The Patriot Post Digest 4-12-2018

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The Patriot Post Digest 4-12-2018
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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The Patriot Post® · Mid-Day Digest
Apr. 12, 2018 · https://patriotpost.us/digests/55323-mid-day-digest

IN TODAY’S EDITION

CBO quietly revises economic growth upward, thanks to the GOP tax cuts.
Paul Ryan’s mixed record reviewed upon his retirement announcement.
Who was raided and who wasn’t raided goes a long way to illustrating corruption.
Researchers blame racism for the diminished black voter bloc. They’re wrong.
Rethinking what it means to be “nice” based on policies that actually hurt people.
Plus our Daily Features: Top Headlines, Memes, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.

THE FOUNDATION

“There is no part of the administration of government that requires extensive information and a thorough knowledge of the principles of political economy, so much as the business of taxation. The man who understands those principles best will be least likely to resort to oppressive expedients, or sacrifice any particular class of citizens to the procurement of revenue. It might be demonstrated that the most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome.” —Alexander Hamilton (1788.)

IN BRIEF

CBO: Tax Cuts Will Actually Spur Economic Growth1

Much of the mainstream media’s attention has been focused on the Congressional Budget Office’s report that the federal deficit would top $1 trillion2 by 2020, blaming Republican tax reform for it. Typical is this Reuters headline: “U.S. budget deficit to balloon on Republican tax cuts.” But the MSM has largely overlooked or ignored a major point of revision within the CBO report. Last year, the CBO surmised that the Republican tax cuts would have little immediate impact on the nation’s economic growth and estimated 2018 GDP at just 2%. That estimate has now been revised up to 3.3% — not a small adjustment. The CBO has also adjusted its 2019 estimates up to 2.4% from what was only 1.5% GDP growth.

Now the CBO is estimating GDP to be $6.1 trillion more by 2027 than its pre-tax cut estimates. Essentially, what the CBO is now saying (albeit not too loudly) is that the tax cuts are paying for themselves. So why all the bad news on a growing budget deficit? As is typical of big government, the fault lies not with tax cuts, as they are proving to create revenue and economic growth. Instead, it’s a convenient excuse designed to avoid the real issue: Government has a spending problem, especially with entitlements. As CNS News reports3, “The federal government collected a record $736,274,000,000 in individual income taxes through the first six months of fiscal 2018” — and it still ran a deficit of $599.7 billion.

Too many lawmakers simply refuse to accept a fact that has been demonstrated time and again: People who are free to keep and spend more of their own money as they see fit have a greater positive impact on economic growth and development than a bunch of elitist bureaucrats in Washington taxing us in order to fund their special interest projects.

Ryan’s Retirement Rattles Republicans4

By Nate Jackson

House Speaker Paul Ryan will not seek re-election this November, joining more than 40 other House Republicans who are headed for the exits this fall, if not sooner. For the sitting speaker to retire is a big deal, and it will have implications all over the map.

There won’t be any shortage of celebration among Democrats or some conservatives over Ryan’s departure. John Hayward, for one, wrote, “Ryan rose to prominence as one of the most articulate advocates of fiscal responsibility in his party. His career ends with Republicans proving beyond all doubt that they were never really serious about it.”

It’s true that spending is not under control5 — especially entitlements — and, as Ryan’s former signature issue, that is a significant failure. Ryan clearly failed to change the budgeting system, instead allowing the all-or-nothing omnibus method to dominate. As Dan McLaughlin explains6, “This excess of brinksmanship gives a massive structural advantage towards the passage of individual spending items that could not survive on their own, since the choice is literally one between shutting down the government and approving all the spending on everything.” That said, before he was speaker, Ryan was instrumental in holding the line on spending during the Barack Obama years. Unfortunately, it wasn’t nearly enough, and he didn’t stick to his guns when he was in charge.

And yes, Republicans failed to repeal ObamaCare as they promised for seven long years. But it’s not primarily the fault of conservatives like Ryan that conservative priorities have failed. The ObamaCare failure is the fault of “centrist” Republicans, particularly in the Senate (here’s looking at you, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, et al.), where Ryan had no control. Leadership for Ryan has meant pulling together Republicans that are much further apart in the majority than they were when Obama was the common opponent, making legislative accomplishments few and far between. The same could be said for his counterpart, Mitch McConnell. Both failed to lead on ObamaCare, but the deck was stacked against them.

President Donald Trump hasn’t made life any easier for Ryan, either. Part of that is welcome — Trump was elected to drain the swamp, and in many ways he’s done so. Clearly that doesn’t make swamp dwellers happy, but there has been some collateral damage too. Republicans are constantly on their heels either defending Trump, bracing for what’s next, or shaking their heads and distancing from him. Trump supporters love it. Ryan and other conservatives trying to accomplish legislative goals, not so much.

Yet, in spite of all that, Ryan steered through the biggest tax reform in 30 years, and Americans of all stripes are benefiting7. For all his faults, that is a huge success. Ryan is also a profoundly decent man, and there are far too few such men in Washington. But perhaps his critics will be happier with the impeachment agenda of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Top Headlines8

Guess this will sell his book: Comey compares Trump to mob boss (Axios9)

Scalise confronts Zuckerberg over bias against conservatives (The Daily Wire10)

Ground broken on high-priority stretch of Trump’s border wall in New Mexico (Fox News11)

Four areas where Democrats once backed Trump’s immigration agenda (The Daily Signal12)

Federal government has cut 21,000 jobs under Trump (CNS News13)

McConnell gets tougher on Dem obstruction of Trump’s nominees (The Washington Free Beacon14)

Pentagon stops accepting Lockheed F-35 jets over repair cost15 dispute (Reuters16)

President Trump signs anti-sex-trafficking17 legislation (The Resurgent18.)

NPR thinks the NRA conspired with Russia, even if it doesn’t have any evidence (The Federalist19)

Humor: Zuckerberg wishes old people would stop commenting on Facebook (The Onion20)

Policy: The types of opioids behind growing overdose fatalities (American Action Forum21)

Policy: Five things that could derail the Trump economy (Fox News22)

For more of today’s news, visit Patriot Headline Report23.

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The Patriot Post Digest 4-12-2018
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Editor’s Note: The deadline for meeting The Patriot Post’s operating budget needs into the summer is quickly approaching, and we have approximately $37,000 left to raise to meet this goal. If you find our editions helpful and informative, please help us meet this goal24 today. Your donation24 in any amount — large or small — is put directly toward this need. Thank you for helping us keep The Patriot Post subscription-free so that we reach the largest number of readers possible. Our work isn’t possible without you. —Nate Jackson, Managing Editor

FEATURED ANALYSIS
Who Will Investigate the Investigators?25

By Arnold Ahlert

On Monday, the idea that the probe being conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller is about “Russian collusion” was revealed to be utterly fraudulent. Despite ongoing cooperation26 by President Donald Trump and his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, the latter man’s office, home and hotel room were raided27 by the FBI. In short, the investigation into Russian collusion has expanded to what it was most likely about from the beginning: getting Trump — by any means necessary.

Attorney Alan Dershowitz, progressive idol-turned-pariah due to his penchant for embracing intellectual honesty over ideological demagoguery, put it26 best. “If this were Hillary Clinton, the ACLU would be on every TV station in America jumping up and down,” he asserted. “The deafening silence of the ACLU and civil libertarians about the intrusion into the lawyer-client confidentiality is really appalling.”

Later on, he called28 that intrusion unconstitutional.

Dershowitz insisted Mueller is staying within the confines of the Russian collusion case parameters and “farming out” what appears to be an effort to investigate Cohen for “bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations, according to three people with knowledge of the case,” as The Washington Post reports29 (or is that leaks?). Nonetheless, those parameters are the epitome of a double standard that may rank as one of the most egregious in the nation’s history.

If this investigation is really about Russian collusion, where are the commensurate raids and/or executions of search warrants against Perkins Coie attorney Marc E. Elias, who represented30 the Clinton campaign and the DNC, as well as retained Fusion GPS, which compiled the infamous Steele dossier? Where are indictments similar to the ones leveled31 at Paul Manafort and Rick Gates — indictments that fall completely outside the aforementioned Russian collusion parameters — of people like Clinton campaign chief John Podesta? Podesta sat on the board32 of Russian energy company Joule Unlimited, which obtained $35 million from a Russian government fund linked to Vladimir Putin.

Where are the commensurate investigations of Obama administration officials, including former Attorney General Eric Holder, then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, then-Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe, the Clinton Foundation and then-FBI Director Robert Mueller himself for their involvement33 in allowing the transfer of one-fifth of our nation’s uranium supply to Russian company Rosatom, even as they knew the deal was corrupted by bribes and kickback schemes, courtesy34 of the FBI’s own informant?

How is it that the same FBI allowed Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson to claim35 attorney-client privilege and get side deals limiting the search of their computers to include nothing after January 2015 — preventing a review of documents related to Clinton’s email server — along with an agreement36 to destroy those computers when the agency was done, even though both women were witnesses to, or suspects in, Clinton’s criminal investigation? Why wasn’t Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s home raided when classified emails showed up37 on husband Anthony Weiner’s computer? Why hasn’t former AG Loretta Lynch been investigated for her meeting38 with Bill Clinton in the midst of the criminal probe against his wife?

Where are the investigations of Susan Rice, John Brennan and Samatha Power over their potentially illegal39 unmasking of hundreds of Americans?

“Mueller and his gang have weaponized the criminalized justice system,” asserts40 attorney Victoria Toensing. “These no-knock raids that were done on his personal lawyer’s house and offices — those kind of tactics are reserved for dope dealers and terrorists.”

The American Left, suffused with dreams of ultimately removing Trump from office, couldn’t care less.

“A search warrant for a law office is extremely rare,” explains New York University School of Law professor Stephen Gillers. “Lawyers are given the courtesy of producing documents in response to a subpoena or a request unless the government believes a lawyer will destroy or conceal the objects of the search.”

Or unless a rogue prosecutor is attempting to intimidate a sitting president.

When the investigation falls outside the original mandate, getting such a warrant requires41 the approval of top DOJ officials, including Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

What was Rosenstein’s original mandate? According42 to National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, it was one that “violated governing special-counsel regulations” because such an appointment requires a criminal investigation and the order “disclosed no basis for a criminal investigation and indicated no crimes that had allegedly been committed.”

Rosenstein “fixed” this by issuing an expanded order 10 weeks after the original one, accompanied by an explanation McCarthy characterizes as “not very convincing, and the extensively redacted form in which it has been released means the memo raises more questions than it answers.”

So does the damning reality that Mueller conduced his raid of Paul Manafort’s home a full week before Rosenstein issued his original memo. As Cornell Law School professor William A. Jacobson points out43, that timing “shows a willingness to give post hoc justification for conduct of Mueller that does not appear authorized by the text of the original May 17 appointing Order.”

The raid conducted against Cohen purportedly centers on a $130,000 payoff to Stephanie Clifford, a.k.a. Stormy Daniels, to maintain her silence about an extra-marital affair with the president, because such a payoff constitutes44 an illegal campaign contribution. In 2008, the Obama campaign collected45 $1.3 million in illegal campaign donations, and despite the fact that those violations could be treated as felonies, the matter was settled quietly with the payment of a $375,000 fine.

Nonetheless, while McCarthy points out that illegal campaign donations are trivial compared to Russian collusion, he warns, “When highly aggressive prosecutors are circling, any kind of something is always more perilous than nothing.”

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The Patriot Post Digest 4-12-2018
From The Federalist Patriot
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“Any kind of something” has transcended anything resembling Mueller’s original mandate, eviscerating attorney-client privilege in the process. It is an investigation engendered by the same officials who have allowed Peter Strzok and Lisa Page to remain on the payroll and retain46 their security clearances, despite anti-Trump bias documented47 by thousands of emails.

Emails the FBI insists will take three years to “process” before the agency can satisfy an FOIA lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch.

Columnist Michael Goodwin asserts48 it’s “time to clear the air of rumor and speculation and put the facts on the record.” A headline49 in The Hill suggests why that is wishful thinking. “Mueller will drop midterm Russia bombshells on GOP Congress,” it states. Meanwhile, it took threats of contempt and impeachment from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes to convince FBI Director Christopher Wray and Rosenstein to stop stonewalling and hand over50 documents that could reveal Mueller’s investigation was based substantially, or entirely, on fraudulently obtained FISA court warrants.

There’s a midterm election to influence and the Rule of Law be damned.

“Mueller needs to be removed,” writes51 columnist Daniel Greenfield. “This investigation needs to be shut down and replaced with a credible investigation into what the Russians actually did and didn’t do, rather than a pretext for bringing down political opponents.”

More wishful thinking. There are substantial numbers of Americans, including members52 of both political parties, who have far less interest in credibility than reasserting the ruling class status quo Trump disrupted — even if the Constitution is shredded in the process.

And once again, in the midst of all these machinations, the age-old question — one usually attached to authoritarian regimes — arises:

Who investigates the investigators?

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

Researchers Blame Racism for Diminishing Black Voter Bloc57 — Blacks are the ones committing the crimes, murdering their own people, and aborting their own babies.
Rethinking ‘Nice’58 — It’s time to question policies that make our world unsafe, exploit people, and endanger children.
Video: The Great American Tax Ripoff59 — Tax Day gets a lot of attention, but John Stossel says that attention is misleading because of other taxes.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Tony Perkins: Well Spoken, Paul Ryan60
Veronique de Rugy: To Infinity and Beyond: Are Trillion-Dollar Deficits the New Norm?61
Larry Elder: Why Is Facebook Groveling?62
Cal Thomas: Searching and Seizing63
Victor Davis Hanson: Mueller at the Crossroads64
For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion65.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Veronique de Rugy: “Trillion-dollar deficits are coming back faster than originally projected. Though it’s fair to complain about the impact of the recently enacted tax cuts on our red ink, the ultimate culprits for our upcoming debt crisis are lawmakers who continually refuse to reform entitlement programs. Consider the numbers. According to the Congressional Budget Office’s newly released report titled ‘The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2018 to 2028,’ the U.S. deficit will reach $1 trillion by next year. That’s three years sooner than projected last year. This year’s deficit projection was also revised, increased to $804 billion, or about $300 billion more than projected last year. By 2028, the deficit will be north of $1.5 trillion. Ouch. … Our debt is growing, and it’s growing fast. Though it’s a shame that lawmakers passed tax cuts without cutting spending to offset short-term losses in revenue, there’s no doubt that Social Security and Medicare deficits are almost entirely to blame for our impending debt crisis. It’s time to wise up and reform these programs.”

SHORT CUTS

Observations: “The easiest thing in the world to do in a legislature is complain about your leaders negotiations and insist that if you had been in charge, you would have gotten a better deal.” —Jim Geraghty

For the record: “Consider that on the day [Paul] Ryan announced his departure, the president of the United States was threatening significant military action that could draw the nation into a confrontation with our leading foe, and no one even bothered to wonder what Congress would say about it.” —Chris Stirewalt

Upright: “The country is in a world of hurt when you can’t acknowledge Paul Ryan’s personal decency because you dislike his politics. None of us are the sum of our political positions.” —Erick Erickson

Alpha Jackass: “Paul Ryan is not even close to being the worst person who has been speaker of the House. Pedophile Dennis Hastert served eight years as the Republican speaker of the House, only to be revealed in his retirement to be a criminal. And before the Civil War, of course, we had slave owners as speakers of the House. But they were all more effective in their job as speaker than Paul Ryan.” —MSNBC’s Lawrence O'Donnell

Virtue: “If I am here for one more term, my kids will only have ever known me as a weekend dad. I just can’t let that happen.” —Paul Ryan

Dezinformatsiya: “On Wednesday, the three broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) never once mentioned the pro-life walkout during their news shows on the night of the event, April 11. In contrast, the same evening shows devoted more than 10 minutes to the gun walkout the day it happened. This comes after the networks covered the March for Our Lives 13 times more than the pro-life March for Life.” —NewsBusters

And last… “Personally, I don’t trust anyone in Syria. Rebel or not. Let’s start there.” —Chuck Woolery

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. We also humbly ask prayer for your Patriot team, that our mission would seed and encourage the spirit of Liberty in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis

Nate Jackson, Managing Editor
Mark Alexander, Publisher