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Top 5 Most Ridiculous Reactions To Congress Passing Tax Bills

By
Gustavo
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0

At 2 a.m. Saturday morning, America, democracy, and all the “poor” people died, at least to hear the media and liberals tell it. In reality, the Senate barreled toward passing one of the most significant tax reforms in three decades, passing their version by a sliver, 51-49.

The bill is conventional in that it’s neither the best thing since legislation began nor the death knell of all humanity. But that didn’t stop liberals from acting like Republicans had choked them by pushing a 479-page bill down their throats. Here are the ridiculous reactions we’ve seen so far.

1. GOP Is Literally Killing People By Passing a Tax Bill

The tax bills roll back several aspects of the current tax code, eliminating some major tax preferences and limiting others, like the state and local tax deduction. In its current form, the bill drops the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, which is incredible.

This Forbes writer says, “By doubling the standard deduction from $6,350 for single taxpayers/ $12,700 for married filing jointly to $12,400/$24,800, while simultaneously gutting the majority of itemized deductions, it is estimated that roughly 94 percent of taxpayers will claim the standard deduction in 2018.”

Still, some insisted basic procedural changes like this are tantamount to criminal activity, even murder—with a guillotine, no less.

https://twitter.com/tobybot/status/937362982715064321

While lower-income earners can’t get as big a tax rate slash because they pay by far the smallest share of U.S. taxes, and most pay no income taxes at all, other provisions will likely affect them positively. Still:

Ma’am, it’s a tax bill. It doesn’t do anything specifically to Medicaid or Medicare.

2. It’s Vile to Let People Keep More of Their Earnings

Under both bills, middle class and rich people will pay less in taxes. This is only a problem if you believe it’s fair to tax them at much higher rates than the rest of the country. Really, breaks for them are a much-deserved respite, as such folks have been paying the most income taxes for decades.

Besides, it’s almost impossible to cut taxes at all without cutting taxes for those who earn more than the national median, as these folks pay nearly all income taxes, period. As this Forbes piece again explains, “Under the Senate bill, the richest 1 percent — those earning more than $700,000 — will enjoy an increase in after-tax income in 2018 of 2.2 percent, and an average savings of $34,000 (by comparison, the middle class will see an increase of 1 percent – 1.5 percent in after-tax income in 2018).”

Naturally, liberals are angry at this slight reprieve in unequal taxation.

https://twitter.com/JosephKahn/status/937592818226384896

3. Claiming Jesus Would Hate This Bill

One of the most absurd reactions came from liberals who tout abortion as a pillar of their party yet claim this tax bill doesn’t represent Jesus’ values. It appears that liberals only pull out Jesus’ teachings when it’s a convenient talking point, and ignore him on other points, such as the personhood of the unborn and the immorality of theft.

4. Taking Less of People’s Earnings Is ‘Theft’

It’s not clear how freeing up some of the hard-earned cash Americans who fall into specific tax brackets earn robs other people of funds, but according to some people, it does. So either math is hard or it’s just easier to spew nonsense than understand basic economics. The tax bill is a lot of things, and it certainly isn’t perfect, but thievery is an overdramatic and just plain false charge.

5. We’re No Longer A Democracy Because Representatives Passed Bills

For the party that hardly seems to understand what democracy, means let alone appreciate this form of government, it’s bizarre to see liberals insist that duly elected representatives passing a bill with far fewer shenanigans than passing the sacrosanct Obamacare is somehow undemocratic.

https://twitter.com/RonCharles/status/936767758087442432

Democrats Corrupt American Leaders To Create Hysteria

By
Gustavo
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0

Whenever the rare threat of a passable Republican bill emerges, we learn from Democrats that thousands, or perhaps millions, of lives, are at stake. Once it passes, we learn that America is over. Taxes? Healthcare? Bogus international treaties? Internet regulations that were only instituted last year? It doesn’t matter. These days, the rhetoric is always apocalyptic and always bellicose.

How did so many liberals convince themselves that tax reform (a rare cut that is, according to sometime-reliable Washington Post fact checkers, only the eighth largest in history) signals the implosion of American life? Everyone tends to dramatize the consequences of policy for effect, of course, but a Democratic Party is drifting towards Bernie-ism is far more likely to perceive cuts in taxation as limiting state control and thus an attack on all decency and morality. Taxation is the finest tool of redistribution, so it’s understandable.

There is a parallel explanation for the hysterics. With failure comes frustration, and frustration ratchets up the panic-stricken rhetoric. It’s no longer enough to hang nefarious personal motivations on your political opponents — although it certainly can’t hurt! — you have to corrupt language and ideas to imbue your ham-fisted arguments with some basic plausibility.

Liberal columnists, for example, will earnestly argue that Republicans, who at this moment control the Senate, the House of Representatives, and White House thanks to our free and fair elections, are acting undemocratically when passing bills. As you know, democracy means raising taxes on the rich. Just ask all the folks who told us democracy died over the weekend.

But the most visible and ubiquitous of the Left’s contorted contentions about the tax bill deliberately muddles the concept of giving and the concept of not taking enough. This distortion is so embedded in contemporary rhetoric that I’m not sure most of the foot soldiers even think it’s odd to say anymore.

“You really shouldn’t lower everyone’s taxes because it creates deficits and makes harder to expand important programs like Medicaid” doesn’t have quite the same kick as “You’re killing the poor!” Whatever you make of the separate tax bills the House and Senate have passed, though, the authors do not take one penny from anyone. In fact, no spending is being cut (unfortunately). Not one welfare program is being block-granted. Not one person is losing a subsidy. It’s just a wide-ranging tax cut without any concurrent spending cuts.


Now, I stay clear of theological debates, but I do wonder what Jesus would have to say about a public figure offering blatant falsehoods to thousands of Twitter followers in His name. To believe that taxing at a moderately lower rate is the same as “taking” from the poor, you must understand that 1) arbitrary rates politicians concocted many years ago regarding child credits and deductions are now a sacred baseline and/or 2) the state has a natural right to your property, and whatever you keep is stolen from the collective. Or, of course, you might just be extraordinarily dishonest.

It’s legitimate and comprehensible to stake a position that argues the state should make the country a fairer place and redistribute money from the well-off to the less-fortunate. Our progressive federal tax code already places most of the tax burden on the wealthy. I get it; you’re worried about income inequality. On the other hand, it is preposterous to claim — as this New Yorker writer and countless others did this weekend — that lowering rates across the board is a state-sponsored “transfer” of wealth. And no amount of pseudo-scientific explainer charts will alter reality.

Nor, by the way, does, as the vast majority of liberal pundits claim, overturning Obamacare’s mandate to purchase health insurance — a market-coercion masquerading as a tax for purely legal purposes — mean that any Americans will have lost “access” to health-care coverage. It says something about the Left’s growing authoritarian inclinations that they confuse consumer choice with a lack of access.

These kind of perversions of imperative language aren’t new, but they are becoming more prevalent. Last year we witnessed Democrats continuously refer to legal actions they disapproved of as “loopholes” and claim that conservatives wanted to “ban” contraception because they didn’t believe paying for it was a collective responsibility. These aren’t typical euphemisms; these are a corrosion of language that we shouldn’t allow to be normalized.

Obama Should’ve Been Locked Up In 2008 — If Mere ‘Contact’ With Foreigners Is A Crime

By
Gustavo
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1

Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn pled guilty on Friday to lying to the FBI about two meetings with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak last December in the weeks leading up to President Trump’s inauguration.

For months, special counsel Robert Mueller has been probing Trump, administration officials, former campaign staff, and anyone associated with them to determine whether the president colluded with Russian officials to steal the election away from Hillary Clinton. Flynn’s admission to lying to the FBI about conversations with Kislyak and reported acceptance of a plea deal from Mueller’s office is the most significant development to date in the ongoing investigation.

As The New York Times reported, there is no evidence thus far that proves Trump colluded with Russian officials to sway the outcome of the election. Trump and his associates did contact foreign dignitaries before he took office. If that is a crime, Barack Obama is also guilty.

On July 24, 2008, then-senator Obama delivered a speech in Berlin, Germany four months before winning the presidential election, and six months before he was sworn into office. At the start of his remarks, Obama thanked Chancellor Angela Merkel and then-Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier for personally welcoming him earlier in the day. Presumably, during that welcome, Obama and the aforementioned leaders of Germany exchanged pleasantries, and they might have even had a conversation.

In 1972, then-presidential candidate George McGovern sent a campaign representative to negotiate with communist North Vietnamese leaders in an attempt to secure an early release of American prisoners. The negotiations, which consisted of two conversations in July and August leading up to the November election, proved to be ultimately unsuccessful, and the war between North Vietnam and the United States would go on for another three years.

During the Cold War, Sen. Ted Kennedy begged Soviet officials to intervene on behalf of the Democratic Party to defeat Ronald Reagan in the 1984 election. A KGB memo released in the 1990s revealed that Kennedy offered to visit Moscow and help the Soviets brush up their propaganda to deal with Reagan. In exchange, John F. Kennedy’s brother expected the USSR to intervene in the election against then-president Reagan’s re-election bid. You can read that memo in full here. 

Dear Pro-Choicer: Human Life Begins At Conception. Deal With It

By
Gustavo
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0

At FiveThirtyEight, Christine Aschwanden writes: “The GOP’s Abortion Ban Is About Politics, Not Science.” She’s half-right, though not in the way she thinks.

Before we get to that, it is worth reflecting on this simple fact: the progressive contribution to the modern abortion debate is, on average, the most science-free political discourse you’re apt to find. The Left is given to declaring that conservatives are generally “anti-science,” because some fundamentalist Christians don’t believe in evolution and many conservatives don’t believe we can accurately predict what the global average temperature will be in 200 years compared to a 1965 baseline.

“Science Is Real,” a popular liberal yard sign declares. There is no more anti-science position than that of the mainstream liberal stance on abortion. It is textbook intellectual Luddism dressed up as informed political dialogue.

We’re Interested in Fantasy, Not Religion

Consider Cecile Richards, the Grand Master of American abortion rights herself. When asked when life begins, she replied: “For me, life [for my children] began when I delivered them.” Hillary Clinton, a former senator and presidential candidate who came very close to inhabiting the Oval Office, declared several years ago: “I believe the potential for life begins at conception.”

A few years ago, a reporter asked House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi: “Is an unborn baby with a human heart and a human liver a human being?” Pelosi explicitly refused to answer this simple tautological question, telling the reporter: “I think I know more about this subject than you, with all due respect.”

These answers are wrong, and demonstrably so, as we’ll see below. But if it were Republicans and conservatives opining so evasively and illiterately about fundamental scientific matters, then the media coverage would be wall-to-wall and gleefully destructive, as it was with Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” comments. Liberals tend to get a pass on their anti-science abortion positions.

When Does Human Life Begin, Again?

That brings us to the current “abortion ban” working its way through Congress. At FiveThirtyEight, Aschwanden points out that the science underpinning the debate—that unborn humans can feel pain as early as 20 weeks—is disputed. This is entirely true. But Aschwanden claims the entire discussion is less about the science of fetal distress and more about the ultimate moral facts of abortion itself:

[T]his particular debate over what the science does and doesn’t show is mostly a distraction because what we have here isn’t a scientific debate, but a moral one. Each side is using science to support age-old value judgments about when life begins and how the rights of a pregnant person are weighed against the rights that a fetus may or may not have; new scientific evidence is unlikely to change many minds.

National Right to Life believes human life begins when an egg is fertilized, and several of the bill’s other proponents have also been clear that they’d like to ban abortion altogether. For example, a 2010 brief about fetal pain published by the Family Research Council, another anti-abortion group and supporter of the bill, states that ‘The humanness of the unborn child is not contingent on its capacity for pain. Whether or not an unborn child can feel pain is irrelevant to the respect that an unborn person deserves.’

“National Right to Life believes human life begins when an egg is fertilized.” You will notice this is stated as if it were in dispute, a partisan political position rather than as settled a scientific matter as the existence of gravity or the Doppler effect. We are supposed to believe, it seems, that the idea that human life begins at conception is merely a policy position, something up for debate, a scientific fact still vigorously debated in universities, labs, and medical conferences across the world.

It is not. Human life begins at conception (“When an egg is fertilized,” as the phrase goes). To pretend as if this is one hazy opinion among many, rather than a fact underpinning the foundation of human biological science, is singularly bizarre, insofar as it does not square with what we know about allogamy, embryogenesis, embryology, mitosis, and everything else concerning the generative origin of our species.

Claim that the sun revolves around the earth and you’ll be laughed out of the room. Claim that your child suddenly sprang into existence on the day of his birth, on the other hand, and you’ll be given a lucrative position at the head of America’s largest abortion mill.

The Science Is Settled

The actual science on the matter if simple, elegant, easy to understand and easy to explain. Dr. Maureen Condic, an associate professor of neurobiology and anatomy at the University of Utah’s School of Medicine, provides us with a well-written essay on the matter at the Charlotte Lozier Institute:

What is the nature of the new cell that comes into existence upon sperm-egg fusion? Most importantly, is the zygote merely another human cell (like a liver cell or a skin cell) or is it something else? Just as science distinguishes between different types of cells, it also makes clear distinctions between cells and organisms. Both cells and organisms are alive, yet organisms exhibit unique characteristics that can reliably distinguish them from mere cells…

An organism is defined as ‘(1) a complex structure of interdependent and subordinate elements whose relations and properties are largely determined by their function in the whole and (2) an individual constituted to carry on the activities of life using organs separate in function but mutually dependent: a living being.’ (Merriam-Webster)  This definition stresses the interaction of parts in the context of a coordinated whole as the distinguishing feature of an organism. Organisms are ‘living beings.’ Therefore, another name for a human organism is a ‘human being’; an entity that is a complete human, rather than a part of a human.

Now, what do you think is a more compelling source of information: a scientist telling you the scientific facts regarding human life, or Nancy Pelosi refusing to answer a simple question about unborn humans?

National Right to Life is correct: human lives begin at conception. There is no debating this. There is a debate about whether elective abortion is acceptable, about whether it is okay to kill certain human beings for the sake of convenience. But we cannot have such a debate if one side continues, blindly and in direct contravention of the facts, to insist that the human beings they wish to kill are not human beings.

Before we deal with abortion, we must deal with the facts of abortion, however unpleasant and inconvenient they may be. Those facts are these: the lives of human beings begin at conception, and abortion kills human beings.

The 10 Most Important Reported Claims About The Steele Dossier On Russia

By
Gustavo
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0

Last night the Washington Post reported that the infamous “Russia dossier” was partly funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The dossier’s inflammatory and unsubstantiated claims about Donald Trump provided the framework for mainstream media treatment of the president for much of the last year and fueled multiple investigations. Here are ten things to keep in mind about the dossier.

1) Russian officials were sources of key claims in dossier

We’re in the midst of media frenzy over Russian disinformation campaigns, particularly as they apply to the 2016 election. It is worth noting that the sources of the “Russia-Trump dossier” were senior Russian officials:

Source A—to use the careful nomenclature of his dossier—was ‘a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure.’ Source B was ‘a former top-level intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin.’

2) No, the Russian dossier was not initially funded by Republicans

When the news broke that the Clinton campaign and the DNC were admitting partial responsibility for the Russia dossier, journalists acted like they’d presented it as a Clinton campaign operation all along. They also claimed a Republican initially funded it.

Incorrect. And Tapper took the tweet down when the error was pointed out. There is no evidence that a Republican donor or Republican campaign was ever involved with the Russian dossier. Fusion GPS claimed to reporters (though they did not provide evidence) that a Republican-funded separate opposition research on Trump, dealing with his business interests. But as the Washington Post itself reports, the dossier did not exist until after the Democrats hired Fusion GPS:

Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the research.

After that, Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community, according to those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

3) The dossier is chock full of discredited information

Journalists who are friendly with Fusion GPS and opponents of the Trump administration claim, without any evidence of any kind beyond anonymous sources’ vague say-so, that the dossier has parts that were “verified.” That could mean something as simple as the parts about Russia trying to find information about Trump, or about Trump affiliates having friendly business relations with Russians. We have no evidence to suggest that anything significant from the dossier has been verified. And we don’t know how much, if any, was deliberate disinformation from the Russian government sources.

We have reports that the freelance spy who put together some of the information in the dossier was paying Russians for their intelligence and used intermediaries. Former acting CIA director and Hillary Clinton campaign surrogate Michael Morrell said this was discrediting:

‘Then I asked myself, why did these guys provide this information, what was their motivation? And I subsequently learned that he paid them. That the intermediaries paid the sources and the intermediaries got the money from Chris. And that kind of worries me a little bit because if you’re paying somebody, particularly former [Russian Federal Security Service] officers, they are going to tell you the truth and innuendo and rumor, and they’re going to call you up and say, ‘Hey, let’s have another meeting, I have more information for you,’ because they want to get paid some more,’ Morrell said.

Far from being “verified,” the dossier is better described as demonstrably false. That includes getting basic facts about Russia wrong, making claims — such as the claim that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen met with Federation Council foreign affairs head Konstantin Kosachev in Prague — that are verifiably wrong, making cartoonishly outlandish claims about finances, and various other problems.

4) The dossier was used as a basis for wiretaps on American citizens

In March, Washington Post used anonymous sources to report the FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to spy on U.S. citizen Carter Page, an unpaid and informal adviser to the Donald Trump campaign, as part of an investigation into links between Russia and the Trump campaign. CNN used anonymous sources to report that the infamous “golden showers” dossier was used as part of the justification to win approval to monitor the Trump associate.

The FBI used a Clinton campaign opposition research operation using information or disinformation from top Russian intelligence officials, these sources say, to enable spying on an opposing political party’s campaign.

5) The FBI also paid for the dossier

Last week, Donald Trump tweeted:

Fusion GPS was working on behalf of Russians while working on the dossier, but they claim, without providing evidence, that they kept their other Russia work separate from their Trump-Russia dossier work. Democrats released their involvement to friendly journalists at the Washington Post last night. When Trump asked about the FBI, many political journalists feigned shock and outrage that he would make such a claim.

They should not have. Their outlets had already reported that the FBI had tried to pay for the dossier and had, in fact, reimbursed expenses for the dossier. We do not know if those costs include the payments to the Russian officials for salacious stories on Republican nominee for president Trump.

The FBI has resisted all oversight by congressional committees looking into the FBI’s role in funding and use of the dossier. Perhaps the agency is worried it will be revealed that a FISA court judge was misled about the provenance of the dossier. Maybe the agency is concerned about light shining on its use of the Clinton campaign operation to spy on Trump affiliates.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is backing House Intelligence Committee efforts to learn more about FBI’s handling of the dossier.

6) Dossier publisher Fusion GPS works with shady outfits

At a July hearing, Senate Judiciary members were told Fusion GPS helped advocate the interests of corrupt Russian and Venezuelan officials while hiding its foreign work from federal authorities.

Fusion GPS has been accused of illegally working as an undisclosed foreign agent and is currently refusing to comply with federal subpoenas for information on its overseas clients.

7) Fusion GPS’ ties to media are problematic

The principals at Fusion GPS are well-connected to mainstream media reporters. They are former journalists themselves and know how to package stories and provide information to push narratives. They are, in fact, close friends with some of the top reporters who have covered the Russia-Trump collusion story.

Fusion GPS has placed stories with friendly reporters while fighting congressional investigators’ attempts to find out the group’s sources of funding. Fusion GPS leaders have taken the Fifth and fought subpoenas for information about the group’s involvement with Russia. Their close friendships with critical reporters on these stories have paid enormous dividends for the firm, although these friendships and cooperative relationships have not served the public well.

Fusion GPS was responsible for the dossier. But the group’s broader narrative push to reporters is even more influential, and an intricate story to unpack due to defensiveness, embarrassment, and outright media complicity.

8) Jim Comey personally briefed Trump on the dossier, shortly before CNN reported it

As confirmed by the Washington Post, the Russia-Trump collusion narrative was a Clinton campaign political operation. The dossier itself was shopped around by Fusion GPS a year ago to The New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo News, The New Yorker, and CNN, according to lawyers for the ex-spy who worked on the dossier. The dossier was so unverifiable that the only reporter to bite was from Mother Jones.

What got the ball rolling on last year’s Russia-Trump conspiracy theory, then, was not the dossier itself but the briefing of it by Obama intelligence chiefs to President-elect Trump in January. Former FBI head Jim Comey admitted under oath that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper asked him to personally brief President Trump about this dossier. The fact of that meeting was quickly leaked to CNN.

Given the dossier’s many problems, was the entire purpose of the meeting to produce the leak that the meeting happened? No one was biting on the dossier, and it needed legitimization by opponents of Trump. If the dossier was so shoddy that it was debunked in hours after BuzzFeed posted it in all its salacious glory, why brief the president and president-elect on it, much less leak it? What was the real purpose of that meeting, and that leak to CNN?

9) Mueller investigation spurred by dossier and illegal leaks from intelligence operatives about Trump

We know from the previous reporting that the dossier of Russia-supplied information or disinformation was used by the FBI to secure a warrant to spy on an American citizen advising an opposing political party’s presidential campaign. We know that this dossier was funded at least in part by the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and the FBI. The firm that produced the report was itself supported by Russians.

We know that Comey briefed Trump on the dossier, and that this meeting was leaked almost immediately to CNN. We know that there were illegal leaks from intelligence officials regarding Trump associates having conversations with Russian counterparts.

We know that Trump was thrice told by Comey that he was not under investigation regarding Russia. And a year into the opposition-research-provoked Russia scare, we have no evidence of the Trump campaign committing treason by colluding with Russia.

Because of this dossier, and its selective use by intelligence agencies, we have a special prosecutor running a no-holds-barred investigation into Trump that, according to CNN, has gone into areas that have nothing to do with Russia or the 2016 election. We have two congressional investigations into alleged collusion of Trump and Russia. And we have had thousands of stories focused on supporting the Clinton campaign’s opposition research.

10) The Steele dossier was a Clinton/DNC-funded operation supported by the FBI and influenced profoundly by Russian operatives in the Kremlin

The country has spent the last year with Obama intelligence officials, the media, and Democratic leaders pushing a narrative of Trump collusion with Russia to steal an election that was supposed to be won by Hillary Clinton. A meeting between Trump officials and a Russian who falsely promised dirt on Hillary Clinton is the best evidence — by far — to support this narrative.

Here we have the realization that the Clinton campaign, the DNC, and the FBI all worked wittingly or unwittingly with Russians to affect the results of the 2016 election. Far from just meeting with a Russian and not getting dirt on a political opponent, these groups wittingly or unwittingly paid Russian operatives for disinformation to harm Trump during the 2016 election and beyond.

Worse, these efforts perverted our justice system by forcing the attorney general to recuse himself for the crime of having served as a surrogate for the Trump campaign, spawning a massive, sprawling, limitless probe over Russia. These things are so much more damaging to the republic than a couple of thousand dollars in ads on Facebook paid for by Russian trolls about a pipeline protest.

Russia-Obsessed Media Shocked To Discover Facts About Russia Stories That Discredit Their Narrative

By
Gustavo
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1

This morning President Donald J. Trump tweeted:

He’s referring to yesterday’s news that, as CNN headlined its story on the matter, “Fusion GPS partners plead Fifth before House Intel.”

Fusion GPS is the firm that paid for and disseminated the discredited dossier that former FBI director James Comey briefed President Obama and President-elect Trump about in January. The most immediate and well-sourced leak of that briefing to CNN is what got the Russia scare going in January. BuzzFeed published the dossier very soon after CNN’s story ran.

So, as Trump and CNN note, folks at the firm took the Fifth in a House investigation into that dossier and the company that helped put it together (Fusion GPS executives similarly refused to testify under oath in a separate Senate inquiry). As to the questions of who paid for it, we still have absolutely no idea, although there have been published reports in The New York Times and Washington Post that Fusion GPS does anti-Magnitsky Act work on behalf of Russia, that the dossier was funded by Democrats, and that the FBI also tried to pay for the dossier. Fusion GPS has also made the unsubstantiated claim that an unnamed Republican donor got the ball rolling on the dossier.

You might think that Russia-obsessed journalists would share the president’s curiosity about who funded the dossier and why Fusion GPS partners are worried about their legal jeopardy. You might think otherwise. Jake Sherman, a Politico senior writer, was utterly shocked to learn that there are questions about the FBI paying for the dossier. To wit:

Fun fact: the FBI was also in the U.S. government when word first got out that they tried to pay for opposition research on the out-of-power party’s nominee! Here’s the Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty:

Before I respond, a quick digression. Sometimes readers or viewers complain that “the media” haven’t covered a story. And it will turn out that the story was covered, deep in one media outlet’s newspaper. Or for a few seconds of a newscast. The Journolisters of Twitter doesn’t help the story go viral. They don’t dig further. It dies. But when readers complain that the story wasn’t covered, they point to that piece on page D14 and say, “See! We covered it!”

If I were a Fusion GPS-connected journalist desperate to bury news of the firm’s refusal to cooperate with a congressional investigation into Russian meddling in U.S. affairs, that is the approach I would have taken, instead of the one taken by journalists today. The path they took today was to pretend that the story was made up. Instead, they could have pointed to the story that ran in the Washington Post on February 28 about how the FBI tried to pay the dossier drafter to continue his work:

The former British spy who authored a controversial dossier on behalf of Donald Trump’s political opponents alleging ties between Trump and Russia reached an agreement with the FBI a few weeks before the election for the bureau to pay him to continue his work, according to several people familiar with the arrangement.

When a Twitter interlocutor pointed out to Tumulty that her paper had published the report that the FBI had tried to pay for oppo on the Republican nominee, she replied:

She’s quoting from the Post story. That story, incidentally, is based on anonymous sources, as all accounts these days are. This from The New York Times also says that the FBI tried to, but ultimately did not pay Christopher Steele for his dossier work. (Read on to get to the part about how the FBI did pay him, according to CNN’s anonymous sources.) It should be the first of many stories digging into how it was possible that the FBI got into the oppo research business on political opponents. As that story itself notes:

The revelation that the FBI agreed to pay Steele at the same time he was being paid by Clinton supporters to dig into Trump’s background could further strain relations between the law enforcement agency and the White House.

Yes! One might imagine that would put a damper on relations between the two. Also, the reason he was not paid, we’re told in the anonymously sourced story, is precise, because it would look bad if they were to pay him. (Not that this kept the FBI from paying him if CNN’s reporting based on anonymous sources is correct.) “Communications between the bureau and the former spy were interrupted as Steele’s now-famous dossier became the subject of news stories, congressional inquiries, and presidential denials, according to the people familiar with the arrangement, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.”

At the time the story was written, back when the Russia-collusion narrative was in full bloom, paying Steele was treated as a good thing in support of the narrative:

While Trump has derided the dossier as ‘fake news’ compiled by his political opponents, the FBI’s arrangement with Steele shows that the bureau considered him credible and found this information, while unproven, to be worthy of further investigation.

It’s also worth noting that we don’t know if the FBI did, in fact, pay Steele or his sources (anonymous reporting to the contrary notwithstanding), because the FBI is stonewalling Sen. Chuck Grassley’s months-long investigation into the matter. As the treason-collusion narrative grinds on despite its lack of supporting evidence, those payment attempts look awful. They advance the narrative — the one the media have worked very hard to portray as invented — that intelligence agencies were inappropriately spying on Trump and his associates. So now that these payment attempts look bad for the Russian collusion narrative, we’re told that the president invented them.

Back to Jake Sherman, the senior writer at Politico:

Now, it’s okay as a journalist to just report what the president says or tweets, without trying to recraft it in more outlandish terms. Not that you see much of that reporting these days. But either way, it’s somewhat disconcerting that the chief investigators in the Senate have been trying to get answers about the FBI’s role with the dossier for months, and journalists who should know about it don’t.

In April, Grassley (R-Iowa), who serves as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote to the FBI about the stonewalling of his request for “information about the FBI’s relationship with Mr. Christopher Steele, the author of the political opposition research dossier alleging collusion between associates of Mr. Trump and the Russian government.” He specifically hoped to learn:

  1. Documentation of all payments made to Mr. Steele, including for travel expenses, if any; the date of any such payments; the amount of such payments; the authorization for such payments.
  2. When the FBI was in contact with Mr. Steele or otherwise relying on information in the dossier, was it aware that his employer, Fusion GPS, was allegedly simultaneously working as an unregistered agent for Russian interests? Please provide all related documents.
  3. If so, when and how did FBI become aware of this information? Did it include this information about Fusion GPS’s alleged work for Russian principals in any documents describing or relying on information from the dossier? If not, why not?
  4. If the FBI was previously unaware of Fusion GPS’s alleged unregistered activity on behalf of Russian interests and connections with a former Russian intelligence operative, does the FBI plan to amend any applications, reports, or other documents it has created that describe or rely on the information in the dossier to add this information? If so, please provide copies of all amended documents. If not, why not?

Here’s the letter, if you’d like to read it. Politico did mention the general issue briefly in a straightforward, short story seven months ago, for what it’s worth.

Just Quote The Guy, Okay?

Here’s another example of redrafting the president’s language to say something else, from a New York Times contributor:

Brendan Nyhan is a professor at Dartmouth College. He claims that by Trump asking which of the groups mentioned paid for the Fusion GPS dossier, he’s saying the FBI colluded with Russia. No, he’s asking who paid for it. We already have claimed that both a Republican opponent of Trump and Clinton supporters paid for the dossier. That doesn’t mean they were working together.

We know Russians had hired Fusion GPS for anti-Magnitsky Act work, and we don’t understand how the dossier and anti-Magnitsky Act work fit together or if they were kept separate, for some reason. Maybe some enterprising journalists will push Fusion GPS to answer those questions instead of just acting as stenographers for Fusion GPS denials of anything untoward. We are told by reporters using anonymous sources that the FBI tried to pay Steele to keep working on the dossier, or perhaps to bring the product in-house to make it easier to use in securing warrants to surveil Trump or his associates. That explosive story has not been treated with the seriousness or reporting resources that it deserves.

Trump asked if the FBI, Democrats, and the Russians all paid for it, not that they spent together for some concerted aim. I’m not even saying he might not ask that in the future, but he didn’t ask that in this tweet. Also, people who misunderstand Trump regularly shouldn’t go on tweetstorms analyzing what his tweets mean.

I mentioned earlier the Washington Post and New York Times had anonymously sourced stories alleging that the FBI tried to pay one of the dossier’s authors but ultimately did not. Well, CNN has anonymous sources that say the FBI did give him money for his work. “FBI reimbursed some expenses of dossier author,” CNN reported in March. To quote Jake Sherman: The FBI is in the U.S. government.

So let’s go back to that tweet. We have reported on CNN of the FBI paying expenses for the dossier, and trying to pay him even more, according to the Post and Times. We have Fusion GPS already claiming that Democratic supporters of Clinton paid for it. And we have New York Times and various other reports that Russians paid Fusion GPS for allegedly unrelated work, though no evidence that those funds were not used on the dossier. So who paid for it? Russia? The FBI? The Democrats? Or all? Gosh, wouldn’t it be nice to know? If only we had some means of finding out the answers to these questions!

The First, Third, and Fifth Amendmentments

Recently Lee Smith wrote about how Fusion GPS fought the Magnitsky Act on behalf of Russians with help from friendly journalists. Fusion GPS partners and employees are former journalists themselves, and keep up excellent relations with journalists on the Russia-Trump collusion beat.

It is likely that the relationships Fusion GPS has with journalists have helped them navigate this difficult time as they became embroiled in the Russia story. Reporters are wary of harming an influential opposition research firm that provides stories and lucrative potential employment opportunities and targets critics.

One of the avenues by which reporters went after Trump was to deny his claim that Fusion GPS partners took the Fifth. For example, here’s an investigative reporter at USA Today:

Here’s Business Insider’s political correspondent being entirely confident of herself:

She goes on to say, “1) they didn’t plead the 5th 2) Republicans hired Fusion, Dems funded later 3) Steele wrote the dossier, not Fusion.” She later mistakenly said the partners invoked the Third Amendment.

A few thoughts. It’s a somewhat odd critique since the bottom line is that the partners refused to answer inquiries into their activities and funding. It’s also strange because they did take the Fifth, according to their attorney. Or so reports CNN:

Fusion GPS’ Peter Fritsch and Thomas Catán invoked their Fifth Amendment rights not to answer questions during their closed-door appearance before the committee, according to their attorney Joshua Levy.

The Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross also said his (anonymous) source said the duo explicitly invoked their Fifth Amendment rights.

Part of the confusion stems from contradictory issues raised by Fusion GPS. In the midst of multiple ongoing defamation lawsuits arising from false claims made in the dossier, Fusion GPS, and its allies publicly claim that Steele, not Fusion GPS, compiled the dossier and that as a result they cannot be held responsible for any alleged defamation. To the investigating committees, they claim they are protected by First Amendment press rights. Neither of these claims, contradictory though they may be, are relevant to the issue of whether Fusion GPS executives invoked their Fifth Amendment right not to be forced to implicate themselves in criminal activity.

As to Bertrand’s other points, no one was talking about the sequence of funding, and Fusion GPS paid Steele for his contributions to the dossier (and he paid his Russian sources, which is why former acting CIA director and Hillary Clinton campaign surrogate Michael Morrell thought the dossier was shady), so that’s also irrelevant.

In any case, get your acts together, journalists. You can’t push a Russia collusion narrative for a year and then go soft and silent just because it turns out Russians paid a shady opposition research firm that just so happens to employ a bunch of your close friends. Sometimes stories evolve in ways you don’t anticipate. You can’t breathlessly hype every instance of a Russian looking in the general direction of a businessman that may have once met Trump and then ignore stories like this. And you can’t pretend to be shocked to learn the story exists at the same time you’re fighting people’s reasonable attempts to discuss Fusion GPS’ efforts to keep hidden information about their work products.

Trump’s Executive Moves Have Strengthened Checks And Balances

By
Gustavo
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Say what you will about Donald Trump — and there’s plenty to say  — he may be the first president in memory to actively limit his own branch’s power. Though far from perfect, on immigration, on funding issues, on international agreements, and on the regulatory state, the Trump administration has relinquished executive power.

So while civility, competence, and rhetoric matter, and none of those issues should be ignored, neither should the administration’s numerous actions that have helped reestablish some appropriate checks and balances.

When President Barack Obama was governing through executive fiat for more than six years, there was precious little anxiety from our elite publications regarding precedents of abuse or the constitutional overreach. Not so today. Take today’s post from Monkey Cage at The Washington Post: “Candidate Trump attacked Obama’s executive orders. President Trump loves executive orders.”

Trump might love them, but the content of these executive orders is more important than the number. Whenever people criticized Obama’s overreach, the reaction was to demand that we contrast the number of executive orders signed by the president’s Republican predecessors (in those heady days “whataboutism” was not only tolerated but favored). This is an exceptionally silly, or perhaps just an unusually dishonest, way to compare presidential records. Bean-counting, the total of executive orders, tells us nothing useful about the effects of those laws; one action could be more consequential than 15 or 50. Most of Trump’s executive orders to this point have been either statement of intent, administrative moves, or reviews of Obama-era mandates.

There’s nothing improper about executive orders or actions meant to implement a law or derived from the Constitution. (Trump’s order promoting free speech and religious freedom, for example, didn’t go nearly far enough.) But there’s plenty wrong with executive orders and actions meant to circumvent those things. Not only did the last administration habitually craft what was in essence sweeping legislation from the ether, it often framed these abuses as good governance. “Congress won’t act; we have to do something” was the central argument of Obama’s second term. Every issue was a moral imperative worthy of the president’s pen.

Re-litigating the past is often a waste of time. Fixing it, less so. There might be wide-ranging support for Deferred Action for Child Arrivals, but it was an obvious way to bypass process. Even President Obama, perhaps fearing legal challenges, called DACA“a temporary stopgap” when he first announced the policy. Trump’s intentions matter, and maybe they are nothing more than a means of leverage. He may even step back from rescinding DACA. But relinquishing power and tasking Congress with the job of substantively changing immigration policy comports with norms of American governance. Unilaterally doing so does not.

You might also be a fan of the Paris Accord, but presidents have no business entering into faux treaties of great substance without Senate approval. I have been told many times that the Paris agreement is the most crucial international deal the world has ever known. Somehow it wasn’t necessary enough to be subjected to the traditional checks and balances of American governance, either. Global warming, explained Obama in 2013, “does not pause for partisan gridlock.” He might have well have said, “my preferred partisan policy positions should not have to pause for the Constitution.”

When Democrats couldn’t pass their cap-and-trade plan, the Obama administration instituted a power plan that outstripped the legal authority Congress afforded the Environmental Protection Agency. This is how they planned on establishing the Paris Accord, as well. If Trump is successful in rescinding these onerous regulations, he will be reinstituting boundaries on the regulatory state. If your goal is inhibiting energy production, then elect members of Congress to pass legislation doing so.

The same arguments can be made for the Trump administration ending Obamacare’s concocted subsidies. Obama’s Treasury Secretary Jack Lew had ordered the government to begin making these payments without ever publicly explaining the legal justification for why. The political arguments, on the other hand, are quite clear — it’s a way to hide the costs of Obamacare while keeping the fabricated marketplaces in business. It’s difficult to comprehend how anyone honestly believes these payments are constitutional. If American voters think “cost-sharing reduction” subsidies are essential, Congress should pass a law appropriating taxpayers’ money for insurance companies. If they don’t pass such funding, then voters can elect people who will. That’s how we have been financing programs in this country for a couple of centuries. Trump could have fought to keep the power of funding from the White House, but he relinquished it.

For those who argue that all of this is nothing more than a malevolent effort to sabotage the Obama administration’s accomplishments, perhaps there is a lesson to be learned: Your legacy is going to be a rickety mess if you build it using imperious diktats rather than consensus.

Perhaps in an increasingly divided nation, this kind of regulatory and executive teeter-tottering is what we can expect. With organic divisions comes gridlock and with gridlock comes an enticement to act outside the process. So one hopes that Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch (and judges elsewhere) who take both separation of power and the dangers of the administrative state seriously will help mitigate some of this future abuse. Who knows — perhaps many of these changes will be even more critical than Trump’s ugly tweets.

Why President Trump’s Tax Plan Is A Win For All Americans

By
Gustavo
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While trying to advocate his tax-reform proposal, President Trump insisted: “It’s not good for me. Believe me.” He shouldn’t have said that.

His statement offered an easy target for the plan’s opponents, who promptly howled that his nine-page framework is a handout to the rich. “Trump’s tax plan benefits wealthy, including Trump,” cried a New York Times headline. The president also missed the point. Trump’s plan is right for him — and it’s good for the rest of America, too.

Trump’s framework will improve life for everyone: It offers direct benefits to the middle-class, encourages economic activity, and reduces the time citizens will spend paying taxes. It looks for long-run solutions and recognizes that the economy is a dynamic market in which tax cuts have ripple effects.

Lowering Business Expenses Helps All Who Work or Buy

Perhaps the most significant and controversial aspect of Trump’s plan is its recognition that boons for business help people of all income levels. The program caps the small-business income tax at 25 percent, allows businesses to write off capital investments as expenses, and cuts the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from its current 35 percent (the highest in the developed world).

Cutting business taxes helps ordinary people. Businesses aren’t faceless abstractions: They’re owned by people, who hire people, who together produce goods and services that help people of all income levels. Businesses pass the costs of taxes to employees and customers. More than 75 percent of corporate taxes falls on workers in the form of lower wages, according to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Cutting the corporate tax rate creates the right incentives: It encourages businesses to come to the United States or stay here, and it reduces incentives for tax evasion. In the long run, the benefits of these policies reach middle- and lower-classes through higher wages, increased employment, and better products. An analysis by the Tax Foundation found that the standalone effect of cutting the corporate rate to 20 percent could lead to 3.4 percent growth in gross domestic product, $3 trillion in additional capital, and a 2.9 percent rise in wages over ten years.

Trump’s framework offers more direct benefits to the middle class, too. It doubles the standard deduction and promises to increase the child tax credit. It vows that congressional committees will work on “additional measures” to relieve the middle-class tax burden, and claims to create incentives for work, higher education, and retirement security. Eliminating the death tax on property and lowering income taxes across the board means the Trump plan will benefit the wealthy as well (although reducing the death tax will also help others, like farmers).

Why It Doesn’t Matter if Rich People Get Cuts, Too

Now, a Tax Policy Center report released Friday predicted that under Trump’s plan the wealthiest 1 percent would face the most significant tax reduction of 5.7 percent, while everyone else would get no more than a 1.4 percent cut. Plus, it claimed, the top 1 percent of income earners would pay an even lower percentage of all income taxes than they do now. But these are no grounds for criticism.

“It is impossible to cut income taxes and not reduce taxes on the upper half of the income distribution,” said Hillsdale College Professor of Economics Gary Wolfram, noting that the top 50 percent of income earners pay 98 percent of all income taxes.

More critical, lightening the tax burden on the wealthy is only a problem for those with a zero-sum mentality who believe taxes are a way to divvy up a pie. That’s not an accurate view of the economy. Lower taxes for the wealthy don’t hurt the middle class. To the contrary, it promotes upward mobility and stimulates growth as the wealthy invest and spend their income. By reducing taxes on the wealthy, Trump’s tax plan can spark innovation that will raise standards of living for the poor; Wolfram said: “Our concern should not be how rich are the rich, but how rich are the poor.”

By simplifying the tax code, slashing its seven brackets to three (with room for a fourth) and cutting out itemized deductions, Trump’s plan will give people time back — a monetary gain in itself for a nation estimated to spend billions of hours filing taxes. The program also takes out state and local deductions, which encourage states to increase taxes and redistribute wealth from low- to high-tax states, Wolfram pointed out.

As Congress fine-tunes the plan, it’ll be time to critique specific policies and implications — like an increased budget deficit of $2 trillion over ten years, as some estimate. But as a framework, Trump’s proposal is a good one, promoting work and economic activity and reducing undue burdens on American citizens.

“This isn’t about me,” Trump should have said. “This plan will benefit me because it benefits everyone in America.”

American Supporters Of The Iran Deal Are Willing To Sell Out The U.S. To Jihadists

By
Gustavo
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Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif shakes hands on January 14, 2015 with US State Secretary John Kerry in Geneva. Zarif said on January 14 that his meeting with his US counterpart was vital for progress on talks on Tehran's contested nuclear drive. Under an interim deal agreed in November 2013, Iran's stock of fissile material has been diluted from 20 percent enriched uranium to five percent, in exchange for limited sanctions relief. AFP PHOTO / POOL / RICK WILKING (Photo credit should read RICK WILKING/AFP/Getty Images)

Among the talking points bouncing around the Iran Deal’s devoted echo chamber in the wake of President Trump’s decertification decision is one of proponents’ most honest and simultaneously sordid admissions: The JCPOA means big business for the West. As long as the money is good, let us all pretend we are not subsidizing the world’s leading state sponsor of jihad and protect the pact at all costs.

This position has been echoed implicitly by European officials, who have feverishly lobbied the U.S. against unwinding the Obama administration’s non-treaty in recent weeks.

EU Ambassador to the U.S. David O’Sullivan asserts that if America nixes the JCPOA, “the European Union will act to protect the legitimate interests of our companies.”

“People in Brussels,” O’Sullivan says, “are looking at whether blocking statutes need to be upgraded or updated,” as a means of subverting prospective re-imposed or new U.S. sanctions.

A Financial Times article titled “Europe battles to save commercial ties with Iran” published mere hours before President Trump’s anticipated speech on Iran policy notes:

European efforts to develop “ironclad” protection against possible fresh U.S. sanctions have so far kept hitting a brick wall, said Nathalie Tocci, director of the Institute for International Affairs think-tank in Rome and also an adviser to Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief. “That’s why so much political capital has been put in to saving the deal,” she said. [Emphasis mine.]

German Ambassador to the U.S. Peter Wittig, a supporter of the Iran Deal, laments that “German companies have suffered billions and billions and billions of dollars” from previous Iran sanctions.

Looking Past Human Rights Violations In The Name Of Free Trade

Leave aside for a second the temerity of an EU whose security, and thus economic activity is in large part ensured and aided by the U.S. threatening countermeasures to thwart American sanctions on Iran.

Who knew that the progressive Wilsonians of the West would cling to the Iran Deal out of fealty to greedy multinational corporations? Or that such progressives could look past the transgressions of murderous, human rights-violating theocracies to support free trade?

Indeed, the Iran Deal has meant billions of dollars in contracts between big business and Tehran, and much of this commerce concerns strategically significant sectors.

Boeing and Airbus have been the two biggest winners of the Iran Deal, each agreeing to airplane sales to Iranian airlines collectively totaling over $30 billion.

In the all-important energy sector, France’s Total SA and China’s China National Petroleum Corporation entered into a $5 billion agreement to develop Iran’s share of one of the world’s largest natural gas fields. Bloomberg reports that more than 30 foreign companies have qualified for Iranian oil and gas projects since the JCPOA was implemented, including among others such major companies as Royal Dutch Shell, Schlumberger, and Rosneft.

This summer, French automobile maker Renault announced plans to increase its car manufacturing in Iran by 75 percent. They are following in the footsteps of fellow French automobile maker Peugeot, which inked a €400 million deal with Iran’s Khodro in a joint venture expected to produce up to 200,000 cars per year.

The recently held 4th annual Europe-Iran Forum, the annual gathering for “business, government, and civil society leaders committed to Iran’s responsible and robust economic development” attended by various European political officials and sponsored by businesses such as KPMG and British Airways, personified the economic relationships crystallizing between the West and Iran.

Kerry Served As Iran’s Lobbyist-In-Chief

Now we understand why then-Secretary of State John Kerry was at pains to push Western entities to trade with Iran. Sec. Kerry served as Iran’s lobbyist-in-chief because he knew deeper economic integration between the West and Iran would make it that much more difficult politically to unwind the culmination of his life’s work undermining U.S. interests. Left unspoken is that such dalliances with Iran inextricably intertwine the West with those who directly threaten and weaken us.

Providing the world’s leading state sponsor of jihad with billions of dollars in cash, and trading it essential goods and services, merely bolster its malicious activities.

To paraphrase the old saw attributed to Lenin: “The Iran Deal dupes and devotees sell the mullahs the rope with which to hang them.”

Consider, for example, the Boeing and Airbus deals with Iran Air. As the Foundation of Defense of Democracies (FDD) noted:

Iran Air was designated by the U.S. Treasury Department on June 23, 2011, for “providing material support and services to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL).” MODAFL is designated under Executive Order 13382 for its proliferation activities.” Treasury stated that “commercial Iran Air flights had been used to transport missile or rocket components to Syria.”

FDD reports that Iran Air never suspended such activities. Since the consummation of the JCPOA, Iranian airlines have continued to ferry “weapons and militants to the Syrian regime” over hundreds of flights.

So today we in the West are knowingly colluding with terror-supporting entities.

Iran’s Economy Supports The IRGC

More broadly, the aforementioned 150,000 active duty member-strong IRGC—which has American blood on its hands from the Beirut marine barrack bombings in 1983 to the roadside EFP attacks during the Iraq War—is deeply enmeshed in all sectors of Iran’s economy, from oil and gas, to shipping, aviation finance, and telecommunications. At the time of the Iran Deal’s passage, it controlled an estimated 20 to 40 percent of the nation’s economy and took in income up to an estimated one-sixth of its GDP.

According to congressional sanction legislation, the Trump administration signed into law; the IRGC “is responsible for implementing Iran’s international program of destabilizing activities, support for acts of international terrorism, and ballistic missile program.” By that law, the administration has now formally announced the IRGC would be designated by the U.S. Treasury Department under an executive order sanctioning support for terrorist groups.

As Treasury Secretary Mnuchin noted in the Treasury Department’s press release: “The IRGC has played a central role in Iran becoming the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror … We urge the private sector to recognize that the IRGC permeates much of the Iranian economy, and those who transact with IRGC-controlled companies do so at great risk.”

The devil will be in the details of implementation to see if these words are made concrete with action.

Regardless, it is clear that to this point the West has been directly and indirectly supporting IRGC’s jihadism by doing business with Iran. In fact, the express purpose of Iran’s economy is to spread the very Islamic movement of which the IRGC plays an integral part.

As Iran’s constitution states, under Islam, its “economy is a means that is not expected to do anything except better facilitate reaching the goal [of furthering and exporting Iran’s Islamic revolution].” Trade is a means to the Islamic revolutionary end.

This Deal Won’t Bring Political Liberalization In Iran

Supporters of the Iran Deal assert that increased commerce will help bring Iran into the “community of nations,” and suggest that political liberalization will follow economic liberalization. But Russia and China prove how disastrously wrong this theory is.

What the Iran Deal does is create a richer, more powerful mullocracy better able to fund its bellicose activities. When and if Iran does build or acquire nuclear weapons, it will be in a far stronger position than it was before the deal was struck. Meanwhile, Iran may be closer to nuclear weapons than anyone knows.

Even if U.S. intelligence—which has chronically underestimated weapons development rates among rogue regimes (see: North Korea)—is accurate on the current state of Iran’s nuclear program, consider the following:

Iran was in violation of the JCPOA from day one—as it required secret exemptions to meet the standards needed to begin implementing the deal, and has continued to violate the agreement in subsequent months.

German intelligence reports indicate that Iran tried at least 32 times to procure equipment probably or related to nuclear or ballistic missile proliferation in 2016.

The IAEA has admitted it cannot inspect the very military sites where Iran’s illicit nuclear activities are likely to be carried out under Section T of the Iran Deal. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) recently released an investigative report alleging four such significant sites that “with high degrees of certainty” are involved in aspects of an ongoing military nuclear program. Iran has said it is unwilling to provide access to such military sites.

We’ve Been Flying Blind With The Iran Deal

President Trump in his decertification announcement ordered intelligence agencies to analyze and report on alleged Iranian dealings with North Korea over its nuclear program. This implies we have been flying somewhat blind concerning a logical and known pathway to an Iranian nuclear weapon.

Even if a notoriously deceptive regime at war with the West since 1979 was somehow more scrupulous than ever before, by deed, it does not respect the deal or the partners at the table.

Of course, regarding the trustworthiness of Iran’s leaders, it worth noting that none other than the “moderate” President Rouhani previously admitted that Iran twice played the West in negotiations that allowed Tehran to continue advancing its illicit nuclear research.

Iran Deal supporters are willing to sell out their nations to jihadists who wish to do them harm.

This is worse than appeasement. It is complicity with evil.

Everything You Need To Know About Trump’s Health Care Executive Order

By
Gustavo
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The executive order did not change regulations on its own. Instead, it instructed cabinet departments to propose changes to rules. On Thursday morning, President Trump signed an Executive Order regarding health care and health insurance. Here’s what you need to know about his action.

What Actions Did the President Take?

The Executive Order did not change regulations on its own; instead, it instructed Cabinet Departments to propose changes to rules shortly:

  1. Within 60 days, the Department of Labor will introduce regulatory changes regarding Association Health Plans (AHPs). Regulations here will look to expand the definition of groups that can qualify as an “employer” under the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). AHPs have two advantages: First, all association health plans regulated by ERISA are federally pre-empted from state benefit mandates; second, self-insured plans governed by ERISA are exempt from several benefit mandates imposed by Obamacare—such as essential benefits and actuarial value standards.
  2. Within 60 days, the Departments of Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services (HHS) will propose regulatory changes regarding short-term health plans. Regulations here will likely revoke rules put into place by the Obama Administration last October. Last year, the Obama Administration limited small projects to 90 days in duration (down from 364 days) and prevented renewals of such coverage—because it feared that such plans, which do not have to meet any of Obamacare’s benefit requirements, were drawing people away from Exchange coverage. The Trump Administration regulations will likely modify, or eliminate entirely, those restrictions, allowing people to purchase plans not compliant with the Obamacare mandates. (For more information, see my Tuesday article on this issue.)
  3. Within 120 days, the Departments of Treasury, Labor, and HHS will propose regulatory changes regarding Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs), vehicles where employers can deposit pre-tax dollars for their employees to use for health expenses. A 2013 IRS Notice prevented employers from using HRA dollars to fund employees’ health insurance premiums—because the Obama Administration worried that doing so would encourage employers to drop coverage. However, Section 18001 of the 21st Century Cures Act, signed into law last December, allowed employers with under 50 employees to make HRA contributions that workers could use to pay for health insurance premiums on the individual market. The Executive Order may seek to expand this exemption to all employers, by rescinding the prior IRS notice.
  4. Within six months—and every two years thereafter—the Departments of Treasury, Labor, and HHS, along with the Federal Trade Commission, will submit reports on industry consolidation within the healthcare sector, whether and how it is raising health care costs and actions to mitigate the same.

How Will the Order Affect the Health Sector?

To some extent, the full impact of the Executive Order will remain unclear until the respective Departments release their proposed regulatory changes. For instance, it is unclear how far the Department of Labor can go in re-defining the term “employer” concerning who can join an Association Health Plan—so it’s hard to predict the scope of the changes the rules themselves will propose.

In general, however, the issues discussed by the Executive Order will:

  • Give individuals more options, and more affordable options. Premiums on the individual market have more than doubled since 2013, due to Obamacare’s regulatory mandates. AHPs would allow workers to circumvent state benefit mandates through ERISA’s federal pre-emption of state laws; self-insured AHPs would also gain exemption from several federal Obamacare mandates, as outlined above. Because virtually all of Obamacare’s mandated benefits do not apply to short-term plans, these would obtain the most regulatory relief.
  • Allow more small businesses to subsidize workers’ coverage—either through Association Health Plans, or by making contributions to HRAs, and allowing employees to use those pre-tax dollars to buy the health coverage of their choosing on the individual market.

When Will the Changes Occur?

The Executive Order directed the Departments to announce regulatory changes within 60-120 days; the Departments could, of course, move faster than that. If the Departments decide to release interim final rules—that is, laws that take effect before a notice-and-comment period—or sub-regulatory guidance, the changes could take effect before the 2018 plan year.

However, any changes that go through the usual regulatory process—agencies issuing proposed rules, followed by a notice-and-comment period, before the regulations taking effect—likely would not take effect until the 2019 plan year. While the Executive Order directed the agencies to “consider and evaluate public comment on any regulations proposed” under the Order, it did not specify whether the Departments must evaluate said comments before the regulations take effect.

Does the Order Represent a Regulatory Overreach?

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was asked about this issue Thursday, given conservatives’ prior criticisms of Barack Obama’s “pen and a phone” strategy. In the case of short-term health plans and Health Reimbursement Arrangements, the Executive Order could lead the Departments merely to rescind President Obama’s previous regulations—which almost by definition cannot represent regulatory overreach.

However, concerning Association Health Plans, some conservatives may take a more nuanced view. Conservatives support allowing individuals to purchase insurance across state lines, believing that such freedom would enable consumers to buy the plans that best suit their interests.

However, AHPs accomplish this goal not through Congress’ Commerce Clause power—i.e., explicitly allowing, for instance, an individual in Maryland to buy a policy regulated in Virginia—but instead through federal pre-emption—individuals in Maryland and Virginia buying policies regulated by Washington, albeit in a less onerous manner than Obamacare’s Exchange plans. As with medical liability reform, therefore, some conservatives may support a state-based approach to achieve regulatory relief for consumers, rather than an expanded role for the federal government.

Finally, if President Trump wants to overturn his predecessor’s history of executive unilateralism, he should cease funding cost-sharing reduction payments to health insurers. The Obama Administration’s unilateral funding of these fees without an appropriation from Congress brought a sharp rebuke from a federal judge, who called the action unconstitutional. If President Trump wants to end executive overreach, he should abide by the ruling, and halt the unilateral payments to insurers.

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