Category: Bureaucraps

If General Flynn is vindicated, and I think he will be, if not pardoned. I hope he sues the pants off the Special Prosecutors, the FBI & the DOJ.

Robert Mueller’s Case Against Michael Flynn Is About To Implode

The criminal case against Michael Flynn imploded Friday. First, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia provided Flynn’s legal team with documents discovered by an outside review of the Flynn prosecution — documents withheld for years. Then, Sidney Powell, the attorney who took over Flynn’s defense nearly a year ago, filed new documents in the case, revealing a secret “lawyers’ understanding” not to prosecute Flynn’s son if the retired lieutenant general pleaded guilty……………

These facts call into question not just the government’s conduct, but the voluntariness of Flynn’s plea. But because there was no mention in the official plea deal of any agreement not to charge Flynn Jr., the court had no opportunity to exercise its “special responsibility to ascertain the plea’s voluntariness.”

With these facts now known, it seems unfathomable that Judge Sullivan will reject Flynn’s motion to withdraw his guilty plea. But Sullivan should do more: He should dismiss the charges against Flynn to make clear that outrageous prosecutorial misconduct will not be tolerated.

Why didn’t Washington have a plan to deal effectively with a pandemic? Because the bureaucraps -doing what they do best- created so many different plans that no one could keep track of them.

When Crisis Planning Doesn’t Work.

As the 2020 coronavirus pandemic unfolds, many Americans have asked why the government didn’t seem to have a plan for this crisis—a crisis that was both predictable and predicted. Almost no one remembers that six months before the current outbreak, Congress passed the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act of 2019, which offered funds and planning authority for just such a crisis. It was the latest in a series of at least a half-dozen similar acts passed over the last two decades.

The problem isn’t that the U.S. government lacked a plan for an international pandemic. It’s that the government had dozens of such plans, totaling thousands of pages, issued by different agencies and different presidential administrations, with little thought to how they would be combined or who would implement them. To meet the next crisis more effectively, we need to get over our obsession with “planning.” Each crisis brings its own challenges, and we must meet those challenges accordingly.

After the 2005 avian influenza scare, for example, Congress did what it does best: demand that someone else come up with a plan. The White House soon issued a National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, followed the next year by the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza Implementation Plan. These proposals in turn birthed numerous individual department blueprints, such as the Department of Defense Implementation Plan for Pandemic Influenza. Congress also mandated that states create their own Pandemic Preparedness Plans.

One might think that all these initiatives would provide the basis for the American pandemic response. Yet they are swamped by countless others. After 9/11, the government also began writing National Response Frameworks on how to deal with any national emergency, including a biological crisis. These frameworks in turn led to Biological Incident Annexes. The most recent such version claims that it “serves as the Federal organizing framework for responding and recovering from a range of biological threats.” What function the other plans now serve is unclear.

To confuse things further, the Department of Health and Human Services, apparently on its own initiative, wrote a Pandemic Influenza Plan in 2005, and it issued new versions in 2009 and in 2017, with no discussion of how these related to the earlier documents mandated by Congress. HHS also created a separate National Health Security Strategy for the United States in 2009, with updates in 2015 and 2019, to supplement the White House’s National Security Strategies, which also deal with biological crises.

But make no mistake: these plans are separate from the United States Health Security National Action Plan, along with the North American Plan for Animal and Pandemic Influenza, which HHS issued in response to World Health Organization mandates. Why the earlier plans did not satisfy these mandates is unknown.

Also getting into the act, the National Security Council has issued plans on how to respond to outbreaks. And, in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2017, Congress, seemingly forgetting its earlier decrees, also mandated that the White House write a National Biodefense Strategy, which refers to none of the previous plans.

All these contradictory plans have consequences. When Politico noted that the Trump administration was not following the National Security Council’s Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Infectious Disease, which I haven’t even mentioned, the administration responded that they weren’t working with that plan anymore, but with a combination of the Biological Incident Annex to the National Response Framework, the Biodefense Strategy, and something called the Pandemic Crisis Action Plan (or PanCAP), the existence of which, outside of this discussion, I have not been able to confirm.

So many plans only ensure that there is no clear plan—and no accountability. What the federal government needs is nimbleness in responding to new scenarios and clear lines of authority in implementing actions. Thus, the one thing that Congress should not do in response to Covid-19 is to mandate yet more plans for future pandemics.

Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus nursing home policy proves tragic.

The letter was heartbreaking as it recounted the death of an 88-year-old woman in a New York nursing home. But it was also angry and accurate about a strange New York policy that is ­fatally wrongheaded.

“I am wondering who will hold Gov. Cuomo accountable for the deaths of so many older people due to his reckless decision to place covid19 patients in nursing and rehabilitation homes,” the letter began. “I am writing as a daughter who lost her beautiful 88 year old mother who was receiving physical therapy at one such facility.”

The writer, Arlene Mullin, went on to recount examples of the governor promising to protect the elderly because of their known vulnerability. She noted that he named his stay-at-home order after his own mother, Matilda ­Cuomo, and talked several times about protecting her.

“My mother is not expendable and your mother is not expendable and our brothers and sisters are not expendable,” Cuomo said a month ago.

Mullin had another complaint, too — that the media never asked the governor about an order mandating that nursing homes admit and readmit patients who tested positive for the coronavirus, despite the extraordinary number of deaths among the elderly.

That drought ended Monday when The Post’s Bernadette Hogan asked about the policy at ­Cuomo’s daily briefing. His ­answer was stunning.

“That’s a good question. I don’t know,” the governor said.

He turned to Howard Zucker, the state health commissioner, who confirmed the policy, saying “if you are positive, you should be admitted back to a nursing home. The necessary precautions will be taken to protect the other residents there.”

The second part of Zucker’s answer is debatable, the first part is not. The disastrous results speak for themselves.

The taste these bureacraps got of nearly unlimited power overrode their mental ethical limitations -if they had any in the first place- and has let the inner dictator hiding just under the surface of their personality come out in all its glory. We should be thankful that this has occurred at at time when we have a president in office more business minded and attuned to the economy (the cure can not be worse then the disease) than political.

CDC Director Lays the Groundwork for Perpetual Lockdowns and Social Distancing and Economic Depression

CDC Director Robert Redfield gave an interview to the Washington Post on the Wuhan virus panic and he made it clear, as have other so-called public health authorities that these people really have no intention of letting us getting back to our lives and they have willing allies in the national media.

Even as states move ahead with plans to reopen their economies, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Tuesday that a second wave of the novel coronavirus will be far more dire because it is likely to coincide with the start of flu season.

“There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And when I’ve said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don’t understand what I mean.”

“We’re going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time,” he said.

Having two simultaneous respiratory outbreaks would put unimaginable strain on the health-care system, he said. The first wave of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has already killed more than 42,000 people across the country. It has overwhelmed hospitals and revealed gaping shortages in test kits, ventilators and protective equipment for health-care workers.

Seasonality, explained: What warm weather could mean for the novel coronavirus
President Trump has said warm weather could slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, but experts explain it’s too early to know if the virus is seasonal. (John Farrell, Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post)
In a wide-ranging interview, Redfield said federal and state officials need to use the coming months to prepare for what lies ahead. As stay-at-home orders are lifted, officials need to stress the continued importance of social distancing, he said. They also need to massively scale up their ability to identify the infected through testing and find everyone they interact with through contact tracing. Doing so prevents new cases from becoming larger outbreaks.

Asked about protests against stay-at-home orders and calls on states to be “liberated” from restrictions, Redfield said: “It’s not helpful.” The president himself has tweeted encouragements of such protests, urging followers to “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” and “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”

First, let’s strip away some of the bullsh** the Washington Post is trying to peddle. Even the worst hit state (at least according to its own numbers which are highly suspect), New York, was never short of hospital beds, respirators, ICU beds, or staff. In fact, the major overflow facilities represented by the hospital ship, USNS Comfort, and the Javits Center have seen only a handful of patients. Across the country, the number of deaths is at record lows. Below is a data table from my post If Wuhan Virus Is So Bad, Why Are Deaths So Low?

CDC Director Lays the Groundwork for Perpetual Lockdowns and Social Distancing and Economic Depression

This is the same data graphed

CDC Director Lays the Groundwork for Perpetual Lockdowns and Social Distancing and Economic Depression

NOTE: the last week’s data from this year drops precipitously because the data were only 58% complete when I downloaded the dataset. The x axis is not labeled because I’m too lazy to manually insert the labels, they are available on the table.

By itself, this is no big deal. There is no human intervention that is going to eradicate the Wuhan virus, it is part of the North American ecosystem forever. Of course, there is going to be a ‘second wave’ and a ‘third wave’ and a ‘fourth wave’ and an ‘nth wave.’ But this statement does not exist in a vacuum. Let’ go back a couple of days to an interview given by Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Center for Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of the key architects of the national response to the Wuhan virus (read Dr. Fauci Decides He Is Galactic Commander and Warns That Protests Will Delay Reopening the Country). In that post, I cover his statements to the effect than an early opening would create a larger ‘second wave.’ But there are two other equally important points. First, the tests being bought from all sources, like the 500,000 my own RINO governor purchased from South Korea, aren’t terribly reliable. As the entire strategy for opening the country is predicated on widespread testing, this seems important. The other point was that there is no evidence that having had and survived Wuhan (which is probably something that 99+% of the people with it do) gives you any immunity. That is entirely consistent with the finding of more than 30 mutations of Wuhan virus, the corollary to that being that there will be no vaccine for this virus.

So, no immunity and no vaccine. What does that mean? It means the people who foisted this disaster upon us are going to try to make us go through lockdown and ‘social distancing’ and all that other crap again in November and again in March. Forever. They have to push for that because if there is a ‘second wave,’ which there will be, and we don’t shutdown again, then they are going to have to answer some very tough questions as to why we did it this time. And they don’t have any answer to that……..

Police Have Started Revolting Against Draconian Coronavirus Edicts From Local Tyrants

Police chiefs from Texas to Washington are standing up against draconian orders from local leaders demanding strict adherence to extreme social distancing measures to curb the spread of the novel Wuhan coronavirus.

The Houston Police Officers’ Union declared Wednesday that its members would refrain from enforcing local County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s ruling deeming it mandatory for any individual over the age of 10 to wear a mask in public.

“The Houston Police Officers’ Union believes everyone should be wearing a mask in public, in order to protect themselves from the virus and we are encouraging all of our officers to wear a mask,” the union wrote in a statement. “However, we draw the line at the draconian measures Hidalgo has decided to engage in.”

“Our officers work every single day to bridge the gap with our community and earn their trust, we will not stand idly by and allow Hidalgo to tear that bridge down, with her horrific leadership and echo chamber decision making.”

The police union said it had contacted the state attorney general’s office to determine whether Hidalgo’s ruling was even constitutional, noting that until then, members were encouraged to use discretion in enforcement of the measure as resources are already stretched thin from the pandemic.

In Washington, Snohomish County Sheriff Adam Fortney announced Tuesday that his officers would also abstain from enforcement of lockdown orders, joining Franklin County Sheriff J.D. Raymond who said he would not stop churches and business from opening with reasonable distancing measures in place.

“As I have previously stated, I have not carried out any enforcement for the current stay-at-home order,” Fortney wrote on Facebook. “I will always put your constitutional rights above politics or popular opinion. We have the right to peacefully assemble. We have the right to keep and bear arms. We have the right to attend church service of any denomination.”

Fortney challenged Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s lockdown orders as inconsistent, deeming some businesses essential over others. While government construction projects may continue Fortney points out, private contractors remain out of work.

“As I arrive to work at the courthouse, I see landscapers show up each day to install new landscape and maintain our flowerbeds,” Fortney wrote. “However, a father who owns a construction company and works alone while outdoors is not allowed to run his business to make a living to provide for his wife and children?”

“This contradiction is not okay and is bordering on unethical,” said Fortney.

Further east in Michigan, four sheriffs in the northwest part of the mitten also announced last week that they would refuse to enforce Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s lockdown orders which have been the most extreme in the country.

By the stroke of a pen, Whitmer has deemed it illegal for Michiganders to travel “between residences” or buy seeds while lottery tickets remain permitted to purchase.

Whitmer, the sheriffs said in a joint statement, “has created a vague framework of emergency laws that only confuse Michigan citizens.”

“As a result, we will not have strict enforcement of these orders,” the sheriffs wrote. “We will deal with every case as an individual situation and apply common sense in assessing the apparent violation… We believe that we are the last line of defense in protecting your civil liberties.”

As the pandemic over the Wuhan coronavirus stretches into the next month, wreaking havoc on the American economy, an anxious public is losing its patience with increasingly strict lockdowns keeping millions out of work while models have proven inaccurate.

Since the start of the pandemic, more than 22 million Americans have filed for unemployment over just four weeks and protests against shelter-in-place orders have begun to appear nationwide.

Last week, several state governors announced they would allow shelter-in-place orders to expire either on or before April 30 with certain conditions in place to kickstart their stalled economies while keeping the virus at bay.

States preparing partial reopenings include Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, and Texas.

CDC’s Failed Coronavirus Tests Were Tainted With Coronavirus, Feds Confirm

As the new coronavirus took root across America, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent states tainted test kits in early February that were themselves seeded with the virus, federal officials have confirmed.

The contamination made the tests uninterpretable, and—because testing is crucial for containment efforts—it lost the country invaluable time to get ahead of the advancing pandemic.

The CDC had been vague about what went wrong with the tests, initially only saying that “a problem in the manufacturing of one of the reagents” had led to the failure. Subsequent reporting suggested that the problem was with a negative control—that is, a part of the test meant to be free of any trace of the coronavirus as a critical reference for confirming that the test was working properly overall.

Now, according to investigation results reported by The New York Times, federal officials confirm that sloppy laboratory practices at two of three CDC labs involved in the tests’ creation led to contamination of the tests and their uninterpretable results.

“Just tragic”

Shortly after the problems became apparent in early February, the Food and Drug Administration sent Timothy Stenzel, chief of in vitro diagnostics and radiological health, to the CDC to investigate what was going wrong. According to the Times, he found a lack of coordination and inexperience in commercial manufacturing.

Problems that led to the contamination included researchers coming and going from labs working on the test kits without changing their coats and researchers sharing lab space to both assemble test components and handle samples containing the coronavirus.

The CDC said in a statement Saturday to the Times that the agency “did not manufacture its test consistent with its own protocol.” Though the CDC appeared reluctant to admit contamination was at the root of the problem, the Times noted that in a separate statement the CDC seemed to acknowledge such problems, saying the agency has since “implemented enhanced quality control to address the issue and will be assessing the issue moving forward.”

After the CDC first sent its test kit to states in early February, it took the agency around a month to fix the problem. By then, the virus had invaded many communities unimpeded, and any chance that the US had at containing its spread had virtually vanished. By mid-March, many states turned to mitigation efforts, such as social distancing, to try to blunt—rather than prevent—the life-threatening, healthcare-overwhelming effects of COVID-19.

“It was just tragic,” Scott Becker, executive director of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, told the Times. “All that time when we were sitting there waiting, I really felt like, here we were at one of the most critical junctures in public health history, and the biggest tool in our toolbox was missing.”

White House readies push to slash regulations as major part of its coronavirus economic recovery plan

Senior White House and Trump administration officials are planning to launch a sweeping effort in the coming days to repeal or suspend federal regulations affecting businesses, with the expected executive action seen by advisers as a way to boost an economy facing its worst shock in generations, two people familiar with the internal planning said.

The White House-driven initiative is expected to center on suspending federal regulations for small businesses and expanding an existing administration program that requires agencies to revoke two regulations for every new one they issue, the two people said.

While the plan remains in flux, changes could affect environmental policy, labor policy, workplace safety, and health care, among other areas.

The White House is also likely to seek to make permanent some temporary regulations issued by agencies over the past few weeks to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

These policies are likely to alarm Democrats on Capitol Hill and other experts who have long railed against the president’s team and its attempts to shrink federal regulations on environmental and labor issues, among other things.

Despite Pandemic, Churches Persevere, Push Back Against Overreach

As politicians and lawyers argue over emergency powers claimed by government officials, the faithful are finding ways to cope amid aggressive public health orders that make it difficult or impossible to come together in person for worship.

As religious people go about their daily lives, battles are raging in courts across the land about how far governments can go in their efforts to combat the CCP virus.

Some Americans have been appalled at what they say are examples of government overreach. Before Easter Sunday, a federal judge in Kentucky enjoined Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer from enforcing a sweeping social-distancing order that banned drive-in church services.

On April 18, a federal court in Kansas granted a temporary injunction against an executive order limiting church gatherings to 10 people, Fox News reported. The order came a week after the state’s supreme court ruled in favor of Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat whose order was reversed by a Republican-led panel of state lawmakers.

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, a Republican, said he supported the federal court ruling, which he said was “a much-needed reminder that the Constitution is not under a stay-home order and the Bill of Rights cannot be quarantined.”

He added, “The Constitution protects our liberties especially during times of crisis, when history reveals governments too quick to sacrifice rights of the few to calm fears of the many.”

The Trump administration is siding with the churches, which argue First Amendment rights are being abridged by overreaching executive orders by governors and mayors.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr has been monitoring government regulation of religious services. On April 14, he weighed in by issuing a statement.

Even in times of emergency, “the First Amendment and federal statutory law prohibit discrimination against religious institutions and religious believers,” Barr wrote………..

“but we are supposed to believe the climate projections [which have already been shown based on lies] and let them impose the soylent green deal”

After Repeated Failures, It’s Time To Permanently Dump Epidemic Models

The … crisis we face is unparalleled in modern times,” said the World Health Organization’s assistant director….. This was based on a CDC computer model projection predicting as many as 1.4 million deaths from just two countries.

So when did they say this about COVID-19? Trick question: It was actually about the Ebola virus in Liberia and Sierra Leone five years ago, and the ultimate death toll was under 8,000.

With COVID-19 having peaked (the highest date was April 4), despite the best efforts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to increase numbers by first saying any death with the virus could be considered a death from the virus and then again this week by saying a positive test isn’t even needed, you can see where this is going.

Since the AIDS epidemic, people have been pumping out such models with often incredible figures. For AIDS, the Public Health Service announced (without documenting) there would be 450,000 cases by the end of 1993, with 100,000 in that year alone. The media faithfully parroted it. There were 17,325 by the end of that year, with about 5,000 in 1993. SARS (2002-2003) was supposed to kill perhaps “millions,” based on analyses. It killed 744 before disappearing.

Later, avian flu strain A/H5N1, “even in the best-case scenarios” was to “cause 2 (million) to 7 million deaths” worldwide. A British professor named Neil Ferguson scaled that up to 200 million. It killed 440. This same Ferguson in 2002 had projected 50-50,000 deaths from so-called “Mad Cow Disease.” On its face, what possible good is a spread that large? (We shall return to this.) But the final toll was slightly over 200.

In the current crisis the most alarming model, nay probably the most influential in the implementation of the draconian quarantines worldwide, projected a maximum of 2.2 million American deaths and 550,000 United Kingdom deaths unless there were severe restrictions for 18 months or until a vaccine was developed. The primary author: Neil Ferguson. Right, Mad Cow/Avian Flu Fergie.

Then a funny thing happened. A mere nine days after announcing his model, Ferguson said a better number for the U.K. would be only 20,000. The equivalent would be fewer than 80,000 American deaths. Technically, that U.K. number was buried in a table in the report under what might be called “a fantastic case scenario.” But could that reduction possibly reflect a mere nine days of restrictions? No.

Soon all the numbers were tumbling. Yet as late as March 31, the New York Times declared: “White House Projects Grim Toll from Virus” citing White House Coronavirus Task Force head Deborah Birx and director of the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci, who in turn cited a model showing deaths up to 240,000. Still awful, but Birx explicitly backed off the Ferguson projection for which she had previously been the Grey Lady’s pompom girl.

Then suddenly Fauci announced a flat figure of “more like 60,000,” the same number the CDC says died of flu two years ago. Probably not coincidentally, until quite recently the agency said there were 80,000 flu victims that year, before lowering it to 61,000 – presumably because people were using that figure to compare to COVID-19 deaths. In any event, the 1968-1969 “Hong Kong flu” killed an estimated 100,000 Americans, or 165,000 adjusted to today’s population.

Moreover, as noted, the CDC now encourages coding a death of anyone “if the circumstances are compelling” even though they haven’t been tested at all. Yeah, wow; it’s not a “conservative myth.” During flu season, that means a lot of flu victims have magically become COVID-19 victims in addition to people who would have otherwise had cause of death listed as heart attack, diabetes, and other co-morbid conditions………..

If epidemic models were just haphazardly wrong, we would expect about half the time they would be too low. Instead, they’re almost universally vastly too high. This isn’t happenstance but intentional. The single most cynical model is probably one regarding Sweden. Released online after the Swedish epidemic had already peaked, and with deaths at about 1,300, it nonetheless predicted a median of 96,000 Swedish COVID-19 deaths with a maximum of 183,000. WTH?

Basically the Swedes have shown dictatorial methods aren’t needed and thereby pose an incredible threat to all those who claim otherwise……..

That’s not proof that public health interventions are worthless; merely that since the Plague of Athens four centuries B.C. and before, epidemics have risen and fallen quite on their own. Nobody needed Big Brother looking over their shoulder and cracking a whip; nobody needed to implode their economies and leave their citizens with tops reading: “I survived the ‘worst epidemic in history’ and all I have left is this crummy t-shirt.”

The models essentially have three purposes: 1) To satisfy the public’s need for a number, any number; 2) To bring media attention for the modeler; and 3) To scare the crap out of people to get them to “do the right thing.” That can be defined as “flattening the curve” so health care systems aren’t overridden, or encouraging people to become sheeple and accept restrictions on liberties never even imposed during wars. Like Ferguson, all the modelers know that no matter what the low end, headlines will always reflect the high end.

Assuming it’s possible to model an epidemic at all, any that the mainstream press relays will have been designed to promote panic. Take it from Fauci, who early on so eagerly employed them – they are to be ignored. Now and forever.

Governments incur fury by banning safe activities during coronavirus lockdown.

If my sons were to sit on the banks of my local creek in Maryland and cast in a hooked worm, trying to catch a trout or a bass, it would be illegal, even though it has about a 0% chance of spreading the coronavirus. Fishing always requires distancing to avoid lines crossing, and on the average day my sons go fishing there, they see about zero other people.

I cleared a copse of bamboo from my backyard this week, and when I tried to drop it off at the county dump, I was told I wasn’t allowed to thanks to Maryland’s stay-at-home rules. I have much more bamboo than I can fit in all my bins/baskets/buckets, so I wanted to do a dump run today and use curbside pickup for the rest tomorrow. Not allowed.

Here’s the thing: Driving bamboo stalks from my house to Rockville and dumping it at a very, very spaced transfer station poses no possible risk of spreading the coronavirus. When I pressed the governor’s spokesman on this yesterday, he pointed to Gov. Larry Hogan’s stay-at-home order and its exemptions for “essential” activities.

(Had I instead hired a crew of gardeners to clear my bamboo, the state would have allowed them to dump it. I doubt this is safer.)

Just to cut to the chase:

Declassifications Show Durham Is Democrats’ Worst Nightmare.

……. First, one of the big lies promulgated by Mueller & Co. was that the Russians favored Trump. This was always dubious. The dossier makes Trump look terrible and since we now have evidence some of it comes from a Russian source, that the Russians wanted him to win seems pretty idiotic. As always, the Russians wanted to sow dissension.

More importantly, these footnotes expand the investigation considerably beyond the “mere” fudging of FISA applications to surveil Carter Page into areas of treason and sedition.

What in the Sam Hill was the FBI doing dealing with someone, Christopher Steele, they knew was being manipulated by Russian intelligence four months before a presidential election? In other words, they understood in July, or possibly even June 2016, that Steele was compromised, yet they continued with and expanded their investigation based on his information knowing it was false.

Why, if not for seditious or treasonous purposes? Someone has to explain.

Trump halts US funding for World Health Organization as it conducts coronavirus review

The U.S. will suspend funding to the World Health Organization while it reviews the agency’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, President Donald Trump announced Tuesday, saying the international health agency made mistakes that “caused so much death” as the coronavirus spread across the globe.

“Today I’m instructing my administration to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus,” Trump said at a White House press conference.

Trump criticized the international agency’s response to the outbreak, saying “one of the most dangerous and costly decisions from the WHO was its disastrous decision to oppose travel restrictions from China and other nations” that Trump imposed early on in the outbreak.

“Fortunately, I was not convinced and suspended travel from China saving untold numbers of lives,” he said.

It’s unclear exactly what mechanism Trump intends to use to withhold WHO funding, much of which is appropriated by Congress. The president typically does not have the authority to unilaterally redirect congressional funding.

One option might be for Trump to use powers granted to the president under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Under this statute, the president may propose to withhold congressional funds, but it requires congressional approval within 45 days. Absent this approval, the funds must be returned to their original, congressionally mandated purpose after 45 days.

When asked by reporters why the administration is choosing now to withhold funds, Trump said the U.S. has had problems with WHO “for years” and the nation should have done this “a long time ago.”

He said the administration will conduct a “thorough” investigation that should last 60 to 90 days.

“It’s not a lot of money, but it’s not right. So we’ll see,” he said. “This is an evaluation period, but in the meantime, we’re putting a hold on all funds going to World Health. We’ll be able to take that money and channel it to the areas that most need it.”

WHO didn’t immediately return CNBC’s request for comment…………..

 

Kentucky State Police record churchgoers’ license plates at Hillview in-person Easter service

Dozens of families attended Easter service at the Bullitt County church despite an executive order from Gov. Andy Beshear that prohibits mass gatherings in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. Beshear said Friday that anyone who participates in mass gatherings of any type during Easter weekend will be required to self-quarantine for two weeks.

The troopers also placed notices under cars’ windshield wipers that say, “This vehicle’s presence at this location indicates that its occupants are present at a mass gathering prohibited by Orders of the Governor and the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. As a result, this vehicle’s occupants, and anyone they come into contact with, are at risk of contracting COVID-19, a respiratory illness that can be severe and lead to death, particularly for older adults and those with underlying heart, lung, kidney and immunity issues.”

According to Beshear, the license plate information will be forwarded to local health departments, which will then present orders to self-quarantine for 14 days at the car owners’ homes. Failure to comply could result in further enforcement, the notices say.

“I don’t know whether they took our license plates or not; it don’t really matter,” the Rev. Jack Roberts said during Sunday’s service, which was livestreamed on the church’s Facebook page. “Church, I’ll just tell you something: If you get a ticket, if you get a ticket for being in church this morning, bring it to me; my lawyer said he’ll take care of it. It’s garbage; it’s just garbage. I took a picture of my license plate on the back of my car and sent it to the governor yesterday. I just said, ‘Save yourself a trip, right here it is. Ain’t no need in coming out.'”

During his opening remarks Sunday, Roberts acknowledged people who drove from Dayton, Ohio, and two women who drove from South Brunswick, New Jersey, to Kentucky to attend Maryville’s Easter service. Roberts also said that someone scattered “at least one keg, one box” of nails throughout the church’s parking lot before the congregation arrived for service.

Sometimes the clotheads at ATF manage to get their act together

Feds allow for drive-up gun sales to ease dealers’, buyers’ coronavirus worries

In a concession to the coronavirus, gun dealers can now offer their own version of take-out service.

The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, in new guidance to federally licensed firearm retailers, said Friday that dealers can provide drive-up or walk-up service to reduce health risks posed by the coronavirus.

The guidance was issued, the ATF said, in response industry questions about how business transactions could be restricted following the declaration of a national health emergency.

Licensees “may carry out the requested activities through a drive-up or walk-up window or doorway where the customer is on the licensee’s property, on the exterior of the brick-and-mortar structure at the address listed on the license,” the ATF said in a Friday bulletin.

Transactions may not be carried from “a nearby space” that is not part of the dealers’ property unless they are participating in qualified gun shows.

Larry Keane, general counsel for the firearms industry trade group National Shooting Sports Foundation, said Friday that the organization raised the issue with the ATF more than two weeks ago as dealers sought to navigate various government orders limiting business activity.

What gall.
I am impressed though, being audacious enough to ask for that much.

United Nations Wants 10% of Entire Planet’s Annual Income in Fund for Coronavirus Response

The United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, has announced the creation of a fund for addressing the global coronavirus pandemic — and he is simultaneously asking nations to contribute the equivalent of at least 10 percent of the annual income of the entire planet to a massive “human-centered, innovative and coordinated stimulus package” that would be administered at the international level. Although Guterres doesn’t state it explicitly, he seems to be connecting the new fund, which he calls a “dedicated COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund,” with the massive stimulus package plan, announcing both measures in the same press release.

If countries were to accept the plan, the United Nations or some similar coordinating agency would be given the equivalent of approximately 8.7 trillion USD, an unprecedented amount that would be 2,900 times greater than the UN’s annual budget of 3 billion USD.

The proposed plan would effectively place a global agency, presumably the UN itself, in charge of propping up the economies of the world during the coronavirus crisis, placing it in charge of 10% of global income.

Pandemic Exposes Dangers of So-Called “Universal” Background Checks

As the COVID-19 pandemic makes its way across the country, Americans are getting an important lesson in the dangers of placing a prior restraint on the exercise of a constitutional right. The vast increase in those seeking protection in the Second Amendment during this period of uncertainty has caused the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) and Point of Contact State background check systems to buckle. Worse, some jurisdictions that have criminalized the private transfer of firearms have also shut down access to gun stores or their state criminal background check system. This lethal combination of misguided policies has made it impossible for millions of Americans to acquire, or even borrow or lend, firearms during this moment of crisis.

In peddling so-called “universal” background checks, anti-gun activists and politicians claim such checks are instant, and therefore don’t encumber Second Amendment rights. For instance, according to Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) firearm background checks take about 90 seconds.

Gun owners know that for many law-abiding individuals NICS checks, let alone point of contact state checks, have never been instant. In the 2018 NICS Operations Report, ​the FBI noted that 30 percent of all NICS checks were not “instant determinations.” The document explained that 20 percent of all checks required some additional analysis to complete, while 10 percent were delayed for further research. The problem overwhelmingly burdened law-abiding gun buyers, as only 1.21 percent of all checks resulted in a denial.

The simple facts outlined in the annual NICS Operations Report have not been enough to shame gun control advocates into dropping their “background checks are instant” talking point. However, the recent experience with firearms background checks during the COVID-19 outbreak should be enough to put their false claim to rest for good.

On March 17, the National Shooting Sports Foundation summarized the state of NICS in a message to federal firearms licensees (gun dealers). NSSF explained,

According to NICS, there are delays in the system due to an astronomical volume of transactions over the last several days. While much of the NICS System is automated and yields an immediate “proceed” or “deny” determination, transactions that result in a delayed status require the work of NICS examiners to investigate whether the transaction should be approved or not. With daily volumes roughly double that of last year, the NICS team is unable to begin investigations on all delays within three business days, creating a backlog in the delayed checks.

Colorado, a state that criminalized private firearm transfers in 2013, is a Point of Contact State where the Colorado Bureau of Investigation is tasked with performing firearms background checks. According to the CBI, as of March 24, background checks were taking four days. According to a report from the Reno Gazette, in Nevada, a state that criminalized private firearm transfers in 2019, “the onslaught of background check requests has made it virtually impossible to get through on the state’s Point of Contact Firearms Unit phone line.​”​ Due to these states’ prohibitions on private firearms transfers, the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding residents are at the mercy of an overwhelmed government bureaucracy.

The situation is even graver in jurisdictions that, through a combination of laws that criminalize the private transfer of firearms and virus-induced shutdowns, have foreclosed the Second Amendment right to acquire a firearm.

On March 21, the New Jersey State Police issued the following message to Federal Firearms Licensees.

On Saturday, March 21, 2020, Governor Phil Murphy announced he is putting New Jersey in lockdown to combat the spread of coronavirus. Per Executive Order 107, he is ordering the residents of New Jersey to stay home, directing all non-essential retail businesses closed to the public. At this time, the order includes New Jersey Firearms State Licensed Dealers. The New Jersey State Police NICS Unit is directing the vendor of the NICS Online Application (NICUSA) to turn off the NICS Online Services for submitting NICS transactions by eliminating the “Request Form” button, effective 9:00 pm EST, Saturday, March 21, 2020. You will still have the ability to view the message board and the status of previously submitted transactions. This “Request Form” feature will remain off until further order by Governor Murphy.

New Jersey is a Point of Contact state where the New Jersey State Police are tasked with performing all firearm background checks.

In order to acquire a rifle or a shotgun in New Jersey a prospective owner must obtain a Firearms Purchase Identification Card. N.J.S.A. 2C:58-3d. requires that a background check be conducted before an FPIC is issued.

Likewise, in order to acquire a handgun, a prospective owner must obtain a Permit to Purchase a Handgun (PPH). The PPH is also issued pursuant to a background check.

Up until 2018, an FPIC or PPH holder could acquire a firearm from another private individual without further government interference. The logic being that the FPIC or PPH holder had already been thoroughly vetted by the government.

However, on June 13, 2018, Gov. Murphy signed A2757. This legislation added a background check requirement for every firearm transfer on top of the existing licensing requirements.

Therefore, with the March 21 change in state police procedure, New Jerseyans are not able to acquire firearms.

The situation is similar in Washington. In 2014, the state has criminalized the private transfer of firearms. RCWA 9.41.113​ requires that parties to a firearms transfer “shall complete the sale or transfer through a licensed dealer” pursuant to a background check.

On March 23, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) issued an order closing all “non-essential” businesses due to the threat of the Wuhan virus. The shutdown included firearms dealers. The governor’s closure order, coupled with existing Washington background check law has made it so Washingtonians cannot acquire or transfer firearms during this crisis.

It should be noted that New Jersey and Washington’s laws do not just require background checks on all firearm sales, but also on other types of firearm transfers. Under both state’s laws, a gun owner could not lend their friend or neighbor a firearm for protection during this time of crisis without first conducting a background check.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the dangers inherent in laws that require government permission in order to exercise a constitutional right. Such laws make law-abiding Americans dependent upon the government’s ability and willingness to grant such permission – something many governments have been unable to ensure. This crisis has shown that Americans cannot trust the government to act as a gatekeeper on their fundamental rights. Therefore, Americans must jealously guard their right to privately transfer firearms without government interference.​

NSSF THANKS TRUMP ADMINISTRATION FOR INDUSTRY’S CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE DESIGNATION
Department of Homeland Security includes firearm manufacturing, distribution, retail and ranges as essential critical services.

NEWTOWN, Conn. — The National Shooting Sports Foundation® (NSSF®), the trade association for the firearm and ammunition industry, is grateful for the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) inclusion of the firearm industry’s manufacturing, distribution, retail and range businesses as essential critical services that should remain open during the COVID-19 pandemic. NSSF has been working closely with the Trump Administration and DHS to convey the important role the firearm and ammunition industry performs for national security, public safety, and the ability for continued exercise of individual constitutional liberties and self-protection.

“We are deeply appreciative to the Trump Administration and Department of Homeland Security for recognizing the vital role our industry fulfills in our nation,” said Lawrence G. Keane, Senior Vice President and General Counsel for NSSF. “We have seen over the past week hundreds of thousands, even millions of Americans choosing to exercise their right to keep and bear arms to ensure their safety and the safety of loved ones during these uncertain times. Americans must not be denied the ability to exercise that right to lawfully purchase and acquire firearms during times of emergency. This guidance from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is crucial to governors and local officials as they craft the orders to preserve public health.”

The firearm industry continues to provide small arms to the U.S. military, even during times of crisis. The national security mission remains and U.S. Armed Forces, with rare exception, rely upon domestically manufactured small arms. Most law enforcement departments rely on local firearm retailers to supply them with their firearms to perform the critical duty of providing for community safety. Law-abiding individuals also rely on these retailers for the ability to purchase their firearms and ammunition. It is also where retailers are able to explain the responsibilities of safe firearm ownership and storage and new gun owners are able to access ranges to learn to safely handle their firearms.

Guidance on the Essential Critical Infrastructure Workforce:
Ensuring Community and National Resilience in COVID-19
Response
Version 2.0 (March 28, 2020)
THE IMPORTANCE OF ESSENTIAL CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE WORKERS

Functioning critical infrastructure is imperative during the response to the COVID-19 emergency for both public health and safety as well as community well-being. Certain critical infrastructure industries have a special responsibility in these times to continue operations.
This advisory guidance and accompanying list are intended to support state, local, tribal, territorial and industry partners in identifying the critical infrastructure sectors and the essential workers needed to maintain the services and functions Americans depend on daily and that need to be able to operate resiliently during the COVID-19 pandemic response.
This document gives advisory guidance on defining essential critical infrastructure workers. Promoting the ability of such workers to continue to work during periods of community restriction, access management, social distancing, or closure orders/directives is crucial to community resilience and continuity of essential functions.

IDENTIFYING ESSENTIAL CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE WORKERS
The following list of identified essential critical infrastructure workers is intended to be overly inclusive reflecting the diversity of industries across the United States.

LAW ENFORCEMENT, PUBLIC SAFETY, AND OTHER FIRST RESPONDERS

• Workers supporting the operation of firearm or ammunition product manufacturers, retailers,importers, distributors, and shooting ranges.

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

“Never trust a politician of any party farther than you can throw them.”—
Miles Fortis

DOJ Is Asking for the Authority to Detain You Indefinitely Without Trial

The Justice Department is asking Congress for the power to ask chief judges to detain people indefinitely, without trial, in “emergencies.”

DoJ isn’t advertising the request. Politico obtained some documents that detail the department’s request to Congress.

Documents reviewed by POLITICO detail the department’s requests to lawmakers on a host of topics, including the statute of limitations, asylum and the way court hearings are conducted. POLITICO also reviewed and previously  reported on documents seeking the authority to extend deadlines on merger reviews and prosecutions.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on the documents.

Trump critics would have a field day with these proposals. It plays into their darkest nightmares about Trump. And frankly, it sounds like most of these proposals wouldn’t pass muster in a Democratic-controlled House.

In one of the documents, the department proposed that Congress grant the attorney general power to ask the chief judge of any district court to pause court proceedings “whenever the district court is fully or partially closed by virtue of any natural disaster, civil disobedience, or other emergency situation.”

The proposal would also grant those top judges broad authority to pause court proceedings during emergencies. It would apply to “any statutes or rules of procedure otherwise affecting pre-arrest, post-arrest, pre-trial, trial, and post-trial procedures in criminal and juvenile proceedings and all civil process and proceedings,” according to draft legislative language the department shared with Congress. In making the case for the change, the DOJ document wrote that individual judges can currently pause proceedings during emergencies, but that their proposal would make sure all judges in any particular district could handle emergencies “in a consistent manner.”

What about habeas corpus?

“Not only would it be a violation of that, but it says ‘affecting pre-arrest,’” said Norman L. Reimer, the executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “So that means you could be arrested and never brought before a judge until they decide that the emergency or the civil disobedience is over. I find it absolutely terrifying. Especially in a time of emergency, we should be very careful about granting new powers to the government.”

Mind you, these would be permanent changes in the law. They won’t suddenly go away when the emergency is over.

Reimer said the possibility of chief judges suspending all court rules during an emergency without a clear end in sight was deeply disturbing.

“That is something that should not happen in a democracy,” he said.

I think many of us would agree with that. The ancient “liberty vs. security” argument notwithstanding, emergency powers should be wielded with enormous care and should always — always — be temporary. You don’t need much of an imagination to see where this could lead.

It’s unclear how serious DoJ is about advancing these proposals. The documents may just represent unlikely scenarios that would need to be addressed in a legal way. Perhaps DoJ lawyers don’t want to let a crisis go to waste and want to push for these changes while Congress might be open to them.

Regardless, I’ll stick with Ben Franklin: ” They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

 

IRS extends tax filing deadline to July 15 as coronavirus spreads

The IRS is extending the federal income tax filing deadline to July 15 as part of a growing effort to stem the financial pain from the coronavirus pandemic, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced Friday.

The move gives Americans three months more than they normally would have to file their income tax returns for the 2019 tax year, without incurring interest or penalties.

This is what you get when you let the state get in the middle of the NICS check process, not to mention the opportunity it gives the state to form a registry.

Pennsylvania State Police background check system crashes

Guns and ammunition have been flying off shelves at Lehigh Valley firearms businesses, just as supermarkets and other stores have been stripped bare by Americans panicked by the coronavirus crisis.

“I think everybody’s running scared, that’s pretty much it,” Eric Koehler, owner of Eagle Arms Sports Shop, said Wednesday from his Upper Macungie Township store, blaming in part the COVID-19. “The markets are collapsing, the virus is here, and blah blah. It’s just too many things for people to accept at one time, you know?”

Friends Teragah Serrano of Bethlehem and Stacy Toro of Allentown were among those shopping Wednesday afternoon at Eagle Arms.

Serrano, who bought a 9 mm and a .38-caliber handgun, joked, “I’m getting ready for the zombie apocalypse.”

Pennsylvanians are buying so many firearms that on Tuesday they crashed the state’s system for instant background checks.

Maj. Gary Dance, director of the Pennsylvania State Police Bureau of Records and Identification, said “technology challenges” and a surge in requests took the system offline.

“Despite the downtime, PICS completed 4,342 transactions on March 17, compared to 1,359 transactions on the corresponding Tuesday in March 2019,” Dance said in a statement.

That represents a 219% increase from a year ago.

Jan Rogers Kniffen, CEO of J. Rogers Kniffen World Wide Enterprises, said firearms sales are up 50%, while ammunition is up 65% in the United States since the pandemic hit.

A sample of area firearm store owners in the Lehigh Valley indicates the region is following the state and national spike in consumer purchases. At least two store owners, including Peter Ratajczyk, president and CEO of 507 Outfitters in Easton, said they were too busy Wednesday afternoon to answer questions, and others did not return email messages.

Dance said transactions include background checks for purchases, transfers, evidence returns and license-to-carry applications.

State police said the server issue was responsible for the outage from 8 to 11:30 a.m. Tuesday. A second outage happened 5-8:40 p.m., due to a backlog of requests.

“Pennsylvania State Police is working with its vendor to increase processing power to avoid future backlogs and will adjust staffing as needed to meet demand,” Dance said. “Rumors circulating on social media that PICS has been shut down as part of the commonwealth’s response to the COVID-19 epidemic are false. PICS is, and will remain, operational.”

The state’s instant check system is used by county sheriffs, police chiefs and licensed firearms dealers in Pennsylvania to determine an individual’s legal ability to get a license to carry firearms or obtain a firearm through a purchase or transfer.