The Patriot Post Digest 4-19-2018

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 4-19-2018
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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The Patriot Post® · Mid-Day Digest
Apr. 19, 2018 · https://patriotpost.us/digests/55460-mid-day-digest

IN TODAY’S EDITION

House Republicans move to investigate several corrupt Obama officials.
Think Facebook is bad with data? Try the IRS and CFPB.
Starbucks surrenders to the mob over the latest race kerfuffle.
The lack of integrity in science is a huge problem.
Were the missile strikes in Syria unconstitutional? A look at history helps answer.
California Dems shoot themselves in the foot with higher taxes.
Plus our Daily Features: Top Headlines, Memes, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.

THE FOUNDATION

“It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience.” —Alexander Hamilton (1787)

IN BRIEF

House Republicans Officially Request Probe of Comey, Et al.1

Thomas Gallatin

On Wednesday, 11 House Republicans sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions requesting that he initiate a criminal investigation into former FBI Director James Comey, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page all for “potential violations of federal statutes.” The letter further states, “In doing so, we are especially mindful of the dissimilar degrees of zealousness that has marked the investigations into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, respectively. Because we believe that those in positions of high authority should be treated the same as every other American, we want to be sure that the potential violations of law outlined below are vetted appropriately.”

The “potential violations of law” the letter outlines include Comey’s handling of the Clinton email2 investigation, Clinton’s “disguising payments to Fusion GPS on mandatory disclosures to the Federal Election Commission,” Lynch’s “decision to threaten with reprisal the former FBI informant who tried to come forward in 2016 with insight into the Uranium One deal,” Comey and McCabe’s lying and leaking to the press, and Strzok and Page’s “interference” in the Clinton email investigation. Finally, the letter requests an investigation of “all DOJ and FBI personnel responsible for signing the Carter Page warrant application that contained unverified and/or false information.”

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), one of the letter’s signees, stated, “This is all about equal application of the law. Comey, he’s out on this book tour3, acting like his values trump all, but yet he testified in front of the Congress that he didn’t exonerate Hillary until after the interview [with Clinton], when we know evidence has come out that he exonerated her two months before with the memo.”

The question now is whether this will go anywhere. The evidence presented by the House letter is certainly more compelling than anything the Democrats offered in their demand for a special counsel investigation into the Trump/Russia collusion conspiracy, to say nothing of their ridiculous pursuit of impeachment over it.

CFPB and IRS Incompetence With Data4

Facebook might collect data5 for profit and politics, but your answers to quiz questions may be the least of your worries. In yet another massive black mark against the rogue Democrat-created and ironically named agency called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau6, Director Mick Mulvaney revealed that the agency had been hacked at least 240 times, and perhaps another 800 times, potentially exposing millions of Americans’ private financial data. Mulvaney said, “Data got out that should not have got out.” After its creation, the CFPB, Investor’s Business Daily explains7, “started collecting and stockpiling data from more than 600 million credit card accounts, along with personal data from almost all mortgage loans taken out since 1998, as well as car payments and other financial data. All without anyone’s knowledge or consent.”

Beyond the obvious problem of government overreach, the CFPB failed to take aggressive measures to safeguard all the data it was collecting. In 2014, the Government Accountability Office reviewed the CFPB’s data security protections and warned that “additional efforts are needed in several areas to reduce the risk of improper collection, use, or release of consumer financial data.” The following year, the GAO found that the CFPB still had “not yet fully implemented a number of privacy control steps and information security practices.” And last fall, the inspector general again noted that more steps needed to be taken.

The irony here is that the CFPB was ostensibly created to safeguard consumers’ finances, but rather than safeguard it has proven itself to be a liability, exposing Americans to even greater threats of fraud and theft. Mulvaney is absolutely correct in his efforts to rein in8 the agency.

Unfortunately, the CFPB is far from the only government agency guilty of negligence in protecting Americans’ private data. Reason’s J.D. Tuccille writes9 that the Internal Revenue Service has an “impressive history … of storing [data] carelessly, leaking data through every possible conduit, and hiring employees who appear to only marginally prefer a career in tax collection over knocking over liquor stores.” For example, the IRS estimates that in 2013 “it paid out $5.8 billion worth of bogus refunds … as a result of identity theft.” Talk about a massive oops.

That’s not to mention the IRS.gov website going down on Income Redistribution Day10.

And those in Washington wonder why so many Americans lack trust in our government.

Patriots’ Day 201811

“Don’t fire unless fired upon. But if they want a war let it begin here.” —Captain John Parker, commander of the militiamen at Lexington, Massachusetts, on sighting British troops

On this day in 1775, American militiamen at Lexington and Concord confronted 700 British Red Coats — firing the opening volley for American Liberty. The British governor had ordered his troops to seize weapons in Concord. It is no small irony that the first shots of the Revolution were fired in response to a gun confiscation order.

Please join us in honoring their sacrifice, and that of generations of Patriots since, including those Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines who continue to shoulder the burden of Liberty. Read a full account of the battle in Mark Alexander’s Patriots’ Day column12.

Please also consider supporting our Patriots’ Day Campaign13. Your support fuels our vital mission to arm grassroots Patriots with the right perspective on the most important issues of the day. Our mission and operations are funded entirely by the voluntary financial support of Patriots like you!

[nChrist]

________________________________________
The Patriot Post Digest 4-19-2018
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Top Headlines14

California governor says deal reached on National Guard mission (Associated Press15)

New air pollution report: California is the worst (Hot Air16)

New York Gov. Cuomo grants 35,000 paroled felons right to vote; GOP sees “power grab” (Fox News17)

Trump says he’ll walk out of a planned meeting with Kim if it is “not fruitful” (The Wall Street Journal18.)

Castro rule in Cuba nears end as Miguel Diaz-Canel named sole candidate for leadership change (The Washington Post19)

Goodlatte to subpoena Comey memos (The Washington Times20)

Facebook to put 1.5 billion users out of reach of new EU privacy law (Reuters21)

Data firm leaks 48 million user profiles it scraped from Facebook, LinkedIn, others (CBS News22)

Global debt has reached a record high of $164 trillion, IMF says, and three countries are to blame (MarketWatch23)

Humor: Impoverished Kenyan bean picker can’t wait to see what Starbucks has to say about racial sensitivity (The Onion24)

Policy: New national test scores show Betsy DeVos was right about public schools (The Daily Signal25)

Policy: Cuba’s leadership transition is an illegitimate succession of power (The Heritage Foundation26)

For more of today’s news, visit Patriot Headline Report27.

FEATURED ANALYSIS
Starbucks Surrenders to the Mob28

Arnold Ahlert

“The tendency of liberals is to create bodies of men and women — of all classes — detached from tradition, alienated from religion, and susceptible to mass suggestion — mob rule. And a mob will be no less a mob if it is well fed, well clothed, well housed, and well disciplined.” —T.S. Eliot

In the world of corporate virtue-signaling, Starbucks takes a back seat to no one. To enter a Starbucks is to enter a world where high prices for coffee are exceeded only by the smug high-mindedness that pollutes the atmosphere. Yet as this kingdom of political correctness is discovering, even a single mistake is unforgivable by the mob. And the company’s chagrin is no doubt amplified by the irony that Starbucks was instrumental in enabling that very same mob attempting to consume them.

On April 12, two black men entered29 a Philadelphia Starbucks where they were reportedly waiting for a friend to meet them. They asked to use the restroom but were denied, because they hadn’t bought anything. While Starbuck’s official policy varies from store to store, this location has that rule in place30. When the men were asked to leave and failed to do so, the manager of the store called police and reported that the men were trespassing. When the police arrived, they also asked the men to leave — three times according to Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross, who is also black. When they still refused to do so, they were arrested.

Racism? Not according to Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson, who is also black. “Our store manager never intended for these men to be arrested and this should never have escalated as it did,” he said in a statement that further noted that Starbuck’s practices and training led to a “bad outcome.”

Regardless, the manager and Starbucks have parted ways31. Thus the only individual to whom accusations of racism could be reasonably attached is no longer with the organization.

Unfortunately for Starbucks, a video32 of the arrest was posted on social media by a user who also said, “All the other white ppl are wondering why it never happens to us when we do the same thing,” has gone viral with more than 10 million views. And Starbucks is learning that when racial arsonists and their progressive enablers sense the emergence of a “teachable moment,” reason is the first casualty.

Thus, while the protesters were angered by what the Philadelphia Inquirer characterized31 as two men “guilty of nothing but waiting for a friend while black,” it further noted the protesters “were also intent on seizing the moment to spark a larger discussion about how black people are treated, surveilled, and policed across Philadelphia.”

That so-called discussion has engendered several days of “protests, castigating statements from Philadelphia elected officials, a sit-in by community and faith leaders to deliver a list of demands, a #boycottStarbucks hashtag that’s trending on social media, and a damage-control tour by Starbucks chief executive Kevin Johnson, who flew into town to apologize personally to the two men,” the paper added.

While the two men met with Johnson, who apologized33 for the incident, they have also retained29 attorney Stewart Cohen, who insists it is a clear case of racial profiling.

Cohen has been joined by a proverbial amen chorus. Protesters have swarmed the Philadelphia location chanting34 slogans such as “a whole lot of racism, a whole lot of crap, Starbucks coffee is anti-black.” Rev. Mark Tyler, pastor at Mother Bethel AME Church, declared the incident demonstrates that “it doesn’t matter what you attain in this country, black people and black lives are treated with the same amount of disrespect.”

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney issued35 a statement saying the incident “appears to exemplify what racial discrimination looks like in 2018.” He also said he would ask the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations to determine whether Starbucks should make bias training for its employees part of the company’s policies.

He needn’t bother. On May 29, Starbucks will close 8,000 of its company-owned stores in the U.S. and subject nearly 175,000 employees to a racial-bias educational curriculum developed with guidance from “national and local experts confronting racial bias” as Fox News puts it36. And as Johnson asserted, “Closing our stores for racial bias training is just one step in a journey that requires dedication from every level of our company and partnerships in our local communities.”

Former CEO and current executive chairman Howard Schultz concurred37, calling the training “just the beginning of what we will do to transform the way we do business and educate our people on unconscious bias.”

One is left to wonder whether minorities, who comprise38 43% of Starbucks’ U.S. workforce, will be considered as “unconsciously biased” as their white counterparts — and thus subjected to the exact same training.

All that notwithstanding, Starbucks is a pariah, epitomizing the adage “no good deed goes unpunished.” Yet that’s exactly what Starbucks deserves for embracing progressives’ obsession with identity politics — the existence of which wholly depends on keeping Americans divided for political gain.

Thus a corporation haughty enough to believe teaching moments should be part of a simple business transaction is getting a teaching moment of its own: Only the ideologically pure survive — and only ever-increasing amounts of ideological purity will satisfy the mob.

[nChrist]

________________________________________
The Patriot Post Digest 4-19-2018
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
________________________________________

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

The Lack of Integrity in Science and What to Do About It43 — Many scientific studies are not reproducible, which misleads the public and yields bad policy.
Were Missile Strikes in Syria ‘Unconstitutional’?44 — Do we really need a lecture from the Left on what passes constitutional muster?
CA Dems Shoot Themselves in Foot With Big Tax Burden45 — One million Californians are projected to fork over an additional $12 billion by Tax Day 2019.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Victor Davis Hanson: Trump Seeks Middle Ground in Foreign Policy Balancing Act46
Hans von Spakovsky: Is DOJ Obstructing Congress in the Trump Surveillance Case?47
Veronique de Rugy: Are the Supremes Ready to Rule on Online Sales Taxes (Again)?48
Tony Perkins: Army Chaplain Bombarded for Marriage View49
Cal Thomas: Is ‘Old-Fashioned’ Returning?50
For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion51.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Victor Davis Hanson: “‘Never Trump’ Republicans and a few Beltway Democrats applauded Trump for hitting back in Syria. Some interventionists even want Trump to escalate efforts to finish off the Afghanistan debacle. And a few talk of a preemptive strike against North Korean or Iranian nuclear facilities. But these voices are mostly those who did not support Trump. And they will not support Trump whatever he does. So here is the irony. The loyal Trump voter says not to intervene. The rabid Trump haters say to intervene. And the fence-sitters will eventually offer judgment based only on the success or failure of the mission. For now, Trump should keep quiet, stop tweeting his intentions and give no indication of what he might do next. If he decides to act again in the future, then he should do it unexpectedly, with overwhelming force and with the intention that he won’t have to do it again very often. Barack Obama lectured loudly and carried a small stick. So far, Trump has blustered loudly and carried a sizable stick. But it would be better to follow Teddy Roosevelt’s maxim to speak softly and carry a big stick — or, wiser yet, to keep quiet altogether and carry a club.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” —Barry Goldwater (1909-1998.)

Upright: “Progressivism … is hubris and conceit mixed with a tyrannical impulse, and it is one of the reasons we have so much moralizing in America today, yet so little morality.” —John Daniel Davidson

For the record: “200 days since the Las Vegas massacre: 250,000 images collected. 22,000 hours of video collected. 1,500 local leads. 500 global leads. 500 subpoenas. 400 specialists brought in. 40 terabytes of data collected. 12 federal search warrants. 2 weeks collecting evidence on scene. 0 answers.” —Ryan Saavedra

Braying Jackass: “I was quite surprised [why I was fired]. Because I thought, ‘I’m leading the Russia investigation.’ Even though our relationship was becoming strained, there’s no way I’m going to get fired, or whacked. … Why would you fire the FBI director who’s leading the Russia investigation?” —James Comey

Race bait: “Just this past year, in 24 states, the administration’s allies have introduced 60 pieces of legislation — or maybe 70 pieces of legislation — to curtail the franchise. That’s what these guys are all about, man. Republicans don’t want working class people voting. They don’t want black folks voting.” —Joe Biden

Non Compos Mentis: “Often people working with the existing consciousness are jealous of those who are more in touch and they become hard-core capitalist in hopes of creating the illusion that the value of money is worth more than the value of time and friends.” —Kanye West

Victimitis profiteering: “Today @lauren_hoggs and I are announcing our book #NeverAgain that tells the story of the foundation of this movement for those we lost. Lauren and I will be using the money made from the book to help heal the community. #NeverAgain out June 5th.” —David Hogg

And last… “Never Again, a phrase associated with the genocide that was the Holocaust, is being cheapened by a generation that is entirely unaware52 of the Holocaust. Depressing.” —Jordan Schachtel

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