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De Blasio’s Plan For New York Universal Health Care Is Smoke And Mirrors.

January 11, 2019/in Culture War, Healthcare, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Taxes/by Dr. Julio Gonzalez

On January 7th, the same day President Trump appeared on national television to discuss immigration, the government shutdown, and border security, New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio announced that the City of New York will guarantee health care for everyone regardless of insurance or immigration status.  In all, the plan will cover 600,000 people, half of whom are undocumented, and he is going to do it for $100 million.  In fact, argued the mayor, the program will not cost the city anything because of the savings realized from the dramatic reductions in emergency room care.

In defense of the plan, De Blasio averred that health care is a right and that it is time for New Yorkers to start conducting their affairs as such.  Since the federal government is trying to disrupt our health care system, he proclaimed, it is time for New Yorkers to take matters into their own hands and guarantee people’s inherent right to health care.

Despite De Blasio’s uncontained enthusiasm, there are two fatal problems with his program.  First, as we know and the left continues to ignore, health carenot a right.  And second, in point of fact, his amazing program adds virtually nothing to what New Yorkers already have at their disposal

Health Care Is Not A Right.

What is a right?

There are many different kinds of rights. First, there is the undisputed interest. This is what attaches when one has a just or legal claim or title upon a property or object, such as when one strikes gold in a Nevada minefield. Under those circumstances, the person owning the land or declaring his or her stake upon it has a right to that land and to the minerals within it.  This right is commensurate with ownership or possession.  Since health care is not a defined, palpable property, then this cannot be the type of right of which De Blasio speaks.

A right can also be statutory; created by government.  In this case, the “right’ is given to you by the government.  One example is the right to a trial by jury.  Here, one has the undisputed access to a trial by jury because the state has declared it to be the so.  This particular right is based on the foundational principles giving rise to the United States, the declarations contained within the Bill of Rights, and guaranteed by the constitutions of the various states.

A statutory right is not inherently yours, as the government has provided it for you.  In other words, there would be no trial by jury; no trial at all in fact; if it weren’t for the fact that the government constructed the framework with which to provide it.  Generally, this kind of right is associated with a price tag.  It takes money to hire a defense attorney, a prosecuting attorney, a judge, and a building in which to conduct it.  And yes, the jury is hired as well.  Since no American government has declared a statutory right to health care, this too is not the type of right to which De Blasio is referring.

The third is the fundamental right, or human right; the ones the Founders called “inalienable.”  These rights are afforded to us by the Creator.  They belong to us.  They are not for government to give or to take away, although under some circumstances, through the consent of the governed, government may regulate them.  Our inalienable rights include a right to life, liberty, the pursuit of property, the right to labor, the right to speak, the right to seek the truth, the right to defend yourself, the right to bear arms, the right to your own beliefs, and of course, the right to pursue happiness.  Each of these is yours by right.  They are inherent in you.

It appears this last category of right is the one to which De Blasio refers when he speaks of a right to health care, but he would be wrong.

You cannot have a right to health care because you need others to realize it.  What isyours, like the right to pursue happiness or property, is your right to pursuehealth care.

So, is health care a privilege? Yes, it is.

It is a privilege to have someone toil over you.  It is a privilege to have someone attend to you.  It is a privilege to have someone sell you something.  So when De Blasio says health care is a right, he is wrong.  It doesn’t matter how many times he says it and repeats it, and that all the liberals say it and repeat it.  It doesn’t matter that 100% of all people are convinced that health care is a right, it still doesn’t make it a right because you can’t force another person to slave and toil over you to obtain the product or service.

What is a right is your freedom to approach someone offering the service and to ask him or her to provide the service.  That is the pursuit of health care and that is your right.  This is exactly in keeping with Benjamin Franklin’s words, “The Constitution only give people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”

De Blasio’s Plan Is Mathematically Impossible.

De Blasio says he is going to cover 600,000 people with $100 million.  This would mean that his health care plan would cover 600,000 individual lives at a price tag of $167.00 per person per year.

Sound too good to be true? That’s because it is.

In point of fact, what De Blasio says he is going to achieve for New York for the first time in the city’s history, New York already has.  New York City already spends $8 billion per year on health care to treat 1.1 million people who otherwise wouldn’t have access to care.  This includes the undocumented.  The effort traces back to the 18th century with the inception of Belleview Hospital. Anyone without insurance can go there to get treated, either through the emergency room or through a primary care doctor.

So if all these things already exist, what’s De Blasio offering that’s new?

Nothing really, just better customer service.

New York HHC Director Mitchell Katz saidwhen asked on the matter, “You can definitely walk into any emergency room, you can go to a clinic, but what is missing is the good customer service to ensure that you get an available appointment. . . That’s what we’re missing and the mayor is providing.”

The New York Times seemed to agree when it wrote,  “The $100 million would go to both establishing the customer service component and hiring additional doctors and nurses.”

Adding to the lacklusterness of the proposal is the uncertainty in the details, as is often the case when politicians try to take credit for nothing.  According to The New York Times, “. . . officials could not provide a breakdown of how much would be spent on each [component of the program].  Indeed, details of how those seeking care could do so under the new plan were not immediately clear, nor was an exact start date.”  The Federalist Pages met with the same problem in its review of De Blasio’s proposal.

The fact of the matter is that, predictably, the City of New York’s less-than-Utopian system is already present and operating; with a shortfall, of course.  For years New York’s hospital system has been under severe financial strain.  Indeed, according to New York’s Independent Budget Office, New York hospitals anticipate budget shortfalls of more than $156 million in 2018, increasing to $1.8 billion in 2022.

As expected, De Blasio continues to deceitfully sell fake, utopic visions.  It’s high time sound policy analysts call him out on it.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Federalist Pages. It is republished with permission. The featured photo is by Hush Naidoo on Unsplash.

DOD IG Reveals The Pentagon Let $27.7 Billion ‘Expire’ As Trump Seeks $5.7 Billion In Border Wall Funding

January 10, 2019/in Budget and Finance, Immigration, Must Read, National Security, Policy, Politics, Taxes/by The Daily Caller

The Defense Department has relinquished over $27 billion to the U.S. Treasury since 2013 simply because it couldn’t spend the money quick enough, according to a DOD Inspector General report released Tuesday.

The DOD was required to fork over the “expired funds” because the Pentagon failed to spend it “within the legal timeframes,” according to the report.

The revelation comes as President Donald Trump is considering declaring a state of emergency that would allow him to bypass Congress and leverage unobligated military funds to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The partial shutdown of the federal government entered its 19th day on Wednesday as Trump remains steadfast in his demand for $5.7 billion in border wall funding from Congress. Democrats, in turn, say they won’t negotiate with the president on the wall until the government reopens.

Legal analysts say Trump would have the authority to leverage unused DOD funds to construct a wall in the event he declares a national emergency.

“My instinct is to say that if he declares a national emergency and uses this pot of unappropriated money for the wall, he’s on very solid legal ground,” Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet told NBC News.

The Pentagon reported an “expired unobligated balance” of $27.7 billion in its most recent financial report, a figure that represents the amount of unused funds the Pentagon returned to the Department of the Treasury during the five-year period between fiscal years 2013 and 2018.

Funds from the federal government “expire” if they aren’t obligated on a contract anywhere between one to three years after their date of appropriation, according to the Alternative Dispute Resolution Working Group.

The $27.7 billion the Pentagon returned to the Treasury between FYs 2013 and 2018 represents “approximately 1 percent of our overall budget,” Pentagon spokesperson Chris Sherwood told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “It’s not as big as it may seem.”

A border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border could cost up to $21.6 billion, the Department of Homeland Security reported in 2017.

The Pentagon lost out on even more funds between FYs 2012 and 2017, when it failed to spend $33.6 billion on time, according to the DOD’s financial report.

Despite the Pentagon’s failure to fully commit its existing budgets on time, Trump has backed plans to increase the DOD’s budget to $750 billion in FY 2020, an 8 percent hike from the $692 billion defense budget signed into law in December 2017, according to Task & Purpose.

COLUMN BY

Andrew Kerr

Investigative Reporter. Follow Andrew on Twitter. Contact Andrew securely at AndrewKerrNC@protonmail.com.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images by The Daily Caller is republished with permission. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Fake News Field Day in Story about Texas Shooting

January 9, 2019/in Courts & Law, Culture War, Must Read, National Security, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Ann Corcoran

Sometimes our criminals at Fraud, Crooks and Criminals will be Americans like the man who allegedly killed little Jazmine Barnes in a drive-by shooting ten days ago.

barnes case white guy — This is the man the New York Times and CNN were already lynching!

The black child was killed by a black thug, but the New York Times, CNN and all the rest had already lynched a “white man with blue eyes” whose likeness had been sent out around the world after other children in the car where Jazmine died told authorities this is what the shooter looked like.

I’ve told some of you previously that I watch CNN the first thing in the morning so that I can get a feel for where they are steering the Leftwing segment of America on any given day.

Oh boy, here they go I thought when that drawing went out and the race hucksters headed to Houston.

CNN actually led one segment of their morning news with the shooting “hate crime” story, even before they launched in to their daily hate fest against the President.

eric black jr — Eric Black Jr arrested in killing of black child

That was until two days ago when, oopsy! turns out the man arrested in the case looks like this.

A second black man has been arrested.

And, guess what! No updates during my early a.m. review of CNN today.

But it wasn’t just CNN, the New York Times had gone on a ‘it has to be a hate crime’ frenzy.

Here is just one segment of a New York Times story (before the arrest of the black thug):

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office believes the gunman fired at random into the car in which Jazmine was riding with her mother and three sisters, a 6-year-old and two teenagers. A bullet struck Jazmine in the head, her mother said.
The police said Wednesday that they still had not identified the gunman. But the case has drawn the attention of national civil rights activists and fueled speculation that the shooting was racially motivated. The gunman is white, the police said, and Jazmine was black. [Note how the reporter phrases that, I doubt the police said the gunman is white!—ed]
[….]
In another effort to garner the public’s help, Mr. Merritt [family attorney] and Shaun King, a prominent racial justice activist and a columnist at The Intercept, have offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the gunman’s arrest.

Maybe the New York Times has apologized, but I don’t see it.

Even in a story where the NYT has to admit the truth, they keep ginning up the “hate crime” meme by quoting Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, here:

“Do not be afraid to call this what it seems to be — a hate crime,” Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, a Houston Democrat, told hundreds of people at a rally last week near the site of the killing.

Now, this is the story they are pushing widely. It is about how the poor family got confused.

Jazmine Barnes Case Shows How Trauma Can Affect Memory

Meanwhile, speaking of poor families, the family of the white man who may have witnessed the shooting is getting bullied and threatened. This is from local ABC news:

Family of man wrongfully accused by activist Shaun King in Jazmine Barnes’ shooting speaks out

Will the NYT and CNN follow-up and report that news? I’m not holding my breath!

Maybe the “white man with blue eyes” should sue the whole bunch of them!

I haven’t done this story (“Justice for Jazmine”) justice. Some feature writer should go through the media coverage of the case and expose in exquisite detail how the frauds in the Leftwing media spin the news.

You know they couldn’t wait to blame this on Donald Trump’s America!

New category at Frauds and Crooks: Media fraud!

Would someone keep an eye on this case and see if major media outlets ever mention it again after this week?

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images from Frauds, Crooks and Criminals is republished with permission. The featured photo is by rawpixel on Unsplash.

‘Gingerly Preparations’ Underway In Case Of Ginsburg Vacancy

January 9, 2019/in Courts & Law, Culture War, Must Read, Policy, Politics/by The Daily Caller

Quiet preparations are underway within conservative legal circles and the White House counsel’s office in the event that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg retires, two sources familiar with the process tell The Daily Caller.

The 85-year-old Ginsburg did not appear for oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Monday, missing the first session in her 25 years on the court for reasons of ill health. Ginsburg is currently recuperating from recent surgery to remove cancerous nodules from her lungs, marking her third bout with the disease.

U.S. Supreme Court justices pose for group portrait at the Supreme Court in Washington — U.S. Supreme Court justices pose for their group portrait at the Supreme Court in Washington, U.S., November 30, 2018. (REUTERS/Jim Young)

“Gingerly preparations are underway, not just for Ginsburg but for any SCOTUS retirement,” a source directly involved in the Supreme Court nominations of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh told TheDC.

Another source emphasized to TheDC that the quiet preparations are all that is realistically needed in case of a vacancy on the court because much of the required infrastructure already exists within the White House.

Both sources said that the White House counsel’s office and its conservative legal allies have now been through two successful confirmation processes, and that they have developed an intimate and professional feel for how to run the process again, if necessary.

Trump is particularly proud of his handling of the Gorsuch and Kavanaugh nominations, a source close to the White House said, noting that the president views proper handling of the Supreme Court as a necessary part of maintaining the support of his voters.

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justices (L-R) Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

The opening would be the first under White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who assumed the position after Don McGahn. Cipollone is a longtime Washington lawyer intimately familiar with the conservative legal eco-system.

“By appointing Pat, Trump made sure he has a White House counsel who is both able to handle the investigation and a movement conservative philosophically aligned with the base of the party,” American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp told TheDC.

Pressed on Trump’s lack of public discussion of any potential Supreme Court nomination, Schlapp noted that “Trump has figured out there are some things you keep close to the vest. He likes to be the explainer-in-chief but understands there’s a downside to sharing too much.”

John Malcolm, Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, similarly told TheDC that Cipollone has “very bright movement conservatives” around him as staffers, and expressed confidence in his preparations to fill a vacancy on the court.

Malcolm speculated that if Ginsburg’s seat becomes vacant, “there would be a lot of pressure to appoint a woman, I would think that one person the president would seriously look at would be Amy Coney Barett.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

COLUMN BY

Saagar Enjeti

White House Correspondent

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images by The Daily Caller is republished with permission.

Top 10 Myths About Abortion

January 8, 2019/in Healthcare, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

The issue of abortion is emotional, heated, and fraught with passionate opinions on all sides, and rightly so—the lives of human beings in the womb hang in the balance. It’s no surprise, then, that a lot of misguided, inflammatory, and patently false rhetoric inevitably surrounds the abortion issue whenever it is debated.

Dr. Ingrid Skop, a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist for 22 years, is passionate about inserting some much-needed scientific truth and common sense into the abortion debate from the perspective of a medical professional who works with pregnant women on a daily basis. In FRC’s new video series and corresponding publication, she dispels 10 common myths about abortion.

Over the next two weeks leading up to FRC’s ProLifeCon and the March for Life, we will be releasing a series of 10 videos of Dr. Skop discussing each myth about abortion. For a more detailed discussion of each myth, be sure to read FRC and the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ (AAPLOG) new publication authored by Dr. Skop, Top 10 Myths About Abortion.

Watch the Video Series

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New York Gov Cuomo Demands Bill Allowing Abortions Up to Birth, Or He Won’t Sign State Budget

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Here Are The Obama-Era Officials Allegedly Behind The Alabama False Flag Campaign

January 8, 2019/in Elections, Must Read, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by The Daily Caller

Two Obama-era officials were instrumental in the false flag operation in Alabama ahead of the special election in 2017, reports show.
One of the Obama-era officials behind the misinformation campaign in Alabama finally opened up about his group’s role in the caper.
Two of the people involved in the social media misinformation campaign in Alabama are denying their roles in the operation, reports indicate.

A trove of reports show two Obama-era officials are partially responsible for a misinformation campaign designed to derail Republican Roy Moore’s senatorial campaign in Alabama.

Former President Barack Obama campaign organizer, Mikey Dickerson, was instrumental in a disinformation campaign targeting Moore, reports show. He was not alone. Evan Coren, who has worked for the National Archives unit since Obama’s first term, also targeted the Republican’s campaign.

Coren, for his part, is a progressive activist who handles classified documents for the Department of Energy. He has not responded to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment about the nature of the campaign, which was designed to fool conservatives into believing Moore intended to reimpose prohibition.

Democrat Doug Jones, who won the special U.S. Senate election against Republican candidate Roy Moore, speaks during a news conference in Birmingham, Alabama, U.S., December 13, 2017. REUTERS/Marvin Gentry

Coren and other operatives created a “Dry Alabama” Facebook page with a blunt message attached: Alcohol is evil and should be prohibited, The New York Times reported Monday, citing sources familiar with the matter. The page included images of car wrecks and ruined families, the report notes. Its contents were targeted at business conservatives who are inclined to oppose prohibition.

Two wealthy Virginia donors who wanted to defeat Moore funded the project, according to a person who worked on the project and who spoke on condition of anonymity. The Dry Alabama project was one of two $100,000 campaigns designed to help Moore’s Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, who barely won the 2017 special election.

Jones previously stated his campaign was unaware of the project and is also calling for an investigation into who is behind the antics. Political analysts believe allegations that Moore sexually assaulted underage women three decades earlier likely played a larger part in his loss. Coren’s false flag operation happened alongside a similar campaign by Dickerson, a former Obama official known for fixing the government’s notoriously glitchy Obamacare website.

Operatives with New Knowledge, a group affiliated with Dickerson, created thousands of Twitter accounts posing as Russian bots to boost the election-year chances of Jones — the accounts began following Moore’s Twitter account in October 2017. The project created a slew of Facebook accounts as well that were designed to troll conservatives into opposing Moore.

But the misinformation project attracted attention from local and national media, falsely suggesting Russia was backing Moore’s candidacy. The Montgomery Advertiser, for one, was the first to cover the story using the Russian-bot angle. National media outlets quickly followed suit.

“Roy Moore flooded with fake Russian Twitter followers,” read the headline on a New York Post story, which cited the Advertiser. WaPo focused its reporting on the fact that Moore blamed Democrats for the fake accounts. Other major national outlets picked up on the story shortly thereafter, with many pundits mocking Moore for blaming Democratic operatives.

The cost of the effort, which was funded by liberal billionaire Reid Hoffman, totaled $100,000 — the identical amount Facebook says the Russian Internet Research Agency spent trolling people on social media leading up to the 2016 presidential election. Dickerson, who has not responded to TheDCNF’s repeated requests for comment about the campaign, finally responded to reporters Monday.

“I received the report in early 2018, which is when I first learned about the false flag and write-in tactics,” Dickerson said in a press statement, referring to a 12-page report from New Knowledge detailing crucial elements of the project.

Jonathon Morgan, head of New Knowledge, denies knowledge of most of the activities described in the Project Birmingham document. He also denies Dickerson’s claim that New Knowledge authored the report.

COLUMN BY

Chris White

Energy Reporter. Follow Chris White on Facebook and Twitter.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images by The Daily Caller is republished with permission. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Democrat Party’s Presents For Putin

January 8, 2019/in Must Read, National Security, Policy, Politics/by Simona Pipko

Yes, Christmas of 2018 was Putin’s best ever. It doesn’t mean that Putin likes Christmas, not at all, but his mortal enemies, the United States of America and President Trump, do sincerely like and traditionally celebrate Christmas and accompany it with millions of good deeds. That is the reason that on December 26, 2018 the Kremlin chose to announce the successful test of a new hypersonic missile. One capable of entering their enemy’s airspace without being detected. The Soviet Union ceased to exist on that very day twenty-seven years ago, December 26, 1991. Keep in mind what Putin said about the collapse of the USSR. He hated it. So, he keeps the asymmetrical war against Western civilization going on the same way it has proceeded twenty-seven years ago—the vindictive ideology of Soviet Fascism is alive and well…

The Christmas 2018 has been extremely good for Oligarchic Socialist Vladimir Putin, because of the negative events in the West, America and Trump’s administration, events he has actively participated in. A devoted disciple of Stalin/Andropov, Putin enjoys the fruits of a one-hundred war waged against Western civilization by his KGB under the banner of Soviet Fascism. Using the term KGB, I mean the entire Russian Intel—it is a collective image–those three letters are familiar to the vast majority of Americans. Western civilization is crumbling under aggressive asymmetrical war waged by the forces of the Soviet Socialist mafia in Europe for the last hundred years … Just take a look at the globe:

For the second month France is boiling in protests: French police have fired tear gas at ‘gilets jaunes’ protesters in Paris, and other cities. The protest-movement against gasoline taxation to fight “climate change” has stopped normal life. Socialist France, on their way to becoming a 3rd world country chants: WE WANT TRUMP…In England, Prime Minister Theresa May is fighting for her survival. Her approval rating has fallen to a record low amid government turmoil over her Chequers Brexit plan speech, according to a new poll. Germany’s culture, now contaminated, will never get over the Muslim Invasion orchestrated by Putin’s KGB. Here is the evidence: Muslim Takeover: German Court Says Child Marriage is Just Fine, Total Conservative, and December 2018.

The Stalin/Andropov Legacy in America

As Western civilization is crumbling under aggressive asymmetrical war in Europe, unfortunately, the same result is being realized in our America the Beautiful. To grasp it, let me give you a short excursion into history, because history will never forget the horrifying years of Show Trials, Purges, the killing and deporting of innocent people in the 1930-40s Russia. It was time when Stalin built his Soviet Socialism—the time of incredible abuses by the KGB, a gross misuse of power against innocent people, the time Stalin was creating a lawless system and the ideology of Soviet Socialism, a heinous ideology I renamed Soviet Fascism sixty years later. As a student of history, I have described those shocking and disturbing years in my books and numerous columns. Yet, some important events should be reminded for Americans…

It was then, Stalin said: “show me the man and we will find the crime he has committed.” His KGB has interpreted his words both ways, often “show me the crime and we’ll find the man who had committed it…” In both cases the exculpatory evidence was never used, because they did not exist, only the KGB’s abusive use of power. As history is the Mother of all sciences, to grasp the modern American reality, you have to know the history, especially the history of Soviet Fascism, the system manufactured and fabricated by Stalin. As with any fascist ideology, it focused on exploiting identity, race, sex, and nationality. It is an ideology where the presumption of innocence doesn’t exist, but the presumption of guilt does! Soviet Fascism is an International Scam to fight the American political system left to us by our Founding Fathers. The rule of Law is a determining factor in American exceptionalism and the agenda of Soviet Fascism was and is trying to delegitimize our political system by infiltrating and subsequently destroying it from within.

The Stalinist system politicized all major departments of the government: Intelligence, Judiciary, Prosecutorial Power, Law Enforcement, and so on… crisis after crisis kept the Russian multi-national population in a constant state of agitation…It is for this reason I dedicated many pages to show the criminal activities of Soviet Fascism and the KGB in Russia and across the globe. The ideology was the banner and nucleus of the Kremlin’s war against the West. Everything from kindergarten to the government had been politicized. We, the former citizens of the Socialist countries, are familiar with the situation very well.

With science and new technology, Stalin’s ideas have been developed and widened by all his devoted disciples further and especially by the KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov during his time at the helm. As a former Soviet defense attorney my work within the legal community coincided with his term and my knowledge derives from my experiences during that time. By the 1960s the KGB had already infiltrated and influenced the world, except America. It was Yuri Andropov, who had a plan to do that and transform America. I named his plan—Soviet Operation Barbarossa.

Look at the world of the year 2019: Stalinist North Korea and China in Asia, Russian mercenaries in Syria, the terrorist Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, and Iran in the Middle East, socialist Venezuela in South America have now established an epicenter for the Axis of Evil, fighting for control and power under Kremlin’s umbrella and leadership today. Watch Pakistan and Turkey, they are on their way to join the Axis. All of them adhere to the ideology of Soviet Fascism, inculcated by Moscow over many decades. They all are the enemies of the United States, using the same tactics strategy, method, and tricks taught by the KGB—dispersing their ideas globally…

Andropov wanted to transform America the same way, and considering events in the 21^st century, his plan Soviet Operation Barbarossa is working. Andropov’s plan had two major avenues: to infiltrate the entire security apparatus and to change the way Americans think, by infiltrating and subordinating American social media, making it a dominant political force. Andropov needed the social media to disrupt capitalism, stop its social mobility, pit American against American and create chaos, to act the way it was implemented in the Eastern Europe by the Soviets—a coordinated effort of several institutions against the opposition. The road to enhance and widen Stalin’s design has never ended–if Stalin had the ideas to destroy America, Andropov worked out the strategy and tactics for the KGB of how to achieve that destruction.

His monumental plan was designed and aimed at destruction of American capitalism through infiltration of America’s security apparatus, transforming it from within into something resembling the KGB, subordinated to the top ideological leadership of the country. So, the Operation Barbarossa had two wings to fly to America, acting in concert, to destroy our country. The drugs design, described in my books was an additional wing existing before Andropov. Yet, all three corresponded to the initial design made by Stalin. If you want to know why our children are dying from opiates, read in my books about an important official Russian document dated the year 1955…

As a Globalist-Chairman of the KGB, Andropov’s plan has been more than those two wings, it was a multi-frontal design to cover completely Stalin’s ideas for taking over the world, recognizing that it might take several generations to accomplish. Andropov introduced Palestine as a legitimate Muslim nation, Whites as the Oppressors of the Blacks in the KGB pamphlet; the BLACK Coordinating Committee’s Message to the Black Movement, A Political Statement from the Black Underground, published in America in 1972. If you want to know who orchestrated a media-lynching of an American hero, Justice Clearance Thomas, read the KGB pamphlet and keep in mind Soviet Fascism’s agenda…

To perceive Andropov’s personality, character, and behavior, please listen another KGB General Pacepa talking about him: “In 1972 the Kremlin decided to turn the whole Islamic world against Israel and the U.S. As KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov told me, a billion adversaries could inflict far greater damage on America than could a few millions. We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter the United States. No one within the American/Zionist sphere of influence should any longer feel safe.” Russian Footprints by Ion Mihai Pacepa, National Review Online, August 24, 2008.

General Pacepa wrote in the same article: “According to Andropov… the Muslims had a taste for nationalism, jingoism, and victimology. Their illiterate, oppressed mobs could be whipped up to a fever pitch. Terrorism and violence against Israel and her master, American Zionism, would flow naturally from the Muslims’ religious fervor, Andropov sermonized.” This is a real portrait of the ideologue Yuri Andropov and his dislike of America. Those who read my books and columns know how all terrorist groups have been built and activated by the KGB during the last several decades when the Dems were soft on socialist ideology. During this time an army of KGB operatives infiltrated our government, democratic institutions, social media, and education, propagating the ‘virtues’ of Socialism… Watch out for the Trojan horse Bernie…

Soviet Fascism: The Real Russia Collusion in Washington D.C.

I am writing about an actual ideology – Soviet Fascism – in the reality of the 21^st century. It is not Liberal Fascism, Classical Liberalism was nearly annihilated by the Stalinism of the 20^thcentury. We are dealing with a radical army of leftists, comprising a Soviet Socialist Mafia. The radical Left is using all Stalinist methods and tricks: lies, fraud, deceptions, mob-tactics, and outlandish propaganda to remake America. Don’t ask me why the leftists always “go all in” when it comes to destabilizing America! The explanation is obvious as follows in an analysis of the current Democrat Party:

The Dems want open borders, sanctuary cities, abolish ICE, and confiscate your guns to make you defenseless against terrorists, criminal-gangs, spies, but mostly Big Brother Government. Don’t be surprised by the Dems’ policy which goes against the national security of the American Republic. Actually, this is Stalin/Andropov’s idea of Western civilization’s destruction—a real danger to America and free Americans. This country is being flooded with illegal aliens that are draining our resources originally designed to help us, the citizens of this country, not illegal aliens. The country is politically divided; Republicans are fighting to protect personal liberty, our own freedoms from being taken away by the Dems. As a result we have:

The Left vs. The Right
Socialists vs. Capitalists
Democrats vs. Republicans
Blacks vs. Whites
Women vs. Men
Gays vs. Straights
Anarchy, Social Justice Warriors vs. Law and Order
Chaos, Criminality, Those under the Influence of Drugs, Pills, and Alcohol vs. Sober

The radical Left is using all Stalinist methods and tricks: lies, fraud, deceptions, mob-tactics, and outlandish propaganda to divide and remake America. Do you remember the public attempt to lynch Judge Clarence Thomas? Now some media outlets — including CNN and The Washington Post — are targeting Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginni for making what they call “bizarre,” “slightly paranoid,” “far-right” posts on Facebook:

“How is it that when hundreds of thousands of votes are ‘found’ days after the election in multiple states… they overwhelmingly favor only Democrats?!” Ginni was absolutely right, I knew KGB’s handwriting and wrote the same in my column: Socialist Power Grab in America, November 24, 2018, in this e-magazine. “Russia is the mortal enemy of the American Republic! Therefore knowledge of Russia and its Intelligence Services is a Must for every American politician. Knowledge of Russia is also a Must for all Republicans to determine who colluded with Russia and how they did it. The chaos we were witnessing in the midterm election is the result of the absence of that knowledge.” Alas, many politicians don’t have it.

Dear Paul Gigot; we didn’t have a fair Midterm election, it was an election by Putin’s way not some ‘Blue Wave’. When Paul Ryan congratulated Nancy Pelosi a thought flashed through my mind: he was an ignorant man, who had betrayed the Republican Party, helped the Dems to win the House, and stolen two years of the Trump Presidency. The November 2018 Midterm election was stolen from Republicans by the “Criminal cabal,” a long-term collaboration of the DNC leadership with Putin’s KGB. Look at Byron York’s tweet: Who needs Russian election interference when Democrats will do the same thing right here at home? From NYT: ‘Secret Experiment in Alabama Senate Race Imitated Russian Tactics.’

Do you remember a painful story of the candidate for Senate in Alabama, Republican Moore? The Dems’ collaboration with the KGB defeated him by a common Soviet fraud. The report exposed it: We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted an idea about the Moore campaign which was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet, the report says. The project’s operators created a Facebook page on which they posed as conservative Alabamians… It involved a scheme to link the Moore campaign to thousands of Russian accounts that suddenly began following the Republican candidate on Twitter, a development that drew national media attention. It was another scheme by Dems with the KGB. Has all accountability ceased to exist in America, like it never existed in Russia?

The Dems have been fighting Donald Trump and the Americans who voted for him over the border wall since the day Trump took office. Invited to the WH, neither Pelosi nor Schumer wanted to know the facts of a humanitarian disaster at the border, reported by the Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen. They even didn’t want to hear her telling that caravan is full of criminals and gang members from South America. They rejected her facts. When Trump calls the caravan an invasion, the Dems lie about who he’s attacking, showing pictures of young children and women while ignoring mobs of criminals roaming around in the caravan. Let me refresh your memory about ideology of Soviet Fascism:

In 1980 Jimmy Carter and Fidel Castro came to an agreement to allow refugees from Cuba to come to America. The Mariel ship or boat was supposed to bring them. When the ship was closed to our shore, it was discovered that the refugees included criminals from Cuba’s jails and people from Cuba’s mental health facilities. It was a typical Stalinist design to destroy the American Republic by fraud and deceit. Please remember everything connected to Russia is radioactive like the ideology of Soviet Fascism itself.

And there is another reminder— Syria. The country has been a Muslim Soviet Republic since 1971, when Papa-Assad was recruited by the KGB. Read my columns. I don’t know the military strategy, but I know that any proximity of our troops to Russians is dangerous to our forces. I don’t want a repetition of the Beirut bombing that was executed by the Russian military against Reagan administration in 1983… On October 23, 1983, two truck bombs struck buildings in Beirut, Lebanon, housing American and French service members of the Multinational Force in Lebanon (MNF), a peacekeeping operation during the Lebanese Civil War. The attack killed 307 people: 241 U.S. and 58 French peacekeepers, 6 civilian, and the 2 attackers. The explosives used were later estimated to be equivalent to as much as 9,500 kg (21,000 pounds) of TNT.^[6][7]

Don’t be surprised by the Dems’ victory, they have been collaborating with the KGB since two American Manchurian Presidents opened the gate of America for the KGB political operatives. You will see now how those Socialists in the House will tear apart the unique system left to us by our Founding Fathers. They will continue to angrily divide our country with typical Stalinist hatred, with the help of George Soros-a KGB agent for over thirty years, not exposed by our incompetent Intel. Some military veterans are deceived and inculcated by a cosmetic version of Socialism, they voted for Dems-Socialists. Mark Zuckerberg admits he has ‘Tremendous Respect’ for George Soros. What a Shame! Don’t be surprised by Russia’s infiltration of Facebook and other media giants; it is Andropov’s design for America. Read it in my books and columns. Yet, infiltration is even more pervasive than what you know. You have to know the KGB’s methods and tricks…

Knowing the Russian methods, agenda, and its proclivity to mold Soviet style charlatan-leaders around the world to engineer cadres of fifth columnists, I believe there are two types of people committing betrayals: those who do not like the system established by our Founding Fathers and are trying to transform it– they are currently collaborating with the KGB to destroy America the Beautiful, and those people who haven’t a clue about the KGB infiltrations, hence becoming their unwitting accomplices—a huge present to President Putin, who is running the anti-Trump show…

The FBI, and other current Security and Intel people won’t be able to identify those culprits without reading my books and columns. We are dealing with an Axis of Evil under the Kremlin’s direction and command. Americans must be aware of the need to save the American Republic–we must expose the Dems’ collaboration with Putin’s KGB. Newly-elected Senator Rick Scott of Florida should know it now… I am not sure whether the Mueller probe is “an illegitimate scam” or not, but Mr. Mueller definitely doesn’t know the Russian KGB and he is missing or avoiding the real crime. Looking for the Russia/Trump collusion, he is spending millions, but he is investigating a Hoax—Trump had no collusion with Russia, yet contrary to the Mueller investigation collusion exists and you know it now..

For some reason, talking about Mueller Russia Probe, I try to be objective and very rarely commented on the investigation, though the actions of the FBI often resembled the KGB and surprised me. As a former attorney, I know that to start investigation, you have to have factual grounds about a crime, a guide line directed to analyze and prove it. Those factual grounds were not present in this Russia probe. In my opinion the investigation started after the publication of the Trump/Dossier document. I would insist, as I described it two years ago–the Trump/Dossier is a Russian Fallshivka, a fraud, the familiar to me as a common KGB production. When I watched it the first time, it took me only a couple of seconds to realize the KGB’s fraud. No experts of our Intel identified the fraud, however, and the FBI used it as a legitimate document, beginning the investigation and spying against President Trump. What a shame!

There are two things I learned directly from Andropov’s statements in his first year as the Chairman of the KGB; his phrase: “information is the most valuable commodity in politics.” I remembered it for life. That helped me to detect the KGB involvement over many years. When Obama’s people had revealed information about 200 or 300 Americans, they unmasked them for the KGB. I reacted instantly by my column, because the KGB’s involvement was clear to me—the KGB needed information. I called it The Russian Connection. The second thing I learned in Andropov’s first year was “the Controlled Opposition.” It is the infiltration of the agent to the opposite group or party to destroy it from within. I had already explained the meaning in my column some time ago, now, in the Russia Probe investigation I saw it clear in the case of Michael Cohen.

Michael Cohen is a liar, the court has confirmed it. Yet, something even more dangerous and intriguing exists within his case: his lawyer Lanny Davis. It is widely known that Lanny Davis has very close ties with Bill Clinton—Davis is a prominent member of the Clinton mafia. I don’t know whether Lanny Davis has ties to the KGB, but I know that Bill Clinton has. What we see in the Cohen case is an actual Dems’ operation of “Controlled Opposition” within the Russia Probe investigation. We know about twelve angry Dems members within the Muller Special Council, we now see even more alarming and frightening abuse of power—international conspiracy against the American Republic… Where is our Intelligence apparatus????

The Failed American Intelligence

The Dems’ hateful resistance to the GOP is not only in revenge for losing the 2016 election; the main and real reason of resistance and offence is to cover-up the sinister crime of TREASON that they have committed over several decades. The Clinton Foundation is a criminal enterprise–the eyes and ears of the KGB. This crime of the Dems’ leadership should be a major topic in the fight against Soviet Fascism in preparation for the 2020 election. President Trump poses an existential threat to Putin and Dems’ plans for America. That unites the anti-Trump forces, which accuse him of racism and of collaboration with Putin. You know now that it is an absurd! You have to know Soviet Fascism’s tricks to grasp them. You witness now the ideology of Soviet Fascism and how it assaults and confronts Americans on our soil with the help of the Dems!

I was warning you about a Socialist Revolution in America for many years. Watch Pelosi’s House and you will recognize the Socialist Mafia that has been planted there quite easily. They are talkative and arrogant, aggressive and vulgar, but not very smart. Some of them even don’t understand that they are promoting the ideology of Soviet Fascism in America. Like the Soviet apparatchiks, they are condescending and rude, they are not servants of the people, but authoritarians. With Speaker Pelosi you will see how Socialist mafia under the KGB rules has executed Socialism in America: Putin doesn’t want a border wall and the Dems will not appropriate any money for the wall. It is a familiar obstruction, a strictly political issue. Dems will create a crisis, use Stalinist PC and confuse the issue with semantic debates calling building a wall “immoral,” as it used to be under Stalin then and under Putin now in Russia. Socialism always uses lies, fraud, and deceit to remake America…

As a matter of fact, Putin’s KGB had been using our Southern border since 1955. Under KGB’s direction the drugging of America, human trafficking, activities of terrorists, and criminal gangs were going on since then. Now, with the help of the Dems in America, the Caravan was organized easily by the KGB… Putin definitely doesn’t want a border wall and border security in America. He likes government shutdown and chaos at the border. But there is an even more serious danger for America on the horizon. There are thirty-two Dems’ candidates for the 2020 election. Several of them are sponsored by the KGB, which is preparing the third American Manchurian President. We need people with authentic knowledge of the KGB, its tactics, techniques, methods, and tricks to expose a global spy-ring running the DNC to divide and remake America!

There are circumstances that can’t wait for the next Presidential election—“the criminal cabal” run by the KGB in America must be investigated immediately. The upcoming new Attorney General will have his hands full to do the job on both fronts domestically and internationally. The last thirty years, started with Bill Clinton, have allowed massive infiltration of foreign agents to our system, undermining it from within. The same patterns of policy were then continued by Obama. My columns and books analyses that, revealing and displaying the Clinton mafias and Obama/Putin’s conspiracy against the U.S., particularly the book Socialist Lies: From Stalin to the Clintons, Obamas, and Sanders. Xlibris, 2016.

Russian interference is not a matter of dispute, it has been going on for a hundred years. That is the reason I am focusing on the anti-American Socialist Mafia that has been coordinated by the KGB since 1969. I haven’t counted here all the Dems’ gifts to Putin, I rely on you, but before doing that, please consider my personal case. I have been writing about Russia, the KGB, and Soviet Fascism fighting our America the Beautiful on dozens of fronts for the last thirty ears. Unfortunately, the information about my books and columns was suppressed by a corrupt FBI to deprive you and the rest of the world the real knowledge of the enemy of humanity…

It was done by the FBI, submitting my name to the FISA court to have a probable cause to block information about my writings. I suspect some people who could execute it: Andrew McCabe, James Comey, or Robert Muller himself. It was done by the Democrat Party, the way Bill Clinton had demolished the Russian Studies in many Universities, the fields of Sovietology and Kremlinology ceased to exist, leaving America the Beautiful defenseless, blind, deaf, and mute…

Meanwhile, don’t underestimate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she is vocal and a very officiant propagandist of Soviet Socialism, I renamed Soviet Fascism. The Republican leadership has two immediate tasks:

To learn the ideology of Soviet fascism and disseminate the knowledge among the American public.
To present to the public the work of Tom G. Palmer: The Morality of Capitalism.

Those two sources will expose the Dems’ Socialist mafia for what it really is and help Republicans to win the 2020 election.

My fellow Americans! God gave us the last chance to save our county—President Donald J. Trump! Don’t allow Dems’ Socialism to take over the American Republic. Fight the ideology of Soviet Fascism and save the legacy of our Founding Fathers and the American Republic!

Knowledge is Power! Good Luck my beloved America the Beautiful!

To be continued www.simonapipko1.com or at www.drrichswier.com/author/spipko/.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is by Lysander Yuen on Unsplash.

How Medicare For All Could Become the Leading Cause of Death In America

January 7, 2019/in Culture War, Healthcare, Must Read, Policy, Politics, Taxes, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

People assume universal health insurance would equal better health outcomes. This isn’t true.

The top three leading causes of death in the US are heart disease (614,348), cancer (591,699), and seeking medical treatment. Yes, you read that correctly. According to a 2016 study by Johns Hopkins, medical errors contribute to the deaths of more than 250,000 Americans annually, which places it as the third leading cause of death in the US.

Other estimates have actually placed those numbers even higher at around 440,000 annual deaths because errors by health care providers are not included on death certificates.

Our current health care system is based on a fee-for-service (FFS) reimbursement model that rewards doctors for providing more treatments than necessary because payment is dependent on the quantity, not quality, of care.

Each time you visit the doctor’s office, consult a specialist, or stay in a hospital, you pay for every single test, treatment, or procedure, even though some of these services may be unnecessary.

These unnecessary tests and treatments have accounted for $200 billion annually and have been found to actually harm patients. That’s because the FFS system is volume-based, not necessarily value-based. Therefore, any increases in the volume of care equal increases in medical errors.

Hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) contribute to the deaths of nearly 100,000 people annually, leaving almost two million of the total afflicted population requiring treatments that cost over $25 billion a year. These costs could be passed along to taxpayers under Medicare for All, instead of private insurers and employers, as they are now.

Preventable Deaths and Proper Procedures

Take one HAI, for example: central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs), which occur when germs enter the bloodstream from a catheter (tube) that health care providers insert in the veins (neck, chest, or groin) of patients to supply them with medication or fluids or to collect blood.

According to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, CLABSIs may cause an “estimated 80,000 catheter-related bloodstream infections and, as a result, up to 28,000 deaths among patients in intensive care units (ICUs).” These deaths often occur after patients have spent a significant amount of time and money in the hospital.

The CDC admits the infections are preventable, yet ICUs still experience high numbers of them. A 2003 study conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins revealed that hospitals can eliminate CLABSIs entirely and very cheaply simply by requiring physicians and hospital staff to follow a five-step checklist when inserting central lines, which include obvious sterilization and precautionary measures.

The researchers tested the checklist at 103 ICUs in Michigan and published their findings a few years later. They found the rate of CLABSIs fell by two-thirds while saving over 1,500 lives and $200 million.

The simple explanation for most medical mistakes is human error; in CLABSIs’ case, neglecting simple precautionary measures. The problem is hospitals have no incentive to change the issue because they generate more money from treating infections than preventing them.

It’s evident that iatrogenic events caused by medical oversights or mistakes spur higher health care consumption. An article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that issues with quality in outpatient care and medical errors exclusively caused “116 million extra physician visits, 77 million extra prescriptions, 17 million emergency department visits, 8 million hospitalizations, 3 million long-term admissions, 199,000 additional deaths.”

Patients from HAIs spend, on average, an additional 6.5 days in the hospital and are five times more likely to be readmitted and twice as likely to die, while surgical infections add another $10 billion in annual costs.

If third-party payers (insurance companies, government, employers) weren’t obscuring the true cost of health care by covering patients’ medical bills, patients would be less likely to permit hospitals to give them highly profitable, easily preventable infections.

“Medicare for All” Would Only Exacerbate This Costly System

If Medicare for All covered all 325 million Americans—which include the nearly 30 million uninsured Americans and the 41 million more with inadequate health insurance—it would be the most disastrous third-party payer ever, once cost was not a primary factor.

Including fatal medical errors and the hundreds of thousands of deaths resulting from longer wait times—already exhibited by VA health care—this could presumably make Medicare for All the single biggest factor to the leading cause of death in the US.

Medicare for All would not only be benefiting those who didn’t contribute 40 or more years into the Medicare Trust, but it also wouldn’t substantially improve conditions because it would forcibly thrust all Americans into a system that costs billions of dollars in unnecessary treatments that don’t necessarily improve patient outcomes but rather impose tremendous harm.

The fundamental flaw people assume about health care is that being universally insured equals better health outcomes. Not true!

Canada has a single-payer system, and not only are they experiencing increased wait times every year (average of 21.2 weeks from primary care doctor to specialist for treatment) for health care but their mortality rates from diseases such as cancer (22 percent) are actually 3.5 percent higher than US cancer deaths (18.5 percent) relative to population size. Canadian deaths from heart disease (14.3 percent) fall only 5.4 percent lower than US deaths from heart disease (19.7 percent), so Canada is not significantly healthier because of its single-payer system.

US Medicare is wasteful, ineffective, and expensive. The Dartmouth Atlas documents variations in health care utilization in the US, and it can reveal spending differences on Medicare patients in separate geographical locations with demographically homogeneous populations.

Further, studies show the variances between patients in these separate regions were not due to differences in prices of medical services or levels of illness but rather the aggregate amount of medical services, which did not generally correlate with better patient outcomes.

More spending in the higher-cost regions results in “supply-sensitive” services by providers: more frequent doctor visits mean more use of diagnostic tests and procedures, which result in more costly hospital visits.

Medicare currently enrolls 57 million Americans and suffers $60 billion in annual fraud, waste, abuse, and improper payments (a single payer would reduce some improper payments) using up 10 percent of Medicare’s total annual budget. Adding another 268 million Americans under Medicare for All would certainly raise that annual $60 billion significantly higher.

Medicare reimbursement rates are set by physicians, which leads to inflated pricing of medical services, and most enrollees are covered by traditional FFS Medicare so there’s no guarantee Medicare for All would decrease the volume of services or the associated negative effects which, altogether, would equate to higher taxes, increased medical injuries, and more fraud under Medicare for All.

Medicare doesn’t cover all health care expenses for its enrollees, so expecting a Medicare for All plan to cover 325 million Americans for “free” looks a lot more like “Medicaid for All” than “Medicare for All,” which would be an even more dreadful scenario.

One Simple Solution to Improve Health Outcomes

The private insurance market largely follows Medicare’s reimbursement rates and the types of health care services Medicare reimburses. Changing what Medicare reimburses would change the entire incentive structure because private insurance companies could cover evidence-based treatments that improve health outcomes, and provider services would be aligned with what insurers cover so it would transform the entire health care industry.

Successful attempts have been made by identifying high-cost, high-tech medical interventions such as cardiac catheterization, coronary angioplasty, and stent implantation that are less effective than low-cost, low-tech interventions such as intensive cardiac rehabilitation (or lifestyle medicine)—which actually reverses heart disease.

Value-based strategies such as lifestyle medicine that address lifestyle factors (i.e. nutrition, physical inactivity, and chronic stress) improve health outcomes of patients, and these strategies should be implemented into the current system before committing $32 trillion in new costs for a Medicare for All plan that is more a political talking point than a medical solution to improve the overall health outcomes of Americans.

COLUMN BY

Nicholas DeSimone

Nicholas DeSimone is a policy researcher for Reason Foundation in Washington, D.C. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and has written for Reason Foundation, The Daily Caller, Townhall.com, New Jersey Libertarian Party, and Penn Political Review. Follow him on Twitter.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images by FEE is republished with permission.

The Green New Deal Is a Trojan Horse for Socialism

January 7, 2019/in Culture War, Energy, Environment, Must Read, News, Policy, Taxes/by The Daily Signal

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is ready to tax the rich to make her Green New Deal a reality.

“People are going to have to start paying their fair share in taxes,” the recently elected New York Democrat told TV show “60 Minutes” in an interview set to air Sunday.

Speaking of prior decades’ taxation rates in the country, Ocasio-Cortez added, “Once you get to the tippy tops, on your 10 millionth dollar, sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent.”

It shouldn’t be a surprise that the avowed “democratic socialist” went with the predictable “tax the rich” formula in order to pay for a massive government program to combat climate change.

But it would hardly be good news for most Americans if Ocasio-Cortez got her way.

In fact, such a scheme would mean that her constituents in New York City would pay a max income tax rate of 82.6 percent, as Americans for Tax Reform was quick to point out. Perhaps New Yorkers deserve what they voted for, but does the country?

Interest in the Green New Deal

While Democratic House leadership has so far balked at the Green New Deal, it enjoys strong support from over 40 members of Congress, per The Daily Caller.

A poll released in December also shows Americans might be more inclined than you’d think to support the plan. The poll, from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, showed that 8 out of 10 Americans hadn’t heard about it.

But when asked if they would support it—albeit with a very favorable description of the deal that didn’t discuss higher taxes, for instance—81 percent of registered voters said they would back it.

However, polls tend to change quickly when people learn about how much policies cost them, and the details of the Green New Deal demonstrate that it’s about more than just a higher tax on a tiny number of rich people.

A Radical Agenda

In fact, the tax hikes on the rich would be one of the least radical parts of the agenda.

It’s no exaggeration to say that if implemented, the Green New Deal would upend our way of life and destroy the liberty and prosperity that Americans, of all backgrounds, currently enjoy.

Among its goals are meeting “100 percent of national power” demand through renewable sources, retrofitting “every residential and industrial building for state-of-the-art energy efficiency, comfort, and safety,” and eliminating “greenhouse gas emissions from the manufacturing, agricultural, and other industries.”

Those changes are going to come with real costs. According to an editorial for Investor’s Business Daily, moving the economy away from fossil fuels to 100 percent renewable energy will come “at a cost of about $5.2 trillion over 20 years.”

So much for America’s newfound energy renaissance that has in large part come through innovative new oil drilling techniques.

Energy Status Quo Couldn’t Change This Fast

Even if we’re willing to shoulder the costs, it’s, well, impossible to achieve.

“Producing 100 percent of electricity from renewable sources is a practical impossibility in the near future,” stated a report issued by the Senate Republican Policy Committee in December. The report, which looked at the Green New Deal, continued:

Scientists doubt it would be achievable by 2050, let alone 2029, the deadline Democrats would set. Such a massive overhaul in power generation would require the closure and replacement of about 83 percent of U.S. electricity generation, including all coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants. … Today, renewable electricity—mainly wind, solar, and hydroelectric—provides only 17 percent of American electricity.

Make no mistake: While progressives have long been focused on green extremist policies, the Green New Deal proposals are significantly more radical than other environmentalist ideas like carbon taxes and subsidies for green industries. Foregoing the sticks-and-carrots approach to addressing climate change, this deal would instead rely on the ruthless bludgeoning of private industry and citizens through the levers of the state.

In fact, the plan outright dismisses attempts to “incentivize the private sector” toward greener policies as “simply inadequate to transition to a fully greenhouse gas-neutral economy as quickly as needed.”

Instead, the plan calls for direct government intervention to be its “prime driver.” (And in a mere 10 years, no less!)

A Trojan Horse of Liberal Goodies

But that’s not all. There’s more.

The Green New Deal doesn’t just include environmentalist proposals: It also includes a grab bag of other left-wing goodies to “mitigate deeply entrenched racial, regional, and gender-based inequalities in income and wealth (including, without limitation, ensuring that federal and other investment will be equitably distributed to historically impoverished, low-income, deindustrialized, or other marginalized communities in such a way that builds wealth and ownership at the community level.)”

Among the liberal wish list items included, the Green New Deal contains a proposal for universal health care and a basic minimum income program to make up for all the jobs lost in the process of transitioning to a fully green economy.

Of course, this will all come with an immense cost.

Citing an analysis by the Mercatus Center, Bob Moffit, a health care expert at The Heritage Foundation, wrote that the “Medicare for All” legislation proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., would cost $32.6 trillion over 10 years. A universal minimum income or basic income plan would also likely cost trillions of dollarsa year.

The entire federal budget in 2018 was $4 trillion. The Green New Deal would require the U.S. to massively expand this already-bloated budget that is burying us in debt.

How do Green New Deal proponents propose to pay for this extreme growth in government?

“[I]n the same ways that we paid for the 2008 bank bailout and extended quantitative easing programs, the same ways we paid for World War II and many other wars,” the plan says. “The Federal Reserve can extend credit to power these projects and investments, new public banks can be created (as in WWII) to extend credit and a combination of various taxation tools (including taxes on carbon and other emissions and progressive wealth taxes) can be employed.”

In other words, by massively hiking taxes, and then borrowing and ultimately printing money. Then it would use public banks run by unaccountable bureaucrats to carry the whole thing out.

That’s not very democratic, but it is socialistic—an American version of a Soviet-style five-year plan focused on command-and-control economic solutions that have proven to fail the world over.

As Justin Haskins, executive editor at the Heartland Institute, wrote for the Washington Examiner: “Make no mistake about it: This is one of the most dangerous and extreme proposals offered in modern U.S. history. It’s the sort of thing you’d see in the Soviet Union, not the United States.”

The Stakes Just Got Higher

If there is one positive thing the Green New Deal does, it’s that it brings to light the fact that much of the environmentalist agenda is just a thinly veiled vehicle for implementing far-left socialism.

Given the fact that nearly half of millennials say they’d rather live under socialism or communism than capitalism, according to a 2017 poll conducted by the Victims of Communism, we shouldn’t ignore the fact that these ideas didn’t die at the end of the Cold War.

They’ve been repackaged by young, hip millennials, like Ocasio-Cortez, who can deceive a generation, mostly detached from history, into believing that the failed flim-flam sauce of socialism can somehow work this time around.

Despite overwhelming evidence of failure and suffering, the American left is now more openly embracing socialism—a worrying and disturbing trend that needs to be countered.

It’s no longer just Sanders waging this crusade in Congress. It is a growing cohort of younger, even more extreme members who are attempting to revive ideas that should have been left in the ash heap of history. As Sanders himself recently noted in a CNN interview, his 2016 campaign helped make certain positions “mainstream” that were previously “considered extreme and fringe.”

Whatever one thinks about Ocasio-Cortez, it’s undeniable that she connects with a large and growing subset of voters. Her everywoman persona and ability to seem truly genuine is making her a potent voice on the left.

The Instagram cooking advice and dance routines may be charming and relatable—especially to millennials—but attention to these trivial matters masks the radicalism and bankruptcy of her views.

Socialism is not the cure for what ails America, and it hardly takes a history lesson to figure this out.

The agony of a collapsing Venezuela, praised as an economic model for the future just a decade ago, is a stark example of how badly this can end for people of all income groups.

The Venezuelan regime started out as “democratic” socialism, too. It’s ending in failure, tyranny, and collapse.

Let’s not let dancing videos and Twitter hot takes distract us from that fact.

COMMENTARY BY

Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is an editor and commentary writer for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast.Send an email to Jarrett.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column with images is republished with permission. Photo: SteveSands /NewYorkNewswire/MEGA/Newscom.

California: Thousands of Mourners See Police Officer Ronil Singh Laid to Rest

January 6, 2019/in Courts & Law, Immigration, Must Read, National Security, Policy, Politics/by Ann Corcoran

This is one of the better stories I’ve read on the funeral for a man, an immigrant who gave everything for America, who should be alive today. Instead some Mexican low-life who allegedly entered the US illegally is still breathing.

singh funeral 2 — Singh’s dog Sam says good-bye

From the Modesto Bee (emphasis is mine):

CrossPoint Community Church overflowed with mourners. The main Worship Hall was standing-room only, reserved for uniformed law enforcement and family members.
Three additional viewing areas inside the church for the general public also were packed and in Newman a livestream viewing was held at Orestimba High School.
[….]
The funeral for the 33-year-old Singh, who was shot and killed while performing a traffic stop in the early hours of Dec. 26, drew some 4,000 people and officers from more than 100 agencies up-and-down the state, as far away as New York and Massachusetts and even two members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
[….]
The family immigrated to the United States in 2003, and he worked his way up working various positions at local law enforcement agencies including the Modesto Police and Turlock Police departments and the Merced County Sheriff’s Department. Then in 2011 he achieved his dream of becoming a police officer when he was hired by the Newman Police Department. He was promoted to become a K9 officer in 2013 and the rank of corporal in 2016.
[….]
Aside from the speakers’ voices, the quiet hall was interrupted only by laughter at Singh’s jokester antics and the occasional burbling sounds of Singh’s five-month-old son, Arnav, who sat in the front row held by with his widow, Anamika Chand-Singh.
[….]
About 2,000 law enforcement representatives took part. Modesto Police Department spokesman Billy Boyle said he had never seen as large a combined police and public turnout as at the funeral service, and that it spoke to the close relationship local law enforcement has with the community.

And, it spoke to the public’s universal outrage at the monstrous unfairness of it —that an illegal alien creep who shouldn’t have been in the country in the first place allegedly took Singh’s life.

Read more at the Modesto Bee.

Donate to the family through the police department

There is no official GoFundMe account for the family. The Stanislaus County PD makes it clear on their facebook page that there is only one legitimate fundraising effort on-going for the family.

Please be aware there are NO other approved or authorized memorial fund or online fundraising accounts that will be established.

Click here to see how you can donate.

Michelle Malkin wants to know why the Democrats are silent, especially California Democrat women! And, it seems to me that the Rs should be talking about Corporal Ronil Singh every day as the wall debate continues. Indeed his death could save thousands in the future if the US finally controls the southern border!

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images by Frauds, Crooks and Criminals is republished with permission. The featured image by darksouls1 on Pixabay.

GENDER-X: New York City’s Uncontested Absurdity

January 4, 2019/in Courts & Law, Culture War, Healthcare, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Science/by Dr. Rich Swier

NBC News writer Brooke Sopelsa in a September 12, 2018 article wrote:

People born in New York City who don’t identify as male or female will soon be able to select a nonbinary gender category on their birth certificates.

The New York City Council and Board of Health voted on Wednesday to include a third gender category, “X,” on birth certificates starting Jan. 1, 2019. Furthermore, the legislation will discontinue the need for a doctor’s note or health care provider’s affidavit to change one’s gender marker.

Ayn Rand wrote:

“The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other – until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country’s official ideology.”

In New York City the uncontested slogan of yesterday became public policy January 1, 2019. A date that will live in absurdity.

Gender is binary!

One is born either a male or female. This distinction is based upon science. One’s DNA determines one’s gender. The gender of a baby can be determined using DNA tests as early as 9 weeks of gestation.

The Family Research Council has produced a new publication with a concise explanation of Why “Sexual Orientation” and “Gender Identity” Should Never Be Specially Protected Categories Under the Law. Written by Senior Fellow Peter Sprigg, the new Issue Brief explains that SOGI laws, like that enacted in New York City,

are not justified in principle;
are invasive and cause tangible harms; and
are coercive and cannot be reconciled with religious liberty.

Gender Dysphoria

The American Psychiatric Association defines Gender Dysphoria.

Gender dysphoria involves a conflict between a person’s physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify. People with gender dysphoria may be very uncomfortable with the gender they were assigned, sometimes described as being uncomfortable with their body (particularly developments during puberty) or being uncomfortable with the expected roles of their assigned gender.

People with gender dysphoria may often experience significant distress and/or problems functioning associated with this conflict between the way they feel and think of themselves (referred to as experienced or expressed gender) and their physical or assigned gender.

Conclusion

QUESTION: How can a newly born baby in New York City select it’s gender category? ANSWER: He or she can’t.

So, who would make the determination to classify a child as Gender-X? The child’s parents? The child’s pediatrician? The child’s grandparents? What impact can classifying a child Gender-X have in the future? Will it impact the child’s education, what sports team the child plays on? Will it impact the child negatively or positively?

Is the purpose of New York City’s Gender X law to protect the LGBT community? If so, they already are under the laws of the city and state of New York, as well as the U.S. Constitution. Will this law raise a generation of children who will suffer from gender dysphoria? Perhaps, only time will tell.

This law can lead to gender confusion, significant distress and/or problems. Boy and girl, man and woman are being replace with what, exactly? Answer: Gender-X!

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is by Nicholas Gercken on Unsplash.

Healthcare Professionals: The world’s greatest mass murderers

January 3, 2019/in Healthcare, Must Read, Policy, Politics, Religion, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Dr. Rich Swier

The media uses barrels of ink and tons of airtime to talk about deaths caused by guns, or illegal alien deaths on the U.S. Southern border but ignore the world’s greatest mass murderers – healthcare professionals.

There is growing evidence that it is doctors who have the dubious honor of being killing machines.

Doctors have outdone noted mass murderers and in most cases legally.

Erin McCann in a HealthcareITNews article titled “Deaths by medical mistakes hit records” wrote:

It’s a chilling reality – one often overlooked in annual mortality statistics: Preventable medical errors persist as the No. 3 killer in the U.S. – third only to heart disease and cancer – claiming the lives of some 400,000 people each year. At a Senate hearing Thursday, patient safety officials put their best ideas forward on how to solve the crisis, with IT often at the center of discussions.

Johns Hopkins University published a May 3, 2016 report titled “Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S.” which concluded:

10 percent of all U.S. deaths are now due to medical error. – Click to Tweet
Third highest cause of death in the U.S. is medical error.- Click to Tweet
Medical errors are an under-recognized cause of death. – Click to Tweet

Opioid addiction is another leading cause of deaths on a massive scale. Many of people get their opioids from medical professionals. The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports:

70,237 drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States in 2017. The age-adjusted rate of overdose deaths increased significantly by 9.6% from 2016 (19.8 per 100,000) to 2017 (21.7 per 100,000). Opioids—mainly synthetic opioids (other than methadone)—are currently the main driver of drug overdose deaths. Opioids were involved in 47,600 overdose deaths in 2017 (67.8% of all drug overdose deaths).

In 2017, the states with the highest rates of death due to drug overdose were West Virginia (57.8 per 100,000), Ohio (46.3 per 100,000), Pennsylvania (44.3 per 100,000), the District of Columbia (44.0 per 100,000), and Kentucky (37.2 per 100,000).¹

States with statistically significant increases in drug overdose death rates from 2016 to 2017 included Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.²

Finally, it is reported that abortion was the leading cause of death worldwide in 2018, killing 42 million people. Breitbart contrasted the abortion numbers to other causes of death, including cancer, HIV/AIDS, traffic accidents and suicide, and found that abortions far outnumbered every other cause.

Abortions are, by enlarge, conducted by a healthcare professional.

The Hippocratic Oath reads:

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.
I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.
—Written in 1964 by Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University, and used in many medical schools today.

Sadly, too many healthcare professionals ignore their solemn oath to their patients.

RELATED STUDY: Death by Medicine by Dr. Gary Null

RELATED ARTICLE: Abortion As Self-Harm: The Human Element

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is by Luis Melendez on Unsplash.

Here Are Six Republican Women To Watch In 2019

January 2, 2019/in Elections, Must Read, Policy, Politics/by The Daily Caller

A number of Republican female candidates enjoyed success in 2018.
Three women became the first elected female governors in their states during the 2018 midterm elections.
Members of Congress Liz Cheney and Elise Stefanik are continuing to raise their profiles in the GOP.

2018 was a year with plenty of firsts for Republican women — Marsha Blackburn became the first woman to represent Tennessee in the Senate, Kristi Noem was elected South Dakota’s first female governor and the list goes on.

Republican women will be carrying that momentum into 2019. Here are six GOP women to watch in the coming year, from the governor’s mansion to Capitol Hill.

Liz Cheney

Republican Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney will hold the same seat her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, held nearly 40 years ago. She achieved the party’s third-ranking leadership position after just one term in Congress, while her father achieved it after four. (RELATED: Great Americans We Lost In 2018)

She will succeed Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers as Republican conference chair in 2019. The position puts her in the running for even more prestigious GOP spots in the coming years.

Cheney has served on the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Natural Resources since 2017.

Rep. Liz Cheney, who was elected House Republican conference chair, talks to reporters following House GOP leadership elections with (L-R) Rep. Jason Smith, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, in the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill November 14, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Elise Stefanik

New York Rep. Elise Stefanik won re-election to her third term in Congress during the 2018 midterm elections. She held the record for youngest woman elected to Congress until Democratic New York Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 29, broke Stefanik’s record in 2018.

Stefanik has long been vocal about her belief that Congress needs more women.

“I think women speak to hard working families,” she told The Daily Caller in a 2013 interview. “The people that balance budgets for their families are often women. Women are small business owners. Women increasingly are the higher dollar earners in families. I think it is important to represent their perspective.”

She also clashed with other Republicans in recent days. Stefanik had been the first woman to head recruitment for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) but stepped down in December, reported The New York Times. She said she wants to focus on her leadership political action committee, E-PAC, to help more Republican women succeed in primaries.

The New York Times wrote:

Ms. Stefanik said she recruited more than 100 women to run this year, and only one won a seat in Congress; she said she grew frustrated by the party’s reluctance to back the new candidates she had helped recruit.

Some of her congressional colleagues did not like her decision. Incoming NRCC chairman Tom Emmer, a Minnesota Republican, called it a “mistake.”

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik speaks onstage during Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit - Day 1 at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on October 12, 2015 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Fortune/Time Inc) — Congresswoman Elise Stefanik speaks onstage during Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit – Day 1 at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on October 12, 2015 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Fortune/Time Inc)

“If that’s what Elise wants to do, then that’s her call, her right,” Emmer told Roll Call. “But I think that’s a mistake. … It shouldn’t be just based on looking for a specific set of ingredients — gender, race, religion — and then we’re going to play in the primary.”

Stefanik has served on the Committee on Armed Services and Committee on Education and the Workforce since 2015, according to Ballotpedia. She’s served on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence since 2017.

Kristi Noem

Outgoing South Dakota Rep. Kristi Noem outraised her Democratic rival for the governor seat in 2018 and won a race classified as a “remarkable” toss-up by Cook Political Report. Noem became the first female governor of South Dakota without much media fanfare.

She ran on a platform of keeping taxes and regulation down. Noem also banked on her down-to-earth image as a rancher who helped run the family operation when her father died unexpectedly.

Florida Governor-elect Ron DeSantis (R) sits next to U.S. President Donald Trump and Governor of South Dakota-elect Kristi Noem during a meeting with Governors elects in the Cabinet Room at the White House on December 13, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Noem discussed her experience as a congresswoman in a legislative body that’s roughly 80 percent male.

“I was expected to help with the chores, even though they were tough and they were often dirty ones,” Noem said during a 2011 floor speech, according to The Hill. “I grew up thinking that I could do anything that the boys could do, and that way of thinking has certainly stayed with me.”

Kay Ivey and Kim Reynolds

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds are is the first woman to be elected governor in her state, and Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey is the second in hers — the key word being “elected.” Ivey and Reynolds were both lieutenant governors who stepped in when their respective governors could no longer serve in office. Now they have cemented their positions in elections.

The two former second-in-commands became state executives for very different reasons. Ivey replaced former Republican Gov. Robert J. Bentley, who resigned in the wake of a sex scandal, in 2017. Reynolds replaced former Republican Gov. Terry Branstad when he was appointed U.S. Ambassador to China that same year.

Alabama has not had a female governor since Lurleen Wallace died in office in 1968. Ivey, a former teacher, wants to raise pay for state education employees as well as focus on “early childhood education, computer science in middle and high school and workforce preparedness,” reported CBS 42.

President-elect Donald Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, left, poses for photos with Alabama Lieutenant Governor Kay Ivey during a thank you rally in Ladd-Peebles Stadium on December 17, 2016 in Mobile, Alabama. (Photo by Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images) — President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, left, poses for photos with Alabama Lieutenant Governor Kay Ivey during a thank you rally in Ladd-Peebles Stadium on December 17, 2016 in Mobile, Alabama. (Photo by Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images)

U.S. President Donald Trump listens as Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds speaks during a campaign rally at the Mid-America Center on October 9, 2018 in Council Bluffs. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Reynolds straddled the conservative and moderate factions of her party during her 2018 run for governor. She broke with the Iowa GOP’s stance against same-sex marriage during summer 2018 when she said the issue was settled because state and federal courts had ruled in favor of it, reported the Des Moines Register.

However, Reynolds also faced criticism when she kept Republican Iowa Rep. Steve King as a co-chair of her 2018 campaign, despite remarks King had made that many deemed racist, reported the Des Moines Register.

Mia Love

Unlike the other politicians on this list, outgoing Republican Utah Rep. Mia Love won’t be sworn into any office in 2019. She lost her re-election bid to Democrat Ben McAdams during the 2018 midterm election.

Love has not said what her next step will be, but there have been reports she will not try to retake her seat on Capitol Hill and might instead try her hand as a political commentator, reported Utah Policy in the wake of her concession.

Love went after President Donald Trump and the Republican Party for shunning “real relationships” and opting for “convenient transactions” during her concession speech in Salt Lake City on Nov. 25.

Rep. Mia Love (R-UT) speaks at an event honoring the bicentennial of Frederick Douglass' birth on Capitol Hill on February 14, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images) — Rep. Mia Love (R-UT) speaks at an event honoring the bicentennial of Frederick Douglass’ birth on Capitol Hill on February 14, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

Trump had slammed Love for distancing herself from him and his policies during her campaign when it appeared likely she would lose her re-election bid after Election Day.

“The president’s behavior towards me made me wonder,” Love said during her concession speech, according to CNN. “What did he have to gain by saying such a thing about a fellow Republican? … However, this gave me a clear vision of his world as it is. No real relationships, just convenient transactions. That is an insufficient way to implement sincere service and policy.”

Democrat Ben McAdams defeated Love by 0.2 percent — 50.1 percent to 49.9 percent — according to The Times.

“Mia Love gave me no love and she lost,” Trump said Nov. 7. “Too bad. Sorry about that, Mia.”

COLUMN BY

Evie Fordham

Politics and Health Care Reporter. Follow Evie on Twitter @eviefordham. Send tips to evie@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Virginia: Alexandria “Man” Arrested on Christmas Eve for Filming a Minor in Mall Dressing Room

January 2, 2019/in Courts & Law, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Ann Corcoran

Ladies beware!

The “man,” Mumtaz Rauf, 39, was arrested at Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax, Virginia after a sharp-eyed teen saw what looked like a camera peeping down at her while she was trying on clothes in a mall shop.

The incident is alleged to have happened at Forever 21 in the late afternoon of Christmas eve.

The girl reported her fear about someone possibly filming her to a store clerk who then spotted a man hurrying from the store.

Rauf was arrested in a dressing room in another store a short time later.

NBC Washington reported (see the video too!) that when police arrived Rauf had a pinhole camera on him, some black tape and a Bluetooth transmitter.

Rauf “was charged with unlawful filming of a minor, which is a felony because of the victim’s age,” continued the NBC report.

Mumtaz rauf gear — Rauf’s tools of the trade from INSIDENOVA story

Rauf was previously a bartender in Alexandria and had been profiled almost a year ago to the day in the Old Town Crier.

In the interview Rauf was asked, “How did you get started in the bartending business?”

His reply: “High hopes of money, women and fame.” (Hmmm!)

Fairfax County Police believe that this was not a one-time event, so if you think you may have been filmed in a dressing room at Fair Oaks Mall, call police at 703-591-0966.

The story was reported by other local news outlets here and here.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images originally appeared on Frauds, Crooks and Criminals. It is republished with permission. The featured photo is by Alex Bocharov on Unsplash.

Antisemitic Doctor Who Said She’d Give Jews The Wrong Medication No Longer Employed At Ohio Hospital

January 1, 2019/in Healthcare, Must Read, Policy, Politics, Religion, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by The Daily Caller

An Ohio hospital confirmed Monday that it no longer employs a doctor who made anti-Semitic comments and promised to give Jewish patients the wrong medication.

The Cleveland Clinic said in its statement that it became aware of the social media posts by Lara Kollab, 27, who worked at the clinic from July to September 2018, and that her beliefs conflicted with those of the clinic. The hospital did not state, however, whether Kollab had been let go as a direct result of her tweets.

Kollab had a history of making violently anti-Semitic comments on social media. An online compilation of Kollab’s tweets showed she often referred to Jews as “dogs,” invoked Allah to kill them, and denigrated both Israel and the U.S.

“Cleveland Clinic was recently made aware of comments posted to social media by a former employee,” the hospital’s Monday statement reads.

“This individual was employed as a supervised resident at our hospital from July to September 2018. She is no longer working at Cleveland Clinic. In no way do these beliefs reflect those of our organization. We fully embrace diversity, inclusion and a culture of safety and respect across our entire health system,” the statement adds.

Kollab since deleted her tweets, but Canary Mission, a website devoted to exposing those who openly support antisemitism or terrorist organizations, compiled, translated and took screenshots of some of them. They show calls for violence against the Jews, claims that the Holocaust is exaggerated, and open support for terrorists.

She also reportedly tweeted:

“@ShabanSalya Allah yo5od el yahood 3ashan enbattel nettar nroo7 3nd hel wes5een -___- [May Allah take back (end the lives) of the Jews so we stop being forced to go to those unclean ones].”
“shoof, ah 7efa 7elwe bes 7efa kolha yahood klab w looks like America, ya3ni wasn’t that special to me [look, Haifa is sweet (nice), but it’s full of Jewish dogs, and it looks like America, meaning, it wasn’t that special to me].”
“I don’t mean to sound insensitive but I have a REALLY hard time feeling bad about Holocaust seeing as the ppl who were in it now kill my ppl.”

She also reportedly tweeted in praise of terrorists like Khader Adnan, a senior member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

“#KhaderAdnan is dying so we can live. #Palestine #KhaderExists,” Kollab wrote.

Kollab also expressed support for the the Palestine Right to Return Coalition and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israeli businesses.

Strangely, Kollab graduated from Touro College Of Osteopathic Medicine with a D.O. in 2018, which is an expressly Jewish Orthodox institution.

While Kollab is no longer employed at the hospital, her medical license is still active until 2021, according to Cleveland 19 News.

COLUMN BY

Joshua Gill

Religion Reporter. Follow Joshua on Twitter.Send tips to joshua@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.