Wednesday, February 28, 2018

So now we learn Loretta Lynch also hid in aliases and deception. Skirting the law is corruption.

DOJ Says Atty. Gen. Used Alias to Conduct Official Business to Protect Security, Privacy

FEBRUARY 23, 2018

Illustrating how government hides information from the American public, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch used a fake name to conduct official Department of Justice (DOJ) business in agency emails obtained by Judicial Watch. As the nation’s chief law enforcement officer Lynch, Barack Obama’s second attorney general, skirted public-records laws by using the alias Elizabeth Carlisle in emails she sent from her official DOJ account. In the records provided to Judicial Watch, the DOJ explains it as necessary to “protect her security and privacy and enable her to conduct Department business efficiently via email.”

This begs the question of how many other government officials use fake names and whether those aliases are searched when agencies process Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Besides Lynch, we have only discovered the use of such aliases among government operatives to conduct official business at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Obama’s EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, famously used the alias Richard Windsor in a government email account to conduct official business and communicate with staff. Jackson even took required EPA computer training under the fake identity with the handle Windsor.Richard@epa.gov. She eventually resigned over the scandal, which brought to light the agency’s violations of federal open-records laws.

In Lynch’s case, Judicial Watch requested the records as part of an investigation into the Obama administration’s involvement in a United Nation’s international law enforcement coalition called Strong Cities Network (SCN). The purported mission of the global coalition was to build social cohesion and community resilience to counter violent extremism. The DOJ masterminded the agreement and Americans found out about the U.S.’s participation when Lynch announced it during a U.N. speech on September 29, 2015. Lynch referred to SCN as a “truly groundbreaking endeavor” and assured the notoriously corrupt world body that the Obama administration was deeply committed to the new initiative. “The government of the United States is fully invested in this collaborative approach and we have seen the value of empowering local communities by promoting initiatives they design and lead themselves,” Lynch said.

Following the Attorney General’s fiery U.N. delivery, a New York newspaper reported that the city was joining a new global, terror-busting network to combat homegrown extremism. Civil rights groups quickly denounced the U.S. participation, expressing concerns about law enforcement abuses against Muslims. In a letter to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio 22 civil rights groups warned that other programs created to counter violent extremism stigmatized “Muslim communities as suspicious and in need of special monitoring.” The anti-terror initiatives have also made “the relationship between Muslims and schools and social service providers into security-based engagements,” the letter states. SCN assures however, that “violent extremism and prevention efforts should not be associated with any particular religion, nationality or ethnic group.” In a statement the DOJ also guaranteed that the SCN will safeguard the rights of local citizens and communities. The State Department also put its weight behind SCN.

In its mission to educate the public about the operations and activities of government, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request with the DOJ on October 15, 2015 for documents related to SCN. Specifically, Judicial Watch asked for legal opinions and analysis prepared by the DOJ relating to the U.S. involvement in the program, documents that form the foundation for the decision for the country to participate in SCN, all international agreements and related records involving the commitment of U.S. resources or personnel to SCN and records of communication between officials in the Office of the Attorney General relating to the initiative. The DOJ claimed to have no records related to the SCN and billed Judicial Watch a startling $50,000 to conduct the search that didn’t produce a single file.

Though the DOJ recently furnished the documents with Lynch’s fake name, the records were part of Judicial Watch’s original 2015 FOIA request. The records also show that then Assistant Attorney General John Carlin touted SCN at an event sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an extremist leftist group that helped a gunman commit an act of terrorism against a conservative organization. A year later Carlin would launch the Michael Flynn counterintelligence investigation and seek the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant now in question.

Will we soon need sharia compliant jail facilities? We are deinventing ourselves!

New York City will pay $180k to Muslim women forced to take mugshots without hijabs in front of men

3 hours

Three Muslim women received financial settlements from New York City for being forced to take mugshots without their hijabs in front of men. (Getty Images)

Three Muslim women who sued New York City after being forced to take off their hijabs for mugshots in front of male officers and other men will each receive $60,000 settlements from the city, according to the New York Daily News.

What happened?

The settlements were filed Monday in three separate cases dating back to 2012:

A Brooklyn teenager was arrested for fighting two other girls. At Brooklyn Central Booking, she was forced to take a mugshot without her hijab in front of male prisoners and officers, making her feel “exposed, violated and distraught” according to the lawsuit.
The second case involved another woman forced to remove her hijab at Brooklyn Central Booking and authorities denied her request for a female photographer.
In the third case, a woman who had been knocked unconscious in a fight said her hijab was removed on the scene, and her request for a female mugshot photographer at Brooklyn Central Booking was denied.

What’s the policy?

New York City police changed the rules in March 2015 to require arresting officers to notify people that they can get their mug shot in a private room with an officer of the same gender.

The attorney for all three women, Tahanie Aboushi, told the Daily News that the NYPD had issued additional directives regarding religious headwear in December.

Why do Muslim women wear hijabs?

Although all Muslims don’t believe the hijab is required for women, those who do draw from Quran 24:31:

And tell the believing women to reduce [some] of their vision and guard their private parts and not expose their adornment except that which [necessarily] appears thereof and to wrap [a portion of] their head covers over their chests and not expose their adornment except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands’ fathers, their sons, their husbands’ sons, their brothers, their brothers’ sons, their sisters’ sons, their women, that which their right hands possess, or those male attendants having no physical desire, or children who are not yet aware of the private aspects of women.

Turkey continues its genocide against the Kurds

Turkish attacks are pulling important Kurdish fighters away from helping the US fight ISIS in Syria

2 hours

Turkish artillery shells Kurdish YPG positions near the Syrian border on January 21, 2018. / AFP PHOTO / BULENT KILIC (Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images)

As U.S. forces continue to try to exterminate ISIS in Syria, they are faced with a fresh problem. Turkey, a country which was criticized for initially sitting on the sidelines in the war against ISIS, has launched attacks against the United States’ Kurdish allies in northern Syria. To try to shore up their forces against the Turkish incursion, Kurdish leaders are pulling their fighters from the war against ISIS.

The New York Times reported that “[i]n recent weeks, Kurdish officials have pulled thousands of fighters and commanders from that battle [against ISIS] and rushed them to Afrin, in Syria’s northwest, where other Kurdish militia are facing sharp attacks from Turkish troops.”

Kurdish forces have been crucial to the U.S. fight against ISIS in both Syria and Iraq. The Times article called the Kurds in Syria the U.S. military campaign’s “most effective fighting partner.” Last year, the State Department approved a deal to send $300 million in weapons to Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in Iraq, and U.S. forces had trained “more than 22,000 Kurdish fighters” as of August, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The Kurds primarily inhabit a region called Kurdistan that stretches across the borders of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and parts of Armenia. The Turkish government and the Kurds have been at odds for decades. In a push for greater autonomy, a Kurdish militant group called the PKK has been fighting in Turkey since 1978. Turkey, the EU, and the U.S. have all declared the PKK to be a terrorist group, but the U.S. sees a difference between the PKK and other Kurdish groups, while Turkey views them all as terrorist organizations.

In 2014 and early 2015, Turkey repeatedly refused to attack ISIS, frustrating the U.S. and its allies. That changed on July 20, 2015, when an ISIS suicide bomber attacked the Turkish town of Suruc, killing 32 people. Since then Turkey has launched a “synchronized war on terror” against ISIS — and the Kurds.

According to U.S. commanders and analysts cited by the Times, the Kurdish retreat to defend against Turkey “threatens not only to slow progress against several hundred Islamic State fighters who are hiding along the Euphrates River or in nearby deserts, but also could allow battle-hardened foreign fighters to escape deeper into western Syria and eventually into Turkey or Jordan — and possibly return home to Europe or Africa to commit mayhem there.”

Ah, progressives: CNN analyst claims women can’t concealed carry because they wear dresses?

CNN analyst claims women can’t concealed carry because they wear dresses?

Doc Thompson 1 hour

A gun “expert” in the media has pointed out one reason why it’s so problematic for teachers to be trained and armed if they choose in order to protect their students … those teachers might be women!

CNN senior law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes claimed this week that women’s clothing impedes their ability to carry. Guns should be completely hidden, and obviously women can’t hide a gun because their dresses and skirts will get in the way. What if the whole staff is female and nobody can carry a gun?

“A lot of these schools—Sandy Hook had an all-female faculty, from principal to teachers. For a woman, where are you going to hide that gun during the day?” Fuentes said. “If you wear a dress, if you wear a skirt, are you going to have to wear a jacket every day with a belt and a holster, the way a detective on duty would do?”

Doc and Kris pointed out some of the major issues with this argument on today’s show.

To see more from Doc, visit his channel on TheBlazeand listen live to “The Morning Blaze with Doc Thompson” weekdays 6 a.m. – 9 a.m. ET, only on TheBlaze Radio Network.

The real story here is the failure of government run bureaucracies.

In the long run, fixing NYCHA means replacing it

By Post Editorial Board

February 27, 2018 | 6:40pm | Updated

In the long run, fixing NYCHA means replacing it

Albin Lohr-Jones/Sipa USA

Tenants are suing to have a monitor imposed over New York’s largest slumlord, the city Housing Authority. But NYCHA’s problems go far beyond mismanagement: In the long run, it looks doomed.

Decades of deferred maintenance have left the authority with $17 billion in capital-investment needs. And that doesn’t include the costs to someday replace edifices that were often built on the cheap and/or will soon enter their second century.

So city Comptroller Scott Stringer’s push to divert $40 million a year to NYCHA from Mayor Bill de Blasio’s other affordable-housing programs offers only modest help.

Same for the $300 million over three years that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has kicked in, and the $40 million a year that the mayor recently announced for heating repairs.

Not that NYCHA’s 400,000 tenants won’t appreciate whatever help they can get — especially when de Blasio warns that many projects need not just new boilers but replacement of the “riser” pipes that actually conduct heat through the building.

Thing is, NYCHA’s $200 million-a-month rent roll barely covers basic maintenance, and federal funds don’t go much further.

Meanwhile, “advocates” fight every effort to sell off the authority’s excess properties to bring in much-needed cash.

And political vendettas seem to cause even more problems: A new City Council report says residents of the Astoria Houses are stuck waiting ’til at least 2021 for their new boilers because Team de Blasio canceled a deal with developer Douglas Durst — apparently over a political feud.

In fact, issues of politicization, massive mismanagement and inadequate capital finance are pretty much endemic to anything like NYCHA. That’s why the rest of the nation has been gradually reducing its stock of publicly owned housing, in favor of other ways to meet the need.

Even de Blasio, Mr. Progressive, has tacitly endorsed that approach by embracing tax and zoning incentives for private builders for his affordable-housing goals.

The city has a 10-year plan to replace Rikers, but it needs a 50-year plan to replace NYCHA.

How Progressives destroy the rule of law...to pursue ideological goals.

Immigration chief: 800 avoid arrest due to mayor’s warning

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — A federal immigration official says about 800 people living in Northern California were able to avoid arrest because of a warning by Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf.

Thomas Homan, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief, told “Fox and Friends” Wednesday that what Schaaf did was “no better than a gang lookout yelling ‘police’ when a police cruiser comes in the neighborhood.”

Homan says the Justice Department is looking into whether Schaaf obstructed justice. He said Schaaf’s actions have made residents less safe.

The mayor warned residents Saturday night of large-scale raids by immigration agents in the San Francisco Bay Area.

ICE said on Tuesday that agents arrested more than 150 people in California after the mayor’s warning in a sweep that covered cities from Sacramento to Stockton in the Central Valley.

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Defrauding government and investors the Democrat way

GreeenTech — Buy Now

Associated Press | File 2012

Terry McAuliffe and former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour take a spin in a GreenTech electric car.
2012, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

The electric car company founded by former Gov. Terry McAuliffe filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week, blaming in part a wave of negative coverage by a conservative news website for its financial woes.

GreenTech Automotive’s bankruptcy petition cites 76 articles by the website Watchdog.org it says “negatively affected governmental, investor and public perception of GreenTech” and prompted investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Homeland Security.

GreenTech in 2013 sued Watchdog.org, operated by the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, for $85 million. A judge dismissed the case in 2014.

McAuliffe resigned from GreenTech in late 2012 during his run for governor. Early in the campaign, he featured the company prominently, pitching himself as a forward-thinking entrepreneur.

More recently, however, the company has faced a series of lawsuits filed by investors in the company, who have called GreenTech a “scam perpetrated by savvy and politically connected operatives and businessmen” to exploit Chinese immigrants hoping to come to America.

The bankruptcy filing cites a $7.5 million judgment won by 12 investors and says other suits are pending.

According to its bankruptcy filing, GreenTech raised $141.5 million from investors between 2009 and 2013 as part of the EB-5 visa program, which offered immigrant investors permanent residency.

GreenTech’s filing says all the investors were advised that the investment constituted a risk and that there were no assurances that they would receive permanent residency in the U.S.

GreenTech reported between $100 million and $500 million in liabilities and listed its assets in the same range.

Among its creditors, GreenTech lists debts totaling $4.8 million owed to the state of Mississippi and Tunica County, which offered economic development incentives to the company to entice the car company to locate its manufacturing facility there.

As outlined in the bankruptcy filing, GreenTech’s troubles don’t stop with negative press coverage.

GreenTech blames U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who raised national security concerns related to GreenTech’s use of the visa program, as well as a 2015 lawsuit filed by an automotive parts company and litigation launched by Mississippi.

“As a result of these significant adverse developments, as well as internal factors such as personnel issues and manufacturing and other difficulties in pursuing GreenTech’s ambitious business plan, the Debtors are faced with severe economic hardship,” the filing says.

Ultra Wealthy Are Being Lured to Italy by Low Tax Rates

Millionaires from Russia to Norway and the U.S. are seeking to take advantage of Italy’s low tax rates for the super-rich.

In an effort to attract capital, Italy unveiled a measure last year allowing ultra-wealthy individuals taking up residency to pay a flat tax of 100,000 euros ($123,000) a year, regardless of their income. Around 150 people, including some with wealth of above the “hundreds of millions,” inquired about the measure, Fabrizio Pagani, head of the office of the Minister of Economy and Finance said in an interview in London.

“We have people from U.K., Switzerland, Russia, from U.S., the usual suspects,” Pagani said. “But we have also Norwegians and some Dutch and not necessarily in finance. Some of those people are art collectors. We are talking about very, very rich people.”

Italy, which is struggling to accelerate the recovery after years of recession, is racing to attract wealthy foreigners to boost the economy with investments, consumption and fresh capital. Countries such as Portugal have already been successful in luring high-net-worth individuals, offering tax benefits in a effort to shore up public finances. Italy is facing political uncertainty at the election on March 4 where no clear winner is expected to emerge.

Under the tax measure, individuals are expected to move their residencies to Italy. Pagani said Milan, Venice and the glamorous area around the lakes at the foot of the Alps may become even wealthier. The number expected to take up the offer will grow “exponentially” as was the case in Portugal, he said.

The figure of “150 is a very good number for the first year,” Pagani said.

— With assistance by Lorenzo Totaro

FBI Investigating Millions Of "Mishandled" Dollars Funneled From Australian Govt To Clinton Foundation.

FBI Investigating Millions Of "Mishandled" Dollars Funneled From Australian Govt To Clinton Foundation

The FBI has asked retired Australian policeman-turned investigative journalist, Michael Smith, to provide information he has gathered detailing multiple allegations of the Clinton Foundation receiving tens of millions of mishandled taxpayer funds, according to LifeZette.

“I have been asked to provide the FBI with further and better particulars about allegations regarding improper donations to the CF funded by Australian taxpayers,” Smith told LifeZette.

Of note, the Clinton Foundation received some $88 million from Australian taxpayers between 2006 and 2014, reaching its peak in 2012-2013 - which was coincidentally (we're sure) Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's last year in office.

Hillary Clinton and former Australian PM Julia Gillard

Smith names several key figures in his complaints of malfeasance, including Bill and Hillary Clinton and multiple Australian government officials - including senior diplomat Alexander Downer, whose conversation with Trump aide George Papadopoulos that Russia had 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton allegedly launched the Trump-Russia investigation (as opposed to the Fusion GPS dossier, of course).

Within hours of the NYT publication, the paper was immediately shredded as the information Papadopoulous told Downer was already public.

The materials Smith is giving to the FBI focus on a 2007 memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Clinton Foundation's HIV/AIDs Initiative (CHAI) and the Australian government.

Smith claims the foundation received a “$25M financial advantage dishonestly obtained by deception” as a result of actions by Bill Clinton and Downer, who was then Australia’s minister of foreign affairs.

Also included in the Smith materials are evidence he believes shows “corrupt October 2006 backdating of false tender advertisements purporting to advertise the availability of a $15 million contract to provide HIV/AIDS services in Papua New Guinea on behalf of the Australian government after an agreement was already in place to pay the Clinton Foundation and/or associates.”-Lifezette

As a reminder, the Australian government announced that they would stop pouring millions of dollars into accounts linked to the Clinton charities in November of 2016 - right after Hillary Clinton lost the election.

The federal government confirmed to news.com.au it has not renewed any of its partnerships with the scandal-plagued Clinton Foundation, effectively ending 10 years of taxpayer-funded contributions worth more than $88 million.

The Clinton Foundation has a rocky past. It was described as “a slush fund”, is still at the centre of an FBI investigation and was revealed to have spent more than $50 million on travel.

Despite that, the official website for the charity shows contributions from both AUSAID and the Commonwealth of Australia, each worth between $10 million and $25 million.

(Norway, coincidentally, also reduced its $20 million / year donations to the Clinton Foundation right after Hillary's loss.)

A third complaint by Smith revolves around a "$10 million financial advantage dishonestly obtained by deception between April 1, 2008, and Sept. 25, 2008, at Washington, D.C., New York, New York, and Canberra Australia involving an MOU between the Australian government, the “Clinton Climate Initiative,” and the purported “Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute Inc.”

When asked why the Clinton Foundation was chosen as a recipient of Australian taxpayer dollars, a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said that all funding was used "solely for agreed development projects” and Clinton charities have “a proven track record” in helping developing countries.