Category: Congress

Coincidence?

July 7, 2020

Some time things happen that cause you to just shake your head in disbelief: “How in the world do you think that could have even been possible? SMH!” Look at the picture of that little boy on the beach. He took his head off and dropped in the sand!

I think it is relatively safe to conclude this one thing: If something looks like it cannot possibly be actual or real, we almost always call it “a coincidence.” In actuality, if it seems like it cannot be genuine or real, it almost certainly IS NOT real! Another way of putting that is, “If it looks too good to be true, you can almost bet it isn’t true.”

These kinds of comparisons are prevalent in pretty much every part of our lives. If you google “coincidences,” you’ll get hundreds of examples of some of the strangest “coincidences” that often look real even though they are undoubtedly contrived. Most coincidences are not coincidences at all. Look at some of these pictures:

I doubt pretty seriously the girl actually painted grass all over her body and then put on a pair of cutoffs and a bikini top! I also don’t think that clouds are created with hot coffee and will sneak out of a coffee cup to spread across the sky.

Our world today is full of coincidences that each and everyone seems to be real. But we know IF we look close enough, we can see the attempted trick that is always included in each. I think the problem in America today is that too many people are content to just live at the 10,000-ft. Level instead of living at sea level. Two miles in the air, things look much different than they do at sea level. Because we all are prone to determine what something is based on OUR perspective of it in whatever surroundings we see it, we often ignore some of the tell-tale signs of the realities of things and happenings that we see in our lives every day. We take for granted in most cases that it appears to be legitimate, so it must be real!

Far too often, it’s NOT real at all. And that’s where our problems begin.

Can you Think of Any Coincidences in our World Today?

Oh my! There are far too many to count. But why don’t we do this: let’s list a few and breakdown a few of those so we all can understand that in 2020 (and in 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016), there were far too many coincidences to be casual occurrences simply. In reality, most coincidences are just plans that have remained hidden — until just the right time.

 

Coincidence #1: the Trump Family

Our coincidences began when someone came across some books on the office of Congress’ Library website. The books are called, “Baron Trump’s Marvelous Underground Journey,” and, “1900; Or, The Last President.” Both were written in the 1890s by Ingersoll Lockwood. The books themselves are real. But wait, it gets better.

The plot of the first book about Baron Trump includes the story about a young boy who finds a secret portal and time travels. Dan Evon of Snopes.com gives a great, in-depth description of the eerie connection. “There are some incredible connections to be made to the first family of the United States and Lockwood’s novels from the turn of the 19th century. For starters, the main character’s name is the same as President Donald J. Trump’s son, albeit spelled differently. Trump’s adventures begin in Russia and are guided thanks to directions provided by ‘the master of all masters,’ a man named ‘Don.’ Before leaving for his voyage through the unknown, Trump is told of his family’s motto: ‘The pathway to glory is strewn with pitfalls and danger.’” But wait, it gets even creepier.

Lockwood wrote a sequel series of novels four years after the initial publication of his first book. In his third novel, “1900; Or, The Last President,” things link eerily to the present day. The story begins with a scene from a panicked New York City in early November. It describes a “state of uproar” after an election in which an enormously opposed outsider is granted power—an outsider candidate. Sound familiar? After the chaotic scene in NYC, we find out that the man who won the presidency is extraordinarily wealthy and resides on 5th avenue. In case you did not know, the Trump Tower lives on 5th avenue.

We’re just getting started!

Coincidence #2: COVID-19

Wuhan, where the virus originated, just happens to be the location of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, China’s only level 4 biosafety lab. Also curious is how quickly Wuhan purportedly became virus-free, and how other major Chinese cities such as Shanghai and Beijing weren’t affected. While the Chinese government quarantined Wuhan, the virus had already been around for months, potentially spread by Chinese New Year travel before the quarantine was placed. Yet the outbreak was quite limited and short-lived in China, unlike elsewhere, almost as if they were prepared.

Coincidence #3: from a Virus to Economic Disaster in Just Days

Just four months ago, Trump’s economy was on top of the world, literally. A booming stock market, strong economic growth, and record low unemployment was Trump’s first term legacy. What better way to derail a gangbuster economy than shutting it down due to a viral pandemic? It would be an ideal way to weaken a president ahead of an election. So what if there was collateral damage? Trump is the existential threat to the deep globalist state, and the ends justify the means.

A viral outbreak, whether hatched in a laboratory or a wet market, could have been a nuisance like past outbreaks. Yet this one was treated far differently, devastating world economies.

What a coincidence in timing.

Coincidence #4: Mysterious One Million Trump Tulsa Rally Tickets

The Trump Campaign gleefully announced for two weeks that their first rally since the start of the pandemic was quickly packed far beyond capacity: one million tickets had been snatched up! Who can forget what happened at showtime that Saturday night? When the television lights went on, the BOK Center in Tulsa looked to be not even half full. What went wrong? Where are all those who claimed those one million tickets?

As part of a coordinated effort, K-pop fans and teenage TikTok users scooped up tickets to President Trump’s rally in Tulsa, potentially leaving at least hundreds of empty seats, The New York Times reported. A tweet from the Trump campaign June 11th urged people to use their phones to register for the free tickets. The K-pop fans shared the information and encouraged their followers to get tickets, and then not show up for the rally. The plan quickly caught on on TikTok, where people followed the K-pop fans’ lead.

CNN credited Iowa grandmother Mary Jo Laupp with leading part of the charge on the video platform. She posted a TikTok video two weeks before the rally encouraging people to “go reserve tickets now and leave him standing alone there on the stage.”

We could spend your entire day listing coincidence after coincidence regarding numerous political events during this presidency. There are far too many to number. But there are some significant ones that we must share here to get you thinking and looking for more of this ahead of the November 3rd election. We’ll just list them in bullet points.

  • Was it a coincidence that the soap opera removal of the federal attorney of the Southern District of New York happened as it did and when it did? Geoffrey Berman was a powerful attorney who regularly dealt with high profile cases that involved some of the most influential people in Washington and elsewhere. Berman and Barr clashed multiple times over the handling of several different cases involving politics and even foreign governments. When Berman was ousted, CNN and other leftist media outlets accused Barr of sidelining Berman because he prosecuted Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen and an ongoing case against NYC former Mayor Guiliani. Those news outlets forgot that Barr was not the Attorney General when those cases happened. But there’s an odd coincidence that occurred immediately upon the firing of Berman. Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend and accused accomplice in Epstein’s sex trafficking business had been under surveillance by U.S. intelligence agencies living in a mansion in New Hampshire. Indictments of her were issued but were not executed UNTIL Berman’s termination. Is that a coincidence? It seems that Berman was connected to some high power Americans and foreign dignitaries that had been fingered as being complicit in the Epstein criminal activity. It was widely thought that Berman would have gone light on Epstein if he had not committed suicide and would undoubtedly have done the same in the prosecution of Maxwell. Immediately after his firing, agents arrested Ghislaine in New Hampshire. She has told the world she’s ready to talk. Who knows who and how many of these powerful men and women will be implicated by her testimony. Many thought with Berman handling the case, she would be coddled in her prosecution and might even have walked. Coincidence?
  • Let’s go back several years — to the early 60s. Lee Harvey Oswald was a loner, a political dissident who had close ties to Cuba and a Russian wife. He was not a fan of President John F. Kennedy. He was fingered as the lone gunman who assassinated the President in Dallas. Surprisingly, two days after Oswald was arrested, he was being moved to another facility. During the transfer, a man named Jack Ruby — a high roller and owner of a bar — mysteriously appeared in the basement of the Dallas police station, walked right up to Oswald. The latter was being escorted by several detectives to a car and shot and killed Oswald. It was later revealed that Oswald had terminal cancer and would not have lasted long. And Ruby knew about that before the shooting. Coincidence?

Summary

Let’s end this with some “today” coincidences. We’ll do these in bullet points as well:

 

Timing

  • Was it a coincidence that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was appointed by the president only to recuse himself from the Russia Collusion investigation almost immediately immediately?
  • Was it a coincidence that his successor, Rod Rosenstein, immediately appointed his good friend Robert Mueller as Special Counsel for that investigation shortly after Mueller had met in the Oval Office to discuss Mueller becoming FBI Director because of the firing of James Comey? (Rosenstein and Mueller are close friends and had worked together multiple times)
  • Was it a coincidence that Russia was (and still is) the focus of EVERY Democrat in Congress, every media outlet, every day regarding any news or discussions about election interference, which Russia preferred in 2016 to be President and the same thing for 2020? Did the fact that Hillary Clinton funded the production of a fake document that implicated then-candidate Donald Trump for massive wrongdoings in Russia? And why was that fact never revealed until after Mueller brought no Trump impeachable finding to Congress?
  • Was it a coincidence that shortly after the Mueller report, Democrats morphed immediately into Ukraine-Gate? It was to the surprise to many when revealed that former Vice President Biden had threatened to withhold U.S. aid to Ukraine if they did not first fire a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating Biden’s son for financial wrongdoing. Was it a coincidence that before that alleged wrongdoing by the Bidens could be investigated, the Democrats found a way to turn that into an impeachment attack against President Trump. Coincidence?
  • Was it a coincidence when immediately after the failure of the impeachment of Donald Trump, the Wuhan COVID-19 pandemic was used by Washington to begin the systemic destruction of the greatest economy in World history? Not only did they use the fear of the unknown about the virus, but they also transitioned that into the necessary shutdown of the nation, unemployment of 40 million Americans with no certainty of the details, and the scope of the virus. Coincidence?
  • Was it multiple coincidences that the World’s foremost virologists and epidemiologists of the Centers for Disease Control were pushed on President Trump as the “experts” of how to handle the coronavirus? That happened to then only force Americans to make critical decisions every day based on faulty information that was wrong as many times as it was right. Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx were and still are so mixed up and unsure about what is valid, what is necessary, what is prudent, and what things are not that Americans today are still uncertain about what and who to believe. Coincidence?
  • Was it a coincidence that the drug Hydroxychloroquine that had been prescribed for 60 years to treat malaria and other infectious diseases in America successfully? Dr. Fauci began trials for a coronavirus vaccine weeks before the first U.S. coronavirus case was confirmed. Was that a coincidence?
  • Was it a coincidence that immediately upon notification that the pandemic looked to not be as critical as first thought that protests and demonstrations and racial unrest would sweep through the nation following the death at the hands of four policemen of one black man?
  • Was it a coincidence that the pandemic lockdown stopped the convening of grand juries in several criminal cases regarding the wrongdoing of many politically connected members from the Obama Administration? Many in the nation thought that Attorney John Durham would have begun releasing indictments in those cases long before the November election. It appears now not to be possible.
  • Is it a coincidence that Democrats are pleading for school systems around the nation to cancel classes for the Fall? One Louisiana state senator sent a letter today to the Lousiana Board of Education advising them to not only cancel school classes, but every athletic event, training, practicing, and anything else that involves close contact between athletes, but to make that mandatory for the entire 2020-2021 athletic season for all sports.

We MUST stop there! There are hundreds more. It’s amazing what creative people who have deep embedded anger and hatred for others can build from pure hatred. But we see it happen over and over again, all of which is certainly not coincidental. And few people today will even deny that there is no way for it to BE coincidental.

But don’t weary: we still have five months before the election. You can bet we’ll see many more coincidental things that happen on the national stage.

Stay tuned!

Rep. Jerrold Nadler’s Judiciary Committee Hearing was Nothing but a Circus

June 25, 2020

The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday held an oversight hearing focusing on Attorney General William Barr’s decisions as head of the Department of Justice. As part of the proceedings, the committee heard testimony from two DOJ officials: Aaron Zelinsky, a federal prosecutor at the US attorney’s office in Baltimore, and John Elias, a senior official in the department’s antitrust division.

Zelinsky worked on the special counsel Robert Mueller’s team during the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the US election, and he testified Wednesday that senior DOJ officials improperly interfered in the sentencing recommendation for the former longtime Republican strategist Roger Stone. Specifically, he told lawmakers that DOJ leaders sought a weaker sentence for Stone at Barr’s direction because they were “afraid of the president.”

Elias testified that Barr weaponized the antitrust division to harass marijuana companies because he doesn’t like the cannabis industry.

The committee also heard testimony from two former DOJ officials: former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and former Deputy Attorney General Donald Ayer. Mukasey was invited to testify by Republicans on the panel.

The witnesses who appeared on Wednesday were asked at one point why they chose to testify. Here’s how Elias and Zelinsky, both of whom are still serving at the Justice Department under Barr, responded:

Elias: “I looked at what was happening, which was unlike anything I had ever seen before, and it didn’t feel like a good faith calling of balls and strikes that I had been used to seeing. And I care very much about the antitrust laws, their evenhanded enforcement, protecting consumers, and also the institution of the antitrust division where I have spent my entire legal career. And when I saw these abuses, I thought that the public should get to know about them. So that’s why I stepped forward.”

Zelinsky: “Because I took an oath to do so.”

Things went downhill from there. Want an example? At one point, Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell excoriated Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan for not wearing a mask during the hearing:

“Let me just remind every member of this committee, and people that are walking into this room, that the guidelines have been set forth by the office of the attendee physician and the house speaker that members need to be wearing masks,” Mucarsel-Powell said. “And the chairman stated earlier, very clearly, that members will not be recognized if they are not wearing masks.”

She then addressed Jordan, saying it was “incredibly disrespectful that you have been sitting here next to the chairman without wearing a mask. You are putting other peoples’ lives and their families in danger.”

Jordan replied by saying that “the unmasking this committee should be concerned about is the unmasking that took place at the end of the Obama administration.”

Jordan was referring to “unmasking,” which is a routine and legal process that the US intelligence community engages in regularly. Republican lawmakers allege that the Obama administration improperly and illegally “unmasked” former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s name in intelligence reports monitoring the communications of then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, one of the most outspoken Democrats on the committee, asked former Deputy Attorney General Donald Ayer about Barr’s unfounded claim that foreign countries would meddle in the 2020 election by mass-producing counterfeit ballots.

Barr has “provided an echo for the president, who has voted himself by mail in New York and in Florida and whose party encourages its members to go out and vote by mail — but he’s echoed the president in saying there’s something wrong with voting by mail, and he’s alleged that voting by mail makes us vulnerable to foreign influence by counterfeit ballots,” Raskin said to Ayer. “Is that an appropriate role for the attorney general of the United States?”

Ayer said: “I think it’s not, and especially it’s not because it appears to be something that there’s absolutely no truth in at all. There are five states that do nothing but vote by mail, and every other state, I think virtually every other state, uses vote by mail somewhat substantially. So the idea that we’re going to throw cold water on the notion that we’re going to vote by mail is just disreputable. And it’s entirely inappropriate. It really isn’t his job anyway. If there were some law-enforcement function, there it might be. But basically he’s just echoing the president.”

Enough of these meaningless allegations tossed about and the screaming match in the House committee hearing room! A bunch of adults acting at best like children and, at worst, a bunch of circus clowns!

What Really Happened in that Hearing?

I’ll give you my two cents:

  • Two DOJ lifetime bureaucrats were enraged when AG Barr instructed their office to reduce the federal sentence handed down in the Roger Stone case. They both resigned over Barr’s order to do so.
  • The reduced sentence was not only a process that happens in at least 40% of federal cases when judges prepare to sentence defendants, their recommended sentence in the case far exceeded punishments meted out in every previous federal case with similar situations.
  • None of this mentions that the Attorney General is overall responsible for the actions of any attorneys that work in the DOJ under him. Obama’s AG Eric Holder frequently intervened in federal sentences as did his replacement, AG Loretta Lynch.
  • What was shocking to me (but should not have been) was that nobody who testified offered any firsthand evidence of any of the evidence of alleged wrongdoing! Why should that NOT surprise me? Because that has been the case in every allegation against President Trump in those impeachment hearings initiated in “Ukraine-Gate!” All-day it was this: “Mr. So-and-so told me that he heard Mr. Boo-Boo talking on the phone to Miss La-La, who said Attorney General Barr coughed when he was reading the recommended charges against Mr. Stone. And  because he coughed, that was a sign that President Trump was mad because Stone was his friend and had promised he’d take care of it all.”

That may sound like a juvenile—explanation for a House Judiciary Committee hearing. But, folks, it was that stupid! It was nothing but a show for the Hard Left in Congress and the nation. Why do that? CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS!

Summary

I’m confident you’d like to know what was the purpose of the charade perpetrated by Rep. Nadler. “The Penguin,” as he has been termed held this committee for no other reason than to lay a foundation. Put that one hearing in the context along with what is imminent in Washington.

Have you forgotten that former Attorney General Jeff Sessions appointed Federal Attorney Jim Huber of Utah to investigate alleged wrongdoing in the Hillary Clinton email server investigation? Even though Session was fired and replaced with Barr, Huber continued acting on his commission, worked (and still does) behind a curtain of secrecy, and has yet not stepped forward with his findings. Additionally, Attorney General Barr appointed Connecticut Federal Attorney John Durham to investigate any wrongdoing by those in the Obama Administration regarding all things that occurred during the Russian Collusion investigation. About six months into Durham’s investigation, the DOJ announced his investigation had shifted gears into a full-blown criminal investigation.

Here’s what’s about to happen:

  • Huber and Durham are very close to bringing their cases forward;
  • The Huber case will probably implicate those from the Hillary Clinton Campaign, the Clinton Foundation, and possibly others in wrongdoing regarding that private email server kept in her home. Just having it there was a constant violation of the handling of classified information. And each such violation was a felony;
  • The Durham case purportedly included multiple grand juries hearing the testimony of numerous subpoenaed witnesses. It is almost certain its recommendations will consist of indictments of numerous members of the Obama Department of Justice, the Obama FBI, and possibly even members of Obama’s White House leadership team;

Don’t for one moment think the Nadler House Judiciary Committee hearing and future such hearings ahead are NOT purposely to build layer upon layer of finger-pointing at Attorney General William Barr to destroy his credibility. Both House and Senate leadership teams know their only hope at escaping the vitriol of American voters just before the November election is to paint Barr as nothing more than a Trump sycophant acting on instructions from the President to attack, attack, and attack those who oppose him to deflect attention from HIS wrongdoing.

In other words, all of these upcoming House committee hearings are nothing more than smokescreens.

Should we expect anything less?

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Stimulus or “Porkulus?”

May 13, 2020

The adage “Never let a crisis go to waste” certainly rings true today. Tax-and-spend Democrats have ramped up their cries for more money — MUCH more money. It’s in the form of a new stimulus bill that could be on its way through Congress by the end of the week, as House Democrats on Tuesday announced plans for $3 trillion in new spending to combat the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new $3 trillion Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act (HEROES Act) would nearly double the $3.6 trillion in stimulus spending already approved by Congress since mid-March—and that’s after Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D–CA) stripped out about $1 trillion in additional spending requested by various lawmakers, according to Politico. The new bill includes another round of stimulus checks for all Americans, funds further coronavirus testing, and spends billions to bail out states and government agencies straining under pension debt and the collapse of tax revenue due to the coronavirus.

As it looks today, it would blow-by the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Recovery Act (CARES Act), passed in late March, as the largest stimulus spending bill in U.S. history. The Treasury has already borrowed more than $3 trillion in just three months, and the new proposal will undoubtedly add to that total.

The draft of the bill released Tuesday includes a $25 billion bailout for the cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service, which could lose as much as $13 billion this year and is on a fiscally unsustainable path.

The HEROES Act also contains $540 billion in aid for states and $375 billion for local governments. That’s in addition to the $150 billion relief fund for states established by an earlier stimulus bill.

The bill also includes another round of stimulus checks for all Americans, with payments capped at $1,200 for individuals and another $1,200 per dependent, with a maximum of three dependents allowed. Those payments will be means-tested in a similar way as were earlier payments authorized by the CARES Act. The HEROES Act also incorporates a Democratic proposal to provide $100 billion in new funding to a Housing and Urban Development program offering assistance to renters.

The 1,800-page bill would also extend the federal unemployment payments authorized by the CARES act through January 2021. Those extra $600 in weekly unemployment payments are meant to soften the blow for laid-off workers at a time when the unemployment rate has spiked to 14 percent and is likely to go higher. But the added unemployment payments are also expected to make reopening the economy more difficult, as workers may be hesitant to return to their jobs as long as the boosted benefits remain available.

The HEROES Act also includes some provisions that seem unrelated to the public health and economic crises unleashed by the pandemic, like a provision that would temporarily reinstate the state and local income tax deduction — known as the SALT deduction. That deduction, which primarily benefits wealthy people who live in states and localities with high taxes, was capped by the 2017 federal tax reform law. Restoring the reduction has been on Democratic to-do lists ever since.

The omnibus bill also includes a provision giving marijuana-based businesses greater access to banking. To some, that’s a worthwhile (and long-awaited) measure, but another thing that seems disconnected from the stated purpose of the HEROES Act.

In some ways, however, the HEROES Act is already looking like a return to some sense of normalcy in Congress — though “normal” is nothing too great when it comes to congressional spending. The bill has already drawn more opposition than the first three rounds of coronavirus stimulus, which passed quickly and with only token resistance, and is likely to be subject to significant negotiation and rewriting before it is passed.

The Postal Service bailout is one point of controversy, for sure, with the White House and Republican lawmakers opposing a similar plan in earlier rounds of coronavirus stimulus. The timing of the new bill has also been questioned by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–KY), who on Monday said Congress needed to give the previous stimulus spending more time to have an impact.

McConnell has also expressed worry over the mounting levels of debt. “We now have a debt the size of our economy,” McConnell said Monday. “We have to take a pause here and take a look at what we’ve done.”

Republicans have mostly abandoned fiscal conservatism since President Donald Trump took office, but the prospect of borrowing another $3 trillion right now might get those anti-deficit spenders fired up again.

When asked about McConnell’s comments, Pelosi told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Monday night that waiting was not an option.

“We have to put money in the pockets of the American people, recognizing the pain, the agony that they are feeling,” she said. “To those who would suggest a pause, I’ll say the hunger doesn’t take a pause. The rent doesn’t take a pause.”

The passage of another significant spending bill to respond to the economic crisis created by the pandemic seems almost inevitable. If not by the end of this week, then it will probably happen sometime shortly. The failure of lawmakers to use the economic boom of the past decade to fix America’s fiscal problems — the national debt, the Post Office, state pension systems, and so on — has never seemed more foolish. And foolish is putting it nicely.

Let’s look at this new spending plan in the context of what is happening today. Indeed, Democrats are using the Coronavirus Pandemic as the basis to tag to the nation’s $20 Trillion+ debt with another two to three trillion dollars. And if you think they plan to spend it wisely specifically (and only) to soften the bite Coronavirus has taken out America, you are sadly mistaken.

If you remember correctly, we at TruthNewsNetwork were the first to do the deep dive into the minute details of the CARES ACT. We brought to you proof and details of the billions of dollars Pelosi demanded in her first draft, some of which was removed by the Senate. Not nearly enough was removed. Who will ever forget and forgive the “poster-child” example of pork Pelosi forced on us to pay as part of that bill that was supposed to be for Coronavirus assistance: $25 billion for the Kennedy Center. And to make it worse, the next day, the Kennedy Center notified their musicians the next Friday would be their last paychecks. And then they laid-off 400 employees! Pelosi states that this bill will be “exclusively” for assistance to all those who have been negatively impacted by this pandemic.”

What’s In the “Heroes Act?”

That’s a simple one. Just take a look for yourself. Here’s the link so you can download and look at it during your coffee break today. It’s only 1800 pages long!

https://truthnewsnet.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/New-Stimulus-Bill.pdf

By tomorrow’s story, we’ll have dived into the middle of this package and ferreted out the “good” and the “bad” for you. Though there no doubt will have features specifically targeted for the American people, businesses, and states who have all struggled because of the economic shutdown (the UNNECESSARY economic shutdown), you can rest assured it if full of pork. And, it includes the authorization for vote-by-mail. Don’t be shocked: Pelosi said: “any House bill offered this year will demand vote-by-mail to be approved.”

First Glance Problems

  • If passed and signed into law as-is, this will be the largest stimulus bill in U.S. history. When you tag its price tag to that of the already $3 Trillion CARES Act and other smaller relief packages, the U.S. will, in less than eight months, added $7 Trillion to the nation’s debt.
  • The bill will pass the House without using the bill-passage normal process. What’s the problem with this? Americans expect lawmakers to fully investigate every piece of legislation through committees and even subcommittees. Each takes plenty of time to find out what is in and behind every piece of legislation before it goes to the full house or Senate for deliberation there. In a bill this size, there would be multiple amendments proposed first in committees and subcommittees. Each of those committees would, once their changes are finalized, vote to move it forward or to table it. If it started in a subcommittee, it would then go to the full committee, which would then conduct the SAME process as the subcommittee did. Only after that committee passes it forward would it go to the floor of the House for consideration. There it would go through the same process! Then and only then would it go on for a vote. Whew! That’s tough. But what it does is assure Americans our legislators considered every little item to make sure it is necessary and appropriate as finalized to serve Americans as best as possible.
  • Pelosi will demand this process be suspended for “the emergency status in which we find ourselves. We cannot make the American people wait while Republicans fight to keep money from all those Americans who are fighting for rent and food for their families!” That’s the way she operates. Remember when Obamacare was before the House, and she was asked what was in the bill? She famously responded, “We must pass the bill so we can find out what’s in the bill.” That without question is the craziest statement I’ve ever heard a member of the American government utter. And, by the way, both the House and Senate passed the ACA with unanimous votes of their party members without a single member having read the bill! And if she can, she’ll do the same thing with this bill. Americans’ only hope is that the Senate will turn away any such bill.

Summary

It’s a war, folks! If you listened to our show yesterday, Dr. Judy Mikovich, in an hour-and-a-half, gave us piece by piece exactly what is going on with this pandemic. To boil down her extensive and detailed and learned analysis of it all, it’s a hoax! She never said people are not dying and that the infection is in any way a fraud, she made it clear that the way its presence is being manipulated to control Americans, our economy, and our healthcare system is fraudulent. In my book, that makes it a war.

So what can we do? This is the time where each of us needs to make a concerted commitment to learning the complete details of this Heroes Act headed to Congress. We MUST become so familiar with its basic terms that we can and will reach out to our elected officials to make sure they know our support or lack of support for all or any of the provisions of this bill. Folks, if we don’t let them know, many of those 535 members of Congress will assume we just don’t care. And that certainly is not factual.

We will once again do the deep dive into these 1800 pages of the Heroes Act and will come back shortly with them in bullet point format for you. However, I suggest you already contact your members of Congress and let them know your displeasure with the massive spending they are doing while forcing our nation through economic blackmail to put 33 million out of work supposedly because of Coronavirus.

It’s war, folks…all-out war. And we’re all IN the fight whether we want to be or not.

This is the time when we discover who are patriots and who are committed to the lawful operation of our government, specifically for United States citizens. That’s what they are supposed to do: period.

Let Mr. Evil Defend His Defenseless Congressional Actions

May 8, 2020

IWho? Adam Schiff, of course!

On April 23rd — just two weeks ago — we published this story here at TruthNewsNetwork:

♦♦ How Evil is Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)?

In 2018, the House Intelligence Committee “forged a rare bipartisan moment: Its Republican and Democratic members voted to make public the transcripts of 53 witnesses in the Russia collusion investigation”. However, that act of transparency has been aggressively thwarted by “Mr. Evil,”Adam Schiff.

Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) took over as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) from Republican Devin Nunes in 2019. It was then that Schiff kicked-off his disgraceful strategy. Schiff sent a letter to the office of then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.

In the letter, Schiff “ordered that the witness transcripts – some of which contained exculpatory evidence for President Trump’s team – not be shared with Trump or White House lawyers even if the declassification process required such sharing.” The letter, dated March 26, 2019, stated:

Under no circumstances shall ODNI, or any other element of the Intelligence Community (IC), share any HPSCI transcripts with the White House, President Trump or any persons associated with the White House or the President…Such transcripts remain the sole property of HPSCI, and were transmitted to ODNI for the limited purpose of enabling a classification review by IC elements and the Department of Justice.

What’s Happened?

The “new” Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell has told House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff that transcripts from the panel’s Russia probe are cleared for public release, as House Republicans demand access to the materials.

Grenell sent a letter this week to Schiff (D-CA) notifying him that transcripts of all 53 interviews — which add up to more than 6,000 pages in total — related to foreign interference in the 2016 election can be released. As noted in the letter from Schiff shown above, Schiff forbid the DNI to release any of those 53 interviews because they are the sole property of his committee. As you probably know, they are NOT the property of Schiff or his or any other Congressional committee. They are the property of the People. Further, they have been declassified officially and should be publicly released with classified segments redacted.

A New Wrinkle

I can just imagine how frantic is Rep. Schiff today. Why? Because of a message from Acting DNI Director Grenell included in his notification letter to Schiff informing the Congressman that those interviews are ready to be released to the public, which is legally required. What did Grenell say to Schiff?

“In the interests of transparency and accountability, I urge you to honor your previous public statements, and your Committee’s unanimous vote on this matter, to release all 53 cleared transcripts to all Members of Congress and the American public as soon as possible,” Grenell wrote to Schiff.

Grenell stops short of announcing that his office will release the transcripts if Congress continues to stall on the action. But he alluded to that as a possibility for the future, should Schiff fail to comply.

“I am also willing to release the transcripts directly from the ODNI to ensure we comply with unanimous and bipartisan vote to release the transcripts,” the acting director also said.

Plain and straightforward: Adam Schiff is afraid of what the American public will see if those testimony transcripts are released. Although all those who served on that committee know their contents, (and therefore know what in them would be detrimental to Schiff) because each transcript was classified, their contents have never been “leaked” to the public. That seems strange to me; how about you? Remember this: each time Schiff’s committee in classified settings heard testimony from any member of the Trump Administration, details of EVERY testimony heard from each were leaked to the press. Each leak portrayed content of testimony to be something other than what was actually testified to under oath.

In every such classified testimony whenever there was a recess, Schiff was seen out in the House hallway on the phone. Is there a coincidence there? Nope. He was known as “the serial House leaker” to his fellow members of the House. I’m sure he has CNN and the Washington Post on speed dial.

The Congressman has consistently lied without impunity showing no remorse for doing so throughout his House career. His lies are legend. We could spend an hour just reading them if we posted all in this story. But most Americans — thanks to some conservative thinking journalists — already know which of his statements fall into that category.

Thanks to John Solomon, who is one of the nation’s top investigative journalists, we have a few of his lies and the proof of their untruthfulness for you:

Schiff Report Claim: “FBI and DOJ officials did not abuse the FISA process, omit material information, or subvert this vital tool to spy on the Trump campaign. … DOJ met the rigor, transparency, and evidentiary basis needed to meet FISA’s probable cause requirement.”

Declassified Facts: Horowitz told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Dec. 11, 2019, “I do not think the Department of Justice fairly treated these FISAs.” His report went even further in describing how the FBI violated its own rules in submitting four FISA applications with a total of 51 pieces of unverified, inaccurate or false information. “FBI personnel fell far short of the requirement in FBI policy that they ensure that all factual statements in a FISA application are ‘scrupulously accurate,’” he wrote. “We identified multiple instances in which factual assertions relied upon in the first FISA application were inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported by appropriate documentation.” The FISAs were so flawed in fact that DOJ has formally withdrawn two of the applications from the court in their entirety because they were incontrovertibly inaccurate.

Schiff Report Claim: DOJ and FBI officials “made only narrow use of information from Steele’s sources about Page’s specific activities in 2016.”

Declassified Facts: Horowitz directly contradicted this claim, concluding the dossier “played a central and essential role” in the FISA application. “The FISA request form drew almost entirely from Steele’s reporting in describing the factual basis to establish probable cause to believe that Page was an agent of a foreign power,” the IG wrote.

Schiff Report Claim: “DOJ provided additional information obtained through multiple independent sources that corroborated Steele’s reporting.”

Declassified Facts: “We found that the FBI did not have information corroborating the specific allegations against Carter Page in Steele’s reporting when it relied upon his reports in the first FISA application or subsequent renewal applications,” Horowitz reported in December.

Schiff’s claims on his many television and media appearances during the early days of the Russian collusion narrative have also aged poorly. In early February 2017, Schiff fanned the narrative that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn may have sought to undercut President Obama’s sanctions on Russia during a phone call with the Russian ambassador and should be prosecuted under the Logan Act. “Trump’s team, through Flynn, reaches out to the Russian ambassador and potentially says, ‘Don’t worry about those sanctions. We’re going to take care of business. We’re not going to bite the hand that fed us.’ That’s something that needs to be investigated. That’s hugely consequential,” Schiff told The Atlantic magazine in Feb. 14, 2017.

By the time Schiff uttered those words, the FBI agent who had investigated Flynn’s contacts with Russia had already concluded on Jan. 4, 2017 that there was “no derogatory information” about Flynn’s contacts and recommended closing down the case, according to recently declassified FBI memos.

Recently declassified documents from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe show that the FBI had informed DOJ by late January 2017 that Flynn was not acting as an agent of Russia. Likewise, the main prosecutor for national security cases inside the Justice Department, Mary McCord, and others thought prosecuting Flynn under the Logan Act was unlikely or a “long shot” after reading Flynn’s actual words from a transcript of his conversation with the Russian ambassador.

“McCord said that upon learning of Flynn’s phone calls with Ambassador Kislyak, a Logan Act prosecution seemed like a stretch to her,” the Mueller summary of her interview stated.

And a top FBI official’s handwritten notes expressed concern the bureau’s treatment of Flynn amounted to “playing games” and appeared to involve an effort to get him into an interview where he might misstate something so he could then be prosecuted or fired.

Once again, Schiff was peddling claims that DOJ, FBI and the intelligence community had already dismissed.

For us at TruthNewsNetwork, it is befitting that Rep. Schiff has NEVER produced any of the “ironclad evidence in his possession that proves Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to impact the results of 2016 for his benefit.” I cannot recall how many television interviews over a two-year period in which Schiff made those exact claims over and over. Oddly enough, no one from the Democrat Party ever called him out or asked about that evidence. Many conservatives did. I was one of them. It is now certain Schiff never had that evidence at all. Certainly, if real and in his possession, it would have been brought forward during the House impeachment process.

Summary

Schiff is probably the most derided member of the House of Representatives. Hardly a day goes by that each of his daily tweets are not lambasted by dozens of conservative Americans who can no longer stand silent in the echo of his constant pontificating and lying about President Trump. The President was just first in his responsive attacks of Schiff. Hundreds if not thousands of Americans have consistently taken their shots at the Congressman through the last few years.

What’s most amazing to me is that he with NO remorse tells lies, misrepresents facts, denigrates the President and every member of the Trump family. That’s in addition to fabricating allegations against POTUS for horrendous and often illegal activities Schiff claims are part of Mr. Trump’s life as President. By definition that labels the Congressman as a “pathological liar.”

Louisiana Senator John Kennedy weighed in on this latest proof of Rep. Schiff’s habitual lies:

I think this time Schiff may be finished. Much of what is likely in those testimony transcripts has been denied in classified hearings and testimony by Mr. Schiff. When it all sees the light of day, the Congressman is likely to find himself seeking really adept and politically savvy D.C. attorneys to represent him in a criminal case in which he is the defendant. And for that, I must honestly say in my humblest Southern spirit, “Bless his heart!”

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“Let Them Eat Ice Cream”

April 24, 2020

Would you like to see a stark contrast between elitism and Americanism?

Take a look at this video. Most Americans instantly see the difference.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) just returned to Washington from her stately mansion overlooking the city of San Francisco. For her return, she didn’t have to fight baggage check-in, security lines, or avoiding other travelers while waiting to board her flight. She also did not wonder who would be her seat-mate. Why? Nancy boarded her plane from a private terminal in San Francisco. Her plane is actually “OUR” plane: a military version of a Gulfstream G650 $65 million corporate jet that seats up to 14 people with a bathroom, a kitchen with all the amenities including every food and beverage item any flyer could hope for — all at the expense of taxpayers. The ticket for that return flight to D.C.? Approximately $60,000. And YOU bought the ticket.

While 22 million+ Americans have lost their jobs in the last month, many of those who are fighting to find ways to continue to put food on their tables, pay rent, pay utility bills while dodging Coronavirus, Nancy goo-goos over her stash of $15 per pint gourmet ice cream.

Does anyone feel she may be out of touch with the people of America?

Let’s be honest: MANY in Washington have long ago lost touch with Americans. Think about it: Thursday in the Senate, only six Senators appeared in the session in-person to consider legislation to be debated and then were put forth for a vote. Six Senators decided how Congress should spend $483 million taxpayer dollars!

Only one Senator rose to speak from the floor during consideration of the “new” stimulus bill: Mike Lee (R-UT). And his speech wasn’t about the pending legislation. It was to chastise his fellow Senators who chose to sit at home without performing their sworn duties in person in consideration of a half-trillion-dollar spending bill! 

There’s just something wrong with that.

Not only is that wrong, but it is also certainly revealing. Put that in tandem with the video above of Nancy sitting in front of her freezer full of a fortune of gourmet ice cream, flaunting it, how good it is and how she would never make it in life if ice cream hadn’t been invented. Wrap it all in this: while Nancy salivated over her ice cream, 23 million unemployed Americans not only couldn’t buy expensive ice cream, they couldn’t purchase milk for their babies, pay to keep their lights on along with water and had to choose which night Mom and Dad would skip supper so that the children would have enough food to eat.

I don’t think it’s Pelosi’s responsibility that COVID-19 hit our nation when and how it did. I DO think it’s her responsibility and lack of leadership that, in part, allowed it to impact us all the way it has.

Think about it: we know that COVID-19 attacked the world through China as early as November or early December. What in those months through the first week of February consumed the time of Speaker Pelosi and that of the majority of House members? Impeachment. 

Did she just think that the virus was just going to sit on the sidelines until “Coach” Nancy called it off the bench to get in the game?

Speaker Pelosi is not the only member of Congress who has turned a back toward the American people. There’s no need to call names: we all know who the chief among them is.

It’s not the right time to place blame! (And that’s directed primarily at Pelosi, Schiff, Schumer, Nadler, and the remainder of House and Senate Democrats in leadership) NEITHER side should point fingers. What should they do? They should set their shoulders to the plow and dig-in to go about the Peoples’ business while ignoring (as much as is possible) the distracting circumstances of COVID-19. Millions of everyday Americans are doing it! Why can’t they do it too?

Many of our political leaders have in good faith publicly hailed those frontline healthcare workers and law enforcement folks for the 24/7 jobs they have dutifully performed during the pandemic. Saying “Thank You” is an admirable thing to do. But saying that while shirking or avoiding performing the job committed to deliver in an oath of office is unforgivable. Any member of the House or Senate that feels ANY Americans should put themselves in harm’s way to address the needs of Americans at the hands of Coronavirus yet does not attend to the Peoples’ work in Congress should give serious consideration to resigning. There is NO “pandemic excuse” for missing work. Do what those First Responders in healthcare and all those in the critical jobs to keep as much of the economy as possible flowing do: go to work!

If you cannot perform your job, consider resigning and find a position that you can achieve regardless of extenuating circumstances that sometimes sneak-up on all of us.

Summary

Utah Senator Mike Lee: “Unlike millions of our constituents, members of Congress are still receiving paychecks. It’s time for us to earn them. It’s time to do our job. It’s time to return to Washington and get to work,” the Utah Republican said in a floor speech Tuesday. “We’ve seen members of the news media working overtime, even if, as is the case for many of them, they do so only to blame all of this — somewhat unfairly, in my opinion — on the president of the United States,“ he said.

“I understand that we’re in unusual circumstances, but we can’t let it happen this way again. This is not acceptable,” he said. The Senate left the session in March.

“That was 20 million lost jobs ago. There is more to do. There is a lot more. More than we have ever faced,” Lee said. “The health crisis is too big, and the challenges are too numerous, onerous, and complex.”

“We can’t just give those issues the attention that they deserve simply by sitting in our respective homes,” Lee said.

“The American people need to know who is helping them, and who is simply playing politics. We can’t allow them to know that if we’re not in session,” he said.

“But we also have to be honest with ourselves and the country about the fact that we can’t afford to do this in perpetuity. Nor can we ignore the public health and safety risks that go along with keeping people locked inside their homes and not returning to work indefinitely,” he said, adding that could lead to suicide, depression, domestic violence, and drug and alcohol abuse.

Lee said he doesn’t know when the right time is to reopen Utah’s economy, but those decisions should be left to state and local governments and not made in Washington, D.C.

“Brooklyn and Orem are very different communities, and every community across the country has its unique circumstances,” he said.

Meanwhile, it looks like Speaker Pelosi might have just enough gourmet ice cream to throw a party for her House Majority pals and invite New York Senator Chuck Schumer.

Unfortunately, there’s not quite enough to go around to those 26 million Americans waiting for theirs’.

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Corona-Madness!

March 27, 2020

Madness is trying to find details of anything our government does. There’s nothing significant going on in the U.S. government right now, right? Nothing but the most expensive spending bill in world history!

As you know, late Wednesday evening, the Senate passed a version of the Stimulus bill that, fortunately, did NOT include very many of the government multi-billion dollar pork Christmas presents House Speaker Pelosi and other Democrats demanded to be included. If you missed those, look back on our published story on 3/25 that contained in a bullet-point format a summary of those: “CURE THE DISEASE!”

And if you’re a speed reader or someone who loves to hit yourself in the head a few dozen times because you have nothing better to do, put down the hammer and read the 888 Senate bill passed Wednesday.

https://truthnewsnet.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/3.26.20_FINAL_CARES_ACT_96_0.pdf

If you, like most of us, prefer a synopsis of something this intense and detailed, here’s a 35-page “roundup” of the hot details of the CARES Act — what the Coronavirus relief bill has been named. Feel free to download a section by section synopsis here:

https://truthnewsnet.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/CARES_Section_by_Section_FINAL.pdf

Here’s what you’ll learn:

  • Congress is good at one thing: spending taxpayer dollars — those we have or that are coming soon in the way of taxes plus the dollars we don’t have and must borrow because we’re spending them before we get them.
  • Democrats LOVE bigger and more controlling government. To that end, somewhere in every financially related bill that Dems put forth that ever gets signed into law is some “thing” or “things” devised strictly to increase the government’s size and authority through unsustainable spending.
  • Nancy Pelosi IS the most influential person in American politics today. No one else — even President Trump — can even remotely compare to her. The Senate bill awaiting House approval verifies how strong she is.
  • Americans are petrified of the unknowns of COVID-19 and are frightened at its devastation playing out now not just in the disease but in its daunting future unknown costs on Americans. And Congress brilliantly parlays those fears into trillions of dollars THEY control and spend.
  • Though many will say Senate Republicans bested Pelosi by allowing just a few of her outrageous spending demands from HER bill, quietly and with no fanfare Pelosi will come away with a victory when the House passes this bill and President Trump signs it. And every Republican — including the President — knows it.
  • The fact that Pelosi, along with every other Congressional Democrat, held this bill up for a week in the face of more people dying, millions losing jobs. At the same time, small companies close their doors and school students out of school stand hoping for a bus with their lunch proves how much disdain there is for America’s working people among Democrats. Let’s take a short pause! I need to catch my breath. Just for grins, take a listen to the “new” version of Margarittille fondly titled “Coronaville.” You’ll get a cute giggle or two. (It’s just a couple of minutes.

I thought with your pursuits of toilet paper; you might enjoy a bit of humor from someone who is “sharing the joy” with all of us!

Any Goodies — REAL Goodies in the CARES Act?

Yes, there are.

Most of us in the South are Pro-Life. I am personally unabashedly Pro-Life. I’ve never stated that here, but now you know. I feel strongly that aborting a baby is killing a human being — period. Someone mentioned to me the other day that if we could prolong the social distancing a bit and a shutdown of non-essential services for two weeks, (that include operations of abortion clinics) we could stop the killing during that two weeks of more humans than Coronavirus will kill in the entire world.

Think about that.

Congressman Mike Johnson (R-LA) just passed this along to me for you. This is a segment inserted in the Senate Republican CARES Act regarding tax dollars paying for abortions:

  • Planned Parenthood Exclusion from Small Business Loan Assistance: 
The bill applies the Small Business Administration’s affiliation rules to nonprofits for purposes of small business assistance (loans and forgiveness for payroll costs), but includes a provision that disqualifies Planned Parenthood– whose affiliates, taken together, have around 16,000 employees nationwide — based on the 500 employee threshold for nonprofits.
  • Hyde Amendment Protections: 
On the Supplemental Appropriations, applies FY2020 Labor HHS’s terms and conditions, including the Hyde Amendment (prohibiting funds for elective abortion and elective abortion coverage), to new supplemental discretionary health funding in Division B, including $100 billion for hospitals and other health care providers determined by the HHS Secretary that provide diagnoses, testing or care for COVID-19.
  • Supplemental Awards for Health Centers:
 Applies the Hyde Amendment by cross-reference to a $1.32 billion plus-up in mandatory funding for health centers.
  • Community Health Center Fund: 
Applies the Hyde Amendment by cross-reference to the extension of mandatory funding for community health centers, the National Health Service Corps, and Graduate Teaching Health Centers
  • Coronavirus Relief Fund: 
Applies the Hyde Amendment by cross-reference to the new $150 billion in mandatory funding for the coronavirus relief fund for states.

In other words, the Democrat House plan included methods to sidetrack the Hyde Amendment through the funding of abortions, not directly to Planned Parenthood, but to several of their affiliates. Senate Republicans made sure Democrat language proposed by Pelosi did NOT make it into the CARE Act. (How many babies will that save?)

The ‘Bad’ Stuff

(Just a note here: the writers of the bill have included a “qualifying” phrase in their spending lingo to expressly point to coronavirus as the “sole” reason for the spending:  “…to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus, for necessary expenses related to providing support for and access to…..”  Make what you will with that phrase. To me, it means “This is what we’re spending in this department in addition to what we are already spending. This amount is only for coronavirus.”

While none of the following are technically “pork,” it is safe to say, “I think this is crazy and superfluous spending on the part of our government!”

Dept. of Agriculture

  • $258,000,000 for broadband services in rural areas
  • $32,615,098,000 for “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program” for Child Nutrition
  • $100,000,000 for administrative expenses and $50,000,000 for additional food costs for Food Distribution on Indian Reservations

Dept. of Commerce

  • $2,000,000,000 for “Economic Development Assistance Programs” to be used “for necessary expenses related to responding to economic injury as a result of coronavirus.”

Dept. of Justice

  • $100,000,000 for nat’l criminal justice operations;
  • $500,000,000 for state and local criminal justice operations;
  • $100,000,000 for juvenile criminal justice operations

National Science Foundation

  • $100,000,000 for “Research related activities,” $2,000,000 for “Agency operations and Award Management.”

Legal Services Corporation

  • $100,000,000 to “carry out the purposes of the Legal Services Corporation.”

Dept. of Defense

  • $3,805,500,000 for “research, development, test and evaluation.”

Dept. of the Treasury

  • $6,000,000 for increased salaries for Courts of Appeals
  • $500,000 for increased salaries for Supreme Court
  • $11,000,000 for “Emergency Planning and Security Costs in D.C.”
  • $4,000,000,000 for “Election Assistance Commission to states for contingency planning, preparation, and resilience of elections.”
  • $200,000,000 for “Salaries and Expenses” — basically pay raises — for the FCC
  • $3,000,000,000 for the “Technology and Modernization Fund of the General Services Administration (GSA)
  • $12,100,000 for salary increases for the Office of Personnel Management
  • $100,000,000,000 for SBA Business Stabilization Loan Programs
  • $100,000,000,000 for the “Relief of Small Businesses Act.”
  • $100,000,000,000 for “Small Business Act” for “economic recovery grants.
  • $25,739,000,000 for “Disaster Loans Program Account”
  • $16,800,000,000 for the cost of “loan debt relief.”
  • $805,000,000 for “Salaries and Expenses” for the “Small Businesses Act.”
  • $20,000,000,000 for US Postal Service for “an emergency requirement under the Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985.”
  • $2,000,000,000 for the “Disaster Relief Fund”

Repeat Disclaimer: all of this funding is “in addition to” other budgeted monies already in use by each of these departments.

Summary

The two big Pelosi pork projects that did not get negotiated out of the bill are the John F. Theater and a Union funding provision. The original Pelosi funding clause in the House bill was for $35,000,000. In the Senate version, it was cut to $25,000,000. Yes, I agree: $25,000,000 for a theater is atrocious. Just think of the full scholarships this could fund for underprivileged children. 250 American students could enter great colleges with fully-funded $100,000 scholarships with that JFK money!

The second is a Pelosi “favor called-in” by labor unions. The CARES Act is full of loans and grants for businesses. The applicable provision is to prevent any company that under the CARES Act receives either federal grants or loans, cannot deter Unions from approaching their employees regarding unionizing those companies.

Yes, these both are dumb. And, yes, they will cost Americans far more than just their face value. But this is how the U.S. government operates. It’s full of attorneys who draft laws. And they do that for the most part to favor someone in every law.

Most in Congress reconcile this nasty and tasteless task as merely “giving up whatever it takes to get whatever I need or want.” Quid pro quo.

Are we done yet? Short of a grandstand play on the House floor today, we’re done. I am confident the President will sign the CARES Act into law on either Saturday or Sunday.

Meanwhile: COVID-19 relentlessly attacks Americans with a vengeance. What are we going to do? How long will it last? How many will die? We’ll waltz back into that fray on Saturday.

Know one thing: Coronavirus is NOT through yet!

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CURE THIS DISEASE!

March 25, 2020

In the furor of the last five days regarding the necessity to stabilize the U.S. economy that is in freefall, almost lost is the absolute necessity to make haste to find the cure for COVID-19. Yes, doctors are treating ill patients in dramatic numbers that are now seeming to double daily. Those certainly are the priorities of our amazing American hospitals, clinics, and specialists. I do not diminish treatment necessity at all. But while doing so, we need to take dramatic steps in preventions and to get those in place, functional, operating, and monitored ASAP.

Our “social distancing” in most cases, is working well. Multiple states have issued orders that have closed all businesses but those which are essential. That has put tens of millions of American workers on the sidelines. That horror has been consuming almost all the oxygen in the atmosphere. But we cannot ignore our requirement to find a cure.

And there may already be one. Watch and listen to this message from Dr. Vladimir Zelenko of New York:

At a Fox News “virtual town hall” Tuesday in the Rose Garden, Vice President Mike Pence was asked by Dr. Mehmet Oz, the popular TV doctor, how the distribution of the hydroxychloroquine treatment can be accelerated. Pence said, “there is no barrier,” explaining the FDA already has approved “off-label” use, meaning the drug used to treat malaria also can be prescribed to treat COVID-19. The vice president said the administration is working with Bayer on increasing the supply of the drug as clinical trials are being conducted.

“Doctors can prescribe that medication, which, as you know, is a perfectly legal malaria medication,” Pence said.

Oz asked Pence if he would allow himself to be treated with hydroxychloroquine if he were infected with the coronavirus. “I would follow the advice of my physician, and I would recommend everyone do that,” the vice president replied.

Oz has called chloroquine “the biggest game-changer of all,” with the potential of preventing the U.S. from “becoming Italy.”

Chloroquine

President Trump announced Monday that clinical trials for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine would begin in New York on Tuesday. He said 10,000 units of chloroquine would be distributed in the state. Studies in China, Australia, and France have found the combination of chloroquine and azithromycin-treated the coronavirus within six days with a 100% success rate.

In an interview, Dr. Peter Costantino, the chairman of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, was asked to comment on Dr. Zelenko’s reported results. “I’m very, very optimistic about this,” he said. “This is not a controlled study, but the number of patients represented by Dr. Zelenko is very significant.”

Costantino noted there were no hospitalizations, intubations, or deaths among Zelenko’s 350 patients. As many as 40 admissions would have been expected, he said, along with possibly two or three deaths.

Summary

Isn’t it sad that as this that is a logical and working treatment to stop coronavirus has been all but lost in the noise of politicizing for power and money this pandemic? Americans should be outraged at how many in Washington have been playing a game with coronavirus. While playing with the disease, they have put the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans at risk.

Pelosi’s bill offers a minuscule amount of taxpayer funding for curing this disease while filling the coffers and pockets of political party backers and federal workers that do nothing but cause the national debt to skyrocket: $2 Trillion!

I’ve been asked dozens of times the last week, “Is there anything we as American voters can do to shut down this lunacy in Congress? Can we stop this senseless wasteful spending?”

What have we at TruthNewsNetwork been harping on for five years now regarding American government: wasteful spending, political fraud, nepotism, and corruption — all for the quest for unilateral political POWER.

For those of you who have been skeptical, take a stroll to the corner of the two busiest streets in your town or city today. Look down both roads and notice NOBODY’S HOME!

We are close — so VERY close — to losing the greatest nation on Earth.

Wake Up America!

Pelosi Blackmail: The “Take Responsibility for Workers and Families Act”

March 25, 2020

It is impossible that Pelosi, along with workers from her office were able to put the “Take REsponsibility for Workers and Family Act” together in just a few days. Pelosi knows that a “major” COVID-19 stimulus bill was in the offing, has been planning for the opportunity to jump into the fray at the last moment, and hold Americans hostage to a pork-ulus bill that is bulging with Democrat goodies. And that’s just what she has done, knowing that time is now on her side and that Republicans have very little power regarding whether or not to approve her bill.

I watched throughout the day on Tuesday as Democrat after Democrat found a television camera in front of which they to a person stated the Pelosi bill has NOTHING in it but measures to stop the coronavirus, funding emergency measures necessary to stop the virus spread while treating those already infected, assisting with measures to prevent further spreading, and economic stimulus measures for the American people. Each of those Democrats not only lied, but they in doing so are also trying to hijack the American financial system while piling up goodies that Democrats can use like Mardi Gras beads coming from a float in New Orleans. Every Mardi Gras, “Give me something, Mister!” is the common phrase for Louisianians to illustrate the pandemonium of Mardi Gras parades. It’s appropriate to say that “Give me something, Ms. Pelosi!” is the relevant cry being answered by the House Speaker with this package.

Her bill is 1400+ pages in length. It is packed full of pork. Because it is so long, she is confident there is not enough time for Republicans to read and digest its measures, determine which of the measures included are legitimate and which are partisan fodder for her party and their financial supporters. She’s done pretty well with that process in her House Speaker career. Who can forget how she rammed down the throats of Americans another bill about the same length a few years ago. When asked what was in that bill, she famously answered, “We don’t know what’s in the bill. We have to pass the bill so we can find out what’s in the bill.” That bill was Obamacare.

We’ve done the dirty work for you. Here in bullet point, we have identified almost every one of the items included in the bill. As you digest these, remember when asked yesterday was there a bunch of pork in the bill, this was her response:

“Every measure in the House Coronavirus bill is to support the necessary medical needs to stop the virus while shoring up the American economy for workers. We MUST assist American workers in keeping going without finding themselves in dire financial circumstances and without fear of the virus.”

Keep that in mind — you will not believe what you are about to see.

  • $100,000,000 to NASA
  • $20,000,000,000 to the US Postal Service to payoff their debt
  • $300,000,000 to the Endowment for the Arts
  • $300,000,000 for the Endowment for the Humanities (I’ve never heard of it)
  • $15,000,000 for Veterans Employment Training
  • $435,000,000 for mental health support
  • $30,000,000,000 for the Department of Education stabilization fund
  • $200,000,000 to Safe Schools Emergency Response to Violence Program
  • $300,000,000 to Public Broadcasting / NPR
  • $500,000,000 to Museums and Libraries
  • $720,000,000 to Social Security Admin, of which ONLY $200,000,000 goes to recipients. The balance is for “Administrative Costs” — $520,000,000.
  • $25,000,000 for Cleaning supplies for the Capitol Building (I know it’s unbelievable. You can find it on page 136)
  • $7,500,000 to the Smithsonian for additional salaries
  • $35,000,000 to the JFK Center for Performing Arts
  • $25,000,000 for salary increases  for the House of Representatives
  • $3,000,000,000 to upgrade to the IT department at the Veterans Administration
  • $315,000,000 for State Department Diplomatic Programs
  • $95,000,000 for the Agency of International Development
  • $300,000,000 for International Disaster Assistance
  • $300,000,000 for Migrant and Refugee Assistance (pg 147)
  • $90,000,000 for the Peace Corp (pg 148)
  • $13,000,000 to Howard University (pg 121)
  • 9,000,000 Miscellaneous Senate Expenses (pg 134)
  • $100,000,000 to Essential Air carriers (pg 162)
  • $40,000,000,000 goes to the “Take Responsibility to Workers and Families Act.” (Pg 164)
  • $1,000,000,000 Airlines Recycle and Save Program (pg 163)
  • $25,000,000 to the FAA for administrative costs (pg 165)
  • $492,000,000 to the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) (pg 167)
  • $526,000,000 Grants to Amtrak to remain available if needed through 2021 (pg 168)
  • $25,000,000,000 for Transit Infrastructure (pg 169)
  • $3,000,000 Maritime Administration (pg 172)
  • $5,000,000 Salaries and Expenses for the Office of the Inspector General (pg 172)
  • A clause that ratifies there is No voter ID necessary to get a ballot to vote. It also establishes and makes legal the anonymous “ballot harvesting” process (pg 650)
  • $2,500,000 for Public and Indian Housing (pg 175)
  • $5,000,000 for Community Planning and Development (pg 175)
  • $2,500,000 for the Office of Housing
  • $1,500,000,000 for the Tenant-Based Rental Assistance Office of Public and Indian Housing, $billion of which can be used as “additional administrative and other expenses.” (pg 176)
  • $720,000,000 to the public housing fund (pg 177)
  • $100,000,000 for Community Block Grants for Native Americans (pg 183)
  • $250,000,000 for Housing Block Grants for Tribes (pg 182)
  • $130,000,000 for AIDS Housing (pg 185) $20,000,000 of which goes to “one-time grantees”  (pg 186)
  • $15,000,000,000 for the Community Development Fund (pg 188)
  • $5,000,000,000 in Homeless Assistance (pg 193)
  • $100,000,000,000 for Rental Assistance (pg 198)
  • An additional $7,000,000 to enforce the Fair Housing Act (pg 203)
  • $227,000,000 for grants to States for “youth activities” (pg 80)
  • $261,000,000 for grants to States for dislocated worker employment and training activities, including supportive services and needs-related payments (pg 80)
  • $10,000,000 for the Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker program
  • $100,000,000 for ‘‘Job Corps.’’
  • $15,000,000 for ‘‘Program Administration’’
  • $6,500,000, to the ‘‘Federal Wage and Hour Division.’’
  • $30,000,000, to OSHA
  • $10,000,000 for Susan Harwood training grants
  • $1,300,000,000, for ‘‘Primary Health Care’’
  • $75,000,000, for ‘‘Student Aid Administration’’
  • $9,500,000,000, for ‘‘Higher Education’’

NOTE:

  • In this bill, Paid Family Leave for Sickness is two paid work weeks (pg 213). “Emergency Family Leave,” and now applies to all employers, not just for companies with over 500 employees (pg 208)
  • Guarantees paid leave to employees who have an in-law who gets sick (pg 209)
  • Opens up leave for some you are in a “committed relationships with” (pg 212)
  • $1,000,000,000 for more Obamaphones!

Odds and Ends…

  • $9,000,000,000 is allocated to colleges and universities
  • $100,000,000 to juvenile justice programs
  • It suspends various aspects of the enforcement of immigration laws
  • Hidden in these provisions is hundreds of billions of dollars in Green New Deal subsidies. Also hidden is the “ACCESS” Act that imposes requirements for states to allow early voting, voting by mail, and requires the mailing of absentee ballots to everyone.

NOTE TWO:

In this bill, only $10 billion is set aside for infrastructure for fighting infectious diseases (pg 191), AND…

Hidden on page 174 the Secretary of the Treasury has only seven days from the date this bill is signed into law to allocate the funds & notify Congress

Summary

Plain and simple: I’m nauseated. I have never in my lifetime seen a more corrupt, dishonest, and massive display of evil in any branch of the U.S. government than this. And as deep as what we outlined for you, the underlying truth in each is eviler than its bullet point!

I was asked on Tuesday, “Why is Speaker Pelosi taking this action?” I have thought through this again and again, and I resolve the question in only one answer I can puzzle to: She wants to crash the U.S. economy and the lives of 300+ million Americans.

But why would she do that?

Could it be that she is so driven to and so set on destroying this presidency that she would take the entire nation down with President Trump?

Before you respond with, “No Way! — think it through. Remember this, HBO host Bill Marr has one more than one occasion stated he’d be fine if that happened just to rid the nation of Donald Trump.

Now: are you nauseated, too?

Senate Dems. DESTROY American Lives: INSANITY!

March 24, 2020

The situation IS that desperate; it IS that critical — at least for most Americans. I cannot think of a better way to say it than this: Senate Democrats don’t give a rip about average Americans, small business owners, employees of mega-corporations OR small businesses.

“That’s pretty dramatic, Dan.” You bet it is. I have watched the Senate live during the day today as the debate has gone on and on and on. Let me catch you up to how we got to where we are:

  • Both parties agree we are in a crisis — a “Corona Crisis.” But the agreements stop there.
  • House members took a week off last week and left D.C. Senators stayed in D.C. and negotiated all last week, much of which was bi-partisan. Late Saturday night, it appeared a reasonable bi-partisan agreement was reached.
  • House Speaker Nancy Pelosi returned to D.C. and Sunday morning blew-up any deal the Senate had agreed to during the week. She notified America, the House is going to draft its OWN bill. Hopefully, it will include much of what the Senate included in their bill.

Let me give you a summary of the contents of the Senate bipartisan bill that has been riddled in two Senate votes solely to take-up the bill and debate it! Can you believe that? Democrats will NOT even agree to put it up for debate! The Senate bill includes the following:

  1. An immediate $1200 to every American adult plus $500 for each child;
  2. A massive federal deposit of cash to assist employers with unemployment benefits;
  • A program of $300 billion for small businesses of billions of dollars that would be to keep their employees on the job during this pandemic and not layoff those employees. Those funds are initially a federally-backed loan. If they keep those employees through the pandemic, that loan is turned into a grant with no repayment required.
  • A program of $500 billion for major corporations, $50 billion of it is for the airline industry. Those funds, too, are federally backed loans that WILL be repaid.

There are other provisions in the bill, none of which are “pork” project funding. Every part of the bill deals specifically with the issues tied directly to the Coronavirus pandemic problems that are directly impacting Americans economically as a result of the virus.

Yesterday

Democrats flatly refused to allow the bill to the floor after denying it on Sunday as well. All-day long, Democrats took turns to scream and holler about how unfair, unrealistic, and unacceptable is the GOP bill. They continuously cry, calling the corporate dollars “a slush fund.” They demand there is no accountability for the spending of the dollars from the corporate dollars they call “a slush fund.” Here’s the foundation for Democrat concern:

In the previous bailout of corporations, billions of taxpayer dollars went to corporations that used the funds primarily to buy back company stock and fatten the pockets of crucial executives — some in the tens of millions. But Democrats have been assured this will NOT happen under the GOP bill. How? Democrats have been told, and the press has detailed this for all to see: NO corporate stock buybacks; no executive at a company receiving money may make more than $425,000 in total annual compensation for two years, retroactive to March 1.

Why then would Democrats continue to cry against corporate support? After all, who work at corporations? Hundreds of thousands and even millions of American workers. Who invests in corporations that are seeing their values plunge and profits melt away? Those same employees through pension funds, retirement programs, 401K retirement savings programs, etc. Without assistance for their employers, they will have no jobs and NO retirement income for them in the future — not mentioning THE EMPLOYEES WILL BE UNEMPLOYED!

Before we make you go starking raving crazy with the details of what Democrats want to be added to the bill before they will approve it, Senator John Kennedy (D-LA) on the Senate floor put it better than I ever could. Buckle in: his speech will put you in orbit!

It’s Not Fair! Democrats Need More in the Bill

Do you have any idea of what Pelosi and other Democrats want to be put in the Coronavirus bill before they will lend their support? Details of their demands are scant at this time (they are purposefully hiding them), but here is what we have been able to verify so far today. You’re going to love this!

  • They demand $500 million for the National Endowment for the Arts;
  • They demand $500 million for the Solar Energy Industry;
  • They demand guarantees for the payment of ALL labor union pensions, which are estimated to be several TRILLION dollars short of being fully-funded;
  • Democrat representation on corporate boards who receive funds along with mandated “diversity” on corporate boards;
  • Requiring early voting along with same-day voter registration;
  • Requiring collective bargaining and election reform.

There are more demands that are steadily being leaked. But let me ask you this question that is the only question that matters: which of these Pelosi demands has anything to do with Coronavirus treatment and prevention and assisting Americans, American small businesses, and corporations in ways to keep them economically capable of surviving until the pandemic is resolved?

Summary

For three hours Monday afternoon, every Senate Democrat vacated the Senate chamber. Of course, their excuse is to isolate themselves from potential exposure to COVID-19. That sounds like nothing but a great excuse. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans remained in session, one by one gave floor speeches detailing the facts of the proposed GOP Coronavirus bill and little by little exposed to the nation what Democrats are doing and why. More and more of the pork they wish to be included in the hoped-for law that is supposed to give Americans immediate economic relief and also their employers have been exposed. Folks, if there ever was a minuscule desire to offer the American public real relief during this disaster, these Democrats indeed lost that desire somewhere along the way.

What many Americans are doing is trying to find some reasonable answer to the question, “What do Senate Democrats hope to accomplish with their antics on Capitol Hill?” As of this moment, I don’t think there’s a reasonable answer that can be given.

I just spoke to one member of the House who is as angry as I at the delay tactics Americans are watching play out on C-SPAN. It’s as if Democrats don’t care about the lousy light their actions shine on their party. Yes, the voters from their states who are looking-in have recoiled at the incompetence their Democratic Senators are showing to the world. Maybe Dems forget that their inaction means millions of THEIR party members have nothing to do but sit at home and are watching their antics exposed. I cannot believe that knowing that, Senators would continue to stall while trying to protect some semblance of honesty, decency, and the dignity Americans expect from U.S. Senators. All of that, they may have once had has been flushed and is long gone.

But that’s not the critical issue here: Americans are dying from COVID-19. Millions of others will not go to work today that could have if Democrats had joined Senate Republicans to get the relief package completed and sent to the President to sign. Wealthy Democrat members of Congress probably don’t relate to working Americans who fight for weekly paychecks. Democrat House members are acting the same.

Two things matter today: First, give Americans economic relief: their employers, their companies, and them individually. Get the $1200 per adult and $500 per child paid immediately. Secondly, fully fund quickly every medical issue pending sufficient to protect medical providers, patients, emergency medical workers, and public servants who are putting their lives in danger to save us.

The devil in all this — as hard as it is to say — is NOT Democrats in the Senate. The devil always has been and still is COVID-19. We need to continue to support the President and his team and other medical professionals who are working 24/7 to find medical relief for us all from Coronavirus. At the same time, give Americans the economic relief necessary to make it through the pandemic.

Here’s a novel thought: why don’t the members of Congress just use our tax dollars for us for a change!

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Stock Market: Congress’ Illegal Piggy Bank

March 21, 2020

For decades, members of Congress have taken advantage of financial details garnered from pending legislation or from those who are directly involved in specific business negotiations with Congress. It has been prevalent through the years for members to enrich themselves with suspect stock market transactions that could only have happened by their access to and then using that info.

Who would have thought that Coronavirus would have opened a door for our federal employees — members of the House and Senate — to take advantage of a pandemic that has 330 million Americans hiding under desktops in fear for their lives? But that is happening today. (Details of these just ahead)

Remember the words of President Obama’s Chief of Staff and later Mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel:

“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

That’s precisely what current members of Congress have been secretly doing. But it has happened often in the past but mostly just to make a lot of money by playing the Congressional Monopoly game!

“Let’s Make A Deal”

What’s happening now is NOT new. It’s been going on for decades. Before we tell you the latest, let’s look back a few years.

Then Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary, when just a nominee was under siege — the harsh lights of a Senate hearing upon him. News reports showed he had bought shares in a tiny biotechnology company while sitting on committees that could influence the firm’s prospects. A colleague, Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY), had tipped him off to the investment.

Rep. Doug Lamborn, Republican of Colorado, bought shares of the same tiny Australian company, Innate Immunotherapeutics. Within two days, three more members also bought in — Republicans Billy Long of Missouri, Mike Conaway of Texas, and John Culberson of Texas. Conaway added more shares the following week.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the Rhode Island Democrat who sits on the Senate HELP Committee, which oversees health care, is a substantial investor in pharmaceutical stocks. As lawmakers closed in on a bipartisan deal over a significant medical research bill called the 21st Century Cures Act, Whitehouse bought shares in the pharmaceutical firms McKesson, Gilead, and Abbott Labs ten days before the bill was made public. Whitehouse and his wife bought additional stock in Gilead and Amgen two days before the House voted on the bill. The day President Barack Obama signed the bill into law, Whitehouse started a series of three sales of shares in those companies.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, was a guest speaker at Prescient Edge, a small research and technology firm with Defense Department contracts, in January of 2016. When the company raised private capital later that year, Kinzinger bought in to the tune of $20,002. Kinzinger was a member of theHouse Foreign Affairs Committee, which oversees issues affecting Prescient Edge.

Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, Republican of Tennessee, served on the health care appropriations panel. As then-Vice President Joe Biden was pressing lawmakers to approve funding for his “Cancer Moonshot” proposal in the summer of 2016, a Fleischmann family account invested in two companies, Juno Therapeutics, and Celgene, which were developing new cancer drugs. One of the investments was made a week before the Obama administration announced new measures that would speed up approval for cancer therapies.

384 House members and senators who served in the 114th Congress made no stock trades over two years. Meanwhile, the lawmakers who are active in stock trading conducted a total of more than 21,300 trades during the same two years, but a small group of very wealthy lawmakers accounted for a significant share of those trades.

Texas Republican Rep. Mike McCaul reported approximately 7,300 stock transactions in an array of industries over the two years. Oregon Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader made a substantial number of trades in companies that have an interest in the committee’s health and energy work. Schrader made close to 700 stock trades over two years.

Instances of insider trading by members of Congress are not difficult to find. For example, in 2008, then-Congressman Spencer Bachus shorted the U.S. stock market one day after attending a confidential meeting with Henry (“Hank”) Paulson and Ben Bernanke, who at that time were the secretary of the Treasury and chairman of the Federal Reserve, respectively. At this meeting, which took place on Sept. 18, Bachus and other members of Congress were given material nonpublic information about the extent of the risks that were facing the financial system at that time.

John Boehner and Dick Durbin, both Senators at the time, also attended that closed-door meeting. Both of them placed orders selling shares in mutual funds the following day.

These are just a pittance of examples of those who have been found involved in unscrupulous stock dealings in the past. Discovering these transactions (which are publicly reported if one cares to dig to find them) show there is a strong propensity for many lawmakers to take advantage of “insider information” obtained by just being a member of Congress.

House and Senate members who are active traders insist their buying and selling is a normal part of managing their finances, as with any American who wants to save for retirement or put their kids through school. But their colleagues don’t seem to agree. The clear majority of lawmakers avoid potential conflicts of interest by buying mutual funds, putting their portfolios in blind trusts or simply staying out of the stock market. Wouldn’t that be the wise and ethical approach for those who have access to information that could possibly be used for self enrichment?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), when just a Representative back in 2012, was slapped on the wrist by Congress for participating in several obvious personal enrichment transactions committed by her husband Paul Pelosi. Both the Senate and the House passed a bill —The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, or “STOCK Act.” The measure made it illegal for members of Congress to engage in insider trading. The act was passed in April 2012, during the presidency of Barack Obama.

The STOCK Act was fondly termed the “Pelosi Rule” by Republican members of Congress. Americans were happy that it appeared that a stop had been crafted for greedy public servants who seemed to always leave Congress as multi-millionaires when being just average economic Americans when entering Congress.

But, WAIT!

  • The STOCK Act outlawed insider trading by members of Congress.
  • The law was passed in April 2012 with strong bipartisan support.
  • In April 2013, key provisions of the law were weakened, reducing the safeguards against insider trading.

Does any of that surprise you?

“I’m deeply concerned,” said Minnesota Democratic Rep. Tim Walz, an early supporter of the Stock Act who does not himself trade stocks. “If you buy stock and then do something that changes that stock, you’ve got to know what’s going on.”

Trouble on  the Hill: “Busted!”

What’s happening in Washington right now? We got through the Mueller Investigation, the impeachment trial of President Trump, and we’re eight months away from a presidential and Congressional election. What could possibly go wrong now? Coronavirus! 

Do you remember the statement above of Rahm Emanuel?

“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

Coronavirus is certainly a horror for every American. But several in Congress in the shadow of the current pandemic found a way to make a few quick bucks. If you haven’t heard, it’s because you’ve been asleep or are fasting news coverage.

Four senators dumped millions of dollars worth of stock while Capitol Hill was being briefed on the threat of coronavirus but before the markets tanked as infections soared, disclosure records have revealed.

Republicans Richard Burr, Kelly Loeffler and James Inhofe and Democrat Dianne Feinstein collectively offloaded up to $11 million in stock between late January and early February, according to disclosure records.

Burr, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee that was directly briefed on coronavirus, sold up to $1.7 million in stock including in hotels, according to reporting from ProPublica. To put Burr’s actions in context, his last financial disclosure form filed with the Senate showed his total net worth at $1 million. Yet, ProPublica reported he sold $1.7 million. Why and how could the Senator sell stock he reportedly did not own? Did he come into stock ownership to that level between the time of his disclosure statement and the coronavirus attacking the stock market? 

Burr’s spokeswoman said in a statement to DailyMail.com that Burr filed his financial disclosure form several weeks before the markets showed ‘volatility.’

Feinstein, a member of the same committee, sold up to $6 million in stock including in a biotech firm.

Loeffler dumped up to $3.1million in investments starting on the day the Senate Health Committee, which she sits on, was briefed by the CDC. Meanwhile, James Inhofe sold up to $400,000 in stock, including real estate.

Loeffler and Feinstein have defended themselves, saying their stocks are invested in trusts and portfolios that they have no personal control over. Inhofe has not commented.

Summary

Numerous times you have witnessed TruthNewsNetwork asking a question in stories and podcasts, “What’s Going On?” We’re asking it again.

It is obvious that politicos in Congress have bountiful opportunities for self-enrichment once seated in the House or Senate. It cannot be happenstance that so many enter Congress with modest net worth only to leave their post years later worth millions. That is NOT normal and is obviously based on enrichment opportunities not available to the general public. And they are OUR employees.

That “Pelosi Rule” that was passed and signed into law by President Obama was little more than a straw gift given to Americans to show “We in Congress are going to police ourselves and make sure NO ONE cheats regarding stock trading.”

They lied.

In YOUR world, do you know of any other public entity (like Congress) in which workers can cheat, take advantage unethically and illegally to make money and there’s no accountability to anyone for those actions? In many respects, it reminds me of that old saying, “That’s kinda’ like the prisoners, not the guards, guarding the prisoners.” Self-policing seldom works, especially when it comes to someone else’s money.

What is most objectionable to me about this has not changed since I first discovered it. These 535 elected officials took an oath of office to serve us — all of us. They’re paid well — far better than are average Americans. Doors they certainly would never know of open to them as they meet and interact with those in business while in office. That’s normal. But there’s NO honest explanation for the actions you are hearing about from these today.

In the REAL world, here’s how this would be structured:

  1. Before taking the oath of office, each member of Congress would be required to either divest 100% of their personal holding other than a retirement plan already in place and then to place ALL of their personal and business assets remaining in valid Blind Trusts in which they nor their spouses or children have any knowledge of or control of any kind.
  2. No member of Congress would be allowed to receive any compensation of any kind — other than their published Congressionally controlled income and expenses while serving their term in office — PERIOD.
  3. NO lobbying of members of Congress or any person serving in the White House or a cabinet position can participate in any type of lobbying as defined in existing U.S. law. Under NO circumstances can any member of Congress receive any kind of compensation from lobbyists. That includes payment of any kind — direct, indirect, or even in-kind. That prohibition applies to the immediate family members of those in Congress.
  4. Finally, and most importantly, any member of Congress found to have violated any of these will immediately be removed from their office in Congress. Further, the Department of Justice will immediately file charges for felony violations against those former members of Congress AND any person or persons who participated in facilitating this illegal process.

Does that sound somewhat radical? What is the role of serving in Congress? TO REPRESENT US…PERIOD. No longer should Americans feel that “serving in Congress” is really “serving.” Being in Congress really means “obtaining unscrupulous if not illegal opportunities to personally enrich oneself, trying to gain as much wealth as possible by walking as close as possible to the ‘felony line’ without stepping across it.”

Here’s a challenge: ask your members of Congress from your district and state if they would support a law that prohibits “extra” compensation based on the points above? Most will say, “I’d have to see the bill before I could commit to support it.” When they say that, ask them this, “Would you create such a bill and promote it in Congress?”

I guarantee the answer will be a resounding “No” with a plethora of excuses.

Sad, isn’t it. Sad mostly that so many take advantage of it and us. But it’s saddest that so many do it at all and think nothing of doing so.

That says a lot about them. Who in God’s name have we put in charge of creating the laws of our nation?

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