DELEITURAS

Two male runners are continuing to dominate high school girls’ track in Connecticut.

High school juniors Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood took first and second place in the state open indoor track championships on Feb. 16, the Associated Press noted in a report on Sunday. Both Miller and Yearwood are biological males who identify as transgender girls.

One of their competitors, high school junior Selina Soule, told the AP that it was unfair to force female runners to compete against male runners.

“We all know the outcome of the race before it even starts; it’s demoralizing,” said Soule. “I fully support and am happy for these athletes for being true to themselves. They should have the right to express themselves in school, but athletics have always had extra rules to keep the competition fair.”

Miller is currently the third-fastest runner in the country in the girls’ 55-meter dash. Yearwood is close behind, tied for seventh nationally.

Miller and Yearwood’s success is just the latest instance of male athletes, who identify as transgender, excelling in women’s sports.

Miller and Yearwood easily outpaced female runners in the state last year as well, when both were sophomores.

A sympathetic segment on ABC’s “Good Morning America” in June 2018 described the two runners as “dominating the competition” at the outdoor state championships earlier that month.

In that interview, Miller argued that female runners should work harder – rather than complaining about unfairness – when forced to compete against male athletes who identify as transgender.

Yearwood acknowledged being stronger than female runners to the AP, but compared it to advantages that other athletes might have from perfecting their form or doing extra training sessions.

“One high jumper could be taller and have longer legs than another, but the other could have perfect form, and then do better,” Yearwood told the AP. “One sprinter could have parents who spend so much money on personal training for their child, which in turn, would cause that child to run faster.”

The sequester’s $85 billion dollar slowing of federal spending isn’t what’s going to stall the economy this year – that will come from the President’s healthcare reform.

The White House and congressional Democrats have been hard at-work spinning the March jobs slowdown as an effect of sequestration even though the details of the report show no slowdown in government hiring. As sequestration would first impact government jobs, the correlation is non-existent.

The true culprit in the coming recession is not George Bush, Republican filibusters or slightly slower government spending – its Obamacare.

The President’s marquee healthcare reform law is taking its toll on business owners and families as it is directly causing premiums to skyrocket – some by more than double – and the toll on the economy is just beginning.

An exhaustive study by three congressional committees delivers startling news about the dire effects of Obamacare: President Barack Obama’s signature legislation could increase health insurance premiums by over 200 percent and render insurance coverage unaffordable for millions of Americans.

Insurance companies, states and the federal government have been frantically trying to implement the complicated and costly healthcare law.

Insurance companies have spent millions of dollars installing new software, designing integration with state/federal exchanges and changing their processes to deal with the concept of premium subsidies and premium cost-sharing – two major components of Obamacare. That money has to come from somewhere and its coming in the form of skyrocketing premiums.

States that chose to either implement their own exchanges or work in a state-federal partnership to form exchanges are seeing their costs balloon as well. State taxpayers will bear the brunt of those expenses.

The federal government, realizing that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is too complex, is planning to hire Obamacare Insurance Navigators at a cost of $29-$49.00 per hour. When the government hires, the costs come from taxpayers. Increasing costs mean increasing taxes – just as the President has proposed in his budget plan.

The revenue needed to fund the expense is coming out of the pockets of consumers and going to a massively-expanding federal bureaucracy. More taxpayer money is going to fund Department of Health and Human Services regulation, State and Federal exchanges and now more federal employees – expensive ones.

Consumers are getting hit from another side as premiums affect their paychecks and their employers.

As employers are forced to pay increasing premiums, more revenue must be directed away from pay and hours. Many employers are converting full-time positions to part-time or eliminating them altogether to avoid the overwhelming costs associated with healthcare reform.

Skyrocketing premiums mean less money for workers. As employer-provided health insurance usually splits the cost between the employee and employer, the worker will see a shrinking paycheck as premiums increase.

According to a Milliman Consulting Group study on insurance rates, the pain will be substantial for the middle-class:

the poor are likely to pay significantly less than they do now while middle-class families dig deeper into pocketbooks.

President Obama told the American people that this law would bend the healthcare cost curve down. In just its first few years of implementation it has done the opposite.

Even Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted that “there may be a higher cost associated with getting into that market.” When asked about rapidly-increasing premiums.

Some proponents of the healthcare law have made the case that premiums are rising due to increasing healthcare costs. White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest countered that claim saying that “I would actually point to the results that we’re already seeing from the Affordable Care Act, which is a savings of $2.1 billion.”

So if healthcare costs are not causing insurance premiums to rise – there’s only one culprit left and the drain on the economy will likely push the country back into recession.

• China provided over $158 million in funding to U.S. schools for ‘Confucius Institutes,’ which Chinese officials have called a form of propaganda, a bipartisan Senate investigation found.
• The program’s U.S. counterpart in Chinese universities was shut down after alleged Chinese interference.  
• FBI Director Christopher Wray faulted ‘naïveté’ among U.S. college faculty, and China is now expanding the program into grade schools, the report said. 

The Chinese government has funded hundreds of outposts in U.S. universities that its own officials say are avenues for propaganda, according to a bipartisan Senate investigation.

Most U.S. institutions of higher learning that received significant Chinese funding failed to report the foreign contracts in violation of the law, and many signed contracts that included secrecy provisions that prevent their terms from being known by students and the public, according to the report.

The Chinese government funds and staffs centers called Confucius Institutes at colleges outside China according to a 100-page report issued Wednesday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which will hold a hearing on the topic Thursday. The program is run by a Chinese government entity called Hanban.

“We should actively carry out international propaganda battles,” China’s former Minister of Propaganda Liu Yunshan said in a Chinese newspaper in 2010. “Our strategy is to proactively take our culture abroad … We should do well in establishing and operating overseas cultural centers and Confucius Institutes.”

The growth of China’s Confucius Classrooms (Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations)

According to the report, Li Changchun, a former member of the Chinese government, said in a 2011 speech that “Confucius Institutes are an important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up.” He said the program “has made an important contribution toward improving our soft power … Using the excuse of teaching Chinese language, everything looks reasonable and logical.”

Administrators at most of the U.S. host colleges told government investigators they had no qualms about the program — even as some of the program’s personnel allegedly sabotaged other professors’ academic materials mentioning Taiwan and even as the Chinese government obstructed the U.S.’s effort to create a complementary program in China.

“I think the level of naïveté on the part of the academic sector about this creates its own issues,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said during a 2018 congressional hearing, according to the report. China is “exploiting the very open research and development environment that we have, which we all revere, but they’re taking advantage of it.

“So one of the things we’re trying to do is view the China threat as not just a whole-of-government threat but a whole-of-society threat on their end, and I think it’s going to take a whole-of-society response by us,” he continued. “So it’s not just the intelligence community, but it’s raising awareness within our academic sector.”

The Chinese program is now expanding into grade school and has set up 519 “Confucius Classrooms” in U.S. K-12 classrooms, according to the report. “Since 2006, the Subcommittee determined China directly provided over $158 million in funding to U.S. schools for Confucius Institutes,” the report said. “The Department of Education requires all post-secondary schools to report foreign gifts of $250,000 or more from a single source within a calendar year of receiving them.

“Despite that legal requirement, nearly 70 percent of U.S. schools that received more than $250,000 from Hanban failed to properly report that amount,” it continued.

The pool of teachers is selected by the Chinese program and they come over on visas granted by the State Department that are designated for academics conducting research, but the Senate report found indications of visa fraud.

In 2018, the State Department revoked 32 visas for Confucius Institute teachers because they were not conducting research but rather teaching at K-12 schools.

“The State Department also found evidence that one Confucius Institute Chinese director improperly coached the teachers to discuss their research during interviews with State Department investigators,” the report said.

When it comes to colleges failing to disclose foreign money, the Department of Justice told Senate investigators it had no indication that the Department of Education has ever tried to take U.S. colleges to court for allegedly violating the law.

Likewise, the report says the State Department has done little on-the-ground investigation of the programs. “In 2019, the State Department plans to double the number of Confucius Institutes field reviews it completed in 2018 – from two to four,” the report says.

The U.S. attempted to establish parity by creating “American Cultural Centers” (ACC) in which U.S. universities would partner with Chinese ones to set up programs abroad. But the program was ended in 2017 after the Chinese government allegedly repeatedly obstructed programs and denied them academic freedom.

“Despite receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from the State Department, at least seven ACCs sponsored by U.S. schools were unable to ever open due to Chinese interference,” the report said.

One U.S. college official told Senate investigators that the Communist Party was involved in approving cultural events, and others said permission was routinely denied.

“Another U.S. school official left the ACC after two sessions of extensive questioning by Chinese police officers regarding her involvement with the ACC and the State Department,” the report said. “When the U.S. school official returned to the United States, a colleague told her that Chinese police interrogation of school officials was common and that she was now just ‘part of the club.’”

Chinese outposts in US schools vs. American outposts in Chinese schools (Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations)

In October 2018, Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, wrote to the attorney general that the program may violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The report, written by staff for both Republican Rob Portman of Ohio and Democrat Tom Carper of Delaware, concluded that “Schools in the United States—from kindergarten to college—have provided a level of access to the Chinese government that the Chinese government has refused to provide to the United States … Confucius Institutes should not continue in the United States.”

Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton urged two colleges in his state to sever ties, while Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio wrote in a February 2018 letter to Florida universities that “[g]iven China’s aggressive campaign to ‘infiltrate’ American classrooms, stifle free inquiry, and subvert free expression both at home and abroad, I respectfully urge you to consider terminating your Confucius Institute agreement.”

In 2013, the Canadian Association of University Teachers called on colleges to shut the programs down, saying “Confucius Institutes are essentially political arms of the Chinese government” and “restrict the free discussion of topics Chinese authorities deem controversial.”

Meanwhile, “As China opened over 100 additional Confucius Institutes in the United States over the last 15 years, the Department of Education remained silent,” the report said.

With the enactment of the privately owned central bank, the Bank of England provided the model for the financial enslavement of governments, and their citizens. Well before the conflict for establishing a National Bank in America or the eventual surrender to the money changers with the betrayal in instituting the Federal Reserve, the history of the Bank of England needs to be studied. Relying on British historians may seem to invoke a cultural bias; however, the range and wealth of information on this topic comes from an earlier age. Further research will expand this understanding and many of the sources cited can fulfill this objective.

For purposes of a mainstream account, the official site of the Bank of England provides a flowery version about the background and purported success of the scheme proposed by   “William Paterson, envisaged a loan of £1,200,000 to the Government, in return for which the subscribers would be incorporated as the “Governor and Company of the Bank of England”. Although the new bank would have risked its entire capital by lending it to the Government, the subscription proved popular and the money was raised in a few weeks. The Royal Charter was sealed on 27 July 1694, and the Bank started its role as the Government’s banker and debt-manager, which it continues today.”

“The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing.”

– William Paterson

THE FORMATION OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND by Halley Goodman provides a detailed and well sourced chronicle and background.

“The goldsmiths evolved to become the original private bankers of the time. Since  goldsmiths already had as part of their trade private stores of gold and stout vaults to store them in, entrepreneurs could entrust their own gold to them for safe keeping, for a fee, and receive a paper receipt for the deposit. The goldsmiths could then lend monies against these deposits for an additional fee. Mr. Hartley Winters declares that “some ingenious goldsmith conceived the epock-making notion of giving notes…and so founded modern banking.” Merchants would deposit “their money with the goldsmiths and received from them receipts” that “…were payable on demand, and were transferred from one holder to another in payment of debts.” These receipts or notes from the goldsmith bankers, often in the form of a letter, are some of the earliest surviving cheques in England. Given the economic realities of the time, although deposits provided the funds for their business, most of the clients of these goldsmith bankers were usually borrowers rather than depositors.”

From such humble origins, the foundation was laid to invent a central bank that would create money out of thin air and loan it at interest to the government, who lost it sovereignty for making this Faustian bargain.

Secrets of the Bank of England Revealed at Last!!

The Charter of the Bank of England (1694) with the Great Seal of William and Mary. The first usury central bank to be incorporated in England.

The Bank of England account, published by Cassell, Petter & Galpin cites a rocky start and opposition from the goldsmiths.

“In 1696 (very soon after its birth) the Bank experienced a crisis. There was a want of money in England. The clipped silver had been called in, and the new money was not ready. Even rich people were living on credit, and issued promissory notes. The stock of the Bank of England had gone rapidly down from 110 to 83. The goldsmiths, who detested the corporation that had broken in on their system of private banking, now tried to destroy the new company. They plotted, and on the same day they crowded to Grocers’ Hall, where the Bank was located from 1694 to 1734, and insisted on immediate payment—one goldsmith alone demanding £30,000. The directors paid all their honest creditors, but refused to cash the goldsmiths’ notes, and left them their remedy in Westminster Hall. The goldsmiths triumphed in scurrilous pasquinades entitled, “The Last Will and Testament,” “The Epitaph,” “The Inquest on the Bank of England.”

It did not take long for the Jewish bankers to set their sights on Paterson’s bank and financers for the English regime. Brother Nathanael Kapner adds his audacious viewpoints.

“The new King William III soon got England involved in costly wars against Catholic France which put England deep into debt. Here was the Jewish bankers’ chance to collect. So King William, under orders from the Elders of Zion in Amsterdam, persuaded the British Treasury to borrow 1.25 million pounds sterling from the Jewish bankers who had helped him to the throne.

Since the state’s debts had risen dramatically, the government had no choice but to accept. But there were conditions attached: The names of the lenders were to be kept secret and that they be granted a Charter to establish a Central Bank of England. Parliament accepted and the Jewish bankers sunk their tentacles into Great Britain.”

Actual control of the fiat central bank is discussed in Who owns the Bank of England?

“A very famous story relates to the Bank of England and the infamous Rothschilds, that all powerful banking family. This story was re-told recently in a BBC documentary about the creation of money and the Bank of England.

It revolves around the Battle of Waterloo in which Nathan Rothschild used his inside knowledge of the outcome and his faster horses and couriers to play the market by getting the result of the battle before anyone else knew the outcome.

He quickly sold his English bonds and gave all the traders who looked to him for guidance the impression that the French had won at Waterloo.

• A team of retired police detectives and a gang expert argue that about 100 officially ruled accidental deaths may be the work of a gang of serial killers called The Smiley Face Killers.
• The cases stretch from current day back to 1997 and involve alleged victims who were white, college-aged males possessed of notable athletic and academic ability, who disappeared after a night of drinking, were found dead in a body of water and whose bodies displayed alleged signs of foul play. 
• The FBI, local law enforcement agencies and the Center for Homicide Research have refuted the serial killer theory, but detectives say that the presence of the date rape drug GHB in some of the victims, ligature marks on at least one body and other evidence shows otherwise. 

A team of retired detectives believes a series of deaths that authorities ruled accidental are actually the work of a sophisticated gang of serial killers.

The retired detectives, a group called Global Death Investigations, have given the alleged group of killers a name, the smiley face killers, and say that they may be responsible for about 100 deaths since 1997 across the U.S. that authorities officially labeled accidental drownings. The deceased all bear similar profiles: College aged white males, athletic and intelligent, who never returned from a night out drinking and whose bodies were later found either in a body of water or washed up on shore.

The retired detectives assert that the alleged gang of killers operate in cells across the country that communicate via the dark web to recruit, choose victims and organize the killings. Of those cases the detectives believe are connected to the group, 70 of the alleged victims were found near the graffiti of particular symbols, including a smiley face, that are specific to the alleged serial killer gang.

“To me, this is one of the most dangerous domestic terrorist groups in the United States and somebody needs to pay attention to them,” Kevin Gannon, a retired New York City police sergeant told The Daily Beast.

“The level of sophistication of the group is a lot greater than we’d imagined. Now we know they communicate with each other on the dark web. We know there’s surveillance and counter-surveillance,” he added.

Professor Lee Gilbertson, who along with Gannon and former NYPD detective Anthony Duarte first brought the smiley face killers theory to law enforcement in 2008, explained that he and his colleagues believe the gang operates in cells, with individuals alternating in and out of action, across dozens of cities.

“There might be 12 in that cell and they go out one night and five of them do this,” he said. “The next time it’s a different five. The way it should be conceived is that it’s the cell that’s the serial [killer] part of it, not necessarily the individuals. Because over time the individuals in the cell will evolve. Some will age out and just keep their mouths shut. Who wants to go to prison?”

Gilbertson also asserted that there is a clear pattern among the alleged victims: Their youth and their character as high achieving individuals. The professor believes that envy of their success may be a factor in their deaths.

“They’re targeting the best of the best. These kids are the best students. They’re the best athletes and they come from the best families,” Gannon said, echoing Gilbertson’s appraisal.

Further complicating the investigation of this alleged group of serial killers, beside their sophisticated methods, is the fact that, according to Gannon and his cohorts, official law enforcement hasn’t displayed any interest in going after the group. All but one of the cases that the retired detectives have investigated remain classified as accidental deaths, despite what the detectives say is compelling evidence of foul play in certain cases, like that of Dakota James.

“Dakota was clearly murdered,” Gannon said.

The first red flag in James’ case was a phone call he made to his friend Shelley on the night of December 15, 2016. Shelley said James was sobbing, disoriented and begging for help. He claimed that the police would not help him.

“I don’t know where I am. I’m so cold. Please help me. I’m lost,” he told her. He said he was in Pittsburgh’s North Side and sent her a picture of a jean-clad leg saying “I’m here.”

Shelley went to pick him up in her car, but an app tracking his phone showed Shelley that James was actually in the city’s South Side. She tried confirming with him, but he responded with more confusion. Nevertheless, she found his location in less than 10 minutes: a hotel in front of which a dark SUV was parked facing the wrong way in the wrong lane. She saw Dakota exit the hotel and make straight for the dark SUV.

“I pulled up not even 10 feet away from the SUV,”  she said. “I said, ‘Dakota!’ He turns, looks back then comes over to me, got in my car, and we left.”

Shelley said that James sobbed the whole way home and would not elaborate on what had happened. She noted that he was frightened but entirely lucid and did not seem to be drunk or otherwise intoxicated. He said that the last thing he remembered was leaving his work Christmas party with co-workers from J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. around 7:15 p.m. All else after that was blank.

Shelley offered to take James to the hospital, but he refused. The next day, he brushed off the incident and told her he just had a bad hangover. He disappeared five weeks later after another night of drinking with his co-workers. A woman walking her dog found his body 40 days after that, floating in the Ohio River about 30 feet from shore and 10 miles from where he was last seen in Pittsburgh.

The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled that his death was an accidental drowning, but Gannon, the other retired detectives and a gang expert say the evidence shows otherwise.

The detectives assert that James’ body was not decomposed enough to have been in the water for 40 days. His body also showed no damage, despite the fact that if he had been in the water for 40 days he would have passed beneath a concrete and steel dam.

Cyril Wecht, a forensic pathologist and former Allegheny County medical examiner who reviewed James’ autopsy report, also said that ligature marks appeared to be on his neck, indicating that someone strangled him.

Wecht said the marks were “strongly suggestive of and entirely consistent with a ligature having been applied around the neck. This death may have been due to ligature strangulation,” according to Oxygen.

Wecht also noted a “distinct difference in the coloration of the fingernail beds of the fourth and fifth fingers on both the right and left hands,” that “certainly would be consistent with someone reaching up and trying to release the pressure from a ligature that is being applied around their neck.”

In addition, someone used James’ Paypal account two days after he disappeared for an $11.99 transaction.

Detectives also noted 11 smiley-faces spray painted on Roberto Clemente Bridge where police allege that James fell into the water, about 10 mile away from where his body was found. The retired detectives say that the symbols are usually spray painted on the first man-made structure that can be seen from where the victims’ bodies are found, though they don’t know if the graffiti was at the bridge before James’ death.

The retired detectives assert that they have similar evidence in other cases and that they even have suspects, but law enforcement agencies have denounced these claims.

The FBI said in a 2008 statement that, while they had investigated the retired detectives’ claims of the involvement of the smiley face killers, they ” have not developed any evidence to support links between these tragic deaths or any evidence substantiating the theory that these deaths are the work of a serial killer or killers.”

“The vast majority of these instances appear to be alcohol-related drownings,” the statement added.

The Center for Homicide Research also denounced the serial killer theory after investigating 40 of the drowning cases.

Gannon, however, remains undeterred, especially in light of the fact that 30 of the young men who died in supposed accidental drownings had the date rape drug GHB in their system, including James, according to their autopsy reports. Several recent victims, including James, had also come out as gay shortly before their disappearances, adding to the supposed pattern.

Gannon’s tenacious investigating also forced law enforcement to reclassify the death of Chris Jenkins, a 21-year old University of Minnesota student, from accidental drowning to homicide. Jenkins’ case remains active and open, but his parents say that they have heard little to no progress from law enforcement and don’t even know which officer has been assigned to their son’s case.

Gilbertson argues that if police would investigate the claims more closely, and apply pressure to his colleague’s suspects and leads, the alleged gang would collapse.

“If they did, the network will start to fall apart,” Gilbertson said. “Someone will squeal or snitch. But there’s no reason to now. Everything’s going fine for them.”

As for Gannon, he said he won’t rest until he fulfills the promise he made to the mother of Patrick McNeil in 1997 while working as a detective on the first case he encountered that he believes in connected to the smiley face killers. Patrick disappeared when he was 20-years-old after drinking with his friends in Manhattan. His body was found two months later floating in the East River close to the Bay Bridge area of Brooklyn.

Witnesses told Gannon that they saw Patrick being closely followed by a couple in a car that night, and Gannon’s appraisal of the site where Patrick supposedly fell into the river cast doubt on law enforcement’s claim that he went down to the river to urinate and fell in. The fact that there was hardly any access to the river at the site, and the fact that two more young men disappeared within the subsequent 15 months and were also found in the river, roused Gannon’s suspicions.

Gannon told Jackie McNeil that he wouldn’t quit until he found her son’s killer, and he hasn’t quit yet.

What is this thing called Gross Domestic Product (GDP)? It is everything produced by all the people and all the companies in the US and in the world. Key upon the word “produced” in the preceding sentence. Until now, the word “produced” referred to the total market value of all final goods and services produced in a country in a given year. But the definition of “produced” will change in July of this year.

Being generous and not including negative GDP growth that occurred during the first three quarters of Dear Leader Barack Hussein Obama’s first reign (er, term), the GDP growth rate has been 2.12 percent, not something to crow about. The GDP growth rate for the fourth quarter of 2012, after Obama was re-elected, was a whopping 0.4 percent.

However, in July 2013, there will be a world-wide redefinition of the GDP, of what is produced. Government statistics will take into account components such as film royalties and spending on research and development. Billions of dollars of intangible assets will enter the GDP of the US economy. The redefinition is expected to add about three percent to the GDP growth rate. Brent Moulton, manager of national accounts at the Bureau of Economic Analysis, said:

“We’re capitalising research and development and also this category referred to as entertainment, literary and artistic originals, which would be things like motion picture originals, long-lasting television programmes, books and sound recordings. At present, R&D counts as a cost of doing business, so the final output of Apple iPads is included in GDP but the research done to create them is not. R&D will now count as an investment, adding a bit more than 2 per cent to the measured size of the economy.”

Redefinition is fine. Just remember that apples should not be compared to oranges. But that minor technicality won’t phase Obama. I’m betting that Obama and his economic team will take credit for the GDP growth increase. He and they will conveniently forget to mention the definition change, will instead trumpet their policies as the reason for the growth. And we can expect the MSM to go right along with him. There is, after all, precedent. Look at what the MSM did with unemployment numbers – particularly just before the 2012 election.

But (and there is always a “but” when Obama is involved), the GDP growth rate will be in excess of five percent, well above what economists say is the “ideal” growth rate of about 2 to 3 percent per year. Too much GDP growth causes inflation. Expect economists to change the definition of “ideal” in order to support Obama.

So, come July, when the GDP growth rate jumps due to some accounting miracle, just remember that the economy is not really heating up. Rather remember what is actually going on, that Obama’s economic policies have not changed.

H/T to Tom, who called the GDP situation to my attention.

But that’s just my opinion
Please visit RWNO, my personal, very conservative web site!

The largest organization of labor unions in the U.S. slammed the Green New Deal Friday for combatting climate change by threatening the livelihoods of millions of Americans.

The AFL-CIO sent a letter on Friday to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey, the two Democratic lawmakers leading the Green New Deal push in Congress. The labor group demanded a larger role in crafting future solutions, slamming the current proposal as “not achievable or realistic.”

“We welcome the call for labor rights and dialogue with labor, but the Green New Deal resolution is far too short on specific solutions that speak to the jobs of our members and the critical sections of our economy,” the letter, signed by 10 national labor unions on the AFL-CIO’s energy committee, says.

“We will not accept proposals that could cause immediate harm to millions of our members and their families,” the letter says. “We will not stand by and allow threats to our members’ jobs and their families’ standard of living go unanswered.”

The Green New Deal calls for an end to fossil fuel use and heavy investment in renewable energy technology such as wind and solar. Meeting the resolution’s goals would require a massive restructuring of the American economy.

Electricity production from fossil fuels makes up about 64 percent of the United States’ total energy demand. Nuclear energy, a clean energy left out of the Green New Deal, makes up about 19 percent of the U.S. energy mix. Wind and solar energy make up just over 8 percent, according to 2018 data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“We should not be haunted by the specter of being automated out of work,” Ocasio-Cortez told a crowd at the South by Southwest festival Saturday in response to a question about the threat of automation to jobs, according to The Verge.

“We should be excited by that. But the reason we’re not excited by it is because we live in a society where if you don’t have a job, you are left to die. And that is, at its core, our problem,” Ocasio-Cortez said, pushing for further automation to free up time for people to be creative and “[enjoy] the world that we live in,” instead.

On December 12th, extremely leftist Congressman Ed Markey and 44 other stridently leftist Democrats sent a letter to the Republican and Democrat leaders of both houses of Congress again calling for spending on America’s nuclear deterrent to be cut by over $100 bn over the next decade… ignoring the fact that this would save only $10 bn per year, and thus do NOTHING to reduce the budget deficit or the debt, while gravely harming US national security and inviting a Russian nuclear first strike.

Their entire letter is a litany of blatant lies. They falsely claim, in the opening paragraph of the letter, that

“Our oversized nuclear weapons arsenal fails to reflect historical reality.  Our spending on radioactive relics of the past requires a reality check.  We won the Cold War.  The Berlin Wall fell.  The threats we face today have dramatically changed in the past two decades.”

But those are blatant lies. The mere fact that the Cold War is over and the Berlin Wall is gone (and BTW, during the Cold War these strident liberals were undermining Ronald Reagan at every turn; had they had their way, the Soviet Union would’ve won the Cold War) does NOT mean that America can deeply cut its nuclear deterrent further or that nuclear weapons are relics of a bygone era. Quite the contrary. America needs its nuclear deterrent now more than ever. It needs that arsenal to deter Russia, China, North Korea, and in the future, Iran, and to provide a nuclear umbrella to over 30 allies who rely on it, thus showing them that they don’t need to develop nuclear arsenals of their own. The threats America faces today have mostly changed in origin, but not in nature. The need for a large nuclear deterrent is more pronounced than ever.

America’s nuclear arsenal is not oversized at all. It is already far smaller than it was at the end of the Cold War (and at any point in that period except the 1940s and the early 1950s). It numbers ca. 5,000 warheads today, whereas at the end of the Cold War, it numbered 20,000. The current arsenal is – as two successive STRATCOM commanders, Gen. Kevin Chilton and Gen. Bob Kehler and former SECDEF James Schlesinger have stated – the bare minimum to deter potential adversaries and protect America and its friends. Russia has 2,800 strategic warheads (1,492 of them deployed), untold thousands of tactical nukes, and a huge fleet of delivery systems: 434 ICBMs, 14 ballistic missile subs, over 200 strategic bombers with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, and thousands of tactical nuclear delivery systems. Its ICBM fleet alone can deliver 1,684 warheads to the US. China has at least 1,800, and up to 3,000, nuclear warheads, and possesses at least 36 DF-5, 30 DF-31/31A, and a number of DF-41 MIRVable ICBMs, plus 6 ballistic missile subs.

Any claim that the US nuclear arsenal is “oversized” is a blatant lie. This also utterly belies their false claim that “We can save hundreds of billions of dollars by restructuring the U.S. nuclear program for the 21st century.” The US nuclear program/arsenal is already in line with the 21st century, as demonstrated above.

They also falsely claim that “Unchecked spending on nuclear weapons threatens to push us over the fiscal cliff.” But US nuclear weapons spending is anything but “unchecked”, and it does not threaten to push America over the fiscal cliff. According to the Stimson Center, America’s total annual nuclear arsenal spending is $32 bn per year, and the US is expected to spend $352 bn – $392 bn over the next decade (i.e. just $39.2 bn per year) to maintain and modernize its nuclear arsenal. $32 bn is just 4.8% of the FY2012 military budget. $39.2 bn per year would amount to just 6%. As a share of the total federal budget, nuclear weapon spending is even lower: just 1% of the federal budget. It’s peanuts. And it is reviewed, authorized, and appropriated every year by Congress. Thus, it is not “unchecked”; it is under strict Congressional control. Moreover, due to its small size, it’s no threat to any other government programs.

Thus, due to its small size, the nuclear weapons budget belies these strident liberals’ false claim that “Our bloated nuclear weapons budget defies fiscal reality” and their equally false claims that:

“It imperils both our national and economic security.   It makes us less safe by preventing investment in the systems that our soldiers need most.  It jeopardizes our future by forcing cuts to programs that fund life-saving medical research, train teachers, and ensure seniors and the most vulnerable receive essential healthcare.”

No, it is the reckless, deep, unilateral cuts to America’s nuclear deterrent and its budget which these strident liberals advocate that threatens national security. Furthermore, what our soldiers (and US citizens) need most is an umbrella protecting them against the most catastrophic threats: nuclear, chemical, biological, or massive conventional attack. Only the US nuclear deterrent can do this. Strategic bombers also provide strategic bombing of targets deep inside enemy territory and close air support to ground troops, and have done so in every war the US has partaken in since WW2. Long range strike – the other mission of strategic bombers – will be one of the most crucial ones in the future, as documented by the CSBA’s Mark Gunzinger.

No, nuclear weapons spending is not preventing investment in anything else nor siphoning money away from anything. It’s too small to do that.

And no, the small nuclear weapons budget is not forcing cuts to any medical research, teacher training, or Medicare and Medicaid. In fact, Medicare and Medicaid have been growing on autopilot ever since these programs’ creation. Moreover, constitutionally, all of these issues and programs are none of the federal government’s business – they are the purview of state and local governments, families, and the private sector.

In terms of research, including “life-saving medical research”, the US is the world’s undisputed leader, accounting for over 33% of world research spending, and by far the most of that money goes to medical, pharmaceutical, and biotech research: $40.6 bn per year by the top 10 American companies alone. (Not counting spending by smaller companies and by government agencies.)

No, nuclear weapons spending does not imperil US national or economic security. Quite the contrary, it safeguards both. It protects America and its allies against the most catastrophic threats at a cost of just 5% of the total military budget and 1% of the total federal budget.

They also falsely claim that “We know there is plenty of waste in the nuclear weapons budget.” But that’s also a blatant lie.

There isn’t any significant “waste” there. What Markey and his fellow leftist Democrats call “waste” are actually crucial nuclear weapon and system/facility modernization programs, including B61 nuclear bomb modernization (needed to provide a nuclear umbrella to Europe, threatened by Russia’s strategic and tactical nuclear weapons; the US has only 400 tactical nuclear warheads while Russia has 10 times that many); the planned Uranium Production Facility in Tennessee, necessary to produce highly-enriched uranium to keep American nuclear warheads available; the CMRR facility planned for Los Alamos, New Mexico, necessary to replace obsolete, decrepit Manhattan Project era facilities; the current ICBMs and B-2 stealth bombers providing two legs of the nuclear triad and thus keeping the peace; and the Next Generation Bomber, needed to replace America’s obsolete B-52 and B-1 bombers (which cannot survive in any defended airspace) in both the nuclear and the conventional long range strike roles.

Citing what they claim to be “waste”, they falsely claim that:

“We are refurbishing a nuclear bomb that no one wants.  We are building a Uranium processing facility we do not need. We are planning for a new nuclear bomber when the ones we have will last for decades.  In fact, just one nuclear bomb life extension program will cost $10 billion for an estimated 400 weapons.”

But the Uranium Processing Facility is needed, and the B61 bomb, which they falsely claim is a bomb “that no one wants”, is actually very much needed to protect America’s European allies from Russia; in the last 2years, at least several European countries, including France and Turkey, have urged America to keep its tactical B61 nuclear warheads in Europe, thus belying the claim that it’s “a bomb that no one wants” – it’s a bomb which only pacifists don’t want America to have. Several NATO countries have warned America against cutting its nuclear arsenal further, saying it threatens NATO’s integrity. And the B61’s modernization cost ($10 bn) will be spread over many years, not one year. If spread over 5 years, it amounts to only $2 bn per annum.

As for the next generation bomber, which will be nuclear- AND conventional-strike-capable, it is likewise very much needed RIGHT NOW. B-52 and B-1 bombers have huge radar signatures and are extremely easy for even legacy Soviet air defense systems (not to mention the newest Russian and Chinese systems like the S-300, S-400, and HQ-9) to detect and shoot down and are therefore useless in anything but the most benign environment where the only opponents are insurgents unable to contest control of the air. Sending American pilots in these bombers into enemy airspace would be a death sentence on them. It would consign them to a certain death or capture (and probably torture). Shame on these House liberals for advocating this fate for brave American pilots. For more on the need for a Next Generation Bomber, see here, here, here, and here.

Among the most lethal and most pervasive threats today is that of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) weapons, such as short/medium-range ballistic missiles (which threaten in-theater American bases, forcing the USAF to fly bombers from distant bases) and air defense systems (which can shoot down any nonstealthy aircraft). B-52s and B-1s don’t stand a chance of surviving in such environment. The Next Generation Bomber is absolutely necessary to counter these threats and strike targets deep within enemy territory. It is an integral, sine qua non part of the DOD’s new AirSea Battle strategy of countering A2/AD threats. Without it, the US military won’t be able to hit the enemy or operate inside enemy airspace.

These strident liberals claim that “Cuts to nuclear weapons programs upwards of $100 billion over the next 10 years are possible.”

While they are technically “possible”, they would be foolish and disastrous for national security. Deeply cutting the already meagre investments in America’s nuclear deterrent, deeply cutting it in size, and foregoing its modernization – as these strident liberals advocate – would greatly jeopardize America’s national security and invite a Russian or Chinese nuclear first strike on the US for the reasons stated above.

They also cite the Ploughshares Fund’s completely false, vastly exaggerated “estimate” of what the US nuclear arsenal costs and what its maintenance and modernization will cost in the next decade:

“The Ploughshares Fund estimates that the U.S. is projected to spend over $640 billion on nuclear weapons and related programs over the next ten years.”

But Ploughshares’ figure is completely false. The correct figure, as stated above, is the Stimson Center’s: 352 bn to 392 bn over the next decade, i.e. no more than 39.2 bn per year (i.e. just 6% of the total military budget and a fraction of one percent of total federal spending). That’s a drop in the bucket.

Ploughshares released its utterly false, vastly exaggerated numbers earlier this year, and was rebuked by the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, who gave Ploughshares two Pinnochios for that claim. Ploughshares is an utterly biased organization which seeks deep, unilateral cuts in America’s nuclear deterrent and its eventual elimination. Thus, it has an incentive to lie and to exaggerate nuclear weapon costs.

The strident liberals’ letter closes as follows:

“Cut Minuteman missiles.  Do not cut Medicare and Medicaid.  Cut nuclear-armed B-52 and B-2 bombers.  Do not cut Social Security.  Invest in the research and education that will drive our future prosperity, not in weapons for a war we already won.”

But, as demonstrated above, nuclear weapons are needed now even more than during the Cold War. They’re not relics of a bygone era; they’re needed to deter Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. Furthermore, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and federal research and education programs are utterly unconstitutional (as they are outside the Constitutional powers of the federal government), while providing for America’s defense is the #1 Constitutional DUTY of the federal government.

Furthermore, not cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security means that the budget deficit (not to mention the public debt) will never be erased, because these three entitlement programs alone amount to 62% of the ENTIRE federal budget. THEY are crowding out defense spending (including nuclear weapons spending), not vice versa. Even eliminating all military spending would fail to even halve the budget deficit, let alone erase it.

Even eliminating all USAF ICBMs and bombers would not pay for even a fraction of the coming tsunami of entitlement spending, or even a fraction of the incoming growth of SS costs.

These strident liberal Democrats’ claims are all blatant lies, and their demands must be completely rejected.

The letter was signed by Ed Markey, John Conyers, Jr., Rush D. Holt, Barbara Lee, Raul M. Grijalva, Charles B. Rangel, Lynn Woolsey, Donna M.C. Christensen, Peter A. DeFazio, Jared Polis, Sam Farr, Jerrold Nadler, Michael M. Honda, Barney Frank, James P. McGovern, Hansen Clarke, Earl Blumenauer, Alcee L. Hastings, Maxine Waters, Jan Schakowsky, Keith Ellison, William Lacy Clay, Lois Capps, Bruce Braley, John Yarmuth, James P. Moran, Peter Welch, Timothy H. Bishop, John W. Olver, John F. Tierney, Marcy Kaptur, Laura Richardson, Richard E. Neal, John Lewis, Janice Hahn, Donna Edwards, Maurice D. Hinchey, Betty McCollum, William Keating, Jim McDermott, David E. Price, Yvette D. Clarke, Carolyn B. Maloney, Doris Matsui, and Hank Johnson. In other words, the most strident liberals in the House.

http://markey.house.gov/press-release/markey-house-dems-leadership-unneeded-nuclear-weapons-spending-should-be-cut-help; http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/fiscal-cliff-talks-prompt-new-call-curb-us-nuke-spending/; http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/legislation-seeks-100b-nuke-spending-cuts/

Wholesale numbers and credit card data don’t look so good “unexpectedly”.

Expectations were for a .3% growth in inventories and a .6% increase in sales for the just released May numbers. Instead, inventories grew .8% and sales only saw a .3% rise.

Along with weak sales data at the wholesale level, Bank of America card data shows that American consumers shut down in June. After having grown .8% in May, consumer spending, ex-autos, dropped .1% in June.

Growth in inventories can mean a surge in expected sales as manufacturers increase production to avoid shortages. Considering BofA card data, it would instead appear that consumers are cutting back, leading to more product sitting in warehouses.

The special counsel’s investigation could wrap up as soon as next week with the delivery of a confidential report to the Justice Department, CNN is reporting.

According to the network, Attorney General William Barr is preparing to receive a report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who took over an FBI investigation of the Trump campaign on May 17, 2017.

Barr, who was confirmed to office last week, will determine soon after receiving Mueller’s report what information will be provided to Congress.

The exact end date for the Mueller probe has been a longstanding source of speculation in Washington, D.C. In December, NBC News reported that Mueller & Co. planned to deliver a report by mid-February. But a delay in Barr’s confirmation may have contributed to a delay in handing over the report.

According to CNN, there have been several signs that the investigation was close to wrapping up.

A grand jury used in the Mueller probe has not met since Jan. 24, the day that an indictment was handed down against Trump confidant Roger Stone, CNN reports. Reporters have also observed prosecutors removing boxes of documents from the special counsel’s offices.

Though the special counsel’s core investigation appears poised to end, several U.S. attorney’s offices are handling cases that have been spun off of the original probe. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., as well as prosecutors in New York and Virginia, are prosecuting several cases that originated with Mueller.

Prosecutors in Washington, for instance, are working jointly on the case against Stone, who was charged with making false statement to the House Intelligence Committee.