"John Kerry’s State Department Funneled MILLIONS To His Daughter’s Nonprofit"

Daily Caller:  More than $9 million of Department of State money has been funneled through the Peace Corps to a nonprofit foundation started and run by Secretary of State John Kerry’s daughter, documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation show.

The Department of State funded a Peace Corps program created by Dr. Vanessa Kerry and officials from both agencies, records show. The Peace Corps then awarded the money without competition to a nonprofit Kerry created for the program. (more)

What Did Obama Know and When Did he Know it?

AP:  "Many donors to Clinton Foundation met with her at State"

More than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money - either personally or through companies or groups - to the Clinton Foundation. It's an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president.

At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs, according to a review of State Department calendars released so far to The Associated Press. Combined, the 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million. At least 40 donated more than $100,000 each, and 20 gave more than $1 million.

Donors who were granted time with Clinton included an internationally known economist who asked for her help as the Bangladesh government pressured him to resign from a nonprofit bank he ran; a Wall Street executive who sought Clinton's help with a visa problem and Estee Lauder executives who were listed as meeting with Clinton while her department worked with the firm's corporate charity to counter gender-based violence in South Africa. 

Emails reveal an apperent Hillary pay-for-play scheme

NY Post:   In an April 2009 message to Abedin and Mills, Doug Band, who was overseeing the Clinton Foundation at the time, urgently asked for a meeting between a top US official and Gilbert Chagoury — a major donor to the Clinton family charity.

“We need to speak to the substance person re Lebanon. As you know, he’s [Chagoury] key guy there and to us and is loved in lebanon,” wrote Band, in a clear attempt to suck up to a big donor to the foundation.

“Its jeff feltman,” Abedin wrote back, referring to America’s former ambassador to Lebanon who went on to become assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs in August 2009.

“I’m sure he knows him. Ill talk to jeff,” said Abedin.

Less than 20 minutes later, Band replied, “Better if you call him. Now preferable. This is very important. He’s awake I’m sure.”

Chagoury is a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire who gave the Clinton Foundation between $1 million and $5 million. In 2009, he also pledged $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative.

The construction magnate, a close pal of Bill Clinton’s, has financial interests around the world. He was convicted in Switzerland in 2000 of money laundering and paid a $66 million fine in a plea deal.

Abedin’s quick response to Band paid dividends down the road.

In June 2011, Band formed the Teneo consulting firm, with Bill Clinton as the paid honorary chairman. And in 2012, Abedin won permission to work as a $15,000-a-month consultant for Teneo in a special arrangement that allowed her to remain on the State Department payroll. (read more)

"Obama.... Hits A New Low"

George Leef: One remarkably brazen instance I recently learned about is his administration’s funneling of money from lawsuit settlements into the pockets of left-wing activist groups. It makes you wonder if there is anything this administration won’t try to get away with.

Following the collapse of the housing bubble, the federal government initiated several grandstanding, politically-motivated lawsuits against big banks for their allegedly fraudulent conduct with regard to secondary market mortgage-backed securities. Rather than fight the feds and their almost bottomless well of taxpayer dollars, several of the defendants decided to cut their losses and settle.

That enabled federal prosecutors to claim victory and wave some prominent scalps. Siphoning off billions of bank capital is bad enough, but the rule of law problem emerges in two of the settlement agreements, under which the banks (Citigroup and Bank of America) were able to reduce their penalties by making “donations” to favored left-wing activist groups.

Mollie Hemigway in the Federalist in 2014, exploring Vaclav Havel’s 1978 essay on Czechoslovakia under Soviet control, “The Power of the Powerless.” (source Link from Instapundit)

To explain how dissent works, Havel introduced the manager of a hypothetical fruit-and-vegetable shop who places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: “Workers of the world, unite!” He’s not actually enthusiastic about the sign’s message. It’s just one of the things that people in a post-totalitarian system do even if they “never think about” what it means. He does it because everyone does it. It’s what you do to get along in life and live “in harmony with society.” (For our purposes, you can imagine that slogan is a red equal sign that you put up on your Facebook page.)

The subtext of the grocer’s sign is “I do what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me.” It protects him from supervisors above and informants below.

Havel is skeptical of ideology. He says that dictatorships can just use raw power, but “the more complex the mechanisms of power become, the larger and more stratified the society they embrace, and the longer they have operated historically … the greater the importance attached to the ideological excuse.” We don’t have a dictatorship, obviously, but we do have complex mechanisms of power and larger and more stratified society.

In any case, individuals need not believe the lies of an ideology so much as behave as though they do, or at least tolerate them in silence or get along with those who work with them. “For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system,” Havel says.

Montana shorted on the payola

Collusion between the Clinton campaign and the DNC allowed Hillary Clinton to buy the loyalty of 33 state Democratic parties last summer. Montana was one of those states. It sold itself for $64,100.

...The Super Delegates now defying democracy with their insistent refusal to change their votes to Sanders in spite of a handful of overwhelming Clinton primary losses in their own states, were arguably part of that deal.

...In other words, a single donor, by giving 10,000 dollars a year to each signatory state could legally give an extra $330,000 a year for two years to the Hillary Victory Fund. For each donor, this raised their individual legal cap on the Presidential campaign to $660,000 if given in both 2015 and 2016. And to one million, three hundred and 20 thousand dollars if an equal amount were also donated in their spouse’s name.

...Our state party leadership signed a deal with a woman who out here, on our turf, possibly wouldn’t last a week. They superdelegates signed away our unobstructed right to choose which Democratic candidate we supported for President. Given that we have 15 pledged delegates and seven superdelegates, we have lost our absolute right to have superdelegate endorsements proportional to the wishes of the primary voters.

For what? Sixty four thousand and one hundred dollars? Which we had to give back? That’s a pretty poor excuse for selling out our right to our own choice."

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/01/how-hillary-clinton-bought-the-loyalty-of-33-state-democratic-parties/

h/t AllenS

"Judge threatens subpoena against Clinton over emails"

Washington Times: A federal judge warned Tuesday that he may have to subpoena former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s entire secret email account, saying he has real questions about whether the Obama administration gave her special treatment.

In the interim, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said he was granting discovery to Judicial Watch, a public interest law firm who’s sued to get a look at the emails, meaning the group will be able to demand the State Department explain who approved Mrs. Clinton’s server, how many officials knew about it, and what accommodations they made to her after her emails become a public issue.

And the judge said he is “inclined” to issue a subpoena eventually, forcing the department to go back to Mrs. Clinton and demand she turn over the entire clintonemail.com system she and top aide Huma Abedin used during their time in the department. He withheld that order for now, saying he will wait to see what discovery produces, but said he’s concerned with the chain of events that led to the emails being shrouded in secrecy for so many years.

“How on earth can the court conclude there is not at minimum a reasonable suspicion of bad faith,” Judge Sullivan said.

In the meantime, Washington Examiner has a story saying released Clinton emails may show aides try to hand pick State Department's inspector general.

Hillary Clinton's private emails indicate the former secretary of state and her closest aides may have played a role in selecting inspectors general that oversaw work from their agency.

In a 2010 exchange between Clinton and Cheryl Mills, then her chief of staff, the two discussed an unnamed "IG candidate" and whether he would be a good fit for the agency.

Margaret Carpenter, a former official at the U.S. Agency for International Development, wrote to key Clinton aides in March 2010 to note that "Cheryl approved nominating" an individual, whose name was redacted, to an inspector general position and asked how to proceed in an email made public Friday evening that was first flagged by the Wall Street Journal.  "Let me know if you DON'T want to proceed," Mills told Clinton.

DOJ will not bring charges against Lois Lerner

[lois lerner] News.

I cannot read, for I must pray instead.

But my other eye is reading search results anyway.

Washington Times -- 1 hour ago The IRS did mishandle tea party and conservative groups nonprofit applications, but their behavior didn't break any laws, the Justice ...

Mediate repeats the headline

Daily caller repeats the headline

Fox News adds "and others will not be charged"

All the headlines say the same thing, the Department of Justice found nothing illegal.

For many observers too diffuse to number and account, and for reasons that vary with each person trust in government generally, its departments running roughshod, is diminished incrementally, severely, and that distrust and accumulative mistrust, devolves to the people and to the party that produces it.

Now I must pray. "Lord please smite these surly sisters. Cause their skin to boil and blister. Make their hair fall out in clumps and make their bulk shrivel and waste, and Lord, please do these wonderful things with haste."

Lord: Knock it off. She's none of your business.

But how can I go on with this social injustice unpunished? This perversion of government by political operatives?

Lord: I said, she is her own business. Mind yours.

But, but, she IS my, but, but, but

Lord: Shut up. Eh, peace be upon you. Just know regarding what matters her soul is chewed up. Take care now that not happen to you.

"Fast moving bad news builds prosperity"

Glenn Reynolds:

Nassim Nicholas Taleb recently tweeted: "The free-market system lets you notice the flaws and hides its benefits. All other systems hide the flaws and show the benefits.”

This drew a response: "The most valuable property of the price mechanism is as a reliable mechanism for delivering bad news." These two statements explain a lot about why socialist systems fail pretty much everywhere but get pretty good press, while capitalism has delivered a truly astounding results but is constantly besieged by detractors...

Last paragraph.

Markets make people better off, but they don’t provide sufficient opportunities for politicians to extract bribes and intellectuals to feel better about themselves. This explains why they’re unpopular with politicians and intellectuals. The real question is why anyone else listens to the self-interested claims of politicians and intellectuals. Maybe because the subject of what works and what doesn't in economics is mostly written by journalists?

"How Deval Patrick secretly diverted millions to off-budget accounts"

"Former Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration secretly diverted nearly $27 million in public money to off-budget accounts that paid for a $1.35 million trade junket tab, bloated advertising contracts, and a deal with a federally subsidized tourism venture backed by U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, a Herald investigation has found."

The maneuver to fatten the hidden “trust” 

accounts with millions from state quasi-public agencies allowed Patrick to skirt the state Legislature and evade state budget cutbacks during the recession, the Herald found.

Via Instapundit who said...

Deval was the template for Obama, in imagery, in bypassing the legislature, and in massive crony socialism. Not surprisingly, his administration ended badly.

Not so sharp-eyed Ex-FIFA official

Fooled by satire: Indicted Ex-FIFA official accuses U.S. of having a double standard, cites "The Onion" http://t.co/pXGRy7qLKR

— Yahoo News (@YahooNews) May 31, 2015

Ugh

BLM closes shop in Clark county Nevada.

For now.

 BLM backing down, says the Sheriff from creating an unsightly war-like scene, rallying opposition from all corners out in the open, and that is the part that cheers my heart -- citizens spending their own money using their own resources to converge and take visible action. But, surely there will be a way to squeeze out the rancher later quietly without creating such a fuss so damaging to public relations.

The county is shown unwilling to challenge Federal grab, Nevada is shown unwilling to back its citizens in the face of Federal land grab and manipulations. The thing is, the land-owning family is more steady than Local and State and Federal governments throughout. From territory to state, through federal government changing its own rules, snapping the rugs, this way and that, all around the landowner family, surrounding the family with its unsteadiness through time and through generations, switching arrangements as they go and laws and Department composition allowing for corruption in full bloom today, while the family stays steady doing what ranchers do. And even as government Departments grab the rancher's land and herd up his cattle they are elsewhere measuring his stock farts and dreaming up ways to tax him further, resulting in ranching altogether more difficult were it not for steady families.

Well played, Cliven Bundy, well played.

Hey! I just now thought of something. Wanna see something? This is a package aged bone-in rib-eye steak sitting in the refrigerator, mustn't freeze a thing like this...

...so no slouch of a steak and you can expect it to be expensive, up to pay a hundred bucks in a restaurant, but not this expensive raw. It's only a LB, not a side.  But I heard the guy say "aged beef" and that made me not care because it saves me a trip to Oliver's. I bought it anyway. But this kind of brutal government dictatorial and frankly unsteady activity, bearing down on ranchers militaristically like this, roping off "free speech zones" is effrontry to even faint-blooded Americans and measuring cow farts and deciding for global warming concerns or for vegetarian concerns or for whatever concern our most fiercely compulsive activists drawn to government dream up for us are the reasons why this beef is this expensive.

That and the dollar jacked with simultaneously.

I started off differently. Earlier I was loading 6 gallons of milk into a trolly when a bald man rolled up. This was two days ago. It seemed I am in his way and I do have gallons spread out on the floor in front of the cooler. "Would you like a gallon of milk?" I offered cheerfully.

"Are you really going to drink all that? 

Teutonic accent. Mess with him. "Yes." His eyes visibly widened. "I drink a gallon a day." He honestly had nothing to say to that obsenity. The corners of his mouth went downward. "But I'm trying to cut back to half a gallon." His face tightened. "In chocolate form."

"Oh."

His face relaxed and he rolled off. I lied. Didn't mention freezing it, but faking was fun.

Sochi Olympics preparation exceeds $50 billion; corruption blamed

"The Games, which begin Friday, rank as the most expensive in Olympic history with an estimated cost of more than $50 billion and counting.

A recent study by a Russian watchdog group alleges that organizers paid far more than the going rate for numerous venues built in and around the Black Sea resort. One former official fled the country and has been accused of embezzlement.

"Athletes are not the only people who compete in Sochi," the Anti-Corruption Foundation report stated. "Officials and businessmen also took part in the Games and turned them into a source of income.""

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Do you still get excited about the Olympics? I appreciate the decision to stagger them every two years, alternating Summer and Winter. Which one is your favorite?

"Census ‘faked’ 2012 election jobs report"

"In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington."

The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.

And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it.

Jack Welch, former GE CEO, raised questions, at the time, in a tweet, which, Chris Matthews and Anderson Cooper chose to focus on the tone of the tweet and not so much on the allegation. 

Just two years before the presidential election, the Census Bureau had caught an employee fabricating data that went into the unemployment report, which is one of the most closely watched measures of the economy.

And a knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond that one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today.

“He’s not the only one,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous for now but is willing to talk with the Labor Department and Congress if asked.

NY Post, Update: "House probes Census over ‘fake’ results"

Gangs and Politicians in Chicago: An Unholy Alliance

Violent gang crime in Chicago has been a constant feature of news reports for years.  Most of it is gun-related crime; homicides caused by people shooting other people.  We hear of school kids being killed, toddlers and families in parks being killed, people walking on the street being killed, gang bangers being killed by other gang bangers.  The number of homicides is especially high in Chicago's gang-ridden south side.

In 2012, three hundred ten American service members were killed in Afghanistan, while there were five hundred thirty-two homicides in Chicago.

The cause of most of the violent crime is drug dealers, or more specifically, organized gangs of drug dealers fighting over turf, territory, and money.  A lot of money, millions and millions of dollars.  Yet Chicago has a large and powerful police department with more than 12,000 sworn officers.  How can such a high level of violet crime persist in a City with a huge law enforcement presence?

Much, much more after the jump.  You'll want to read it all.

Wisconsin professor, 163 trips, 542 days

And it was all business.

What kind of business, monkey business?

None of your business.

This is my problem, professor.  I'm going to pretend I am speaking directly.

You work for a State College. It is your job and your employer is the State and the State extends to the edges and everybody there is taxed for paying for your job, yet you behave as if you are paid by somebody else. And you are overly expensive. Not only are, let's say half,  those people not getting their money-worth,  you are actually damaging their interests and you know it. 

There is a word for that. Where individuals take up positions within State government, then engage in "politically correct" speech policies, and enforce them, and exclusionary hiring practices once lodged there, and then use that position to advance the interests of Party over the interests of State, loose sense of the relationship between employer, the people of the State, Republican, Democrat, Independent, uninvolved, or in their minds blend those interests so thoroughly they become indistinguishable. There is a word for that. Come on, you're a professor, help me out here, um, um…

Sociologist, indeed. You could study yourself. How society allows itself to be duped. You park bad.

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