53percenter's Blog

The title of this new book is a play on aristocracy.  The science aristocracy is living off its former reputation as honest investigators of the natural world.  But now they are largely mean-spirited bureaucrats who don’t hesitate to fake science when it serves their bureaucratic and financial goals.  The public, politicians, and the media are mostly scientific ignoramuses easily fooled into believing that fake science is rock-solid science.  There is an alliance driven by the money-greed of the science mandarins and the socialist dreams of the political Left.  It is not an accident that the many ecological catastrophes predicted by rogue science get political support from the Left.

The book consists of 11 essays by prominent whistleblowers that have waged mostly losing battles with the scientocracy.  The editors are Patrick Michaels, a distinguished skeptical climate scientist, and Terence Kealey, a biochemist and former university administrator in Great Britain.

The science establishment has been corrupted by money, specifically federal research grants.  A wise President Eisenhower warned about the corrupting effect of money on science in this 1961 farewell address.  Money is now more important than science.  A big bite of every research grant goes to the university as “overhead.”  So the university bureaucracy is intensely focused on bringing in more research grants.  For the researcher, money means promotion, status, and the means to engage in expensive research projects.

In order to keep the money flowing, the research has to achieve positive and important results.  Sometimes, the original hypothesis that is tested turns out to have been wrong.  That a hypothesis is wrong is theoretically a scientific contribution, but not one that is likely to impress the funding committees.  One answer is to search the data for a new hypothesis — a statistically flawed procedure, since, if one searches for enough different hypotheses, one is likely to find something “proven” by the data, even if the data consist of random numbers.  Outright fakery is not usually necessary since there are many ways to process and adjust data to make them better.  The researcher may believe that his adjustments are shown to be necessary because he believes that his hypothesis is correct, so there must be something wrong with the data.

The most lucrative research is to predict an ecological catastrophe.  Thus, we have overpopulation, acid rain, the ozone hole, and global warming.  The scary prediction generates government appropriations for science.  When the predictions turn out to have been false, the scientocracy can declare victory or quietly move on to something else.

The foundation of many pollution scares is the Linear, No Threshold (LNT) theory of damage from various type of poisons.  This holds that if a dose x causes damage y, then a dose of one thousandth x will cause one thousandth the damage y.  The alternative theories are that there is a threshold below which the poison is harmless, or that for low doses, the poison will actually be beneficial, known as hormesis.  The beauty of the LNT theory is that there is always a problem waiting to be solved because most poisons cannot be reduced to zero.  An example of hormesis is selenium, a deadly poison but a necessary micro-nutrient.

Edward Calabrese, a professor of toxicology at the University of Massachusetts, wrote chapter 7 of Scientocracy.  He recounts that he spent two years searching for a study that validated the LNT theory for carcinogens.  He concluded that there was no such study, and LNT was simply assumed as an article of faith.  Calabrese details the scientific history behind the adaptation of LNT as well as the practical advantages that make the scientific community comfortable with the LNT approach, even if it is scientifically erroneous.

Government acceptance of bad research resulted in diet fads, where the nation was browbeaten at various times not to eat eggs, salt, or meat for various reasons that turned out to be wrong.  The self-interested lobbying of various segment of the food industry probably saved us from the worst of this.  Now carbon dioxide is considered worse than eggs, and the research proving this is bad computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere.  The politics of “carbon dioxide bad” is that it provides a convenient club to beat big corporations and capitalism in general.  The pathetic big corporations, including even oil companies, loudly proclaim that they are limiting their carbon emissions, not realizing that they and not carbon are the real problem.  In the meantime, the increase of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is greening the Earth as plants thirsty for carbon dioxide can at last breathe easy.

The phenomenal ten-year development of new oil and gas, thanks to fracking, could happen only because, almost unique to the United States, mineral rights belong to the landowner.  The economic and geopolitical benefit of energy independence is overwhelming.

Scientocracy discusses two valuable mineral deposits that so far cannot be developed due to the opposition of the left and bad science.  A $7-billion uranium deposit in Virginia is doomed to remain underground due to a political campaign against it.  The Alaska Pebble Mine, “the largest known copper, gold and molybdenum deposit on Earth,” is suffering a similar fate.  The general hysteria surrounding anything considered remotely polluting creates vast economic damage.

PM 2.5, or particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter, floating in the air has become a powerful tool for the scientocracy and the political Left.  These things are everywhere, and the damage to human health is strictly hypothetical.  Studies purporting to show damage suffer from bad statistics and confounding variables.  The concentration is often so small that one would be hard pressed to inhale a teaspoon of this during an 85-year life.  But since nothing can be proved and everything is hypothetical, PM 2.5 provides a wonderful subject for scientific studies and government regulation.  The scientists that advise the EPA concerning PM 2.5 are the recipients of huge research grants that are justified only by the danger of PM 2.5.

If there is a solution for the present corruption, it can’t involve committees of establishment scientists or government bureaucrats telling us what the solution is.  The solution may be pointed to by the army of amateur scientists that sprang up to fight the global warming hoax.  These amateurs are disconnected from the financial rewards of corruption.  The downside is that they may not understand the science as well as the professionals do.  I suggest independent advisory committees that cannot include professional scientists or professional regulators.  The members of such committees would be required to be scientifically literate and be financially independent of the science-government establishment.

Norman Rogers writes often about science and energy.  He has websites: NevadaSolarScam.com and climateviews.com.

The title of this new book is a play on aristocracy.  The science aristocracy is living off its former reputation as honest investigators of the natural world.  But now they are largely mean-spirited bureaucrats who don’t hesitate to fake science when it serves their bureaucratic and financial goals.  The public, politicians, and the media are mostly scientific ignoramuses easily fooled into believing that fake science is rock-solid science.  There is an alliance driven by the money-greed of the science mandarins and the socialist dreams of the political Left.  It is not an accident that the many ecological catastrophes predicted by rogue science get political support from the Left.

The book consists of 11 essays by prominent whistleblowers that have waged mostly losing battles with the scientocracy.  The editors are Patrick Michaels, a distinguished skeptical climate scientist, and Terence Kealey, a biochemist and former university administrator in Great Britain.

The science establishment has been corrupted by money, specifically federal research grants.  A wise President Eisenhower warned about the corrupting effect of money on science in this 1961 farewell address.  Money is now more important than science.  A big bite of every research grant goes to the university as “overhead.”  So the university bureaucracy is intensely focused on bringing in more research grants.  For the researcher, money means promotion, status, and the means to engage in expensive research projects.

In order to keep the money flowing, the research has to achieve positive and important results.  Sometimes, the original hypothesis that is tested turns out to have been wrong.  That a hypothesis is wrong is theoretically a scientific contribution, but not one that is likely to impress the funding committees.  One answer is to search the data for a new hypothesis — a statistically flawed procedure, since, if one searches for enough different hypotheses, one is likely to find something “proven” by the data, even if the data consist of random numbers.  Outright fakery is not usually necessary since there are many ways to process and adjust data to make them better.  The researcher may believe that his adjustments are shown to be necessary because he believes that his hypothesis is correct, so there must be something wrong with the data.

The most lucrative research is to predict an ecological catastrophe.  Thus, we have overpopulation, acid rain, the ozone hole, and global warming.  The scary prediction generates government appropriations for science.  When the predictions turn out to have been false, the scientocracy can declare victory or quietly move on to something else.

The foundation of many pollution scares is the Linear, No Threshold (LNT) theory of damage from various type of poisons.  This holds that if a dose x causes damage y, then a dose of one thousandth x will cause one thousandth the damage y.  The alternative theories are that there is a threshold below which the poison is harmless, or that for low doses, the poison will actually be beneficial, known as hormesis.  The beauty of the LNT theory is that there is always a problem waiting to be solved because most poisons cannot be reduced to zero.  An example of hormesis is selenium, a deadly poison but a necessary micro-nutrient.

Edward Calabrese, a professor of toxicology at the University of Massachusetts, wrote chapter 7 of Scientocracy.  He recounts that he spent two years searching for a study that validated the LNT theory for carcinogens.  He concluded that there was no such study, and LNT was simply assumed as an article of faith.  Calabrese details the scientific history behind the adaptation of LNT as well as the practical advantages that make the scientific community comfortable with the LNT approach, even if it is scientifically erroneous.

Government acceptance of bad research resulted in diet fads, where the nation was browbeaten at various times not to eat eggs, salt, or meat for various reasons that turned out to be wrong.  The self-interested lobbying of various segment of the food industry probably saved us from the worst of this.  Now carbon dioxide is considered worse than eggs, and the research proving this is bad computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere.  The politics of “carbon dioxide bad” is that it provides a convenient club to beat big corporations and capitalism in general.  The pathetic big corporations, including even oil companies, loudly proclaim that they are limiting their carbon emissions, not realizing that they and not carbon are the real problem.  In the meantime, the increase of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is greening the Earth as plants thirsty for carbon dioxide can at last breathe easy.

The phenomenal ten-year development of new oil and gas, thanks to fracking, could happen only because, almost unique to the United States, mineral rights belong to the landowner.  The economic and geopolitical benefit of energy independence is overwhelming.

Scientocracy discusses two valuable mineral deposits that so far cannot be developed due to the opposition of the left and bad science.  A $7-billion uranium deposit in Virginia is doomed to remain underground due to a political campaign against it.  The Alaska Pebble Mine, “the largest known copper, gold and molybdenum deposit on Earth,” is suffering a similar fate.  The general hysteria surrounding anything considered remotely polluting creates vast economic damage.

PM 2.5, or particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter, floating in the air has become a powerful tool for the scientocracy and the political Left.  These things are everywhere, and the damage to human health is strictly hypothetical.  Studies purporting to show damage suffer from bad statistics and confounding variables.  The concentration is often so small that one would be hard pressed to inhale a teaspoon of this during an 85-year life.  But since nothing can be proved and everything is hypothetical, PM 2.5 provides a wonderful subject for scientific studies and government regulation.  The scientists that advise the EPA concerning PM 2.5 are the recipients of huge research grants that are justified only by the danger of PM 2.5.

If there is a solution for the present corruption, it can’t involve committees of establishment scientists or government bureaucrats telling us what the solution is.  The solution may be pointed to by the army of amateur scientists that sprang up to fight the global warming hoax.  These amateurs are disconnected from the financial rewards of corruption.  The downside is that they may not understand the science as well as the professionals do.  I suggest independent advisory committees that cannot include professional scientists or professional regulators.  The members of such committees would be required to be scientifically literate and be financially independent of the science-government establishment.

Norman Rogers writes often about science and energy.  He has websites: NevadaSolarScam.com and climateviews.com.

via American Thinker

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via American Thinker Blog

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via American Thinker Blog

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/

Two controversial economists have played a major role in the 2020 Democratic primary with Senators Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) each trumpeting major tax hikes and financial reforms to curb inequality.

University of California, Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman have gained currency on the left for their proposed radical taxes on wealth and financial transactions. While Warren, Sanders, and other leading liberals rush to embrace them as advisers, a debate has roiled academic economics. The evidence on which Sanders, Warren, and others have built their plans to dramatically transform the U.S. economy may be shoddier than their supporters realize, according to some prominent Democrats who have called the research "substantially inaccurate and substantially misleading."

Both Warren and Sanders, neither of whom returned requests for comment, have promised to pursue aggressive expansions of government spending, with costs expected to run into the trillions of dollars. To finance this spending, both campaigns have floated novel tax proposals, including Sanders’s financial transaction tax and Warren’s corporate profit tax. The most ambitious of these proposals, however, is each campaign’s wealth tax—a tax levied directly on the assets of the super-wealthy.

Warren’s wealth tax, introduced in January, would tax assets in excess of $50 million at 2 percent annually, and those in excess of $1 billion at 3 percent annually. Sanders’s plan, released in September, upstages Warren’s with a sliding scale from a 1 percent tax on assets of $32 million to an 8 percent tax on assets of $10 billion.

Both proposals, according to information released by the campaigns, are the brainchild of Saez and Zucman. The two coauthored letters on behalf of Warren and Sanders touting the plans, and have since made media appearances pushing for increased consideration of a wealth tax. They also have advocated for other policies embraced by both Sanders and Warren, including a recent op-ed claiming that Medicare for All will cut taxes for most Americans—even in spite of Sanders’s acknowledgment that tax hikes for the middle class would be needed to pay for his plan.

Both Saez and Zucman’s research focuses on tax policy and inequality. They have also previously teamed with Thomas Piketty, the French economist whose best-selling Capital in the Twenty-First Century made an international splash when it debuted in 2013. Their prominent role as Democratic advisers—alongside glowing reviews of their new book—has put them front and center in the 2020 policy conversation.

Saez and Zucman’s analysis of income and tax distributions indicates that inequality has skyrocketed: The data used in their new book indicate that as of 2018, the top 1 percent of tax filers collected 20 percent of the income, up from 8 percent in the 1970s. At the same time, their research (as captured in a recent viral New York Times chart) indicates that the U.S. tax system is actually regressive, with the top 400 tax filers paying a lower total tax rate—including state, local, and federal taxes—than those in the bottom 10 percent of earners.

If true, these findings support Zucman’s claim in a recent interview with Axios that "[y]ou look at the numbers and it’s very similar to the Gilded Age." They also can be used to support the tax policy that Saez and Zucman designed for the Warren and Sanders campaigns. Their influence extends beyond presidential politics. The pair publicly defended Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D., N.Y.) call for a 70-percent top tax rate.

The pair’s public elevation has brought with it massive scrutiny, and many economists think their work does not hold up.

The dispute over Saez and Zucman’s work is intensely technical, but it more or less boils down to the fact that calculating income distribution and tax incidence both necessarily require making a host of methodological choices. Wherever possible, Saez and Zucman make the choice that in some cases radically overstates inequality compared to other academic estimates.

For example, the pair chose to focus on inequality among "tax units," meaning discreet tax returns, which are not necessarily the same with individuals (because of jointly filing couples) or households (because of dependents who file separately). Research indicates that the income distribution for tax units is more inequitable than among households or individuals.

In the case of tax burden, there’s the question of how to distribute the weight of corporate taxes—Saez and Zucman assume that they fall totally on corporate shareholders, meaning that the gains from cutting them accrue entirely to these—usually wealthy—actors, as opposed to workers.

There are lots of other, similar choices that Saez and Zucman make. Shifting those variables could yield research that finds inequality has barely budged, or that the tax system is actually quite progressive. Gerald Auten and David Splinter, economists at Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation and the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis, found that the top 1 percent’s share of after-tax income only rose from 8.4 percent in 1979 to 10.1 percent in 2015—less than a third of the increase that Piketty, Saez, and Zucman found in 2017.

Splinter also recently responded to Saez and Zucman’s finding that the tax system is flat, identifying "three issues"—an over-allocation of underreported income to high earners, a misallocation of retirement income, and excluding the value of after-tax wealth transfers—which, when removed, produce the progressive tax system that most other estimates find.

These disparities may be why even liberals have been critical of Saez and Zucman. Jason Furman, who ran the Council of Economic Advisers under Obama, noted that "the standard data show that the tax system overall is highly progressive." Larry Summers, former Clinton treasury secretary and Obama director of the National Economic Council, called Saez and Zucman’s estimates of tax inequality "substantially inaccurate and substantially misleading."

All of this may seem like a petty dispute among academics. But Saez and Zucman appear to have real influence in the 2020 debate, pushing for a tax that some experts, including Summers, have said would likely be unconstitutional, impossible to administer, and ineffective, pointing to numerous European countries that ditched wealth taxes after seeing them hurt the national economy.

The wealth tax has become a key plank to Warren’s campaign, with supporters chanting "two cents!" at rallies, in reference to the two cents taxed on every dollar over $50 million held. These supporters probably have not heard from Summers, or Splinter, or any of Saez and Zucman’s other critics. Warren may have, but it is clear to whom she chooses to listen.

The post Meet the Radical Economists Behind Warren, Sanders appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

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The Dennis Prager/Adam Carolla documentary “No Safe Spaces,” which chronicles the academic Left’s politically correct war to stifle free speech on college campuses, made an impressive $45,000 on just one screen in Phoenix during its opening weekend.

“The film raked in an estimated $45,000 on one screen in Phoenix, the production team said, adding that the only documentary that earned more from one screen on an opening weekend was Michael Moore’s ‘Sicko’ in 2007,” reports Fox News.

Released on October 25, the new movie will expand this week in Phoenix and then move on to engagements in San Diego, Denver, Tampa Bay, and Greenville. The film will go nationwide on November 15.

Producer Adam Carolla said he appreciated the high fan turnout and hoped to see the same in subsequent cities. “I’m really proud of this movie and hope the rest of the country will love it as much as we and our fans in Phoenix do,” he said.

Earlier in the week, Carolla said that the documentary would hopefully “make people aware of how nuts it is on campuses and in the media when it comes to censorship based on feelings” rather than facts.

“It’s not a left or a right-wing thing,” Carolla told Fox News on Wednesday. “We have people across the political spectrum in the film, including [liberal CNN pundit] Van Jones, who says it doesn’t help his team to have young people who can’t defend their beliefs. This is hurting everyone.”

The push to make “No Safe Spaces” a film reality has been ongoing since 2017, when Prager and Carolla started an Indiegogo campaign to crowdfund the documentary. It raised $684,684.

Much of the documentary focuses on Prager and Carolla traveling to various college campuses, exploring the systemic crackdown there on free speech.

“Entitled snowflakes on college campuses raging and screaming every time they encounter an idea they disagree with,” reads the film’s Indiegogo page. “These stories might be somewhat amusing if they weren’t such a dangerous indication of what’s to come. Trigger warnings, micro-aggressions, the suppression of free speech, and other illogical ideas born on campuses are proliferating and spreading out into the real world.”

“Today’s campus snowflake is tomorrow’s teacher, judge, or elected official,” it continues. “And if that doesn’t scare you, maybe you should reconsider. No matter where you live or what you do, if you don’t think they way they do, they will attempt to silence and punish you.”

Prior to the release, Prager challenged the MPAA for slapping the movie with a PG-13 rating from a single, 30-second animated clip in which a character meant to personify free speech named “Firsty” gets pummeled with bullet holes, causing it to bleed.

Prager sent a letter to the MPAA asking that it reconsider the decision. “Any kid who sees it will probably laugh,” Prager wrote to MPAA head Charles Rivkin.

Prager said he feared that the PG-13 rating will persuade certain parents to avoid showing the film to their children.

“When it comes to Firsty, we would ask that you reconsider and allow the scene to remain and still achieve a PG rating so that we can reach the widest possible audience. A PG-13 rating would not reinforce people’s faith in MPAA’s ratings,” Prager wrote in the letter.

via The Daily Wire

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Friday night on the radio, LevinTV host Mark Levin criticized the mass media’s apparent disregard for the fact that they’re being closed out of a presidential impeachment process.

“Not a single one of these phony journalists … not one of them is speaking about freedom of the press when it comes to being closed out, shut out, of the secret testimony being conducted in a secret room — a vault, if you will — in the basement of the Capitol building, where there’s not classified information being discussed,” Levin pointed out.

More specifically, Levin criticized CNN’s Jake Tapper over his characterization of House Democrats’ ongoing impeachment inquiry and questioned how serious Tapper and CNN are about wanting an open process.

“How come CNN hasn’t sued the Congress under the First Amendment?” Levin asked in response to Tapper’s assertion that he wants a more open process.

“You know, CNN sued the White House when they removed Jim Acosta and took his press pass away, his permanent press pass … even though another hundred journalists are in there reporting,” Levin reminded listeners. “But when the House under the Democrats prevents any journalist from participating in a process that has nothing to do with classified information, where’s the lawsuit from CNN? Where’s the lawsuit from the other press rooms, press corporations, press associations? They’re nowhere.”

Levin picked apart Tapper’s faulty comparison between the current secretive process and other investigations that used closed-door depositions conducted by House Republicans when they had majority in the chamber. The comparison fails, Levin explained, because those investigations weren’t impeachment processes.

“So now you know Jake Tapper is a fraud,” Levin concluded.

Listen:

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All the phony press does is attack Trump over nothing and cry.

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— LevinTV (@LevinTV) October 25, 2019

The post Levin calls CNN’s bluff on press freedom & Democrats’ closed impeachment process: ‘Where’s the lawsuit?’ appeared first on Conservative Review.

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The Mueller Witchhunt and Lying Adam Schiff’s impeachment hearings of President Trump held in the basement of the Capital are very similar in numerous ways.

Ultimately the Democrats, their Deep State and elites behind these events are destroying the country and the US Constitution.

This past weekend attorney David Rivkin and professor Elizabeth Price Foley wrote an eloquent piece in the Wall Street Journal outlining how the House of Representatives impeachment inquiry is unconstitutional.  They wrote –

House Democrats have discarded the Constitution, tradition and basic fairness merely because they hate Mr. Trump. Because the House has not properly begun impeachment proceedings, the president has no obligation to cooperate. The courts also should not enforce any purportedly impeachment-related document requests from the House. (A federal district judge held Friday that the Judiciary Committee is engaged in an impeachment inquiry and therefore must see grand-jury materials from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, but that ruling will likely be overturned on appeal.) And the House cannot cure this problem simply by voting on articles of impeachment at the end of a flawed process.

Here are eight ways that the Mueller Witchhunt and Lying Adam Schiff’s impeachment hearings of President Trump are similar –

1. Both Begin in the Ukraine –

The Mueller special counsel was created based on a bogus dossier with connections back to the Ukraine.  As we reported in December 2018, Andrii Telizhenko was approached by DNC operative Alexandra Chalupa in early 2016.  Chalupa wanted dirt on candidate Trump and his campaign manager Paul Manafort.  The Ukrainian embassy in Washington DC worked CLOSELY with the DNC operative Chalupa.

Chalupa told Andrii she wanted Russian “dirt” on the Trump campaign.

Alexandra Chalupa was apparently hired by the DNC going as far back as 2013.  According to Politico, shortly before the election:

A daughter of Ukrainian immigrants who maintains strong ties to the Ukrainian-American diaspora and the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, Chalupa, a lawyer by training, in 2014 was doing pro bono work for another client interested in the Ukrainian crisis and began researching Manafort’s role in Yanukovych’s rise, as well as his ties to the pro-Russian oligarchs who funded Yanukovych’s political party.”

According to Politico, Chalupa claimed that in October of 2015 she began investigating Trump’s ties to Russia. Why she began this investigation is completely unknown.  The only thing of significance that had happened at this point was that Trump announced he was running for office. There was no apparent triggering event. Candidate Trump had very limited contact with Russia or Russia businessmen.

Lying Adam Schiff’s dungeon impeachment sham is based on this exact same scenario.  President Trump asked the Ukraine’s newly elected leader to look into the beginnings of the Russia Witchhunt in the Ukraine.  Liberal Democrats believe this is a crime even though their bogus Mueller investigation started based on the exact same bogus actions tied to the Ukraine and Chalupa.

2. Democrats Are Behind the Beginnings of Both Shams

As noted above, the Russia Hoax started in the Ukraine and was instigated by the DNC and Chalupa.  It’s also been widely reported that Democrat Hillary Clinton paid for the dossier that was used to surveil candidate and President Trump and which was the basis for the Mueller Witchhunt.

The Schiff Sham was also a Democrat creation.  The ‘whistleblower’ who started the sham is widely suspected of being an Obama CIA spy in the Trump White House.  This individual, suspected to be Eric Ciaramella, approached Congressman Schiff before filing the faulty ‘whistleblower’ report.  If Schiff’s CIA ‘whistleblower’ is outed and if he was spying on President on behalf of Schiff, then they both should be held accountable for conspiracy and treason under the Espionage Act.

3. Both Shams are Based on Fake or Non-Crimes

We reported two years ago that the Mueller investigation was not based on a crime. Gregg Jarrett at FOX News wrote when Mueller initially brought charges against Manafort that Mueller is tasked with finding a crime that does not exist in the law. It is a legal impossibility. He is being asked to do something that is manifestly unattainable because there is no such thing as the crime of collusion with foreign countries in the US statutory code.

Rivkin and Foley point out that President Trump has similarly committed no crime in regards to his actions with the Ukrainian leader –

The effort has another problem: There is no evidence on the public record that Mr. Trump has committed an impeachable offense. The Constitution permits impeachment only for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” The Founders considered allowing impeachment on the broader grounds of “maladministration,” “neglect of duty” and “mal-practice,” but they rejected these reasons for fear of giving too much power to Congress. The phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” includes abuses of power that do not constitute violations of criminal statutes. But its scope is limited.

Abuse of power encompasses two distinct types of behavior. First, the president can abuse his power by purporting to exercise authority not given to him by the Constitution or properly delegated by Congress—say, by imposing a new tax without congressional approval or establishing a presidential “court” to punish his opponents. Second, the president can abuse power by failing to carry out a constitutional duty—such as systematically refusing to enforce laws he disfavors. The president cannot legitimately be impeached for lawfully exercising his constitutional power.

Applying these standards to the behavior triggering current calls for impeachment, it is apparent that Mr. Trump has neither committed a crime nor abused his power. One theory is that by asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Kyiv’s involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and potential corruption by Joe Biden and his son Hunter was unlawful “interference with an election.” There is no such crime in the federal criminal code (the same is true of “collusion”). Election-related offenses involve specific actions such as voting by aliens, fraudulent voting, buying votes and interfering with access to the polls. None of these apply here.

4. Both Shams are Led by Corrupt and Criminal Actors –

The Hillary email scandal, the beginnings of the Russia Hoax and the Mueller investigation were led by many of the same Obama Administration corrupt players.  James Comey, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Andy McCabe, Bruce Ohr, James Clapper, John Brennan, and numerous others were behind setting up of President Trump and his team with bogus crimes.  The actions of these individuals were so egregious that they are now the focus of a criminal investigation led by DOJ prosecutor John Durham.

Adam Schiff is running the sham impeachment of President Trump.  He is arguably the most dishonest politician in US history.  He and his gang of fellow Democrats and Deep State operatives are not concerned with the law or the constitution.  If they were, this would never be in place.

5. Both Shams Involve Tampering and Threatening Witnesses

We’ve reported that six out of eight events involving Russians in the Mueller report were set ups by the Deep State.  The Mueller gang hired Andrew Weissmann to head the investigation and he is a known crook who was even scolded by the Supreme Court in relation to his actions in the early 2000’s.  Weissman and gang pressured General Michael Flynn to sign a statement that he lied to the FBI or they were were going after the General’s son.  They withheld evidence that showed that he was innocent and set up by the Deep State.

The Mueller gang pressured young George Papadopoulos as well and withheld information from him that would have exonerated him of any wrongdoing.  Paul Manafort was placed in a gag order like Roger Stone is to this day by corrupt DC Judge Amy Berman Jackson.  This same corrupt judge placed Manafort in solitary confinement in an alleged effort to make him compose.

Lying Adam Schiff reportedly is pressuring those he is interrogating in the Capital dungeon to make up stories about President Trump committing wrongdoings.  Schiff or his team met with the CIA whistleblower before he filed his complaint.  Schiff’s team met with their latest witness, Bill Taylor, in the Ukraine before the whistleblower’s complaint went public.  Schiff and Pelosi both attended a fundraiser sponsored by a Ukrainian arms dealer for Schiff in 2013 in DC.  The corrupt acts by Schiff go on and on.

6. Both Shams Utilize Illegal Convenient Leaks to the Media

During the Russia Hoax the Democrats leaked almost daily to the press news that turned out to be utterly false but nevertheless damaging to President Trump.  Devin Nunez, California Republican in the House, stated that he had put together a list of the Democrat leaks to the far-left media –

Well we have over 100 leaks from our committee. Over 100 leaks that didn’t come from the Republican side. So it had to come from the Democratic side. We can’t pin it on a particular member or staff but there’s over 100.

Most of these leaks were no doubt from House liar Adam Schiff, Democrat from California.  Schiff has continued this strategy with his fake and unconstitutional impeachment sham.  Rivkin and Foley make this statement –

Mrs. Pelosi discarded this process in favor of a Trump-specific procedure without precedent in Anglo-American law. Rep. Adam Schiff’s Intelligence Committee and several other panels are questioning witnesses in secret. Mr. Schiff has defended this process by likening it to a grand jury considering whether to hand up an indictment. But while grand-jury secrecy is mandatory, House Democrats are selectively leaking information to the media, and House Republicans, who are part of the jury, are being denied subpoena authority and full access to transcripts of testimony and even impeachment-related committee documents. No grand jury has a second class of jurors excluded from full participation.

Truly the Democrats aren’t making America great again, they are making America a Banana Republic.

7. Both Shams Involve a Complicit and Rabid Mainstream Media

We put together a list of leaks that were reported in the fake news media in May of 2017 and reported the following in our post that was linked to by the Drudge Report (before Drudge turned into a liberal mouthpiece).  We wrote –

Here is updated analysis of the most recent so called ‘leaks’ being reported and repeated by the liberal mainstream media (MSM) involving President Trump.  The probability that a portion of these ‘leaks’ are completely inaccurate remains very high.

The leaks are all being reported by biased liberal media outlets that were adamantly opposed to the election of President Trump.

These ‘leaks’ in all cases still are not supported with any names of so-called sources and in all cases the ‘leaks’ are meant to destroy the current President.

Former FBI Director James Comey reportedly made statements that were revealed in the media ‘leaks’ but to this date he has not corroborated any of the statements he reportedly made after his firing.  Comey was scheduled to go in front of Congress this past week but instead asked to reschedule so he could first talk to Comey’s predecessor at the FBI, Robert Mueller, who is now the appointed Russia Investigation Special Council.

Comey did meet with Mueller, which alone should have disqualified Mueller from his sham investigation.  Comey later admitted to some of the leaks and the Deep State FBI claimed none of his leaks were classified.  The liberal media continues to post bogus leaks to this day.

Joel Pollak at Breitbart News provided this summary:

In their effort to impugn Trump, the [New York] Times and the [Washington] Post violate the most basic journalistic standards. Publishing parts of a document that you do not possess and cannot verify, and timing the release to cause maximum political damage (right after the president leaves the country), is not investigative journalism. It is political propaganda.

… For the elite mainstream media, when it comes to protecting Democrats or attacking Republicans, there are no journalistic standards, no ethics, and no shame.

The media is no longer just purveyors of ‘fake news’, they are now just plain corrupt, as noted by President Trump –

The Media is “Fixed” and Corrupt. It bears no relationship to the truth. The @nytimes & @washingtonpost are pure fiction. Totally dishonest reporting!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2019

8. Both Shams are Hell Bent on the Destruction of the US Constitution

The Mueller investigation and Obama’s Deep State FBI, CIA, DOJ, State Department and Intel community have done all they can to destroy President Trump and in so doing, damaged America.

We put together a list of over 130 times the FBI, DOJ and/or the Mueller gang “Deviated from Standard Practice” or committed crimes in efforts to exonerate Hillary and indict President Trump.  The Deep State goons who went after Trump did not care about the law or the constitution.

In regards to Lying Schiff’s dungeon impeachment proceedings, Rivkin and Foley wrote in the Wall Street Journal –

Alexis de Tocqueville observed in 1835: “A decline of public morals in the United States will probably be marked by the abuse of the power of impeachment as a means of crushing political adversaries or ejecting them from office.” What House Democrats are doing is not only unfair to Mr. Trump and a threat to all his successors. It is an attempt to overrule the constitutional process for selecting the president and thus subvert American democracy itself. For the sake of the Constitution, it must be decisively rejected. If Mr. Trump’s policies are unpopular or offensive, the remedy is up to the people, not Congress.

The grotesque actions taken by the far-left and dishonest players in Congress, Deep State left-overs from the Obama Administration and the corrupt actors in the media, are severely damaging the country and the Constitution.  It’s time Americans stand up for the gifts we’ve been given and stop these criminals from making America a Banana Republic.

The post MUST READ… THE LIST: 8 Ways the Mueller Witchhunt and Lying Schiff’s Sham Impeachment Are Identical, Corrupt and Unconstitutional appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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A new poll released Monday by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation shows that while support for “socialism” is dropping in the U.S., the Millennial generation (23-38) remains the most supportive of the idea.

The poll, conducted by YouGov for the foundation, included 2100 respondents over the age of 16. No margin of error was provided as of the time of publication.

The survey reports that overall, 58% of Americans held favorable opinions of capitalism in 2019, down 3% from 2018’s figure of 61%. However, only 49% of members of Generation Z (16-22) and 50% of the Millennial generation see capitalism favorably.

At the same time, socialism became less favorable overall in 2019, dropping from 42% favorability in the 2018 poll to 36% favorability this year. Moreover, Generation Z saw favorability drop from 48% to 40%, while Millennials only saw a drop of 1%, from 50% to 49%.

36% of Millennials view communism favorably, up 8% from 2018; 35% of Millennials see Marxism favorably, up 6% from 2018.

The survey adds: “50% of Millennials say they are ‘somewhat likely’ and 20% of Millennials say they are ‘extremely likely’ to vote for a socialist candidate, doubling from 10% in 2018, Americans overall are more hesitant about voting for a ‘democratic socialist’ than they were last year (53% ‘never’ or ‘hesitant’ in 2019 versus 47% in 2018).”

Many Millennials came of age during the global financial crisis — and the election of President Barack Obama.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is the most well-known “democratic socialist” presidential candidates, though several of his fellow contenders for the Democratic Party presidential nomination have embraced socialist policies such as “Medicare for All” (including those arriving in the country illegally) and the so-called “Green New Deal.”

More respondents (27%) named President Donald Trump the “biggest threat to world peace” than any other leader.

The survey’s full results will be released later on Monday; only some of the data were public as of this writing.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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As if starvation, the Cultural Revolution, and then infanticide, the laogai, the social credit system and sex-selection abortions were not enough, here’s the latest from our trading partners the Chinese:

China is now harvesting the organs of political prisoners of conscience on a wide scale for medical transplants against their will – and with the unwilling ‘donors’ still alive.

According to an important Fox News report:

It’s the stuff of nightmares. And it has been buried from public view, hard to prove, and shrouded beneath the cloak of silence for almost two decades.

But anecdotes and evidence are slowly bubbling to the surface that the organs of members of marginalized groups detained in Chinese prisons and labor camps are unwillingly harvested. Most affected is a spiritual minority, the Falun Gong, who have been persecuted for adhering to a Buddhist-centric religious philosophy grounded in meditation and compassion.

After 12 months of independent assessment of all available evidence, the seven-person China Tribunal panel – which was initiated by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC), an international human rights charity – delivered its final findings in June. The tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC who led the prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic in the International Criminal Trial for the former Yugoslavia, stated with “certainty” that “in China, forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practiced for a substantial period of time.”

“Forced organ harvesting has been committed for years, and Falun Gong practitioners have been one – and probably the main – source of organ supply,” the report concluded, pointing to the growing transplant industry already worth more than $1 billion.

The Voice of America has an earlier and equally outrageous report (with photos of the nightmarish act) here.

You have to wonder why we trade with these people at all. This represents a new low. How sick does it have to get? Where do we draw the line?

What we have here is another manifestation of socialism, the materialistic philosophy that views all human beings as putty, commodities, worker ants, righted to live not because they are human beings with human rights, but conditioned on their service to the state. That’s what makes it easy for socialists to treat human beings as mere matter, valued only through its usefulness to the state.

With no God-given human rights as seen in the West, immutable in themselves, the slippery slope begins. First these socialists started with the criminals since nobody likes that bunch, then they moved on to the political prisoners of conscience, another marginal group whose loyalty is to something higher than China’s state or its communism.

Soon, it will be someone else they want to exert control over. It’s a sick as heck system and bound to leave social ruin in its wake once the dictatorship, as all dictatorships, eventually fall. Human life means nothing to socialists observing their ideology, because only the state matters. 

Not only do they create the terror that holds their hellhole state together, they move further and further down the food chain of human rights violations, getting increasingly horrific in their deeds as they keep getting away with it. They not only get away with it internationally, they amass power from it, they answer to no god but socialism to give them a tinge of conscience, so put all such factors together and the road is open.

Again, why are we trading with these people? Why isn’t every hoity toity European Union official blasting these Chicoms as maggots? Why are Google, Yahoo and others cooperating with them to strengthen their state and why aren’t they being stopped?

They all should be blasted for enabling this sick practice, halted and shunned.

Nothing justifies this sick behavior, a clear sign of not some aberration, but the design and effect of socialism itself.

Image credit: William Murphy, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0

As if starvation, the Cultural Revolution, and then infanticide, the laogai, the social credit system and sex-selection abortions were not enough, here’s the latest from our trading partners the Chinese:

China is now harvesting the organs of political prisoners of conscience on a wide scale for medical transplants against their will – and with the unwilling ‘donors’ still alive.

According to an important Fox News report:

It’s the stuff of nightmares. And it has been buried from public view, hard to prove, and shrouded beneath the cloak of silence for almost two decades.

But anecdotes and evidence are slowly bubbling to the surface that the organs of members of marginalized groups detained in Chinese prisons and labor camps are unwillingly harvested. Most affected is a spiritual minority, the Falun Gong, who have been persecuted for adhering to a Buddhist-centric religious philosophy grounded in meditation and compassion.

After 12 months of independent assessment of all available evidence, the seven-person China Tribunal panel – which was initiated by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC), an international human rights charity – delivered its final findings in June. The tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC who led the prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic in the International Criminal Trial for the former Yugoslavia, stated with “certainty” that “in China, forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practiced for a substantial period of time.”

“Forced organ harvesting has been committed for years, and Falun Gong practitioners have been one – and probably the main – source of organ supply,” the report concluded, pointing to the growing transplant industry already worth more than $1 billion.

The Voice of America has an earlier and equally outrageous report (with photos of the nightmarish act) here.

You have to wonder why we trade with these people at all. This represents a new low. How sick does it have to get? Where do we draw the line?

What we have here is another manifestation of socialism, the materialistic philosophy that views all human beings as putty, commodities, worker ants, righted to live not because they are human beings with human rights, but conditioned on their service to the state. That’s what makes it easy for socialists to treat human beings as mere matter, valued only through its usefulness to the state.

With no God-given human rights as seen in the West, immutable in themselves, the slippery slope begins. First these socialists started with the criminals since nobody likes that bunch, then they moved on to the political prisoners of conscience, another marginal group whose loyalty is to something higher than China’s state or its communism.

Soon, it will be someone else they want to exert control over. It’s a sick as heck system and bound to leave social ruin in its wake once the dictatorship, as all dictatorships, eventually fall. Human life means nothing to socialists observing their ideology, because only the state matters. 

Not only do they create the terror that holds their hellhole state together, they move further and further down the food chain of human rights violations, getting increasingly horrific in their deeds as they keep getting away with it. They not only get away with it internationally, they amass power from it, they answer to no god but socialism to give them a tinge of conscience, so put all such factors together and the road is open.

Again, why are we trading with these people? Why isn’t every hoity toity European Union official blasting these Chicoms as maggots? Why are Google, Yahoo and others cooperating with them to strengthen their state and why aren’t they being stopped?

They all should be blasted for enabling this sick practice, halted and shunned.

Nothing justifies this sick behavior, a clear sign of not some aberration, but the design and effect of socialism itself.

Image credit: William Murphy, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0

via American Thinker Blog

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Former vice presidential candidate John Edwards was right when he said in 2004 that there are two Americas. The reaction to the targeting and death of ISIS leader Abu al-Baghdadi demonstrates the moral divide in this country between normal people and the “elites” more than ever.

Normal people who believe in good vs. evil, victim vs. criminal, and right vs. wrong reacted to the news yesterday the way it’s expressed in Proverbs 11:10: “When the wicked perish, there are shouts of joy.”

Those who believe that criminals are victims, babies should be executed, and murderers should be released from prison, aka progressives, have a difficult time with Trump celebrating the lowly death of one of the most brutal terrorists of this generation.

The Washington Post, in a roundly mocked obituary, titled its screed, “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State, dies at 48.” They have since modified the title to “extremist leader,” refusing to mention which form of extremism.

Could you imagine such a headline from the media about Hitler’s death? For that matter, could you imagine a headline like this regarding a conservative they detest, such as Jesse Helms?

The media seems to have a fascination with humanizing people like Baghdadi, while President Trump rightfully depicts them in the dehumanizing way they acted. Bloomberg published a profile yesterday describing Baghdadi as a man who “transformed himself from a little-known teacher of Koranic recitation into the self-proclaimed ruler of an entity that covered swaths of Syria and Iraq” and said he “was killed along with a number of his followers.”

Rukmini Callimachi, who covers ISIS for the New York Times, in a profile piece at the Gray Lady, felt a need to quote local people who grew up with Baghdadi describing his pious devotion to his mosque and how he cleaned the building.

10. We are familiar with the atrocities his group carried out & are used to thinking of Baghdadi as a criminal & a thug. But those who knew him as a teen & as a young man described him as having a spiritual gift. The owner of the first mosque he attended described him like this: pic.twitter.com/bghskTyvUi

— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) October 27, 2019

What exactly is the point in pushing this line of reporting now?

Even Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, in response to a question about the president describing Baghdadi’s death as a “coward” and “dog,” said he felt “a little uncomfortable to hear a president talking that way.” CNN’s Jake Tapper bizarrely felt that there was something wrong with what the president said, although he never explained exactly why it was wrong for him to paint such a “vivid picture” of the terrorist’s demise.

Thornberry qualified his answer by noting that there was utility to Trump taking the glamour away from Baghdadi’s death as an inspirational figure in the eyes of young recruits to terrorism. But why did he need to preface his remarks with the fact that he felt “a little uncomfortable?”

I guess we should just be relieved the Ninth Circuit didn’t place an injunction on Baghdadi’s death.

In reality, this was one instance where Trump’s undisciplined and unorthodox way of speaking is just what the time called for. The entire draw of ISIS was its glamour in martyrdom. Trump did a superlative job dehumanizing him while playing up the bravery of the special operators – all without too much focus on himself. He was actually right on message.

Also, Trump took the time to explain in greater detail and clarity why he believes it’s wrong to have a permanent ground presence in Syria. He deftly explained how ISIS is a bigger problem for Russia and the other neighbors and how it’s not our job to have a permanent presence there, but rather to engage in quick strikes and maneuvers as necessary. Taking away the shine from ISIS recruitment speaks exactly to what threatens us here at home, thanks to all of the people we’ve admitted into our country over the years who subscribe to this ideology. Trump’s rhetoric following this operation did more to deter their actions than a permanent presence in the region, which does nothing but help Russia and the Shiites.

At the same time, Trump demonstrated that a lack of a permanent ground presence doesn’t mean we won’t step in as needed for a clearly defined mission in our interests. He might not have used these terms, but the president, for the first time, effectively explained the difference between “strike and maneuver” vs. “hold and build” on behalf of others, the plan I laid out a few weeks ago.

With so much that divides us as a nation, it’s a shame we can’t all join together with unvarnished joy that such evil has been rooted out and that our president did his job well and communicated it properly. Then again, what divides the elites from the rest of America is clearly too insurmountable to bridge even in a moment like this.

The post America’s moral divide extends even to the world’s most evil terrorist appeared first on Conservative Review.

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