Donald Trump Vs Establishment – Election 2016
Category: Hypocrisy
Here’s a variation of our previous creation . Again , apologies to the late Ms Bourke-White . If you are unfamiliar with the name read here . Margaret Bourke-White was a “Life” magazine war correspondent as well as one of the most accomplished photographers of all time .
Bread Lines For All*
*Apologies to Margaret Bourke-White
” With the prisoner exchange and the normalizing of relations with Cuba arises the question of the dozens of American fugitives enjoying asylum there—including a cop-killer on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists List with a $1 million reward offered for her capture.
Assata Shakur, also known as Joanne Chesimard, escaped from prison in 1979 after being convicted of murdering state trooper Werner Foerster. She had been in a car with two fellow members of the Black Liberation Army when Foerster and another trooper pulled them over on the New Jersey Turnpike.
Shakur was on the run for five years after her prison break before managing to reach Cuba, where she was granted asylum in 1984.
In 1997, the New Jersey State Police wrote to Pope John Paul II asking him to raise the question of Shakur with Fidel Castro on an upcoming visit to Cuba.
Whether the pope did or not, Shakur continued to live undisturbed in Cuba despite a 1998 resolution by the U.S. Congress asking that she be returned. She was joined by her daughter, who was conceived while Shakur was in a New Jersey prison and initially raised by Shakur’s own mother in New York.
Cuba also granted asylum to three black militants who hijacked an airplane from Albuquerque while being sought for the 1972 murder of New Mexico State Trooper Robert Rosenbloom during a traffic stop.
One of the three, Ralph Goodwin, is said to have drowned while swimming at a beach outside Havana. Michael Finney died of cancer. Charlie Hill continues to live in Cuba. Hill told a Washington Post reporter in 1999 that he had no regrets about killing Rosenbloom, who had a wife and two young daughters.
“ I have never felt guilty about that cop,” Hill was quoted saying. “I never think about that dude.”
For her part, Shakur denied actually firing the bullets that killed trooper Foerster, who was murdered with his own gun. The FBI continued to consider her so dangerous that it offered the $1 million reward in 2005 and put her on the Most Wanted Terrorists List last year.
Among the roughly 80 other American fugitives in Cuba is Ishmael Ali LaBeef, who hijacked an airplane after he and four buddies murdered eight innocents during a robbery at a Virgin Islands golf course in 1972.
There is also Victor Gerena, who is wanted in connection with a $7 million armored car robbery in Connecticut in 1983.
And then there is William Morales of the Puerto Rican independence group the FALN. He lost most of both hands while assembling a device in an FALN bomb factory in 1979, but managed to escape from a hospital ward where he was being fitted for prosthetic hands after being convicted of weapons charges and sentenced to 99 years.
Morales made his way to Mexico, where an effort to capture him led to a shootout, which ended with a local cop being killed. He served five years in a Mexican prison but then was allowed to board a plane for Havana despite American efforts to extradite him.”
Read more of about these longtime fugitives from justice that Obama has chosen to ignore while making deals with tyrants , just as he ignored our citizens being held by Iran as he enriched their treasury and war-making ability .
As Obama Toots His Own Horn, Judge Jeanine Rips Him a New One
Published on Jun 6, 2015
” Declaring his foreign policy to be a raging success based on some unnamed “poll,” Barack Obama has invited derision and laughter. Here, Judge Jeanine samples his “accomplishments” and asks how he could possibly make such a claim.”
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Happy Birthday FA von Hayek
Wiki Bio
” Friedrich August Hayek ; 8 May 1899 – 23 March 1992), born in Austria-Hungary as Friedrich August von Hayek and frequently known as F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian, later turned British , economist and philosopher best known for his defense of classical liberalism. In 1974, Hayek shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (with Gunnar Myrdal) for his “pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and … penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena”.
Hayek is an economist and major political thinker of the twentieth century. Hayek’s account of how changing prices communicate information which enables individuals to coordinate their plans is widely regarded as an important achievement in economics. He also contributed to the fields of systems thinking , jurisprudence, neuroscience, and the history of ideas.
Hayek served in World War I and said that his experience in the war and his desire to help avoid the mistakes that had led to the war led him to his career. Hayek lived in Austria, Great Britain, the United States and Germany, and became a British subject in 1938. He spent most of his academic life at the London School of Economics (LSE), the University of Chicago, and the University of Freiburg.
In 1984, he was appointed as a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour by Queen Elizabeth II on the advice of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for his “services to the study of economics”. He was the first recipient of the Hanns Martin Schleyer Prize in 1984. He also received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991 from president George H. W. Bush. In 2011, his article The Use of Knowledge in Society was selected as one of the top 20 articles published in the American Economic Review during its first 100 years.“
Concise Encyclopedia Of Economics:
” If any twentieth-century economist was a Renaissance man, it was Friedrich Hayek. He made fundamental contributions in political theory, psychology, and economics. In a field in which the relevance of ideas often is eclipsed by expansions on an initial theory, many of his contributions are so remarkable that people still read them more than fifty years after they were written. Many graduate economics students today, for example, study his articles from the 1930s and 1940s on economics and knowledge, deriving insights that some of their elders in the economics profession still do not totally understand. It would not be surprising if a substantial minority of economists still read and learn from his articles in the year 2050. In his book Commanding Heights, Daniel Yergin called Hayek the “preeminent” economist of the last half of the twentieth century.”
Further Reading
The Friedrich Hayek Quote Page
Biography of F. A. Hayek (1899-1992)Mises.org
Friedrich Hayek (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
F. A. Hayek | Libertarianism.org
BBC News – Masters of Money: Friedrich Hayek
F.A. Hayek – Encyclopedia Britannica
BBC News – Keynes v Hayek: Two economic giants go head to head
Friedrich von Hayek Nobel Prize Winner
Videos
Bibliography
1920–1929
- Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle (1929)
1930–1939
- Prices and Production (1931)
- Monetary Nationalism and International Stability (1937)
- Profits, Interest and Investment (1939)
1940–1949
- The Pure Theory of Capital (1941) ISBN 978-0-226-32099-1
- The Road to Serfdom (1944) ISBN 978-0-226-32055-7
- Individualism and Economic Order (1948) ISBN 978-0-226-32093-9
1950–1959
- “The Transmission of the Ideals of Economic Freedom,” (1951) Full Article
- John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor: Their Friendship and Subsequent Marriage (1951) ISBN 978-0-678-06504-4
- The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason (1952) ISBN 978-0-913966-67-9
- The Sensory Order: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Theoretical Psychology (1952) ISBN 978-0-226-32094-6
- The Political Ideal of the Rule of Law (1955)
1960–1969
- The Constitution of Liberty (1960) ISBN 978-0-226-32084-7
- The Constitution of Liberty: The Definitive Edition (2011). Ronald Hamowy, ed., v. 17, The Collected Works of F A. Hayek. Description and preview.
- Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (1967) ISBN 978-0-226-32085-4
- Freiburger Studien: Gesammelte Aufsatze (1969) ISBN 978-3-16-146312-9
1970–1979
- A Tiger by the Tail (1972, revised edition 1978)
- Law, Legislation and Liberty: A New Statement of the Liberal Principles of Justice and Political EconomyDenationalisation of Money: An Analysis of the Theory and Practice of Concurrent Currencies (1976)
- Volume I. Rules and Order (1973) ISBN 978-0-226-32086-1
- Volume II. The Mirage of Social Justice (1976) ISBN 978-0-226-32083-0
- Volume III. The Political Order of a Free People (1979) ISBN 978-0-226-32090-8
- New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas (1978) ISBN 978-0-226-32069-4
1980–1989
- 1980s Unemployment and the Unions (1980) ISBN 978-0-255-36173-6
- The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988) ISBN 978-0-226-32069-4
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Who Pays When The DEA Destroys Your Vehicle And Kills Your Employee During A Botched Sting? Hint: Not The DEA
Photo courtesy of Houston Chronicle
” The DEA likes to borrow stuff. It’s just not very good about returning borrowed items in the same shape it got them.
Like a woman’s Facebook account. Or a businessman’s semi truck. And his employee’s life.
Craig Patty runs a tiny trucking company in Texas. He has only two trucks in his “fleet.” One of them was being taken to Houston for repairs by his employee, Lawrence Chapa. Or so he thought.
In reality, Chapa was working with the DEA, which had paid him to load up Patty’s truck with marijuana and haul it back to Houston so the DEA could bust the prospective buyers. That’s when everything went completely, horribly wrong.
[A]s the truck entered northwest Houston under the watch of approximately two dozen law enforcement officers, several heavily armed Los Zetas cartel-connected soldiers in sport utility vehicles converged on Patty’s truck.
In the ensuing firefight, Patty’s truck was wrecked and riddled with bullet holes, and a plainclothes Houston police officer shot and wounded a plainclothes Harris County Sheriff’s Office deputy who was mistaken for a gangster.
The truck’s driver was killed and four attackers were arrested and charged with capital murder.
Until Patty received a call notifying him that his employee had been killed, he was completely unaware of the DEA’s operations involving both his truck and his driver. Unbelievably, things got even worse for Patty after this discovery.
Patty’s truck was impounded by the DEA. After it was released to him, it was out of service for several months as it underwent more than $100,000-worth of repairs. The DEA offered him no financial assistance for the truck it helped fill with bullet holes nor did it offer to make up for the revenue Patty lost while his truck was out of commission. His insurance company likewise turned down his claim, citing his truck’s use in a law enforcement operation.
Nor did the DEA offer to do something to repair his newly-acquired reputation as a drug runner and/or DEA informant — something that makes Patty’s life a little bit more dangerous.
Nor will it have to. A federal judge has dismissed Patty’s lawsuit against the DEA seeking up to $6.4 million in damages. (h/t to attorney Mark Bennett, who previously advised Patty but did not represent him in this lawsuit.)”
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13 Current And Former North Carolina And Virginia Law Enforcement Officers Indicted
” Federal officials said at a news conference Wednesday that 13 current and former law enforcement officers are accused of protecting cocaine and heroin shipments along the East Coast.
All were arrested Wednesday morning after a two-year undercover investigation called “Operation Rockfish”.
” Corruption in local government – especially involving law enforcement – threatens the social compact that binds our communities together,” said Assistant Attorney General Caldwell in a statement.
In addition to the 13, two more civilians are also charged with conspiring to distribute controlled substances and conspiring to use and carry firearms during and in relation to drug trafficking offenses.
Some are also charged with attempted extortion, attempted possession with intent to distribute controlled substances, money laundering, federal programs bribery and use and carry of firearms during and in relation to crimes of violence and drug trafficking offenses.
Here’s the full list:
-Lann Tjuan Clanton, 36, a correctional officer with the Virginia Department of Corrections;
-Ikeisha Jacobs, 32, a deputy with the Northampton County Sheriff’s Office;
-Jason Boone, 29, a deputy with the Northampton County Sheriff’s Office;
-Wardie Vincent Jr., 35, formerly of the Northampton County Sheriff’s Office;
-Adrienne Moody, 39, a correctional officer with the North Carolina Department of Public Safety;
-Cory Jackson, 43, formerly of the Northampton County Sheriff’s Office;
-Jimmy Pair Jr., 48, a deputy with the Northampton County Sheriff’s Office;
-Curtis Boone, 31, a deputy with the Northampton County Sheriff’s Office;
-Antonio Tillmon, 31, a police officer with the Windsor City Police Department;
-Alaina Sue Kam Ling, 27, a correctional officer with the North Carolina Department of Public Safety;
-Kavon Phillips, 25, a correctional officer with the North Carolina Department of Public Safety;
-Crystal Pierce, 31, of Raleigh, North Carolina;
-Alphonso Ponton, 42, a correctional officer with the Virginia Department of Corrections;
-Thomas Jefferson Allen II, 37, a deputy with the Northampton County Sheriff’s Office; and
-Tosha Dailey, 31, a 911 dispatch operator for Northampton County.”
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Cartoonists Are Controversial And Murderers Are Moderate
” Controversial, intolerant and provocative. Mainstream media outlets broke out these three words to describe the “Draw the Prophet” contest, the American Freedom Defense Initiative and Pamela Geller.
While the police were still checking cars for explosives and attendees waited to be released, CNN called AFDI, rather than the terrorists who attacked a cartoon contest, “intolerant.” Time dubbed the group “controversial.” The Washington Post called the contest, “provocative.”
Many media outlets relied on the expert opinion of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a multi-million dollar mail order scam disguised as a civil rights group, which had listed AFDI as a hate group. Also listed as hate groups were a number of single author blogs, including mine, a brand of gun oil and a bar sign.
The bar sign, which hangs outside a bar seven miles outside Pittsburgh, appears to be made out of metal and plastic. It is reportedly unaware that it is a hate group and has made no plans to take over America.
The SPLC’s inability to conduct even the most elementary fact checking did not stop news networks from inviting its talking head on to suggest that AFDI got “the response that they — in a sense — they are seeking.” Neither CNN nor MSNBC were impolitic enough to mention that no AFDI supporter had used its materials to plan a killing spree, while at least one of SPLC’s supporters had done just that.
But being “controversial” and “provocative” has nothing to do with who is doing the shooting. It’s a media signal that the target shouldn’t be sympathized with. The Family Research Council, which was shot up by a killer using the SPLC’s hate map, is invariably dubbed “intolerant.” The SPLC, which targeted it, is however a “respected civil rights group” which provides maps to respected civil rights gunmen.
A contest in which Bosch Fawstin, an ex-Muslim, drew a cartoon of a genocidal warlord is “controversial” and “provocative,” while the MSA, which has invited Sheikh Khalid Yasin, who has inspired a number of terrorists, including apparently one of the Mohammed contest attackers, is a legitimate organization that is only criticized by controversial, intolerant and provocative Islamophobes.”
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CBS News/New York Times Poll: Race Relations Worst In Over 2 Decades
” A new poll released Monday indicated that Americans believe race relations are at their worst in more than two decades.
The CBS News/New York Times poll said 61 percent of Americans characterize race relations in the U.S. as “bad,” including a majority of white and black respondents. The figure is the highest since 1992.
A total of 79 percent of African-Americans believe police are more likely to use deadly force against a black person than against a white person, while 53 percent of whites believe race does not play a role, the survey said.Black respondents were also more likely than white respondents to believe their local police make them feel anxious rather than safe, the poll said.”
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Police Shoot Dead 2 Gunmen At Texas Exhibit Of Prophet Mohammad Cartoons
” Texas police shot dead two gunmen who opened fire on Sunday outside an exhibit of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad that was organized by an anti-Islamic group and billed as a free-speech event.
The shooting in a Dallas suburb was an echo of past attacks or threats in other Western countries against art depicting the Prophet Mohammad. In January, gunmen killed 12 people in the Paris offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in revenge for its cartoons.
Sunday’s attack took place at about 7 p.m. in a parking lot of the Curtis Culwell Center, an indoor arena in Garland, northeast of Dallas. Geert Wilders, a polarizing Dutch politician and anti-Islamic campaigner who is on an al Qaeda hit list, was among the speakers at the event.
Police said they had not determined the identity of the two gunmen or whether they were linked to critics of the event who had branded it anti-Islamic.
As a precaution, a police bomb squad was checking the suspects’ car, and the immediate vicinity of the Culwell Center was evacuated, city police spokesman Joe Harn said. Investigators were keeping their distance from the bodies of the gunmen, which were close to the car, until the vehicle was deemed clear of explosives, he said later.”
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The Clintons, A Luxury Jet And Their $100 Million Donor From Canada
” Bill Clinton was planning a charity trip to Latin America and needed a big plane.
For Frank Giustra, who had never met the former president, this was an opportunity. The Canadian mining magnate and onetime Hollywood studio owner stepped up to let the former president borrow his luxurious passenger jet. There was just one condition: Giustra would come along for the ride.
That 2005 trip was the start of an intense, mutually beneficial friendship — one that has helped propel the Clinton Foundation into a global giant and established Giustra’s reputation as an international philanthropist while helping him build connections in countries where his business was expanding.
Giustra has since committed more than $100 million to the work of the Clinton Foundation, becoming one of the largest individual donors to the family’s charities.
Clinton has also gained regular transportation, borrowing Giustra’s plane 26 times for foundation business since 2005, including 13 trips in which the two men traveled together. The numbers on Clinton’s use of the plane, never previously reported, were provided by a spokeswoman for Giustra.”
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IRS Caught Violating Its Own Civil Forfeiture Policy; U.S. Attorney Admonishes Small Business Owner To Keep His Mouth Shut
” Lyndon McLellan has spent more than a decade running L&M Convenience Mart, a gas station, restaurant and convenience store in rural Fairmont, North Carolina. Then, almost one year ago, agents from the IRS came to the store and announced that they had seized his entire bank account, totaling more than $107,000.
Lyndon did nothing wrong, and the IRS has never alleged that he committed a crime—much less charged him with one. Despite this, in December 2014, the IRS and Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a civil forfeiture complaint in federal court, which, if successful, would allow them to keep Lyndon’s money permanently. The DOJ’s actions came months after the IRS announced a formal policy change prohibiting the agency from using civil forfeiture to take money from law-abiding citizens like Lyndon.
Yesterday, the Institute for Justice (IJ), a national public interest law firm leading the fight to end civil forfeiture, filed court documents contesting the IRS’s forfeiture of Lyndon’s money.
“ This case demonstrates that the federal government’s recent reforms are riddled with loopholes and exceptions and fundamentally fail to protect Americans’ basic rights,” said Institute for Justice Attorney Robert Everett Johnson, who represents Lyndon. “No American should have his property taken by the government without first being convicted of a crime.”
In February 2015, during a hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives Ways & Means Oversight Subcommittee, North Carolina Congressman George Holding told IRS Commissioner John Koskinen that he had reviewed Lyndon’s case—without specifically naming it—and that there was no allegation of the kind of illegal activity required by the IRS’s new policy. The IRS Commissioner responded, “If that cases exists, then it’s not following the policy.” “
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Isis On The Run? The US Portrayal Is Very Far From The Truth
The Independent has more on Obama’s successful corruption of US military leadership
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Conservatives, Unleash the Awesome Power Of “No”
” We decent Americans are bombarded with lies, libeled, and subjected to petty (and, increasingly, not so petty) tyrannies by government flunkies. At every turn, liberals and their suck-ups in the media and academia seek to delegitimize our interests, concerns, and opinions. They want us to submit, to take the easy way out, to just go along. Our fate, they decree, is cultural and political dhimmitude.
Well, it’s time to draw a red line and, unlike President Feckless and the Wimptones, to enforce it.
Conservatives, it’s time to say, “No.”
No, liberals, you can’t just lie about us anymore without us pushing back. The days of surrender in the face of your slander are over.
No, liberals, you are the racists. Your party created the Klan. Your party created and enforced Jim Crow. Those weren’t Republicans beating black skulls in Selma – they were Democrats. Bull Connor was a union-loving populist and a delegate to a Democrat National Convention. You liberals elected a KKK member as your Senate Majority Leader and then made him your President Pro Tempore, and you did it in this century.
I repeat, in this century.
Your Democrat party relies on racial divisions, lies, and hatred. Quick, which party would fold tomorrow if racial hatred suddenly evaporated – the party that seeks to limit government and to empower every individual to create his own success, or the party that seeks to grow government to more lavishly hand out scraps to buy votes? “
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Paranoid Texans Grill Army Spokesman On Jade Helm 15 Exercise That’s Sparking Fears Of Military Takeover
” Concerned citizens confronted county and military officials Monday in Texas over the planned Jade Helm 15 training exercise that has ignited fears of a military takeover.
Elite forces from all four branches of the military will take part in the July 15-Sept. 15 operation in seven states across the southwest, where role players will stand in for hostile and less-hostile forces.
Residents packed the Bastrop County Commission, where a U.S. Army spokesman answered questions while an overflow crowd watched from downstairs on closed-circuit television.
Lt. Col. Mark Lastoria tried to assure the crowd that no intelligence would be gathered on non-participants, no property would be confiscated, and no psychological operations would be conducted.
Participants were torn between their respect for the military and their suspicion of the Obama administration, and they frequently expressed concern that they had not been notified about the exercise until conspiracy theories began circulating on social media.
The recent closing of five Walmart stores sparked fears that those stores would be converted into detention centers or link to underground tunnels to transport troops.”
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Feds Play The Race Card To Crush Parents’ Revolt Against Common Core
” There was a time when Common Core supporters loudly insisted the program — adopted by no fewer than 46 states — was most assuredly not federal, that any allegation that this astounding national uniformity was the result of federal pressure was a nasty, vicious lie. The State Standards Initiative confidently declares as “myth” the assertions that “Common Core State Standards were adopted by states as part of the [federal] Race to the Top grant program” or that the “federal government will take over ownership” of Common Core. The Initiative’s position is clear: “The federal government will not govern the Common Core State Standards. The Common Core was and will remain a state-led effort.” (Emphasis in original.)
Yet when Common Core is threatened by a large-scale parental revolt, look who moves in to crush the dissenters’ dreams — Arne Duncan, the race-baiting (federal) Secretary of Education.
Last week an estimated 184,000 New York students (out of 1.1 million) opted out of this year’s Common Core–mandated English tests, a more than three-fold increase from last year’s 60,000 opt-outs. Large-scale opt-outs threaten the validity of the tests, decreasing the likelihood that they fairly measure overall student achievement. In some schools the opt-out rates have crippled the tests. One Manhattan school reported an 85 percent opt-out rate, and other schools — including one in Park Slope, Brooklyn — have reported opt-out rates exceeding 30 percent.”
” With the tests in crisis, Arne Duncan said this week that if the states can’t fix themselves, the federal government will “have an obligation to step in.” This means not just threatening to cut federal funding, but essentially forcing states to withhold their own funds from delinquent schools. ”
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Charity Watchdog: Clinton Foundation A ‘Slush Fund’
” The Clinton Foundation’s finances are so messy that the nation’s most influential charity watchdog put it on its “watch list” of problematic nonprofits last month.
The Clinton family’s mega-charity took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid.
The group spent the bulk of its windfall on administration, travel, and salaries and bonuses, with the fattest payouts going to family friends.
On its 2013 tax forms, the most recent available, the foundation claimed it spent $30 million on payroll and employee benefits; $8.7 million in rent and office expenses; $9.2 million on “conferences, conventions and meetings”; $8 million on fund-raising; and nearly $8.5 million on travel. None of the Clintons are on the payroll, but they do enjoy first-class flights paid for by the Foundation.
In all, the group reported $84.6 million in “functional expenses” on its 2013 tax return and had more than $64 million left over — money the organization has said represents pledges rather than actual cash on hand.
Some of the tens of millions in administrative costs finance more than 2,000 employees, including aid workers and health professionals around the world.
But that’s still far below the 75 percent rate of spending that nonprofit experts say a good charity should spend on its mission.
Charity Navigator, which rates nonprofits, recently refused to rate the Clinton Foundation because its “atypical business model . . . doesn’t meet our criteria.”
Charity Navigator put the foundation on its “watch list,” which warns potential donors about investing in problematic charities. The 23 charities on the list include the Rev. Al Sharpton’s troubled National Action Network, which is cited for failing to pay payroll taxes for several years.
Other nonprofit experts are asking hard questions about the Clinton Foundation’s tax filings in the wake of recent reports that the Clintons traded influence for donations.
“ It seems like the Clinton Foundation operates as a slush fund for the Clintons,” said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a government watchdog group once run by leading progressive Democrat and Fordham Law professor Zephyr Teachout.”
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Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts
” What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised?
I was. As a philosopher, I already knew that many college-aged students don’t believe in moral facts. While there are no national surveys quantifying this phenomenon, philosophy professors with whom I have spoken suggest that the overwhelming majority of college freshmen in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture.
What I didn’t know was where this attitude came from. Given the presence of moral relativism in some academic circles, some people might naturally assume that philosophers themselves are to blame. But they aren’t. There are historical examples of philosophers who endorse a kind of moral relativism, dating back at least to Protagoras who declared that “man is the measure of all things,” and several who deny that there are any moral facts whatsoever. But such creatures are rare. Besides, if students are already showing up to college with this view of morality, it’s very unlikely that it’s the result of what professional philosophers are teaching. So where is the view coming from?
A few weeks ago, I learned that students are exposed to this sort of thinking well before crossing the threshold of higher education. When I went to visit my son’s second grade open house, I found a troubling pair of signs hanging over the bulletin board. They read:
Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.
Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes.
Hoping that this set of definitions was a one-off mistake, I went home and Googled “fact vs. opinion.” The definitions I found online were substantially the same as the one in my son’s classroom. As it turns out, the Common Core standards used by a majority of K-12 programs in the country require that students be able to “distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text.” And the Common Core institute provides a helpful page full of links to definitions, lesson plans and quizzes to ensure that students can tell the difference between facts and opinions.
So what’s wrong with this distinction and how does it undermine the view that there are objective moral facts? “
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Fighting For Everyday Americans, And Everyday Uranium-Dealing Kazakhs
” It turns out that, while we were all worrying about the mullahs’ nuclear program, the Clintons’ nuclear program was going gangbusters. Kazakhquiddick dominated the conversation on my weekly chat with Hugh Hewitt:
HUGH HEWITT: I’m looking at an extraordinary article – Cash Flowed To Clinton Foundation As Russians Press For Control Of Uranium Company. It’s by Jo Becker and Mike McIntire from today’s New York Times. It’s almost unfathomable that Hillary Clinton would consider running for president after this article comes out, but what say you, Mark Steyn?
MARK STEYN: Yes, I agree. And I like Elizabeth Warren, and I want her to run. And when I say ‘like’, don’t get me wrong – I think she would be a disastrous president for this country, and she would want to turn it into a socialist basket case. But she believes in something, and she wants to do something. And Hillary Clinton is an entirely hollow creation. She is basically just an empty vessel in which the dodgiest characters on the planet pour money in return for favors. And I regret to say her daughter is becoming much the same kind of thing, too. Her daughter’s joined the family on stage with this Kazakh oligarch and all the rest of it. In fairness to Bill Clinton, he likes chasing nymphettes – he’s the only Clinton with a human characteristic…
HH: Now I don’t want to overstate the complexity, but in a nutshell, Russia has cornered the world uranium market.
MS: Right.
HH: They have done so through acquiring huge uranium resources in Canada and the United State subject to review by the State Department was given, and Bill Clinton pocketed a half million along the way, and the foundation picked up two and a half million bucks from interested parties…
I think I’ve mentioned before that, for a while, the US Department of Labor used to call up my assistant once a year and demand to know whether we “worked with uranium”. And once in a while they’d insist on speaking to me personally and I’d say, “Hmm. Let me have a think on that. Did we use any uranium in my Christmas disco single? No, wait, that was bongos…”
And, when they’d gone away, I used occasionally to wonder how many American businesses the vast federal bureaucracy had to harass before they got a positive response to that question. But it turns out that, if the Department of Labor were to call up the Clinton Foundation, which Hill’s impressionable rubes seem to think is something to do with reducing diarrhea outbreaks in Africa, and ask them, “Do you work with uranium?”, the answer is yes.”
Saturday’s must read from Mark Steyn
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Displaced American Workers Sue DHS Over Work Permit Expansion
” American workers who lost their jobs to foreign replacements are suing the federal government over a new rule that will allow more foreign workers into the job market.
In a stated effort to encourage guest workers to stick around permanently, the Department of Homeland Security will now grant their spouses work permits in addition to visas. DHS estimates more than 100,000 spouses will be eligible to apply when it begins accepting applications May 26.
The complaint, filed by the Immigration Reform Law Institute on behalf of the displaced workers, alleges DHS does not have the authority to make the rule, and that the rule violates federal labor protection law. IRLI is asking the judge to halt implementation of the rule until the case is heard.
“ The larger implication is that Obama is arguing he has the executive authority to allow anyone to work in the United States,” John Miano, the attorney for the displaced workers, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “[He] started with the children, then the parents, and now the spouses of H-1B workers.” “
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Loretta Lynch Confirmed As New Attorney General — Here Are The 10 Republicans Who Voted For Her
” The Senate voted Thursday to confirm Loretta Lynch as the next attorney general, with the help of 10 Republicans who ignored complaints that Lynch would use her new position to support what many say is President Barack Obama’s unconstitutional immigration plan.
The Senate voted 56–43 in favor of Lynch, approving her with help of Sens. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), Thad Cochran (Miss.), Susan Collins (Maine), Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Orrin Hatch (Utah), Ron Johnson (Wis.), Mark Kirk (Ill.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “
A republican “majority” is worthless when made up of spineless RINOs such as these …
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