Transparency

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Examining the House Impeachment Inquiry Resolution | National Review

By Andrew C. McCarthy

Editor’s Note: This is a fair assessment of the ongoing impeachment process in the House of Representatives. Read on!

On Tuesday, House Democrats published the resolution that, once passed, will approve and govern the impeachment inquiry on the question whether President Trump should be impeached. The vote is likely to take place on Thursday.

Some observations about the eight-page resolution.

1) The resolution is flawed, for reasons we’ll get to (the flaws could be major or minor, depending on how the resolution is implemented). By any measure, though, it is a significant improvement over the status quo ante. Once it’s passed, the House as an institution will have endorsed the impeachment inquiry. As we have pointed out, the Constitution commits the impeachment power to the House, not to the Speaker or the majority party in the House. The House acts as institution only by voting. It will finally have done so once this resolution is approved. The president and Republicans will no longer have a valid argument that the inquiry is constitutionally infirm. That has been the White House’s main justification for refusing to cooperate. (This refusal is overstated since a number of executive officials have submitted to closed-door interviews and otherwise participated. This has largely been done, though, despite the discouragement of the White House, which has otherwise declined to cooperate.)

2) Not surprisingly, Democrats are posturing that the passage of the resolution means the president must produce any information directed by the House. This is an overstatement. What the resolution means is that the White House’s position of blanket, indiscriminate non-cooperation will no longer be justifiable. Nevertheless, the president maintains all the legal privileges he enjoyed — including executive privilege and attorney-client privilege — regardless of whether there was a resolution.

3) It is not clear how extensive executive privilege is. In United States v. Nixon, the Supreme Court recognized that the president’s communications with key advisers in carrying out his official duties were presumptively privileged; but it further held that the privilege was not absolute and would have to give way to the needs of a criminal investigation — particularly if the evidence at issue was critical and there was no alternative source for obtaining it. A House impeachment inquiry is not a criminal investigation. It is, however, a core constitutional function, and I believe the courts would find that its needs for information are at least as compelling as those of a criminal investigation.

4) Chances are, however, that the courts will not be given the opportunity to rule on executive privilege. The House has plenty of other witnesses and sources for the information needed to investigate the Ukraine controversy, the details of which are already largely known. Moreover, Democrats are seeking to avoid the delay that would result from protracted court battles. If the president flouts a House demand for information, the House will simply add an article of impeachment for obstructing the investigation. Democrats would obviously prefer that to court challenges they could lose; it gives them incentive to ask for rafts of information.

5) Interestingly, the Resolution takes pains to refer to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence as “the Permanent Select Committee,” dropping “on Intelligence” after page two. If they were just trying to be succinct, they would use the usual HPSCI shorthand. Omitting reference to the Intelligence is more likely some recognition of the strangeness of running an impeachment inquiry behind closed doors in the intelligence committee, and a suggestion to the public that this committee has been specially selected for impeachment purposes. Impeachment should be the work of the Judiciary Committee (which will take the help in inquiry’s the next phase). By doing it through the Intelligence Committee, moreover, Democrats dodge Judiciary impeachment precedents that would provide for more due process. (See Thomas Jipping’s post at Bench Memos.)

6) Not surprisingly, the resolution endorses the “ongoing investigation” that Democrats have been conducting. The resolution is pitched as a means of continuing that inquiry, not beginning anew. This is a face-saving measure: Democrats should have passed this resolution at the beginning of the inquiry. They did not do that because, as discussed yesterday, they hoped to move public opinion in their favor with selective leaks to friendly media of their closed-door proceedings — a strategy that, sadly, has worked.

Republicans are right to complain (as, for example, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) has complained) that Democrats are continuing the secret proceedings for now, notwithstanding the promise of imminent open hearings. The closed proceedings are nearly devoid of due process — they do not feature the Republican participation provisions attendant to the open hearings (and the presidential participation provisions envisioned once things more to the Judiciary Committee). Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) says they are like a grand jury, but (as I’ve explained) they are not — they are a rubber stamp for Democrats who decided three years ago that Trump should be impeached, and a vehicle for shaping media coverage by selective disclosure.

Ironically, the resolution’s endorsement of the secret hearings is portrayed as part of Democrat’s’ commitment to “open and transparent investigative proceedings.”

7) Whether the proceedings ultimately will be seen as open and transparent will depend in large part on whether the heretofore secret proceedings are disclosed. Significantly, the resolution allows for that, but does not require it. The issue is placed in the discretion of Chairman Schiff. This is part of what I referred to at the start as the resolution’s flaws. Schiff is a notoriously sharp-elbowed partisan, the protégé Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) placed in charge of implementing the unauthorized (by a House vote) inquiry practices of closed hearings and selective leaking. The question of disclosing transcripts will be a good early test of how straight Chairman Schiff is going to play this. The resolution empowers him to decide what should be made public, and to direct “appropriate redactions” for not only any classified information but anything he decides is too “sensitive” to be disclosed.

8) With that as a concrete example of what’s at stake, we should pause to deal with the central procedural issue. Republicans continue validly to complain about the rigged process. Whether it will be rigged going forward, though, depends on how committed Schiff and, ultimately, Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.) are to open proceedings that both are and appear to be fair. It is not frivolous for Republicans to grouse that the future open proceedings with due process are tainted by the month of closed proceedings without due process, which has made impeachment a foregone conclusion. But the procedural argument won’t win the day, and Democrats still have to make their case to the public, no matter how one-sided things have been to this point.

I am not without hope that there will be real due process in the public hearings — not because hardcore partisans Schiff and Nadler will suddenly transform into paragons of fairness, but because it is in their interest to be fair.

The court here is public opinion, and — because the president is highly unlikely to be removed by the Senate — the verdict will come in November 2020. If the House Democrats have an impeachment case against the president, the Democrats have a strong incentive to let the process play out with deferential due process befitting the seriousness of the matter. If the case is thin gruel and the process is manifestly skewed against the president, with disclosure withheld, cross-examination slashed, exculpatory witnesses denied, etc., it will look like a partisan hit job — i.e., Democrats determined to impeach a president they never accepted, not spurred by egregious misconduct.

The public will judge the House impeachment inquiry on the finished product, not the dodgy start. In this vein, Republicans are seizing on the broad discretion and control that the resolution vests in Schiff. This is a sensible strategy: Schiff has conducted himself disreputably, theatrically reading an absurd caricature of the Trump-Zelensky transcript, concealing his staff’s coordination with the so-called whistleblower (and earlier, championing the discredited Steele dossier). A former prosecutor, Schiff is a very able interrogator; he is also hyper-partisan, sneaky, and erratic.

All that said, congressional inquiries are adversarial political proceedings, which means someone has to be in charge of them. Elections have consequences, so the someone is a Democrat. Since we are in a very partisan time, Republicans and Democrats tend to vote in antagonistic lockstep. Where there are disputes, Democrats will win because they have the numbers.That doesn’t mean the process has to be rigged. That will be up to Schiff. If Republicans make reasonable requests, Schiff would be well advised not to turn them into disputes; if he denies them, Democrats will look terrible. If Republicans make outlandish demands that appear designed to delay or derail the proceedings, there will be sympathy for Schiff. A lot rides on how he presides — and how Nadler does in phase-two.

To repeat, the president and his allies are going to need a substantive defense to the charge that, with a purpose to interfere in the 2020 election, he abused his foreign-relations power by encouraging a foreign government to investigate an American citizen for violating foreign law. Making Schiff the bogeyman is only going to get them so far. It will wear thin quickly if Schiff performs well.

9) The resolution outlines a bifurcated inquiry, the first half of which includes the closed-door investigative phase that has been underway for weeks under the direction of Schiff’s Intelligence Committee. That phase will soon go public. The resolution authorizes Schiff to conduct open hearings at which he and the Republican ranking member, Devin Nunes (R., Calif.), may, with equal time, question witnesses for up to 90 minutes — with the assistance of a member of the Committee’s professional staff (there are very experienced investigators and prosecutors on the staff). The Committee would then proceed with the familiar five-minute rounds of questioning by all members. (There are 22 members of the Committee, 13 Democrats and nine Republicans.)

10) In both this hearing phase, and the later Judiciary Committee phase, there is provision for the Republican minority to seek to call their own witnesses and present other evidence, including the ability to issue subpoenas for testimony and tangible evidence. Thomas Jipping’s Bench Memos post (noted above) observes that the minority is not being given the same procedural equal standing it got in the Clinton and Nixon impeachment inquiries. The distinction, however, may be more apparent than real. Underneath the veneer of bipartisan comity in prior impeachment lurked the reality that one side was the majority and would win if any dispute arose. This reality is more patent in the current resolution — for example, Schiff and the Democrats can subpoena whoever they want; Nunes and the Republicans must make a showing of relevance in writing to Schiff’s satisfaction. The brute fact, however, is that a House impeachment inquiry is a majority show, no matter how clearly the enabling resolution articulates it.

11) The resolution directs that the Intelligence Committee (in conjunction with the Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees, which have also been investigating) file a public report with findings and recommendations, to be submitted to the Judiciary Committee — which would then proceed with impeachment articles.

The report is supposed to include any relevant materials Schiff deems appropriate. I would anticipate, then, that the report stage is when Schiff will release any currently sealed testimony and other evidence; the report will provide him with an opportunity to spin that information as he’d have people construe it, rather than allowing the public to form its own impressions. The Republican minority will be permitted to append dissenting views. The report will outline the Intelligence Committee’s findings and recommendations; presumably, that will be the first iteration of what will become the articles of impeachment.

12) After the report is filed, the proceedings shift to the Judiciary Committee. It is finally, at that stage, that the president and his counsel will have an opportunity to participate. It is the Judiciary Committee that will formally report articles of impeachment to the full House.

We’ll have more to say about the Judiciary Committee proceedings when we get there.

Source: National Review

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House to Vote This Week on Impeachment Inquiry, Says Pelosi | The Epoch Times

The House is slated to vote this week on the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, top Democrats have said.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Monday that “we will bring a resolution to the Floor that affirms the ongoing, existing investigation that is currently being conducted by our committees as part of this impeachment inquiry, including all requests for documents, subpoenas for records and testimony, and any other investigative steps previously taken or to be taken as part of this investigation.”

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the chairman of the House Rules Committee, said on Monday that he will introduce a resolution to “ensure transparency” and “provide a clear path forward” in the inquiry.

According to the House Rules Committee’s website, a meeting will be held Wednesday “directing certain committees to continue their ongoing investigations as part of the existing House of Representatives inquiry into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its Constitutional power to impeach Donald John Trump, President of the United States of America, and for other purposes.”

McGovern, meanwhile, said that he plans on introducing it on Tuesday, according to a statement, as reported by CBS News.

It will be the first, formal vote on the impeachment process after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced the inquiry in September.

Republicans and the Trump administration have called for the House Democrats to hold a vote on the inquiry.

“As committees continue to gather evidence and prepare to present their findings, I will be introducing a resolution to ensure transparency and provide a clear path forward,” McGovern said in a statement. “This is the right thing to do for the institution and the American people.”

At the same time, Republicans have criticized the way in which Democrats have conducted the investigation, saying they are being held in secret while leaking information about them to the media. Last week, a coalition of GOP lawmakers entered a closed-door meeting that was being held by House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

“We are taking this step to eliminate any doubt as to whether the Trump Administration may withhold documents, prevent witness testimony, disregard duly authorized subpoenas, or continue obstructing the House of Representatives,” said Pelosi in the statement.

Source: The Epoch Times

 

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Deep state in total panic as Durham’s investigation confirmed to have transitioned to CRIMINAL phase… indictments imminent | Natural News

Editor’s Note: Perhaps these warriors of justice will find the light of day to expose the players behind the false Russian collusion narrative and the coordinated attempts by deep state agents within our own government and beyond to “influence not only an election” but to overthrow a duly elected President of the United States.

By Mike Adams

Beyond “bombshell” news, we now have confirmation that U.S. Attorney John Durham has transitioned into a “criminal investigation” which will likely lead to criminal indictments of deep state traitors. Those most likely to face criminal indictments are John Brennan and James Clapper, which may lead to evidence implicating James Comey, Robert Mueller, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, among others.

As the New York Times reported:

For more than two years, President Trump has repeatedly attacked the Russia investigation, portraying it as a hoax and illegal even months after the special counsel closed it. Now, Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into how it all began… Justice Department officials have shifted an administrative review of the Russia investigation closely overseen by Attorney General William P. Barr to a criminal inquiry, according to two people familiar with the matter. The move gives the prosecutor running it, John H. Durham, the power to subpoena for witness testimony and documents, to impanel a grand jury and to file criminal charges.

The illegal coup against Trump was initiated by Hillary Clinton and the criminal deep state

Our analysis of events unfolding over the last few months concludes that interviews with alleged “Trump dossier” author Christopher Steele revealed explosive new evidence that the entire intelligence community coup effort against President Trump was initiated by a Hillary Clinton-funded smear document (the dossier) which wasn’t authored by Steele at all. The entire operation has always been a deep state coup attempt to reverse the 2016 election by any means necessary. The effort failed, the deep state traitors have been identified and they are about to face justice.

Two key names to watch in all this are Christopher Steele and Joseph Mifsud. As Conservative Treehouse explains:

So what the New York Times is outlining here, is the CIA ran an operation using Mifsud to place information into Papadopoulos, a classic set-up, and the FBI is now claiming they had no idea the CIA was the originating intelligence apparatus for that information. Very interesting…. aligns with the FBI defensive framework from last week.

Well the claim: “The F.B.I. did not use information from the C.I.A. in opening the Russia investigation” is demonstrably false.  The CIA produced an “electronic communication” (EC) to the FBI which officially launched the premise of operation “crossfire hurricane’.  That EC has never been released, though it has been seen by congressional investigators.  So whoever this “former American official” is, is lying.

As Lisa Haven explains in this Brighteon video below, Durham’s criminal investigation is “the link to everything” and will expose the greatest cover-up in political history:

Observers are expecting criminal conspiracy charges to emerge from the Durham / Barr investigation. As The Gateway Pundit reports:

Former Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos reacted to the news tonight. Papadopoulos was set up by CIA-FBI operatives during the 2016 election.

George Papadopoulos: John Durham’s investigation has officially morphed into a criminal investigation. When I said Mifsud and Downer were in on it together and Halper was there to provide cover, I was serious. Expect conspiracy charges to come out of this. Great day for America!

Source: Natural News & The Gateway Pundit

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Congressman Confronts Zuckerberg About Censoring Information About Vaccine Safety | Collective Evolution

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  • The Facts: Senator Bill Posey from Florida recently questioned Mark Zuckerberg during a hearing on Capitol Hill about Facebook’s censorship on information that paints vaccines in a negative light,
  • Reflect On: Why do proponents of vaccines always use terms like . “anti-vax conspiracy theories” and ridicule instead of simply addressing the points and facts that are made by vaccine safety advocates like Bill Posey?

Editor’s Note: The end of free speech on the internet continues here with deliberate censorship of other perspectives re: vaccines by Facebook, Google and Apple News and other “gatekeepers” of information (and disinformation comes along with the package). 

Mark Zuckerberg was recently confronted by Senator Bill Posey from Florida during a hearing on Capitol Hill about Facebook’s recent censorship on information about vaccine safety. Zuckerberg shared that they are simply conforming with the general scientific consensus, and do their best to censor information that may be harmful to people. This really shows his unawareness about vaccine safety, and he also used the term “anti-vaccine.” Furthermore, headlines are popping up within the mainstream once again reading “anti-vaccine conspiracy theories” and “vaccine misinformation.” This is a common tactic from the pharmaceutical controlled mainstream media, they always use these terms along with ridicule instead of addressing the concerns and points made by vaccine safety advocates. You can watch the Congressman and Zuckerberg’s exchange below, but first, I wanted to put a tidbit of information about why people are concerned about vaccines.

How safe are vaccines? More people are starting to realize that they are not as safe as they are marketed to be. This is why the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act has paid out approximately $4 billion to compensate families of vaccine injured children. As astronomical as the monetary awards are, they’re even more alarming considering HHS claims that only an estimated 1% of vaccine injuries are even reported to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting, System (VAERS). Think about that for a minute, If the numbers from VAERS and HHS are correct – only 1% of vaccine injuries are reported and only 1/3 of the petitions are compensated – then up to 99% of vaccine injuries go unreported and the families of the vast majority of people injured by vaccines are picking up the costs, once again, for vaccine makers’ flawed products.

2010 HHS pilot study by the Federal Agency for Health Care Research (AHCR) conducted by Harvard doctors/researchers found that 1 in every 39 vaccines causes injury, a shocking comparison to the claims from the CDC of 1 in every million. You can read more about that here.

If we look at the MMR vaccine, for example, there have ben 93,929 adverse events, 1,810 disabilities, 6,902 hospitalizations, and 463 deaths. Furthermore, it’s well documented that the measles vaccine has been a complete failure. This is evident by the documented outbreaks in highly vaccinated populations up to the present day. A study published as far back as 1994 in JAMA Internal Medicine makes this quite clear.

We found 18 reports of measles outbreaks in very highly immunized school populations where 71% to 99.8% of students were immunized against measles. Despite these high rates of immunization, 30% to 100% (mean, 77%) of all measles cases in these outbreaks occurred in previously immunized students. In our hypothetical school model, after more than 95% of schoolchildren are immunized against measles, the majority of measles cases occur in appropriately immunized children. (source)

During the measles outbreak in California in 2015, a large number of suspected cases occurred in recent vaccinees. Of the 194 measles virus sequences obtained in the United States in 2015, 73 were identified as vaccine sequences. The media (Pharma-owned) generated high public anxiety. This fear mongering led to the demonization of unvaccinated children, who were perceived as the spreaders of this disease, this type of fear mongering happens all the time, and Facebook has been apart of it.

There are a number of concerns with vaccines, the list is quite large. Vaccine ingredients is another big concern.

A study published in 2011 makes the issue quite clear:

Aluminum is an experimentally demonstrated neurotoxin and the most commonly used vaccine adjuvant. Despite almost 90 years of widespread use of aluminum adjuvants, medical science’s understanding about their mechanisms of action is still remarkably poor. There is also a concerning scarcity of data on toxicology and pharmacokinetics of these compounds. In spite of this, the notion that aluminum in vaccines is safe appears to be widely accepted. Experimental research, however, clearly shows that aluminum adjuvants have a potential to induce serious immunological disorders in humans. (source)

The key takeaway here is that “medical science’s understanding about their mechanisms of action is still remarkably poor.”

After this study, more research came out to help us better understand what happens when aluminum is injected into the body. It has been found that injected aluminum does not exit the body; in fact, it stays in the body and travels to various organs in the brain, where it remains. This isn’t surprising since it’s the adjuvant, it’s designed to stay there or else the vaccine doesn’t work.

As the groundbreaking study in 2015 emphasized:

Evidence that aluminum-coated particles phagocytozed in the injected muscle and its draining lymph nodes can disseminate within phagocytes throughout the body and slowly accumulate in the brain further suggests that alum safety should be evaluated in the long term.

Furthermore, in 2018, a paper published in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry found that almost 100 percent of the intramuscularly injected aluminum in mice as vaccine adjuvants was absorbed into the systemic circulation and traveled to different sites in the body such as the brain, the joints, and the spleen, where it accumulated and was retained for years post-vaccination. (source)

You can watch a video here of Dr. Christopher Exley, a Professor in Bioinorganic Chemistry at Keele University explains what happens to aluminum when it is injected via a vaccine.

The Takeaway

Regardless of how mainstream media outlets are presenting this part of the hearing, it’s great to see Zuckerberg questioned about Facebook’s censoring of information regarding vaccines. We here at Collective Evolution have experienced this censorship, along with other independent media outlets, we’ve been heavily censored, blocked, and demonetized. A clear strategic agenda by Facebook, and those who control it, to shut down information and viewpoints that do not fit within the accepted framework of the global elite.

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Senate Resolution Urges Formal House Vote on Initiating Impeachment Inquiry | The Epoch Times

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) holds a press conference about the House impeachment inquiry process, on Capitol Hill in Washington on Oct. 24, 2019. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Editor’s Note: We the People are witnessing an attempted coup d’tat of our United States government in broad daylight and this impeachment inquiry is a smokescreen, a distraction, a false narrative and coverup orchestrated by the many co-conspirators who before Trump was elected in 2016 decided to manufacture a false accusation re: Russian collusion to discredit him. These “enemies of the state” decided that should Trump be elected that they would take it into their own hands to overthrow a duly elected President of the United States. If you are one of the many naive American’s who actually believe what you read in the mainstream, corporate newspapers and are not savvy enough to understand the hidden powers that pull the strings behind the curtain of the U.S. Congress, then shame on you. Wake Up America before it’s too late!

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) introduced a non-binding resolution on Oct. 24 calling on House Democrats to hold a formal vote on initiating an impeachment inquiry before moving any further in the investigation of President Donald Trump.

Thirty-five Republican senators co-sponsored the resolution, which also demands that the impeachment inquiry accommodate Trump with constitutional due-process protections. By early evening on Oct. 24, the number of co-sponsors had reached 46.

“The House of Representatives is abandoning more than a century’s worth of precedent and tradition in impeachment proceedings and denying President Trump basic fairness and due process accorded every American,” the resolution (pdf) states.

“One of the cornerstones of the American Constitution is due process: the right to confront your accuser, call witnesses on your behalf, and challenge the accusations against you.”

Senate Republicans unveiled the resolution one day after roughly three dozen House Republicans stormed a hearing room during a House Intelligence Committee impeachment deposition to demand that the closed-door hearings be opened to lawmakers and the public.

The resolution points out that during the three prior impeachment proceedings, the House held a formal vote to initiate an impeachment inquiry. In Trump’s case, the process was replaced by a press conference by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the Republicans charge.

“The proposition that the Speaker acting alone may direct committees to initiate impeachment proceedings without any debate or a vote on the House floor is unprecedented and undemocratic,” the resolution states.

Prior impeachment proceedings allowed the presidents to have counsel present at hearings and depositions, according to the resolution. In each case, the presidents’ lawyers were allowed to introduce and object to evidence and call on and cross-examine witnesses.

“By contrast, the House’s current impeachment ‘inquiry’ provides none of these basic rights and protections to President Trump,” the co-sponsors say. “The main allegations against President Trump are based on assertions and testimony from witnesses whom he is unable to confront, as part of a process in which he is not able to offer witnesses in his defense or have a basic understanding of the allegations lodged against him.”

House Democrats are investigating allegations related to President Donald Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. During the conversation on July 25, Trump asked Zelensky to look into two matters. The first request concerned a server tied to Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity firm that analyzed the Democratic National Committee server allegedly breached by Russian government hackers. The second request concerned allegations of corruption by former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

The Democrats have conducted all of the hearings to date behind closed doors. The public’s access to the information has so far been limited to leaks to the media and a handful of documents published by the committees.

The Democrats have defended the process, claiming that lawmakers in prior impeachment proceedings worked from material collected through an investigation by a special counsel. Meanwhile, the lawmakers took up the current case without letting a special counsel conduct an inquiry. As a result, the process requires secrecy so that witnesses don’t adjust their testimony.

The constant leaks from the inquiry have undermined the advantages gained through secret proceedings. Republicans say they don’t have access to transcripts of the depositions. Meanwhile, leaked information seems to consist almost entirely of sections of testimony damaging to Trump.

The minority Republicans on the three committees conducting the impeachment inquiry don’t have the same rights as those that were granted to the minority Democrats during the House impeachment inquiry of President Bill Clinton, including the ability to issue subpoenas. The resolution calls on the Democrats to follow precedent and grant Republicans the same rights.

“We’re not telling the House they can’t impeach the president. What we’re telling the House is, there’s a right way to do it, and a wrong way to do it,” Graham told reporters. “This is one part legal, and two parts politics.”

The White House has refused to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry unless the Democrats hold a vote to formally launch the inquiry. The president has denied any wrongdoing in his call with Zelensky. The Ukrainian leader said he wasn’t pressured during the phone call.

Trump on Oct. 23 criticized the impeachment inquiry along lines similar to the Senate resolution.

“Do Nothing Democrats allow Republicans Zero Representation, Zero due process, and Zero Transparency,” the president wrote on Twitter. “Does anybody think this is fair?”

The Democrats allege that in order to pressure Zelensky, Trump placed a temporary hold on military aid to Ukraine. All of the witnesses who have testified to date say that Ukrainian officials were unaware of the hold until one month after the Trump–Zelensky phone call.

Source: The Epoch Times

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Trump’s Error-filled Cabinet Meeting | FactCheck.org

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For more than an hour, President Donald Trump presided over a cabinet meeting, reeling off numerous false or misleading claims:

  • Trump claimed, without evidence, that President Barack Obama tried to call North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “11 times” but that “the man on the other side … did not take his call” due to a “lack of respect.” Obama’s national security adviser and deputy national security adviser both called Trump’s claim false.
  • Trump took credit for making a “deal” between Turkey and the Syrian Kurds that he said “people have been trying to make” for years. One expert called this claim “nonsense.” The deal is only a five-day pause in the conflict that arose when Trump pulled U.S. troops from the Syria-Turkey border.
  • The president boasted that “nobody has ever done” a National Prescription Drug Take Back Day until he took office. In fact, it started in 2010.
  • He wrongly claimed that “many” of the “ambassadors” House Democrats are interviewing in the impeachment inquiry were “put there” by past administrations. Seven of the nine officials who have testified behind closed doors so far were appointed to their most recent positions under Trump’s administration.
  • Trump made the illogical and unsubstantiated claim that there was no informant who provided information to the whistleblower, whose complaint triggered an impeachment inquiry. And even more absurdly, Trump suggested the informant was Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House intelligence committee.
  • Trump was wrong in saying “no other president” has donated his salary. John F. Kennedy and Herbert Hoover also did so, according to news reports and Hoover’s library.
  • In defending the quashed plans to hold the next G-7 at his own resort, Trump suggested that Obama getting a book deal was like “running a business” while Obama was in office. The deal came after Obama left office.
  • Trump said, “China is doing very poorly — worst year they’ve had in 57 years.” China announced its economy grew by 6% in the third quarter of 2019, when compared with the same period the previous year. That was “the weakest pace in at least 27-1/2 years,” according to a Reuter’s analysis of quarterly data.

Trump made his remarks during an Oct. 21 cabinet meeting, which started — after a prayer from Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson — with the president talking about the U.S. economy, which he described as doing “fantastically well.” (See “Trump’s Numbers October 2019 Update” for a statistical measure of how things have changed since Trump took office.)

Calling Kim Jong Un

Trump claimed, without evidence, that President Barack Obama tried to call North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “11 times,” but Kim “did not take his call.”

Trump, Oct. 21: I like Kim; he likes me. We get along. I respect him; he respects me. You could end up in a war. President Obama told me that. He said, “The biggest problem — I don’t know how to solve it.” He told me doesn’t know how to solve it. I said, “Did you ever call him?” “No.” Actually, he tried 11 times. But the man on the other side — the gentleman on the side did not take his call. Okay? Lack of respect. But he takes my call.

Obama’s national security adviser and deputy national security adviser both called Trump’s claim false.

Susan Rice, who served under Obama as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013 and as Obama’s national security adviser from 2013 to 2017, tweeted that Trump’s claim is “a total fabrication.” She added, “Trump is completely delusional, and it’s scary.”

Likewise, Ben Rhodes, who served as Obama’s deputy national security adviser, tweeted, “Obama never called Kim Jong Un. Obama never tried to meet Kim Jong Un. Trump is a serial liar and not well.”

Trump’s claim is similar to one we fact-checked back in July. Then, Trump said Obama was “constantly … begging for meetings” but that Kim Jong Un refused. As we wrote then, Obama administration officials and experts on U.S.-North Korea relations said that’s not true.

“At the risk of stating the obvious, this is horse-sh*t,” Rice tweeted then. “Yes. It’s horseshit,” added Gen. Michael Hayden, via Twitter. Hayden served as director of the CIA from 2006 to Feb. 12, 2009, shortly after Obama took office.

A Deal Between Turkey and Syrian Kurds

Trump praised his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria, saying the subsequent fighting that resulted between Turkey and the Syrian Kurds sparked a “deal” that he claimed “people have been trying to make” for years.

Trump, Oct. 21: If shooting didn’t start for a couple of days, I don’t think the Kurds would have moved. I don’t think, frankly, you would’ve been able to make a very easy deal with Turkey. … If they didn’t go through two and a half days of hell, I don’t think they would’ve done it. I think you couldn’t have made a deal. And people have been trying to make this deal for years. But we’re close to making it. We’ll see what happens.

Henri Barkey, a professor of international relations at Lehigh University and adjunct senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, called Trump’s claim of failed past attempts to broker such a deal “complete nonsense.”

“There is no effort of any sorts in the past between Turkey and Syrian Kurds,” Barkey told us in an email. “He is making things up.”

On Oct. 6, the White House announced it would withdraw U.S. special forces in northern Syria and that Turkey would soon move “forward with its long-planned [military] operation” against the Syrian Kurds, who had been U.S. allies in the fight against the Islamic State. Three days later, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan started “Operation Peace Spring,” resulting in dozens of deaths of civilians and Kurdish fighters.

After bipartisan criticism, Trump sent Vice President Mike Pence to meet with Erdogan in Ankara, Turkey, where on Oct. 17 they announced a five-day pause in the Turkish military operation to “allow for the withdrawal of YPG” from “the nearly 20-mile-wide safe zone area, south of the Turkish border in Syria.” The People’s Protection Units, or the YPG, is the armed wing of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party.

Turkey does have a long history of conflict with the Kurds, but direct Turkish involvement in northern Syria dates only to 2016. In August 2016, Turkey began Operation Euphrates Shield in northern Syria to clear the area of Islamic State terrorists and “prevent the YPG from establishing an autonomous area along the northern Syrian border with Turkey,” as explained in a January Congressional Research Service report.

Turkey felt threatened by the Syrian Kurds on its border. The Kurds were hoping for support from their allies in Washington, D.C. “Syrian Kurds wanted political recognition from DC,” and “down the road support for their autonomous state” in northern Syria, Barkey said.

National Prescription Take Back Day

Trump falsely said that “nobody has ever done” a National Prescription Drug Take Back Day, an event in which Americans can safely dispose of unused prescription drugs. The Drug Enforcement Administration began holding such national events in 2010.

Trump’s claim followed a briefing from White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on an upcoming take-back day on Oct. 26. After thanking Conway, he said, “Take Back Day is a big deal. And they’ve been talking about it for a long time. Nobody has ever done it. But it is big.”

The scheduled take back day, however, will not be the first, nor was the first national take back under Trump’s watch.

The initiative launched under Obama in 2010, with the primary aim of reducing misuse of old prescription drugs. The DEA has since organized two events each year — one in the spring and one in the fall — to encourage people to get rid of drugs lingering in their medicine cabinets. The most recent one was in April; Saturday’s take back will be the 18th event.

At the April 2016 event, the DEA collected a then-record 893,498 pounds of unwanted medicines. A new record was set two years later with 949,046 pounds. So far, across all 17 completed events, the DEA has collected nearly 12 million pounds of drugs.

During a take back, people can drop off their expired, unused or unwanted medications anonymously and for free — no questions asked — at a variety of locations across the country. This year, for the first time, the DEA will accept vaping devices and cartridges, in light of the recent spate of deaths and lung injuries linked to those products.

This isn’t the first time that Trump has falsely taken credit for launching a new program.

Last October, he took credit for the Veterans Choice Program, which allows veterans to seek health care outside of the VA if there are long wait times or travel burdens, and falsely added that it had taken “44 years” to pass the legislation. In fact, the program was created in 2014 under Obama. And in July 2018, Trump inaccurately said that prior to a law he signed in 2017, there was “nothing you could do” to get rid of VA employees who mistreat military veterans. On average, around 2,300 VA workers were fired each fiscal year before Trump’s legislation going back to 2005.

Trump Appointees

In remarks about the ongoing House impeachment inquiry, Trump wrongly claimed that “many” of the “ambassadors” Democratic-controlled House committees are interviewing were “put there during Obama, during Clinton, during the Never Trump or Bush era.”

Actually, among the nine government officials who have testified in closed sessions so far, just two were appointed to their current or recently resigned positions under the Obama administration. The other seven were appointed by Trump or Trump appointees, such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Trump, Oct. 21: They’re interviewing — they’re interviewing ambassadors who I’d never heard of. I don’t know who these people are. I never heard of them. … Don’t forget, many of these people were put there during Obama, during Clinton, during the Never Trump or Bush era.

Let’s go through the list:

  • Steve A. Linick, the State Department inspector general, met with impeachment investigators on Oct. 2 and provided documents pertaining to Ukraine. Linick was appointed to the IG job by then-President Obama in 2013, and had served in the Justice Department under then-President George W. Bush and Obama from 2006 to 2010.
  • Kurt Volker was appointed special representative for Ukraine negotiations on July 7, 2017, by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a Trump appointee. Volker resigned from that job on Sept. 27 and testified before the House committees on Oct. 3.
  • Michael K. Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community, was nominated to the post by Trump in November 2017 and sworn in on May 17, 2018. Atkinson, who worked in the Justice Department for more than 15 years under both Republican and Democratic administrations, testified on Oct. 4.
  • George P. Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state in the European and Eurasian bureau, assumed that job on Sept. 4, 2018, under Secretary of State Pompeo, a Trump appointee. He joined the foreign service in 1992; he testified Oct. 15.
  • Gordon Sondland, a Trump nominee, was confirmed as ambassador to the European Union on June 29, 2018. Sondland, the founder and CEO of Provenance Hotels, donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration committee through four companies registered to him, according to The Intercept. He testified on Oct. 17.
  • Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch was nominated to be ambassador to Ukraine by Obama on May 18, 2016, and confirmed by the Senate two months later. Yovanovitch, who joined the foreign service in 1986, was removed from her post by the Trump administration in May. She testified on Oct. 11.
  • Michael McKinley, another career diplomat, who joined the foreign service in 1982, was appointed senior adviser to Pompeo in May 2018. He testified on Oct. 16, days after resigning.
  • William B. Taylor served under the Bush and Obama administrations and was appointedchargé d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine in June after Yovanovitch was removed as ambassador. Taylor had been ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009. He testified on Oct. 22.
  • Fiona Hill became deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian Affairs under the National Security Council in 2017. Hill resigned this summer and testified on Oct. 14.

That list doesn’t include Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, a Trump appointee, who publicly testified before the House intelligence committee on Sept. 26.

Trump’s Strange Whistleblower Theory

Trump also made the illogical claim that there was no informant who provided information to the whistleblower. And even more absurdly, Trump suggested the informant was Rep. Adam Schiff.

Trump said the whistleblower relied on “second- and thirdhand information” and Trump questioned the very existence of an informant who told the whistleblower about the content of Trump’s July phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Trump, Oct. 21: Now, I happen to think there probably wasn’t an informant. You know, the informant went to the whistleblower, the whistleblower had second- and thirdhand information. You remember that. It was a big problem. But the information was wrong. So was there actually an informant? Maybe the informant was Schiff. It could be Shifty Schiff. In my opinion, it’s possibly Schiff.

Later, in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Trump reiterated his groundless theory.

Trump, Oct. 21: And where is the person who gave the whistleblower the information? Because is that person a spy? Or does that person even exist? I have a feeling that person doesn’t exist. I think Schiff might’ve made it up.

Let’s quickly deconstruct why Trump’s theory makes no sense.

Despite Trump repeatedly claiming that the whistleblower “gave a totally false account of my conversation” with the Ukrainian president, as we have written, the whistleblower’s account of the phone call matches up with the White House-released memo. (Though the president takes issue with the whistleblower’s allegation that he “pressured” Zelensky to investigate the Bidens.)

Specifically, the whistleblower made these three claims that were corroborated by the memo: Trump asked Zelensky to “initiate or continue an investigation” into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden; assist the U.S. in investigating allegations that “Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election originated in Ukraine”; and “meet or speak” about these matters with Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr.

The whistleblower, described by the New York Times as a CIA officer who was detailed to the National Security Council, wrote in his complaint that while he did not participate in Trump’s phone call with the Ukraine president, “in the course of official interagency business” he was informed about details of the phone call by “multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call.”

The intelligence community’s inspector general conducted a preliminary review of the whistleblower’s complaint and determined there were “reasonable grounds to believe that the complaint relating to the urgent concern ‘appears credible.’” Fox News reported that during the closed-door testimony of Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson to House lawmakers, it was revealed that the preliminary investigation included interviews with a handful of witnesses, including two of the whistleblower’s supervisors.

Since then, the New York Times reported that a second whistleblower, one with firsthand knowledge of the phone call, has stepped forward and was interviewed by Atkinson’s office.

Given that the original whistleblower did not participate directly in the Ukraine phone call, and yet got key details about it correct, it stands to reason he was provided that information by an informant.

As for Trump’s theory that the informant might be Schiff, that makes no sense. As we wrote, Schiff, chair of the House intelligence committee, wrongly implied that his committee had no contact with the whistleblower before receiving the complaint, when the whistleblower had in fact reached out to a committee aide before filing a complaint. Trump has speculatedthat Schiff “probably helped write” the complaint, but there’s no evidence of that, and a spokesman for Schiff and the House intelligence committee said in a statement, “At no point did the Committee review or receive the complaint in advance.”

But Schiff did not participate in the phone call, and therefore could not have provided details to the whistleblower about it, at least not unless Schiff was debriefed on the call by — an informant.

Trump Isn’t Only President to Donate Salary

Trump does indeed donate his salary, which we’ve written about before, but he was wrong when he said “no other president has done it.”

Trump, Oct. 21: I give away my salary. It’s, I guess, close to $450,000. I give it away. Nobody ever said he gives away his salary.  … They say that no other president has done it. … They think George Washington did, but they say no other.

Trump’s annual salary is $400,000, and the press has covered the quarterly announcementson which government programs would be receiving Trump’s donated salary.

But John F. Kennedy also donated his salary in 1961, according to a Nov. 14, 1962, news article that attributed that information to the Minneapolis Tribune and Des Moines Register. The article said Kennedy was following the practice of Herbert Hoover, who “banked his presidential salary and gave it entirely to charity,” according to the Hoover presidential library.

Snopes.com wrote about this issue before Trump took office, noting that in Washington’s case, according to one book, he did refuse the salary at first but then accepted it at Congress’ urging.

In his book, “George Washington’s 1791 Southern Tour,” Warren L. Bingham wrote: “At first, Washington refused the salary, but Congress insisted on the principle, on which Washington also agreed, that the presidency should not be reserved for only those wealthy enough to work for free.”

Obama’s Book Deal

In defending his decision to host the 2020 G-7 at his Doral golf resort in Miami — and his subsequent reversal in the face of criticism — Trump claimed that other presidents “ran their business” while in office, citing Obama’s book and Netflix deals. But the book, reportedly a memoir on his presidency, and Netflix collaboration were announced after Obama left office.

Trump, Oct. 21: Hey, Obama made a deal for a book. Is that running a business? I’m sure he didn’t even discuss it while he was President. Oh, yeah. He has a deal with Netflix. When did they start talking about that? That’s only, you know, a couple of examples.

Penguin Random House announced on Feb. 28, 2017, a month after Obama left office, that it would publish books both by the former president and former First Lady Michelle Obama. The deal is reportedly worth about $65 million. Netflix announced a production deal with the Obamas in May 2018.

Trump also overlooks the fact that hosting the G-7 at Doral was akin to awarding a government contract to himself and accepting payments from foreign governments.

China’s Economy

Trump made several claims about China’s economy, and some of them were inaccurate.

First, Trump said, “China is doing very poorly — worst year they’ve had in 57 years.” Later, he claimed, “they announced that they have the worst numbers they’ve had in 20 years.” He was closer to being accurate the second time.

“They announced six,” Trump said, referring to China’s growth in its real gross domestic product.

Most recently, China announced its economy grew by 6% in the third quarter of 2019, when compared with the same period the previous year. That was “the weakest pace in at least 27-1/2 years,” according to a Reuters’ analysis of quarterly data.

On an annual basis, China is currently projected to have real GDP growth of 6.1% for all of 2019, according to the International Monetary Fund. But that would be the lowest annual growth in 29 years — since China’s GDP grew by 3.9% in 1990, according to World Bank data going back to 1961.

Trump went on to say: “So, if I weren’t elected, by right now, China would be the largest economy in the world. It was expected. It was said by many people that China would, right now — they were expecting around the second year of this term.”

We don’t know where Trump saw that China was projected to surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest economy in 2018. As of 2016, China’s GDP in nominal dollars was $11.2 trillion, which was still about 40 percent less than the U.S. GDP of $18.7 trillion.

Plus, by one measure — purchasing power parity, which accounts for differences in prices across countries — China had already become the leading economy in 2014, according to a Congressional Research Service report updated in June. Citing figures from the IMF and World Economic Forum, the CRS report said, based on PPP, China ($25.27 trillion) was still ahead of the U.S. ($20.49 trillion) in 2018, while the U.S. ($20.49 trillion) still outranked China ($13.40 trillion) in nominal dollars.

Trump also was wrong when he said, “And we’re getting bigger, and they’re not.” China’s economic growth has slowed in recent years, but it is still increasing at a faster rate than real U.S. GDP, which grew by 2.9% in 2018 and at an annual rate of 2% in the second quarter of 2019.

And as the IMF noted in July 2018, “[e]ven with a gradual slowdown in growth, China,” in nominal figures, “could become the world’s largest economy by 2030.”

Source: FactCheck.org

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Tulsi Sets The Internet Ablaze With Fiery Response To Hillary Clinton | Trending Politics

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard fires back at former first lady over comments suggesting she was being groomed by Russia.

n Friday, Democratic Presidential Candidate Tulsi Gabbard absolutely shredded failed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton after she falsely stated that Gabbard was a Russian asset.

“Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain.” Gabbard tweeted. “From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why.”

She continued: “Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.”

This scathing statement from Gabbard immediately set the internet on fire, resulting in hundreds of thousands of tweets relating to the subject matter.

Gabbards tweets come in response to a conspiracy theory promoted by Hillary Clinton on Friday where she falsely claimed that Russia was “grooming” Gabbard to help President Trump win again in 2020.

The corrupt Democrat made the conspiracy theory during a podcast with President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe.

“They are also going to do third party again,” Clinton said. “I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate,” Clinton said while referring to Gabbard.

“She is a favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far. That’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she is also a Russian asset,” Clinton bizarrely continued.

“They know they can’t win without a third-party candidate, and so I do not know who it’s going to be, but I can guarantee you they will have a vigorous third-party challenge in the key states that they most need it.”

Unlike Clinton, Gabbard has honorably served her country and has never been an asset to a foreign country. The failed presidential candidate and the rest of the Democratic party as a whole is spreading this conspiracy theory for one reason and one reason only. Gabbard is the only Democratic candidate who hasn’t sold her soul to the far-left base.

During the CNN debate on Tuesday, Gabbard went nuclear on CNN and the New York Times for slandering her, when they, like Hillary Clinton called her a Russian asset. CNN and the NYT also previously lied about her position on regime change in Syria, which Gabbard said was “completely despicable.”

The 38-year-old Iraq War veteran shredded CNN and the New York Times to their faces over their extremely biased coverage of her.

“Not only that, New York Times and CNN have also smeared veterans like myself for calling for an end to this regime change war,” Gabbard said.

“Just two days ago The New York Times put out an article saying that I’m a Russian asset and an [Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad apologist and all these different smears. This morning a CNN commentator said on national television that I’m an asset of Russia,” she added.

What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments below!

Source: Trending Politics & Al Jazeera

 

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FactChecking the October Democratic Debate | FactCheck.org

By , , , , , , and

Summary

We found several false and misleading claims in the October Democratic presidential debate:

  • Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro claimed that the most recent jobs data show that “Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania … have lost jobs not gained them.” In fact, total nonfarm employment in all three states was up in August — and since President Donald Trump took office — according to the most recent preliminary federal data.
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden was wrong when he said that American troops withdrawing from Syria were “being fired on by [Syrian President Bashar] Assad’s people.”
  • Activist and former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer claimed 90% of workers haven’t had a raise in 40 years — but a liberal think tank says their real annual wages are up more than 22%.
  • Sen. Cory Booker claimed that “raising the minimum to $15 an hour … would put more money in people’s pockets than giving them $1,000 a month” under businessman Andrew Yang’s universal basic income plan. But Yang’s plan would put more money in more pockets than Booker’s bill to raise the minimum wage.
  • Leading economists and tax experts disagree about whether Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposed wealth tax would generate enough revenue to fund a host of Warren’s education priorities. Yang rightly noted that several European countries repealed their wealth taxes, in part because they did not raise as much revenue as projected. But Warren’s plan seeks to address some of the weaknesses of those plans.
  • Yang and Steyer both exaggerated the number of opioid overdose deaths in America by using total drug overdose death figures. Yang also inaccurately attributed all of the deaths to Purdue Pharma.
  • Biden claimed Medicare for All will cost “at least $30 trillion over 10 years. That is more on a yearly basis than the entire federal budget.” It may cost that much, but federal spending is projected to exceed $50 trillion over 10 years. And, while Medicare for All would significantly increase federal spending, it also would eliminate health care spending by individuals, businesses and local governments.
  • Sen. Bernie Sanders repeated two claims on health care. He said that “500,000 people” are “going bankrupt” due to cancer, but the study he cites only says that medical issues contributed to those bankruptcies — they were not the sole reason. He also said that “87 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured.” The figure includes 19.3 million who were insured but had a gap in coverage in the previous year.
  • Sanders referred to climate change as an “existential threat.” Scientists agree climate change does pose a threat to humans and ecosystems, but they do not envision that climate change will obliterate all people from the planet.
  • Yang repeated a baseless claim that Amazon is responsible for closing “30% of America’s stores and malls.” In fact, there’s evidence that the number of retail stores may actually be increasing.

Twelve candidates for president met for the Oct. 15 debate hosted by CNN and the New York Times in Westerville, Ohio.

Analysis

Castro Wrong About Job Losses

Castro, a former mayor of San Antonio and HUD secretary, was wrong when he said, “Donald Trump has broken his promises because Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania — actually in the latest jobs data — have lost jobs, not gained them.”

In August, which is the most recent month for seasonally adjusted data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, total nonfarm employment went up by 16,500 in Pennsylvania, by 6,100 in Michigan and by 3,700 in Ohio.

Castro’s campaign issued a press release during the debate that said the “data from August … is preliminary due to incomplete data and will be revised by the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the end of this month.” The press release added, “This fiscal year, from March through July, the latest month with final numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, non-farm payrolls are down in Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.”

That’s all true, but it’s not the claim that Castro made during the debate. The “latest jobs data” for states, although preliminary, is for August — not July.

The estimated job gains in August for Pennsylvania and Michigan surpassed the job losses from March through July. However, Ohio has lost 3,600 jobs from March through August.

Furthermore, the campaign’s argument is misleading. The fact is, since Trump took office in January 2017, total nonfarm employment is up — not down — in those three states and nationwide. That’s whether one measures up to July or August.

Biden Wrong on Syria

Biden mistakenly said that American troops withdrawing from Syria were “being fired on by [Syrian President Bashar] Assad’s people.”

According to news reports, Turkish militias fired artillery rounds near a U.S. military outpost in northeastern Syria last week, though no U.S. forces were injured. There have been no reports of Assad’s Syrian government forces firing on American troops.

Biden: I would not have withdrawn the troops and I would not have withdrawn the additional thousand troops who are in Iraq, which are in retreat now, being fired on by Assad’s people.

After a phone call on Oct. 6 with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President Donald Trump announced he would be withdrawing troops from northern Syria. After initially withdrawing 50 American troops from the Syrian border with Turkey, the Pentagon this week began pulling out all of its 1,000 soldiers from Syria, a process that was expected to take several weeks.

With the U.S. troop withdrawal, Syrian government forces have moved to retake territory in the country’s northeast, but there have been no reports that they have fired upon retreating U.S. forces, as Biden said.

New York Times, Oct. 14: Syrian government forces streamed into the country’s northeast on Monday, seizing towns where they had not stepped foot in years and filling a vacuum opened up by President Trump’s decision to abandon the United States’ Syrian Kurdish allies.

Less than a week after Turkey launched an incursion into northern Syria with Mr. Trump’s assent, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, considered a war criminal by the United States, has benefited handsomely, striking a deal with the United States’ former allies to take the northern border and rapidly gaining territory without a fight.

News reports made no mention of Syrian forces firing upon withdrawing U.S. troops, though.

Steyer Wrong on Wages

Tom Steyer, the billionaire liberal activist, was wrong when he claimed that “90 percent of Americans have not had a raise for 40 years.”

Even the liberal Economic Policy Institute — a think tank that advocates for low- and middle-income earners — reported in February of this year that the annual wages of the bottom 90% of wage earners have gone up 22.2% since 1979, even after adjustment for inflation. (See Appendix Figure A.)

And that’s only through 2017. Wages have risen further since then. Average weekly earnings of all production and nonsupervisory wage earners in the private sector have gone up 2.1%(after adjustment for inflation) between December 2017 and last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

EPI reports that wage growth has been “sluggish” for the vast majority of workers, compared with a 157% increase for the highest-paid 1% of earners since 1979. But Steyer goes too far when he claims there has been no growth at all.

Minimum Wage Hike vs. Universal Basic Income

When asked about how he would convince GM workers to end their strike, Booker took the opportunity to compare his bill to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour to Yang’s universal basic income plan.

Booker: Well, first of all, the one point I wanted to make about the UBI conversation — and I hope that my friend, Andrew Yang, will come out for this — doing more for workers than UBI would actually be just raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. It would put more money in people’s pockets than giving them $1,000 a month.

Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would eventually put more than $1,000 a month in some pockets, but Yang’s so-called “Freedom Dividend” would pay “$1,000 per month, or $12,000 per year, to all U.S. citizens over the age of 18 … no questions asked.”

Booker is a cosponsor of “Raise the Wage Act,” which would increase the minimum wage to $15, but not until six years after enactment. Under the bill, there would be a seven-step phase-in period, beginning with $8.40 an hour and then increasing $1.10 per hour each year for the next six years.

“The annual earnings for a full-time minimum-wage worker is $15,080 at the current federal minimum wage of $7.25,” according to the Center for Poverty Research at the University of California, Davis. An increase to $15 per hour would more than double that to $31,200 — a difference of $16,120, or $1,343 a month.

But it would take five years for a person earning minimum wage to earn more than $1,000 a month in additional income.

Under the Raise the Wage Act, the minimum raise would increase to $8.40 an hour no later than 90 days after the bill is signed into law. That’s an increase of $199 more per month — compared with Yang’s $1,000-per-month plan.

Five years after the bill takes effect, the minimum wage would increase to $13.90 an hour, providing an additional $1,153 per month. The $15 minimum wage would be fully implemented six years after the bill takes effect, providing $1,343 per month in additional income.

After seven years, Yang’s plan would have provided $1,000 a month, while the phasing-in of the minimum wage would provide only an average of $771 a month.

Also, unlike Yang’s plan, the minimum wage pay hike would not affect every American. And increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour would result in job losses, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

In a July report, CBO said a $15 minimum wage would directly increase the wages of 17 million workers, but “1.3 million other workers would become jobless.”

Yang’s plan would put more money in more pockets than raising the minimum wage.

Warren’s Wealth Tax

As she has in past debates, Warren ticked off a list of things she says could be paid for with her proposal for an annual wealth tax on all assets over $50 million. As we have written, it is a matter of debate among economists and tax experts as to whether her plan would raise as much as she expects.

One of Warren’s challengers at the debate, Yang, noted that several European countries have repealed their wealth taxes “because it had massive implementation problems and did not generate the revenue that they’d projected.” That’s backed up in a report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But the report also argues that a wealth tax is likely needed to close the wealth inequality gap, and it outlines a number of proposed improvements to make a wealth tax more effective than those in Europe. Warren’s plan incorporates many of those suggestions.

Under Warren’s plan, households would pay an annual 2% tax on all assets — net worth — above $50 million, and a 3% tax on every dollar of net worth above $1 billion. During the debate, Warren highlighted some of the things that tax could bankroll.

Warren: And right now in America, the top 0.1 percent have so much wealth — understand this — that if we put a 2 cent tax on their 50 millionth and first dollar, and on every dollar after that, we would have enough money to provide universal child care for every baby in this country, age zero to 5, universal pre-K for every child, raise the wages of every child care worker and preschool teacher in America, provide for universal tuition-free college, put $50 billion into historically black colleges and universities … and cancel student loan debt for 95 percent of the people who have it.

Warren estimates her wealth tax would raise $2.75 trillion over 10 years, based on an analysis by University of California, Berkeley economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez, who study wealth inequality.

When we wrote about Warren’s plan back in June in our story “Facts on Warren’s Wealth Tax Plan,” we noted that several prominent economists and tax experts cast doubt on Warren’s estimate of the revenue the tax would generate, warning that wealthy people would find ways to avoid the tax.

Yang noted that that was one of the reasons several European countries scrapped their wealth tax plans.

Yang: And a wealth tax makes a lot of sense in principle. The problem is that it’s been tried in Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, and all those countries ended up repealing it, because it had massive implementation problems and did not generate the revenue that they’d projected. If we can’t learn from the failed experiences of other countries, what can we learn from? We should not be looking to other countries’ mistakes.

Indeed, while as many as a dozen countries in Europe had a wealth tax in the early 1990s, that number has dropped to three as of 2018, according to an OECD report. (In 2018, Francereplaced its net wealth tax with a new real estate wealth tax.)

“Decisions to repeal net wealth taxes have often been justified by efficiency and administrative concerns and by the observation that net wealth taxes have frequently failed to meet their redistributive goals,” the report stated. “The revenues collected from net wealth taxes have also, with a few exceptions, been very low.”

However, the report “also argues that capital income taxes alone will most likely not be enough to address wealth inequality and suggests the need to complement capital income taxes with a form of wealth taxation.”

The report makes several recommendations to bolster the effectiveness of a wealth tax — lessons learned from the European examples. Warren’s plan has attempted to incorporate many of those suggestions.

For example, the OECD report recommends a wealth tax only be levied on the very wealthy, that the rate should be low, exemptions and reliefs should be limited (to prevent those subject to the tax from moving assets into exempted categories), and that payments should be allowed in installments for those “facing liquidity constraints.” All of those are part of Warren’s plan.

Under the Warren plan, those with liquidity issues would be able to defer tax payments, with interest, for up to five years. And to guard against wealthy Americans simply moving out of the country to avoid the wealth tax, Warren’s plan would assess a one-time 40% “exit tax” on the net worth above $50 million for those who renounce their citizenship.

We take no position on whether those provisions in the Warren plan would address the lower-than-expected revenues generated by some European countries that tried a wealth tax, but we simply note that there is significant disagreement among economists and tax experts.

Biden on Medicare for All

As he has done in past debates, Biden repeatedly criticized the Medicare for All proposal as a budget buster, saying it would increase federal spending by $30 trillion over 10 years. But Biden ignored that nearly all health care spending by businesses, local governments and individuals would go away.

At one point, Biden said: “The plan is going to cost at least $30 trillion over 10 years. That is more on a yearly basis than the entire federal budget.” He turned to the issue later in the debate, saying something similar: “It costs $30 trillion. Guess what? That’s over $3 trillion — it’s more than the entire federal budget.”

We should start out by saying that $30 trillion over 10 years is not “more than the entire federal budget.” In its August report on long-term budget projections, the Congressional Budget Office estimates federal outlays will be $57.8 trillion over 10 years, from 2020 to 2029.

Also, as we’ve explained before, we don’t know how much Medicare for All would cost, since many details are yet to be determined. But two estimates, one by the Urban Institute and another by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, said the federal government cost would be $32 trillion or $32.6 trillion over 10 years.

The government would have to raise taxes or fees, or cut other spending, to cover the costs. But Biden ignores the fact that current health care spending by private insurers, employers, individuals and states would shift to the federal government.

Opioid Epidemic

In relating the severity of the opioid epidemic, Yang and Steyer gave inaccurate figures for the number of overdose deaths from opioids.

“I think this is one of the most heartbreaking experiences that America’s had — 72,000 people died of opioid overdoses last year,” Steyer said in response to a moderator’s question about how he would address the opioid epidemic.

Steyer’s statistic, however, is for 2017, and applies to deaths from overdoses from any drug, not just those from opioids. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website, there were 70,237 deaths from any drug in 2017, with 47,600, or 67.8%, involving opioids.

For 2018, provisional CDC data suggest that overdose deaths fell, to 68,618 deaths from any drug. The agency estimates that 47,625 deaths, or 69%, were opioid-related.

The 72,000 number that Steyer used is well known because it was widely reported as a provisional 2017 figure from the CDC in August 2018 (the final data, which we report above, differs slightly, and is limited to U.S. residents).

Yang made a similar error when he claimed that Purdue Pharma was responsible for eight deaths per hour.

Yang: There was a point when there were more opiate prescriptions in the state of Ohio than human beings in the state of Ohio. And for some reason, the federal government thought that was appropriate. They ended up levying a $600 million fine against Purdue Pharma, which sounds like a lot of money, until you realize that company made $30 billion. They got a 2% fine, and they killed tens of thousands of Americans, eight an hour.

We contacted the Yang campaign to find out the source of the eight deaths an hour claim, and we were directed to a Vox news article reporting on the initial 2017 estimate of 72,000 overdose deaths, which noted that the death toll was equivalent to nearly 200 per day. The campaign then spelled out the math, explaining that 200 divided by 24 hours was 8.33.

The math checks out, but as with Steyer, those eight deaths per hour were not due just to opioids. Rather, opioids were involved in about 5 deaths per hour in 2017.

Yang’s other error is to ascribe all of the overdose deaths to Purdue Pharma. While Purdue Pharma, as the maker of OxyContin, is arguably responsible for many opioid-related deaths, the company isn’t responsible for all of them.

Medical Bankruptcies and the ‘Underinsured’

Sanders stated that “500,000 people” are “going bankrupt” because “they came down with cancer.” As we wrote in September, Sanders is referencing a March 2019 editorial article in the American Journal of Public Health. Of the 910 respondents who declared bankruptcy between 2013 and 2016, 66.5% said medical expenses or medical problems either “somewhat” or “very much” contributed to their bankruptcies. This percentage translates to just under half a million bankruptcies when applied to the 750,489 non-business bankruptcies filed from 2015-2019.

Medical issues weren’t the sole reason for some of those bankruptcies. Also, the survey did not ask about specific medical conditions, so there’s no evidence those bankruptcies happened only because of medical expenses related to cancer or any other disease.

Sanders repeated another claim he has made in previous debates, saying that “87 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured.” As we’ve written before, this figure comes from a Commonwealth Fund study and includes 19.3 million who were insured when they were surveyed but had a gap in coverage in the previous year.

“Of the 194 million U.S. adults ages 19 to 64 in 2018, an estimated 87 million, or 45 percent, were inadequately insured,” the study said. It broke down the “inadequately insured” into three different categories: 24 million uninsured, 43.8 million who were “underinsured” and 19.3 million who were insured but had been uninsured at some point in the prior year.

Climate Change

Debate moderators did not ask candidates about climate change, but that didn’t stop a few candidates from referring to it, including Sanders, who used a descriptor that could use some clarification.

“We’re forgetting about the existential threat of climate change,” Sanders said early on in the debate.

“Existential” has become a popular word among Democrats to describe the danger that climate change poses. As we’ve written in our coverage of a previous debate, it’s not entirely clear what politicians mean when they use the word. But if taken literally to mean the end of humanity, the descriptor is incorrect.

Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann told us previously in an email that the idea that humans would go extinct because of climate change “simply cannot be defended scientifically.”

Yet scientists are clear that climate change does pose serious risks to civilization through increased temperatures, sea level rise and extreme weather, among other factors — especially if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated.

In some cases, this could even mean a specific location would be uninhabitable, said Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist at NASA. But does he think climate change is going to wipe humanity off the face of the Earth? “No,” he said.

Yang Wrong About Amazon — Again

Yang doubled down on a false claim about Amazon.com.

Yang: Amazon alone is closing 30% of America’s stores and malls, soaking up $20 billion in business while paying zero in taxes.

As we reported Aug. 1, after he made the same claim in the second Democratic debate, Yang went way beyond the facts. We found no factual basis for the claim that 30% of stores have closed, and some evidence that the number may be increasing. The National Retail Federation reports that “54 percent of surveyed retailers plan to open new stores in 2019, and 36 percent of those surveyed will have a higher store count than in 2018.” Furthermore, the retail services firm JLL reported last year that 850 new stores were being planned over the next five years by firms that previously had sold only through the internet.

We also noted that the Wall Street Journal has estimated that Amazon paid 8% of its income in taxes for the years 2012 through 2018 — which the Journal noted was “low, but not zero or negative.”

It’s true that a 2017 Business Insider report estimated that 30% of retail malls (not stores) were being pushed “to the brink of death” (but not necessarily over it) by a wave of store closings by old-line retailers including JCPenney and Sears. But malls are not stores, and even that report didn’t cite Amazon’s competition as the sole cause of the malls’ distress.

Sources

Kiely, Eugene et. al. “FactChecking July’s Round Two Debate.” FactCheck.org. 1 Aug 2019.

Cook, Benjamin. Climate scientist, NASA. Interview with FactCheck.org. 26 Jul 2019.

Mann, Michael. Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, Pennsylvania State University. Email sent to FactCheck.org. 23 Jul 2019.

Kiely, Eugene et. al. “FactChecking the Second Democratic Debate.” FactCheck.org. 31 Jul 2019.

Collins, Sara R. et. al. “Health Insurance Coverage Eight Years After the ACA.” The Commonwealth Fund. 7 Feb 2019.

Robertson, Lori et. al. “FactChecking the September Democratic Debate.” FactCheck.org. 13 Sep 2019.

Himmelstein, David U. et. al. “Medical Bankruptcy: Still Common Despite the Affordable Care Act.” Am J Public Health. 109(3):431-433, 2019.

United States Courts. Bankruptcy Filings Continue to Decline. 22 Apr 2019.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National); Total Nonfarm Employment, Seasonally Adjusted.” Data accessed 15 Oct 2019.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “State and Area Employment, Hours, and Earnings (Pennsylvania); Total Nonfarm Employment, Seasonally Adjusted.” Data accessed 15 Oct 2019.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “State and Area Employment, Hours, and Earnings (Ohio); Total Nonfarm Employment, Seasonally Adjusted.” Data accessed 15 Oct 2019.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “State and Area Employment, Hours, and Earnings (Michigan); Total Nonfarm Employment, Seasonally Adjusted.” Data accessed 15 Oct 2019.

Castro, Julian. “FACT: Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania Have Lost Jobs Under Trump.” Press release. 15 Oct 2019.

Gould, Elise. “State of Working America Wages 2018.” Economic Policy Institute. 20 Feb 2019.

Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National); Average Weekly Earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees, 1982-1984 Dollars.” Data extracted 16 Oct 2019.

Rubin, Richard. “Does Amazon Really Pay No Taxes? Here’s the Complicated Answer.” Wall Street Journal. 14 Jun 2019.

Peterson, Haley and Skye Gould. “Store closures will push 30% of US malls to the brink of death.” Business Insider. 7 Mar 2017.

Aronholt, Bethany. “Setting the record straight on the state of retail and store closures.” National Retail Federation. 15 Apr 2019.

Maloney, Greg. “Once-Online-Only Brands Will Open 850 Brick-And-Mortar Stores Over Next Five Years.” Forbes. 12 Nov 2018.

Congressional Budget Office. “An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2019 to 2029.” 21 Aug 2019.

Robertson, Lori. “The Facts on Medicare for All.” FactCheck.org. 24 Apr 2019.

Holahan, John, et. al. “The Sanders Single-Payer Health Care Plan.” Urban Institute. May 2016.

Blahous, Charles. “The Costs of a National Single-Payer Healthcare System.” Mercatus Center, George Mason University. Jul 2018.

“What is the Freedom Dividend?” Friends of Andrew Yang. Undated. Accessed 16 Oct 2019.

U.S. Senate. “S. 150, Raise the Wage Act.” (as introduced 16 Jan 2019.)

“What are the annual earnings for a full-time minimum wage worker?” Center for Poverty Research at the University of California, Davis. 12 Jan 2018.

Congressional Budget Office. “The Effects on Employment and Family Income of Increasing the Federal Minimum Wage.” Jul 2019.

LaMothe, Dan. “U.S. forces say Turkey was deliberately ‘bracketing’ American troops with artillery fire in Syria.” Washington Post. 12 Oct 2019.

White House website. “Statement from the Press Secretary.” 06 Oct 2019.

Vanden Brook, Tom. “Pentagon to withdraw 1,000 troops from Syria within weeks, pulling back in fight against ISIS.” USA Today. 14 Oct 2019.

Hubbard, Ben and Schmitt, Eric. “Assad Forces Surge Forward in Syria as U.S. Pulls Back.” New York Times. 14 Oct 2019.

OECD Tax Policy Studies. “The Role and Design of Net Wealth Taxes in the OECD.” 2018.

Farley, Robert. “Facts on Warren’s Wealth Tax Plan.” FactCheck.org. 25 Jun 2019.

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Summers, Lawrence H. and Sarin, Natasha. “Opinions: A ‘wealth tax’ presents a revenue estimation puzzle.” Washington Post. 4 Apr 2019.

Saez, Emmanuel and Zucman, Gabriel. “Response to Summers and Sarin, ‘A wealth tax presents a revenue estimation puzzle,’ Washington Post, April 4.” 25 Jun 2019.

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Hedegaard, Holly et. al. “Drug overdose deaths in the United States, 1999–2017.” NCHS Data Brief, no 329. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2018.

Ingraham, Christopher. “Fentanyl use drove drug overdose deaths to a record high in 2017, CDC estimates.” Washington Post. 15 Aug 2018.

Sanger-Katz, Margot. “Bleak New Estimates in Drug Epidemic: A Record 72,000 Overdose Deaths in 2017.” New York Times. 15 Aug 2018.

Lopez, German. “2017 was the worst year ever for drug overdose deaths in America.” Vox. 16 Aug 2018.

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Source: FactCheck.org

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Ukraine Showdown: Why Trump And Biden Are Facing Off | Collective Evolution

IN BRIEF

  • The Facts:The Ukraine saga, which has Democrats calling for impeachment and Republicans calling for the indictment of Democratic criminals, is only the latest iteration of a struggle between two polarities which will never end so long as we fuel it.
  • Reflect On:What does it really mean to step away from the left/right polarity, and truly find a neutral seat in the audience from which we can sit back and be entertained by this political theatre of the absurd?

The tussle between Democrats calling for Trump’s impeachment and Republicans calling for an investigation into Joe Biden’s influence-peddling in the Ukraine is just the latest act in the never-ending saga of American political theatre.

Still, there is value in examining the details of this particular drama–as objective observers rather than as polarized partisans–in order to strengthen our understanding of our role as citizens impacted by all the machinations within the political arena.

That’s precisely what Joe Martino and I attempt to do in our latest episode of ‘The Collective Evolution Show’ on CETV. Below is a clip from the show that outlines the strong-arm tactics Joe Biden used–by his own admission–against the Ukranian government to fire a prosecutor who was investigating an energy company that was paying Biden’s son an exorbitant salary for being on their executive board. You can see the whole episode when you start a free 7-day trial on CETV.

The Sequence Of Events

The saga all starts with Joe Biden’s meeting in March 2016 with then-president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, where he threatened to cancel $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to pressure the president to fire prosecutor Viktor Shokin. Biden himself discloses exactly this in a 2018 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.

The problem here? While Joe Biden claims he wanted the prosecutor fired because he was inept and corrupt, Biden’s son Hunter Biden was on the executive board of Burisma Holdings, which Shokin was in the process of investigating. U.S. banking records show that Hunter’s American-based firm Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC received regular transfers into one of its accounts—usually more than $166,000 a month—from Burisma from spring 2014 through fall 2015.

This significant remuneration is brought further into question by the fact that Hunter Biden reportedly has no formal knowledge about the energy industry.

In a sworn affidavit, Viktor Shokin makes it clear why he believes he was fired:

“I was forced out because I was leading a wide-range corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine, and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, was a member of the board of directors.”

“We had plans that included interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden.”

And memos that are now surfacing from the Ukraine offer some corroboration for Shokin’s claims that he was not fired because he was corrupt or inept:

Burisma’s American legal representatives met with Ukrainian officials just days after Biden forced the firing of the country’s chief prosecutor and offered “an apology for dissemination of false information by U.S. representatives and public figures” about the Ukrainian prosecutors, according to the Ukrainian government’s official memo of the meeting. The effort to secure that meeting began the same day the prosecutor’s firing was announced. (source)

In other words, Burisma was made well aware of the decision to fire Viktor Shokin the day it was made, and worked quickly to ensure their influence over the new prosecutors coming in, whom Joe Biden characterized as “solid.”

Was Joe Biden involved in some ‘pay-to-play’ scheme in which one or more Ukranian businesses would be able to count on Joe Biden’s influence in exchange for payments that were being made to Biden’s son Hunter, sheltering Joe Biden himself from those transactions? It would seem so.

Trump Calls On New Ukranian President For Help

But all this only became news after the electoral victory of new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in March of 2019, and a phone call from Donald Trump on July 25th, 2019, where Trump requested that Mr. Zelenskiy cooperate with AG Bill Barr and Rudy Giuliani in investigating the firing of prosecutor Victor Shokin.

In turn this phone call only surfaced because an anonymous ‘whistleblower’ came out in August and claimed to have first-hand knowledge of the phone call and disclosed that Donald Trump had pressured Zelinskiy to investigate Biden, and that Trump’s tactics involved a quid pro quo.

Mainstream media ran with this right away and ramped up rhetoric that this phone conversation was the new and serious grounds for impeachment, which was then taken up by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

This prompted Trump to release a transcript of the phone call, in order to certify that he had done nothing wrong. Democrat Adam Schiff, in an attempt to spin the gist of the phone conversation, seems to ignore the fact that the transcript had just been released and went ahead with his ‘interpretation’ which he later excused as a ‘parody’, while making it seem as though he was quoting from the transcript:

On September 25th Trump held an in-person press conference with Zelinskiy  to quash any rumors that he had pressured the Ukranian PM, and followed with an ongoing counter-attack against Schiff on Twitter that continues today:

Left-Right Political Theatre

So where does this leave us? What are we to make of this debacle?

Well, if you’re on the right, you are probably getting absolutely fed up that high ranking people on the left who have obviously been involved in criminal activity have not yet been indicted and prosecuted. If you’re on the left, you may see Trump as an embarrassment and are desperate to see him removed from power, whether legitimately or even through questionable political maneuvers.

But there is a bigger question here. Amidst the ever-polarizing political battle that has been playing out since Trump became president, over a host of issues of which this Ukraine matter is only the most recent, how do we really want to participate in this?

If we continue to take sides, and believe that some form of legal action within the political theatre will solve our problems, whether it be indictment or impeachment, we are only supporting the madness and continuing to give our power away to forces who clearly don’t have our best interests at heart.

What is needed is to see current politics as it is, truly theatre of the absurd, and its only real value to us is to awaken us to what we are really giving our power away to, so that we eventually gain the conviction to withdraw our consent to these systems in favor of something that really is in service to us, the people.

So rather than getting angry, and continuing to believe that the people on our chosen side of the aisle will save the day for us, tempting as this continues to be for some, what will really benefit us is to move to neutrality, observe how senseless and pointless this drama has become–comical, we could even say–and begin having clear-minded conversations about how we step away from the whole ugly production.

The Takeaway

At CE, we encourage people to look at world events as a projection of our collective consciousness. When we see polarized turmoil being played out in front of us, it means our inner grievances and prejudices are being brought to the surface, smack in front of our eyes in order for us to confront them. When we have finally had enough of investing in the never-ending struggle between two polarities, neither of which offers the whole truth or the prospects of peace and harmony, we can choose to disengage from identifying with one side or the other, and transcend the battle in search of greater possibilities for ourselves and for humanity.

Source: Collective Evolution

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US Vax Court Sees 400% Spike in Vaccine Injuries, Flu Shot Wins Top Honors for Biggest Payout | Vaccine Impact

Vaccine injury cases are on the rise people, so if you’ve got your head in the sand and you haven’t been paying attention, it’s time to wake up.

Here’s a little background for those of you just getting started.

Ronnie Reagan… almost 30 years ago to the day, the 40th president of the United States signed away the rights of Americans to sue vaccine makers, replacing them with a law that forces families who have suffered vaccine injury or death to sue the U.S. government instead of a pharmaceutical company.

As a result, special masters from the United States Special Claims Court, also known for our purposes as the vaccine court, are given full authority as judge with no jury to decide the fate of Americans who have had the unfortunate ‘luck’ to be stricken by a vaccine injury — which can range from chronic, mild symptoms to death.

Once a year, this non-traditional court provides the public with a glimpse into its inner workings, by issuing an annual report on its website — a ritual that happens every January.  The report is sent to the President of Congress, otherwise known as the Vice President of the United States, where it is intended to serve as a bell weather monitoring reactions the American public may be having to vaccinations that are increasingly becoming forced by government mandates around the country.

Great, right?  Accountability in action?

Wrong.

The report, which is consistently ignored by mainstream media/politicians/health officials and the CDC, lies dormant on the reports page of the U.S. Special Claims Court website.

No headlines, no press release, no analysis, no alert the media, no nothing.

No surprise, given that most people in America don’t even know that vaccines were ruled to be unavoidably unsafe by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011.  Also no surprise, that mainstream, co-opted, globalist elite media constantly ignore this report, along with sane arguments made by health freedom advocates about the dangers and risks of vaccine injury (‘look! a unicorn!’), instead using terms like ‘the science is in,’ and vaccine risk has been ‘debunked,’ to deter rational discussion pertaining to evidence that is hiding in plain sight.

Also no surprise that the U.S. Special Claims Court offers up an ineffective, low tech, archaic version of the report every year.  Instead of a nice, sort-able spread sheet, the court posts a scanned PDF document — a format which requires labor-intensive activities to conduct any sort of concrete analysis.  One must either re-data-entry all 220+ pages which would take weeks, or conduct an extensive, hand-written breakdown by vaccine of each case, combined with extensive tallying and organization efforts in order to identify statistical relevance and trends emerging from the vaccine court.

Is this by design?  Perhaps.  Most definitely it is at the very least a deterrent from having anybody actually sit down and try to analyze the damn thing.

Which is exactly why we do it, every year since 2014.  Not to be deterred, it took us 10 months to finally finish our analysis of this year’s report.  But once we did, the trends we found were shocking — not just because of what they revealed about the continual increase in vaccine injury, but also because of the deafening silence present among the halls of mainstream media, as vaccine injury continues to be a subject that journalists and media outlets ignore — chalking it up to yet another conspiracy theory from yet another fake news site.

Well pull up a chair and hold on to your hats, because guess what we discovered:

  1. Vaccine court settlement payouts increased in total $91.2 million in 2015, up from $22.8 million in 2014 to $114 million in 2015 — a 400% increase. 
  2. Vaccine court settlement payments for flu shots increased the most, from $4.9 million in 2014 to $61 million in 2015 —  an increase of more than 1000%, despite autumnal onslaughts every year of media/pr/advertising campaigns urging Americans to ‘get your flu shot,’ with total abandon for the statistical facts coming out of the vaccine court.
  3. Varicella (chicken pox) had the third biggest increase — from $0 in 2014 to $5.8 million in 2015.  (No surprise shingles is on the rise among the elderly population, as recently vaccinated grandchildren continuously shed live virus to their unsuspecting elders.)
  4. Hepatitis B was the fourth largest increase in vaccine court settlements, increasing 321% in 2015 to more than $8 million in 2015 from $1.9 million in 2014.
  5. TDap/DTP/DPT and D/T shots were the fifth largest increase, leaping 75% in 2014 from $5.5 million to $9.8.

The rest of the settlements not pictured here are: Tetanus, $4 million; HPV $3.4 million, up from almost nothing in 2014 (one to watch in January when the 2016 report is issued); MMR, which actually decreased from the number one position last year to under $1 m — an 88%+ decrease in payouts; pertussis, $1.7 million; thimerisol $1.5 million; HIB, $345k, menginococal $500k, HEP A $408k, DPT & Polio, $210k & rotovirus $76k. 

You may have noticed we omitted the second place winner, ‘other.’  Here’s why.

‘Other’ illustrates perfectly the dodgy nature of the vaccine court report, and its lack of transparency in the vaccine court process.  Instead of identifying which combination of vaccines are being charged with injury or death and labeling the case accordingly, a special master can decide to label a vaccine case ‘other,’ thereby diluting its affect on the overall numbers in the final analysis.

In 2015, the ‘other’ category was the second largest increase in vaccine settlement payments, totaling $21.5 million in payouts, up 388% from $4.4 million in payouts the year before.

We’re not accusing anybody of anything.  But, 388% increase is a lot.  What combination of vaccines is causing such an increase?  Doesn’t the public have a right to know?  If the court decided, for example, that there were too many flu shot settlements mounting for the year, couldn’t it simply skew the data by categorizing certain cases as ‘other,’ which would artificially deflate the flu category?

Did we mention that these results are ONLY for the judgements — cases that are found in favor of the plaintiff.  It does NOT include the EXTENSIVE legal fees for both sides, which are paid for by the U.S. government whether the lawyer wins or loses the case?  Those are categorized as costs.  And instead of submitting them in the report along with any judgments that are awarded, often they are entered as separate entries, making the exercise of linking them with their judgement payouts that much harder, requiring yet another step in the arduous, analysis of data.

The total dollar payout of legal fees for the vaccine court in 2015 is $42 million.

Also, a hand full of settlements in the payout are based on annuities — that means that the payouts (many of which total more than $1 million) reoccur annually.  That’s because life as they knew it for some plaintiffs disappeared after their vaccine injury occurred, and the costs to care for them in perpetuity for the life of the plaintiff requires an annual sum that is often extensive.

Share far and wide people, it’s time to turn the tide.

Republished with permission of The Mom Street Journal. Read the full article at TheMomStreetJournal.com.

Source: Vaccine Impact & TheMomStreetJournal.com