he lied about the event.[2] Two referrals related to allegations made by Mr. Michael Avenatti and his client, Ms. Julie Swetnick, who accused Judge Kavanaugh of being involved in gang rape activities. The Committee identified no verifiable evidence to support the allegations. The Committee found that Mr. Avenatti, who has since been convicted on felony extortion charges, and his client, Ms. Swetnick, had a long history of credibility issues and may have criminally conspired to mislead the Committee regarding those allegations and obstruct its investigation.[3] A final referral related to Ms. Judy Munro-Leighton, a woman who claimed to be the author of an anonymous letter stating that Judge Kavanaugh and a friend raped her “several times each” in the back seat of a car. Ms. Munro-Leighton later admitted that she falsely claimed that she was the author of the letter and its allegations and only claimed authorship of the letter “as a way to grab attention.”[4] These false allegations materially impeded the Committee’s work and diverted important Committee resources during its time-sensitive investigation.
Note well that while Grassley names names, there is one name missing from this letter. The Judiciary Committee never referred Christine Blasey Ford for prosecution, for the same reason that her testimony shouldn’t have been offered at all — there is no evidence to either corroborate it or disprove it. The witnesses Ford cited in her allegation all deny ever witnessing any such assault or even recalling Ford and Kavanaugh together at the same party. Ford’s allegations are too vague to credit and also to challenge in any legal form.
What about the others? It seems quite strange that nothing has been done about Avenatti. The now-disgraced attorney went waaaaaaay out of his way not just to represent Swetnick and her absurd rape-gang allegations, but to use those to promote himself into media celebrity-hood and a brief moment of being a potential Democratic presidential contender. The other false-testimony suspects apparently admitted to lying for their own purposes, which should make for easy prosecution, if the DoJ was so inclined.
Why weren’t they so inclined for the last two years? ”
———–
Why?
See above….
LikeLiked by 2 people
It ain’t just this bunch that need reigning in.
https://www.businessinsider.com/for-profit-colleges-alleged-fraud-student-loans-debt-cancelation-education-2021-3
“5 of the biggest for-profit colleges that were accused of defrauding their students”
“Last week, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona canceled $1 billion in student loan debt for about 72,000 defrauded borrowers.
The decision, his first major one as President Joe Biden’s education chief, came after a series of investigations over the past decade of for-profit schools for engaging in fraudulent behavior related to federal loans. Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute were the main institutions connected with the canceled debt, but others were similarly accused, according to a series of legal settlements.
Since 2015, more than 200,000 defrauded students filed claims for a complete discharge of their loans, and the Education Department approved nearly 28,000 claims in the six-month period before January 2017. Yet under former President Donald Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, claims processing slowed dramatically and in many cases halted. Cardona said the new process will streamline debt relief determinations for about 72,000 borrowers with approved claims to date.
Under Cardona’s new rule, anyone with a previously approved claim is now eligible for 100% student-loan forgiveness. Those who haven’t submitted claims but believe they have been defrauded can apply for forgiveness on the borrower defense website.
“For more than four years, defrauded borrowers and their families have lived under a cloud of education debt that they should not have to repay,” House Education and Labor Committee Chair Bobby Scott said in a statement. “I applaud the Biden Administration for doing the right thing by making these borrowers whole, and I can only imagine the mixture of joy and relief they are feeling today. This announcement is life-changing for tens of thousands of people across the country.”
Here’s what Corinthian and ITT did, along with the other notable investigations of fraud among other major for-profit schools:
Corinthian Colleges
Founded in 1995, Corinthian Colleges once had more than 100 campuses across the country, with 74,000 students enrolled. In 2014, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau accused it of illegally collecting high-interest private loans that it marketed to students.
The CFPB’s action coincided with the filing of more than 100 lawsuits in federal court about Corinthian’s practices, and the company lost federal funding because of deceptive marketing and lying about its graduation rates, with high loan defaults being one result. It filed for bankruptcy protection in 2015.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts found in a 2016 investigation that 80,000 former Corinthian students are still under some form of debt collection from the government.
When it shut down, the company was liable for $531 million in student loans.
ITT Technical Institute
In 2016, the government cut off ITT’s access to millions of dollars in federal loans and grants, and the institution shut down shortly afterward, ending its 50-year history.
The Securities and Exchange Commission had taken ITT to court in 2015 for deceiving investors about high rates of late payment and defaults on student loans.
Last year, 48 state attorneys general and the CFPB secured more than $330 million in private student-loan forgiveness for 35,000 former ITT Tech students. “
LikeLike
Teen abortion/pregnancy: and so we learn that social media and gaming are good things! Children too busy on their phones and lacking social skills to get pregnant.
LikeLike
My son-in-law has tried twice to get some student loan reimbursement. He qualifies (as a teacher in a minority school) according to all they have read. They were promised to get them, but nothing both times. I told them to contact their representative, but they have not done so. I think many of these programs only go to certain people. They sound good on paper, but….
LikeLike
Kathleena, my BFF Dave Ramsey frequently gets calls from folks asking if they should count on those programs for student loan reimbursement and he says that the success rate is dismal.
LikeLike
I just watched most of that “news conference “ of Biden’s. That was not a news conference! It was sickening, orchestrated, outrageous. How many “news reporters” were in that room? 5?! When are people going to wake up ?!
LikeLike