The Patriot Post Digest 11-2-2016

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The Patriot Post Digest 11-2-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Nov. 2, 2016

IN TODAY’S EDITION

The DOJ and FBI sure have muddled the Clinton investigation.
Students don’t know much about slavery.
A patriotic response to NFL players' entitled complaints.
Hillary promises to help small businesses … by regulating them to death.
And more news, policy and opinion.

THE FOUNDATION

“The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold on us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.” —Thomas Jefferson (1781)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

The DOJ’s Cracking Façade1

When news broke Friday that FBI Director James Comey had notified Congress2 that the FBI was re-opening its investigation into Hillary Clinton due to newly discovered emails, jaws collectively dropped across the nation. This was the same James Comey who for the past couple of months had become the punching bag of conservative pundits for his lawless decision of recommending no charges be brought against Clinton. Conversely, he received high praise from Democrats for being an apolitical straight shooter.

Suddenly, 11 days before one of the most controversial elections in our nation’s history, the tables turned. The “apolitical” director is now completely politicized — at least that’s what Hillary Clinton and the Democrats charge, while Donald Trump crowed, “Justice will finally be done.” By the way, on Sunday, a letter, ostensibly from former DOJ officials, with Eric Holder topping the list, was circulated castigating Comey: “Justice Department officials are instructed to refrain from commenting publicly on the existence, let alone the substance, of pending investigative matters, except in exceptional circumstances and with explicit approval from the Department of Justice officials responsible for ultimate supervision of the matter. Director Comey’s letter is inconsistent with prevailing Department policy, and it breaks with longstanding practices followed by officials of both parties during past elections.” Except, again, by Democrats four days ahead of Bill Clinton’s election in 1992. We know you will be shocked to learn the letter was drafted by Clinton campaign hacks3.

Meanwhile, news has leaked of infighting between Loretta Lynch’s “Justice” Department and the FBI over the direction of the Clinton investigation. The DOJ wanted to end investigations while many agents within the Bureau were frustrated with what amounted to a “stand down” order regarding further probes of the Clinton Foundation. The constant stream of WikiLeaks releases coupled with news of agency infighting seemingly motivated by political concerns reveals that the façade of a government committed to serving the interests of everyday Americans has cracked severely.

Gallup recently released a poll showing that currently fewer than three in ten Americans trust government leaders to do the right thing. In fact, the period since 2007 marks “the longest period of low trust in government in more than 50 years.” Is it any wonder that Donald Trump is in serious contention? It’s precisely because he is not a part of the distrusted and often corrupt political establishment.

And to add more fuel to the increasingly contentious relationship between the agencies and the Clinton campaign, just yesterday the FBI released documents relating to its 2001 investigation into Bill Clinton’s pardoning of fugitive billionaire Marc Rich — an investigation that concluded with no charges filed. Hillary and the Democrats were quick to question the FBI’s timing of the release, accusing the FBI of yet more political schemes. The FBI insisted the release was a result of its automatic programmed response designed to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests that are on a “first in, first out” basis. One thing is for certain, this certainly doesn’t help Hillary.

Revisionist History Distorts Slavery’s Roots4

It’s unfortunate that deep ignorance permeates our education system, as demonstrated, for example, in college students' view of slavery, which Professor Duke Pesta lays out in an interview5 with The College Fix. Pesta, who has taught at numerous schools, conducted an 11-year experiment in which new students at Purdue University, University of Tennessee Martin, Ursinus College, Oklahoma State University, and University of Wisconsin Oshkosh were presented a simple quiz to gauge their level of competency on subjects like slavery. His findings help explain today’s ill-informed political revolution among the college-aged.

Pesta says, “Most of my students could not tell me anything meaningful about slavery outside of America. They are convinced that slavery was an American problem that more or less ended with the Civil War, and they are very fuzzy about the history of slavery prior to the Colonial era. Their entire education about slavery was confined to America.” Moreover, “They cannot tell you many historical facts or relate anything meaningful about historical biographies, but they are, however, stridently vocal about the corrupt nature of the Republic, about the wickedness of the founding fathers, and about the evils of free markets. Most alarmingly, they know nothing about the fraught history of Marxist ideology and communist governments over the last century, but often reductively define socialism as ‘fairness.’”

Pesta believes it will only grow worse under guys like David Coleman, who was instrumental in the development of Common Core and who now leads the College Board. The problem boils down to the fact that a few (very progressive) executives at the top control the levers. The centralization of education by social activists has transcended individual discernment and critical thinking. The result is a revisionist history that tarnishes truth. And the truth is that America partook of a globally practiced deplorable deed — a deed that it eventually purged. By teaching students otherwise, revisionists are raising slaves of the state.

Slavery, of course, has existed for most of human history. It still does in much of the world, and it’s often based on faith or sex. But it’s easier for college brats to meditate on the sins of the past than to tackle the problems of the present.

The Wall of Heroes Contrast6

“Cancelled,” read a sticker slapped onto a sign in a Colorado Springs sporting goods store advertising an autograph signing secession with Denver Broncos player Brandon Marshall. Marshall was one of several NFL players to kneel during the national anthem, and when store owner Stephen Martin saw that he decided to cancel the autograph signing secession. Martin said he received several phone calls and threats regarding his decision, which caused him to consider an appropriate response.

Martin, whose father-in-law survived the Bataan Death March and a three-and-a-half-year stint as a POW in a Japanese prison camp, thought of just the thing: He created a wall in his store dedicated to honoring those heroes who’d sacrificed for the flag. He sent out a Facebook post on his store’s site asking for “photos of your loved ones that are veterans, in active service, who have been injured in the line of duty or who have paid the ultimate price. I will post these photos on my store front windows under the banner, ‘These people have sacrificed for the ideas represented by our flag. We honor them.’”

So far, Martin has received almost 500 photos from all across the nation, to which he responded, “Our voice, the voice of the active, the injured and the fallen is being heard. Thank You America.” We in our humble shop commend Martin for standing on his patriotic convictions, despite the risk to his business. Instead, it’s the NFL seeing its ratings plummet7 as more fans are turned off by entitled, wealthy athletes protesting the flag which represents a nation committed to the ideals of freedom and justice for all.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Jonah Goldberg: Team Clinton Has a Laughable Double Standard on Protocol8
Terence Jeffrey: Medicaid and CHIP Enrollees Outnumber Obama Voters9
Joe Bastardi: First It Was No Snow and Cold. Now It’s More Snow and Cold?10

For more, visit Right Opinion11.

TOP HEADLINES

Iowa Cops Killed in Ambush Attacks12
Florida Dem Patrick Murphy Probed for Donor Scheme13
Clinton Chief Pushed to ‘Dump’ Emails14

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report15.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Hillary Is No Friend of Small Business16

By Louis DeBroux

In an effort to distract from her core anti-free market ideology, Hillary Clinton threw a proverbial bone to American small business owners during the debates. Speaking in the first debate, the Queen of Pay-to-Play said, “I want us to invest in you. I want us to invest in your future. That means jobs in infrastructure, in advanced manufacturing, innovation and technology, clean, renewable energy, and small business, because most of the new jobs will come from small business. We also have to make the economy fairer. That starts with raising the national minimum wage and also guarantee, finally, equal pay for women’s work.”

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The Patriot Post Digest 11-2-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Clinton, who has spent her entire adult life in government, is so bereft of understanding regarding the fundamental tenets of the free market that she likely didn’t understand the contradictory clauses in her statement. Or she did, which is even worse.

First, government does not “invest.” Investing requires capital, and in a free market, capital is owned by individuals and businesses. Government does not have a single penny that it does not first confiscate from a private individual who earned it. And when Hillary talks about making the economy “fairer,” she means she wants government to pick winners and losers. Of course, there has to be some kind of system by which winners and losers are determined — like maybe, who donates to the Clinton Foundation?

In a true free market, the winners are those that are best able to allocate scarce resources in the most efficient way in order to meet the demands of the market. Those that innovate, who create goods and services that people want, are the ones who succeed. Those who are inefficient, wasteful, or who don’t recognize what the market wants, are the ones who fail.

Unless they have friends in government.

For decades, we have lived not so much in a free market as a quasi-capitalist/corporate socialism hybrid where small businesses and major corporations operate under different rules. Small businesses innovate, risk capital, and work tirelessly to bring new goods and services to the market, all while being forced to navigate through literally tens of thousands of pages of federal regulations, a byzantine tax code, and the heaviest tax burden in the industrialized world.

Big Business, on the other hand, can afford an army of lawyers and lobbyists to manipulate the system for their benefit. They can buy off politicians who in turn write special exemptions into the tax and regulatory code for them, and then the same politicians hypocritically rail against the exemptions they wrote, demanding an end to these “loopholes.” Small businesses, which create nearly two-thirds of all new jobs in America, and which account for nearly half of all private GDP growth, do not have that luxury, and find themselves crushed under the weight of government bureaucracy.

In the second debate, Hillary had the audacity to say, “We’ve got to provide some additional help to small businesses so that they can afford to provide health insurance.” Clinton has been a champion (godmother, even) of ObamaCare, which is a massive regulatory takeover of the U.S. health care system. Rather than “bend the cost curve down” as Barack Obama promised, it has caused premiums and deductibles to skyrocket, and millions of Americans lost their health insurance. Furthermore, it has forced small business owners across the country to freeze or reduce hiring, cut hours, and shift workers to part-time in order to avoid the more onerous, back-breaking provisions of the health care law.

In the third debate, Hillary claimed that she wants “to do more to help small business” but then, literally in the next sentence, said she wants to raise the minimum wage, which is nothing more than an additional tax on businesses, the levying of which raises their labor costs and reduces profitability, and even drives some businesses out of business altogether.

According to the 2016 Small Business and Priorities Survey, “unreasonable government regulations” is the second biggest worry of small business owners17 in America. The first? Rising health care costs.

Both of these are a direct result of the very kind of government interference in (or a takeover of) the free market that Clinton advocates. ObamaCare has crippled the health care market, driving up costs and increasing complexity. Likewise, the Obama administration has implemented, since Obama took the oath of office, a staggering 229 new “major” rules (rules expected to cost businesses and individuals at least $100 million in direct compliance costs), for a total of $107.7 billion in new regulatory costs.

That doesn’t even include the massive amount of new indirect costs, in the form of millions of man-hours to fill out federal compliance reports and forms, or the hiring of lawyers and accountants to make sure they don’t end up in jail for accidentally violating some arcane rule. There is also the hidden cost of the distortion this does to business planning, forcing companies to make decisions not based on what is best for the shareholders or employees, or what will sell best, but rather, what will keep them out of the crosshairs of government bureaucrats who often act arbitrarily and vindictively.

Frederick Douglass, the famous freed-slave, abolitionist and orator, once declared, “Everybody has asked the question… ‘What shall be done with the Negro?’ I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us!”

The same, we dare say, should be applied to the free market. End burdensome taxation and slash regulations to only those absolutely necessary to protect the public from harm, a course which has shown immediate benefits18. And then keep government out of it, and let businesses thrive or crumble according to their entrepreneurialism and market demands. Government meddling has caused almost nothing but mischief.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

Ecofascists Still Looking for Bogeymen19 — Exxon ordered to turn over 40 years of documents on climate.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Jonah Goldberg: “Clinton broke all kinds of protocol by setting up her stealth server and then lying about it not only in public but also, I would argue, to Congress. She broke protocol when her aides smashed phones with a hammer and erased emails — official government records — after they were subject to a congressional subpoena. Bill Clinton broke protocol when he met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch in secret while his wife was still under investigation by the FBI. Lynch, smarting from her breach of protocol with the former president, widened the breach by refusing to recuse herself and investing instead in the FBI director the authority to decide whether or not to prosecute Hillary Clinton. President Obama broke protocol when he told ‘60 Minutes’ that Clinton … did nothing to endanger national security long before the investigation was even concluded. And, of course, the Democratic Party broke not a formal protocol but one hell of a rule of thumb by nominating a woman who carries more baggage than the cargo hold of the Queen Mary. … That is what Clintons do. They do not care about the breach of protocol, only the reach of protocol. Everyone should be sticklers for the rules, except the Clintons and their henchmen.”

SHORT CUTS

Upright: “If some rich people can line the pockets of politicians to do their bidding at the expense of the rest of us, who’s to blame? I think it’s we, the people, who are to blame for not using our votes to run such politicians out of town — and that’s most of them. But that might be deceitful of us, for we also ask politicians to enable us to live at the expense of others.” —Walter Williams

Blame sexist pigs: “I want every man out there to kinda look inside yourself and ask yourself, if you’re having problems with this stuff, how much of it is that we’re just not used to it? So that, you know, when a guy is ambitious and out in the public arena and working hard, well, that’s okay, but when a woman suddenly does it, suddenly you’re all like, ‘Well, why’s she doing that?’” —Barack Obama stumping for Hillary Clinton

Alpha Jackass: “If you’re disrespect the Constitution by threatening to shut down the press when it doesn’t say things you like or threaten to throw your opponent in jail or discriminate against people of different faiths — if you do that before you are elected, then what are you gonna do when you have actual power to do those things?” —Barack Obama slamming Trump for the things Obama has done

Non Compos Mentis: “I’m here vouching for Mrs. Clinton, and I think it’s high time somebody did.” —Libertarian VP nominee Bill Weld

Hell hath frozen over: “Hillary Clinton made her secret email bed and she lied in it. Now she is paying the consequences and it may cost her the White House. She’s the one to blame, not James Comey.” —Piers Morgan

Late-night humor: “Hillary Clinton got quite a scare [Monday night]. I guess a trick-or-treater came to the door dressed as a lie detector.” —Jimmy Fallon

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis!
Managing Editor Nate Jackson

Join us in daily prayer for our Patriots in uniform — Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen — standing in harm’s way in defense of Liberty, and for their families.