The Patriot Post Digest 6-12-2017

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The Patriot Post Digest 6-12-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Jun. 12, 2017

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Democrats are changing their Trump narrative, but Lynch could also be in trouble.
Bernie Sanders, a Karl Marx disciple, goes after a disciple of Christianity.
The plan to privatize air traffic control is a good one, despite criticism.
Daily Features: Top Headlines, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.

THE FOUNDATION

“To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.” —Alexander Hamilton (1788.)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

The Fallout After Comey’s Testimony1

Moving forward from former FBI Director Jamey Comey’s Senate testimony2 last week, here are several developing stories.

Democrats and their cohorts in the mainstream media are involved in a slight-of-hand attempt to shift their anti-Trump narrative away from Russian collusion to one of “obstructing justice.” The Democrats’ excuse for pushing to have Comey testify was under the auspices of furthering the investigation into the now fast collapsing Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy. It’s now more clear than ever that Democrats and the Leftmedia are on a witch-hunt seeking anything by which to justify their call for Trump’s impeachment3.

Donald Trump called Comey a liar and declared that he is willing to testify under oath in his own defense. Last Friday at a news conference, Trump said that he was “100 percent” willing to testify about conversations with Comey, but also that Comey’s testimony “showed no collusion, no obstruction.” Trump tweeted, “Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication.” He seems to be jumping at the chance of engaging in the battle of he-said, he-said. It will be interesting to see if this ends up with Trump testifying before the Senate under oath.

Former AG Loretta Lynch is now in the spotlight. During Comey’s testimony, he mentioned that he had been directed by Lynch to call the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton as a “matter” and not an “investigation.” On Sunday, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) responded to the question of whether Lynch was “giving cover to the Clinton campaign,” saying it gave her a “queasy feeling” and that there needed to be a “separate investigation” opened into the potential of Lynch having engaged in obstruction of justice4, not to mention political collusion. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) agreed with Feinstein’s sentiments, stating, “If the attorney general’s office has become political, that is bad for us all. So I want to get to the bottom of that, and it should be in [the] Judiciary [Committee].”

Finally, Trump quickly picked up on the former FBI director’s statement outing himself as a leaker, tweeting, “I believe the James Comey leaks will be far more prevalent than anyone ever thought possible. Totally illegal? Very ‘cowardly!’” This appears to be the narrative that the Trump administration will hit hard, and not surprisingly given the massive problem leaks have caused Trump since he won the election. And statements on leaking to the press are proving to paint Comey as vindictive, not honorable.

The coming weeks will be telling as to how the “scandal” narratives continue and whether or not the Russian collusion narrative finally dies.

Bernie Sanders Condemns Christian as Unfit for Public Office5

It would be surprising to find a “Coexist” bumper sticker affixed to Senator Bernie Sanders’ car. While the sentiment expressed by the sticker is clearly meant to promote the progressive idea of tolerance, it would seem for Sanders, when it comes to government, that’s just a bridge too far.

It’s no secret that our Founding Fathers formulated much the of U.S. Constitution from a Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment worldview. They were also very much aware of the danger of allowing the government the power of determining what religious convictions and beliefs are permissible, the protections against such government abuse being espoused in the First Amendment and further delineated in Article VI of the Constitution. Evidently, Sanders must have misplaced his pocket Constitution.

During the Senate hearing for Donald Trump’s nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, Sanders brought up an article Vought wrote in 2016. Vought had defended his alma mater, Wheaton College, over an incident that eventually led to the departure6 of a professor who had expressed solidarity with Muslims. Sanders decided to question Vought’s theological convictions:

Sanders: I don’t know how many Muslims there are in America, I really don’t know, probably a couple million. Are you suggesting that all of those people stand condemned? What about Jews? Do they stand condemned too?

Vought: Senator, I am a Christian…

Sanders: I understand that you are a Christian. But this country is made up of people who are not just — I understand that Christianity is the majority religion. But there are other people who have different religions in this country and around the world. In your judgment, do you think that people who are not Christians are going to be condemned?

After Sanders continued badgering Vought along those lines, he evidently sought to conclude that Vought’s religious views were bigoted — without noting the irony that Muslims and Jews likewise believe their religion is the only true one. Sanders concluded, “I would simply say, Mr. Chairman, that this nominee is really not someone who this country is supposed to be about.” Then again, Sanders is a disciple of Karl Marx, who once said, “Religion is the opium of the people” (in other translations, “opiate of the masses”). Is that ideology what the country’s about?

It’s ironic that Sanders, a champion of the Left, deemed it entirely relevant to question Vought’s religious beliefs as a means of determining his qualifications for a position in government, and yet this same Left has worked to stop Donald Trump’s travel ban over the claim that it’s a religious test against Muslims. Maybe the parody site The Babylon Bee captures it best with its fictional Sanders op-ed headline, “It Is Perfectly OK For Public Servants To Be Christian, As Long As They Do Not Believe Christian Things7.”

Top Headlines8

House conservatives ready to “go big” on tax reform that includes welfare reform. (The Daily Signal9)

AG Jeff Sessions to testify; Senate Dems demand public hearing. (The Washington Times10)

DOJ: Comey provided false testimony about Sessions’ recusal from Russia investigations. (The Federalist11)

Intelligence-leaker Reality Winner wanted to “burn the White House down.” (National Review12)

Clinton security clearance still not revoked. (Circa News13)

Puerto Rico votes in favor of statehood — another Demo welfare state. (The Hill14)

Democrats charged in voter registration fraud. (Associated Press15)

LGBT pride parade turns away gay Trump supporters. (Reason16)

DC spending $20,000 to paint LGBTQ murals on storm drains. (The Washington Free Beacon17)

Policy: Understanding Qatar’s diplomatic crisis. (American Enterprise Institute18.)

Policy: The UK snap election was Theresa May’s Waterloo. (The Hill19)

Humor: ISIS fighter marks himself safe on Facebook after firefight with US Special Forces. (Duffel Blog20)

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report21.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Dear FAA: We Need Some (Air)Space22

By John J. Bastiat

Proving yet again the federal government’s uncanny ability to transform billions of dollars of taxpayers’ hard-earned income into useless piles of poo, another spendthrift arm of the federal government — here, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) — is drawing well-deserved fire for its fiscal buffoonery. On the heels of its teeth-jarring smackdown in May by the Transportation Department Inspector General (IG) for falling decades behind in its mandate to modernize the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS) — the so-called “NextGen” NAS modernization program — the FAA suffered yet another blow last week, this time delivered by President Donald Trump.

No doubt the president was mindful of the reasons cited by the IG for the FAA’s failures: “Overambitious plans, unreliable cost and schedule estimates, unstable requirements, software development problems, poorly defined benefits, and ineffective contract and program management.” So Trump proposed separating air traffic control (ATC) from the FAA, privatizing the airspace-services component from the rest. The new service would be governed by a nonprofit organization with a board of directors made up of ATC-service stakeholders, leaving the FAA’s regulatory and standards-creating functions intact to form the “new” FAA.

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The Patriot Post Digest 6-12-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
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This makes a lot of sense: Both ATC and NAS (sequencing and routing) are really services provided to users of the nation’s airspace. Privatizing them — as more than 50 other nations worldwide have already done — is the best way to ensure funds provided for such services are used efficiently. Meanwhile, the FAA would still oversee the national safety standards the privatized component would be required to meet.

The alternative of course is the status quo: taxpayer-supported FAA waste. We’ve endured that clown act for roughly half a century now. Alluding to this fact, the president bluntly noted, “We live in a modern age, but our air traffic control system is stuck, painfully, in the past. … At a time when every passenger has GPS technology in their pockets, our air traffic control system still runs on radar and ground-based radio systems that they don’t even make anymore — they can’t even fix anymore — and many controllers must use slips of paper to track our thousands and thousands of planes that are up in the air.”

By “radar” the president was referring to the vast junkyard of antiquated ATC radars strewn about the U.S., and by “radio” he was alluding to the fact pilots must still talk to — versus datalink, text or auto-uplink/downlink information with — ATC controllers. That last fact may sound trivial, but as more transmitters from more aircraft crowd the limited communication channels remaining, less clearly communicated instructions and readbacks will be received by end-listeners. The result is, and will continue to be, delays, confusion and potentially dangerous situations, all generated from comm-crowding on inefficient voice channels. In contrast, silent, non-“comm-jammed” data-linked paths and text-driven instructions are much more efficient and clear, yet the U.S. is decades behind other nations in these capabilities.

The con-side argument to fee-based, non-profit-privatized ATC/NAS services is that the “little guy” — the private or recreational pilot — might get crushed by “fee-based” ATC/NAS services. The concern is understandable, but misplaced.

First, and frankly, it’s an argument based in emotion and fear, not in fact. The non-profit board will be composed of stakeholders, including those from general aviation. In fact, in the proposed board the air transport industry will hold no more than two of the 12 seats.

Second, no evidence has surfaced among any of the 50+ nations that have already modernized their ATC/NAS services that general aviation has suffered from the fee-based services themselves. That’s notwithstanding vague assertions about general aviation users “getting squeezed,” or anecdotal claims citing one country’s practices and then generalizing those practices to the U.S. using apples-and-oranges analogies.

Many in the general aviation community do not want user-based fees because they believe the current system “works fine” — for them. As Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) President and CEO Mark Baker put it, “The U.S. has a very safe air traffic system today and we don’t hear complaints from our nearly 350,000 members about it.” But this statement dismisses the root issue: an outdated system, which currently causes the loss of billions of dollars in inefficiencies across the entire span of the most densely populated airspace system on the planet.

Of course, the “devil’s in the details,” but if the current, bloated FAA budget — which has doubled in recent years while maintaining the same number of air traffic control facilities — could be slashed in favor of a more efficient, higher-technology, privatized system, benefits would flow to every airspace user, not just “the big guys.” Yes, general aviation would then be held, like everything else, to fee-based use. But many other taxes, fees and costs would disappear virtually overnight — as they have in Canada and Europe. Canada, particularly, is instructive, as it enjoys ATC fees among the lowest in the world.

Were U.S. airspace not the most extensively used on Earth, perhaps such an outdated, Soviet-class bureaucracy as the FAA’s would be adequate to maintain and modernize U.S. ATC and NAS services. But considering the fact that almost 100,000 flights carry roughly two-million passengers across U.S. skies each day, yesterday’s systems surely cannot meet today’s demands — let alone tomorrow’s. Congress needs to approve privatizing U.S. ATC/NAS services. The sooner, the better.

Editor’s note: Bastiat is a retired fighter pilot, and is a pilot with a major airline. He holds advanced FAA instructor certifications and was the Chief Pilot at an FAA-certified flight school. He’s been a pilot for over 30 years.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

A Tale of Two Marches23 — Leftists protest in support of Sharia, while turning “gay pride” marches into resist-Trump protests.
How Many Other ‘Reality Winners’ Infest the NSA?24 — Something truly rotten is going on at the National Security Agency. What kind of vetting are they actually doing?
30 Years Later, the Lessons of ‘Tear Down This Wall’25 — On this day in 1987, Reagan gave his seminal speech at the Brandenburg Gate — defying tyranny with the message of Liberty.
Qatar’s Diplomatic Crisis, Explained26 — How does it affect the U.S.? AEI’s Michael Rubin provides a concise summary.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Tony Perkins: Music Case a Major Key for Religious Liberty27
Peggy Noonan: Hillary Lacks Remorse of Conscience28
George Will: Get the Shovels in the Ground29

For more, visit Right Opinion30.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Peggy Noonan: “[Hillary Clinton’s] public statements since defeat have been malignant little masterpieces of victimhood-claiming, blame-shifting and unhelpful accusation. They deserve censure. … The truth is Bernie Sanders destroyed Mrs. Clinton’s chance of winning by almost knocking her off, and in the process revealing her party’s base had changed. Her plodding, charmless, insincere style of campaigning defeated her. Bad decisions in her campaign approach to the battleground states did it; a long history of personal scandals did it; fat Wall Street speeches did it; the Clinton Foundation’s bloat and chicanery did it — and most of all the sense that she ultimately stands for nothing but Hillary did it. … The worst part is that she insulted her own country by both stating and implying that America is full of knuckle-dragging, deplorable oafs who are averse to powerful women and would never elect one president. Has she not learned anything? Does she never think Britain had Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and Theresa May now, that Germany has had as its leader Angela Merkel since 2005? Is America really more backward, narrow and hate-filled toward women than those countries? Or was Mrs. Clinton simply the wrong woman, and the wrong candidate?”

SHORT CUTS

The Gipper: “We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him.”

For the record: “What makes it egregious is the fact — and I think it’s obvious that it is a fact — that the attorney general of the United States was adjusting the way the department talked about its business so as to coincide with the way the Clinton campaign talked about that business. In other words, it made the Department of Justice essentially an arm of the Clinton campaign.” —former Attorney General Michael Mukasey on James Comey’s revelation2 that Lynch wanted him to call the Clinton email investigation a “matter”

A blind squirrel finds a nut: “I would have a queasy feeling too, though, to be candid with you. I think we need to know more about [Loretta Lynch’s protecting Clinton], and there’s only one way to know about it, and that’s to have the Judiciary Committee take a look at that.” —Sen. Dianne Feinstein

Wishful thinking: “I wish I had flown in from the White House, but I’m just as happy to be here anyway.” —Hillary Clinton at Medgar Evers College

Friendly fire: “The Clinton campaign did not spend their money on white workers, and they did not spend it on people of color. They spent it on themselves. Let’s be honest. They took a billion dollars — a billion dollars — and set it on fire, and called it a ‘campaign.’ That wasn’t a campaign.” —Van Jones

Alpha Jackass: “As far as American leadership is concerned, yes.” —Sen. John McCain suggesting Obama’s “leadership” style is preferable to Trump’s

Late-night humor: “An 88-year-old woman has set a new record for oldest female to stand on the wing of a flying plane. It sounds dangerous, but it’s actually the safest place to be when you fly United.” —Seth Meyers

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Managing Editor Nate Jackson

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