The Clinton Foundation

by

News/Politics 6-11-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. This is the problem with these secretive deals, which most haven’t read (again). It’s the unknown details which come back to haunt you. Establishment Republicans probably like it because it provides them cover to do what they want to do anyway, which is to expand immigration. 

From Breitbart  “Discovered inside the huge tranche of secretive Obamatrade documents released by Wikileaks are key details on how technically any Republican voting for Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) that would fast-track trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal would technically also be voting to massively expand President Obama’s executive authority when it comes to immigration matters.

The mainstream media covered the Wikileaks document dump extensively, but did not mention the immigration chapter contained within it, so Breitbart News took the documents to immigration experts to get their take on it. Nobody has figured how big a deal the documents uncovered by Wikileaks are until now. (See below)

The president’s Trade in Services Act (TiSA) documents, which is one of the three different close-to-completely-negotiated deals that would be fast-tracked making up the president’s trade agreement, show Obamatrade in fact unilaterally alters current U.S. immigration law. TiSA, like TPP or the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) deals, are international trade agreements that President Obama is trying to force through to final approval. The way he can do so is by getting Congress to give him fast-track authority through TPA.

TiSA is even more secretive than TPP. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill can review the text of TPP in a secret, secured room inside the Capitol—and in some cases can bring staffers who have high enough security clearances—but with TiSA, no such draft text is available.

Voting for TPA, of course, would essentially ensure the final passage of each TPP, T-TIP, and TiSA by Congress, since in the history of fast-track any deal that’s ever started on fast-track has been approved. Roughly 10 pages of this TiSA agreement document leak are specifically about immigration.

“The existence of these ten pages on immigration in the Trade and Services Agreement make it absolutely clear in my mind that the administration is negotiating immigration – and for them to say they are not – they have a lot of explaining to do based on the actual text in this agreement,” Rosemary Jenks, the Director of Government Relations at Numbers USA, told Breitbart News following her review of these documents.”

______________________________________

2. Anybody shocked?

From TheWallStJournal  “Last September the Obama administration produced an FBI report that said mass shooting attacks and deaths were up sharply — by an average annual rate of about 16% between 2000 and 2013. Moreover, the problem was worsening. “The findings establish an increasing frequency of incidents,” said the authors. “During the first 7 years included in the study, an average of 6.4 incidents occurred annually. In the last 7 years of the study, that average increased to 16.4 incidents annually.”

The White House could not possibly have been more pleased with the media reaction to these findings, which were prominently featured by the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, the Washington Post and other major outlets. The FBI report landed six weeks before the midterm elections, and the administration was hoping that the gun-control issue would help drive Democratic turnout.

But late last week, J. Pete Blair and M. Hunter Martaindale, two academics at Texas State University who co-authored the FBI report, acknowledged that “our data is imperfect.” They said that the news media “got it wrong” last year when they “mistakenly reported mass shootings were on the rise.”

Mind you, the authors did not issue this mea culpa in the major news outlets that supposedly misreported the original findings. Instead, the authors published it in ACJS Today, an academic journal published by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. “Because official data did not contain the information we needed, we had to develop our own,” wrote Messrs. Blair and Martaindale. “This required choices between various options with various strengths and weaknesses.” You don’t say.

John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center—who has studied FBI crime data for three decades—told me in an interview that the FBI report is better understood as a political document than as a work of serious social science. For example, the authors chose the year 2000 as their starting point “even though anyone who has studied these trends knows that 2000 and 2001 were unusually quiet and had few mass shootings.” Data going back to the mid-1970s is readily available but was ignored. How come? Over the past 40 years, there has been no statistically significant increase in mass shootings in the U.S.”

______________________________________

3. Again, is anyone shocked? Nope.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “State Department Inspector General officials edited out passages of a high-profile report in 2013 that could have embarrassed Hillary Clinton just days before she quit President Obama’s Cabinet.

The officials excised details of a cover up of misconduct by Clinton’s security team.

The edits raise concerns that investigators were subjected to “undue influence” from agency officials.

The Washington Examiner obtained earlier drafts of the report which differ markedly from the final version. References to specific cases in which high-level State officials intervened and descriptions of the extent and frequency of those interventions appear in several early drafts but were later eliminated.

The unexplained gaps in the final version, and the removal of passages that would have damaged the State Department, call into question the independence of Harold Geisel, who was State’s temporary inspector general throughout Clinton’s four years at the head of the department.

The drafts were provided to the Examiner by Richard Higbie, a senior criminal investigator at the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, after he said he disclosed the documents to several members of Congress and multiple congressional committees under federal whistleblower protections.

Higbie is presently suing the State Department for retaliation.”

______________________________________

4. Hillary appears to have been providing favors for Clinton Foundation donors even back when she was a Senator.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “Hillary Rodham Clinton’s efforts to provide favors to major donors to her husband’s global charity or her own political career stretch back far earlier than her tenure as America’s top diplomat, dating to the time she served as a U.S. senator and had the power to earmark federal funds and influence legislation, records show.

For instance, Mrs. Clinton introduced a bill when she was New York’s junior senator that allowed a donor to the Clinton Foundation to use tax-exempt bonds to build a shopping center in Syracuse, New York, public records show.

She also went to bat for Freddie Mac, working to defeat legislation that would have subjected the mortgage giant to tougher regulations before the housing bubble burst and led to a major recession. That same year, Freddie Mac donated $50,000 to $100,000 to her husband’s charity, originally called the William J. Clinton Foundation records show.”

“Mrs. Clinton also used her leverage as a senator to help persuade the Chinese government to reduce tariffs on Corning Inc.’s fiber optic products. The central New York company’s employees and executives contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to her campaigns and political action committee.

Analysts on political money have said the pattern of Mrs. Clinton’s intervention on behalf of donors to her husband’s charity raise troubling ethical questions.”

______________________________________

5. Apparently his hometown of Chicago is where Obama learned to use fuzzy math. It’s one of the few courses required. 🙄

From HotAir  “Have you heard the good news? (No.. not that Good News.) The high school graduation rate in Chicago has finally started going back up as of the last full year of available records. (2012-2013) It jumped up from 61% to 63%, which still isn’t really close to the national rate of 81%, but hey… at least it’s improving, right?

According to an investigation done by NPR (of all places) the news might not be quite as sunny and cheerful as the headlines would indicate. Graduating more students isn’t really a positive accomplishment if the graduates in question are making it out the door on a technicality and are not prepared for either college or a job. And in Chicago, that seems to be the case far too often.

First of all, the “percentage who graduate” isn’t accurate if you mislabel a lot of the dropouts.

Basically, we found that many high schools in the city were mislabeling students when they left. They were saying they were moving out of town or going to private schools when, in reality, they were enrolling at the district’s alternative schools or, in some cases, GED programs…

Well, it’s making it look better than it really is because mislabeling those students makes them disappear from the denominator.

But even the ones who stick around and graduate were frequently getting credit for work which was dubious to say the least. Many students achieved the required minimums through “credit recovery.” This process allowed students who failed required courses to “retake” the class at home and/or online with limited teacher supervision and far fewer questions to answer.

Plenty of cities are apparently using similar tactics to Chicago. Camden, New Jersey has an interesting optional program for kids who fail their finals. They get to try again with a substantially easier course.”

“In New Jersey, if you fail the first-round high school exit exam, there’s a second exam you can take — an easier one. It’s untimed, and it consists of just one single question per subject. In Camden, half the senior class failed not just the first test but the second one too…”

______________________________________

by

News/Politics 6-10-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. As is usually the case in these episodes, once again the truth is the first casualty. 

https://youtu.be/PClAOQ7ZMok

The second casualty is anyone who doesn’t play along with the charade or stick with the meme. 

_____________________________________

2. Yet another reason this fraud has to remove herself from the proceedings. 

From TheBaltimoreSun  “About three weeks before Freddie Gray was chased from a West Baltimore corner by three Baltimore police officers — the start of a fatal encounter — the office of prosecutor Marilyn Mosby asked police to target the intersection with “enhanced” drug enforcement efforts, court documents show.

“State’s Attorney Mosby asked me to look into community concerns regarding drug dealing in the area of North Ave and Mount St,” Joshua Rosenblatt, division chief of Mosby’s Crime Strategies Unit, wrote in a March 17 email to a Western District police commander.

The email was disclosed for the first time Tuesday in a motion filed in Baltimore Circuit Court by defense attorneys for the six officers being prosecuted in Gray’s arrest and death. The attorneys said Mosby’s involvement in the police initiative means that she should be removed from the case.

“Mrs. Mosby herself is now an integral part of the story and as such is a central witness,” the defense attorneys argued. “This is a case where the witness and the prosecutor are one and the same.”

Mosby, through spokeswoman Rochelle Ritchie, said, “Consistent with our prosecutorial obligations, we will litigate this case in the courtroom and not in the media.” Mosby’s office received the motion Tuesday afternoon, Ritchie said.”

_____________________________________

3. Did Hillary refuse to name Boko Haram as a terrorist group just to get money for the Clinton Foundation?

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “A conservative group is suing the State Department in an effort to find out whether the agency’s refusal to place Boko Haram on the terrorist watch list while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state had anything to do with the fact that a high-level Nigerian official was a major Clinton Foundation donor and close friend of the former president.

Citizens United, a conservative nonprofit, brought the case to court after the State Department ignored its request for records about the Chagoury Group, a sprawling Nigerian company headed by a Clinton friend and financial supporter of Clinton causes, Gilbert Chagoury.

Chagoury donated between $1 million and 5 million to the Clinton Foundation, donor records show. More than 30 days have passed since Citizens United first filed the lawsuit without a response of any kind from the State Department.

David Bossie, president of Citizens United, said it was the first time he’d seen the State Department completely ignore a case against it in federal court.”

“In January 2010, Chagoury was removed from a private jet and questioned by federal agents for hours because his name had been added to the no-fly list, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

Although he was removed from the list before the U.S. government issued a formal, written apology, it is still unclear why he received that designation in the first place and how he was able to get his name off the no-fly list.”

_____________________________________

4. And you just know that liberals and gay activists will give her a pass on this one. 

From TheDailyMail  “Hillary Clinton’s charity accepted a substantial donation from an anti-gay African church which has likened homosexuals to the Devil, Daily Mail Online can reveal.

The 2016 Presidential candidate took money for her sprawling health nonprofit from the Cameroon Baptist Convention whose official policy is that being gay ‘contradicts God’s purpose for human sexuality’.

The devout Christian organization has in the past compared being gay to committing incest and human trafficking. Its leaders have also railed against US attempts to promote gay rights in Cameroon.

Despite this, the Cameroon Baptist Convention Health Board gave between $1million and $10million between 2010 and this year, according to the latest list of donors from the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

The disclosure will be awkward for Mrs Clinton who has publicly stated that she supports gay marriage.

Some of her wealthy and influential celebrity supporters are gay including Ellen DeGeneres and Elton John, while many others Democrats are strong advocates for gay rights. And during her election campaign Mrs Clinton will be heavily relying on them to raise her estimated $1 billion war chest.”

_____________________________________

5. How to escape the age of mass delusion. 

From TheFederalist  “Nearly 100 years ago, Walter Lippmann wrote about “the manufacture of consent” in his classic work, “Public Opinion.” On the heels of that book, Edward Bernays penned a little volume called “Propaganda,” in which he stated that an elite would always be responsible for making the public aware of “new ideas” which the public would then act upon as the elite nudged them into it. Related, but more in-depth is Jacques Ellul’s 1962 book, “Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes.”

Political propaganda aims to mobilize the masses to move an agenda forward. That’s most effectively done when the masses are unaware of the process. It’s what “community organizers” work towards, whether they know it or not. Once the masses are mobilized to push for a cause, the propagandists’ goals can be put into law.

In fact, many newly propagandized ideas seem to have taken America by storm just in the past decade or so. Same-sex marriage is only one of those ideas. Transgenderism is now eclipsing that notion, and its propaganda techniques—wrapped in the language of civil rights—are getting Americans on board with the idea of erasing all sex distinctions in law, including theirown. It’s as though Americans are buying into a fast-talking sales pitch without being allowed to read the print, whether it’s large print or small.

There’s more on the horizon: a singles’ rights movement that promises to end legal recognition of all marriage. Then there is transhumanism, which includes a push to end “fleshism” by enacting laws that protect non-biological entities from discrimination.

American conservatives are by and large clueless about propaganda methods and tactics. And it shows. There are virtually no conservative social psychologists around. You’d think once a liberal social psychologist hits the public over the head with this factsome on the Right would take notice and at least try to get clued in.

Meanwhile, the Left has been employing social psychology and depth psychology on the masses for decades. President Obama’s campaign staff was filled with social psychologists. In this context, those who believe conservatives can subsist on reason and logic alone are kidding themselves. It’s no wonder GOP leaders are caving on so many principles, and being absorbed so easily into the Left’s machine.”

_____________________________________

by

News/Politics 6-9-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. The IRS is not a big fan of investigating the Clinton Foundation. I guess they feel the group is not conservative enough to warrant looking at. 

https://youtu.be/802J7fTevyc

______________________________________

2. More schools are complaining about the lack of discipline in the “white privilege” theory of so-called education. 

From EAGNews  “Last week we were stunned to learn that chaos has been the norm in the St. Paul, Minnesota school district, due to a student disciplinary policy that replaces suspensions with time-outs, counseling and other less punitive measures.

We also learned that the controversial policy was influenced by the Pacific Educational Group (PEG), a radical San Francisco-based consulting firm that claims black students lag behind academically, and tend to have more disciplinary problems, because American K-12 education is designed to benefit white students – aka “white privilege.” Now it’s becoming obvious that several other large school districts around the nation are in the same situation as St. Paul.

They’ve all instituted radical disciplinary policies to reduce the number of black student suspensions, they’ve all experienced serious behavioral problems as a result, and they’re all included on a recent list of PEG client school districts.”

““Critics say PEG’s work has alienated some educators and, in recasting certain discipline issues as cultural misunderstandings, let disruptive students and their families off the hook.”

PEG’s connection to similarly passive disciplinary policies in the Madison, Wisconsin; Denver; Philadelphia; Los Angeles, Oakland and Portland school districts is not quite as obvious.

No news reports have surfaced claiming the organization played a direct role in encouraging school officials to adopt or implement policies that allow violent and unruly behavior to go unchecked.”

PEG has wiped the list of schools using their material from its website. But as we all know, the internet is forever, so here’s a link with the list. 

Also from EAGNews

______________________________________

3. The drive to take America out of US history. 

From The NYPost  “A stellar group of American historians and academics released a milestone open letter Tuesday in protest of deleterious changes to the Advanced Placement US History (or APUSH) exam.

The signatories are bold intellectual bulwarks against increasing progressive attacks in the classroom on America’s unique ideals and institutions.”

“As the 55 distinguished members of the National Association of Scholars explained this week, the teaching of American history faces “a grave new risk.”

So-called “reforms” by the College Board, which holds a virtual monopoly on AP testing across the country, “abandon a rigorous insistence on content” in favor of downplaying “American citizenship and American world leadership in favor of a more global and transnational perspective.”

The framework eschews vivid, content-rich history lessons on the Constitution for “such abstractions as ‘identity,’ ‘peopling,’ ‘work, exchange and technology,’ and ‘human geography’ while downplaying essential subjects, such as the sources, meaning and development of America’s ideals and political institutions.”

The scholars, who hail from institutions ranging from Notre Dame and Stanford to the University of Virginia, Baylor, CUNY, Georgetown and Ohio State, decried the aggressive centralization of power over how teachers can teach the story of America. This is not a bug. It’s a feature.”

______________________________________