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© 2019 Irish Republican News
Thursday, October 17, 2019
Hard Irish Border Will Cause Deaths - IRA Statement
Saturday, October 12, 2019
Ambassador Marie L. Yovanovitch - Opening Statement
Opening Statement of Marie L. Yovanovitch to the House of
Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Committee on
Foreign Affairs,and Committee on Oversight and Reform
October 11,2019
'Thank you for the opportunity to start with this statement
today. For the last 33 years,it has been my great honor to serve the American people
as a Foreign Service Officer, over six Administrations—four Republican,and two
Democratic. I have served in seven different countries,five of them hardship
posts, and was appointed to serve as an ambassador three times—twice by a
Republican President,and once by a Democrat.Throughout my career, I have stayed
true to the oath that Foreign Service Officers take and observe every day:
“that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against
all enemies, foreign and domestic;” and “that I will bear true faith and
allegiance to the same.” Like all foreign service officers with whom I
have been privileged to serve,I have understood that oath as a commitment to serve on
a strictly nonpartisan basis, to advance the foreign policy determined by the
incumbent President, and to work at all times to strengthen our national
security and promote our national interests.
My Background
I come by these beliefs honestly and through personal
experience. My parents fled Communist and Nazi regimes. Having seen, first
hand, the war, poverty and displacement common to totalitarian regimes, they
valued the freedom and democracy the U.S. represents. And they raised me to
cherish these values as well. Their sacrifices allowed me to attend Princeton
University, where I focused my studies on the Soviet Union. Given my
upbringing, it
has been the honor of a lifetime to help to foster those
principles as a career Foreign Service Officer. From August 2016 until May
2019, I served as the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine. Our policy, fully embraced by
Democrats and Republicans alike, was to help Ukraine become a stable and
independent democratic state, with a market economy integrated into Europe.'
Continue reading here: https://www.lawfareblog.com/former-ambassador-marie-yovanovitchs-opening-statement-congress?fbclid=IwAR3-CtncwRqPOAUfhBwriqTc3zzCmO-MhcyHgF5HmHDshEcLGhtZFeAQbzA
Thursday, October 10, 2019
Giuliani Associates Indicted
Two foreign-born associates of President Donald Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, have been charged with campaign finance violations, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday.
Igor
Fruman and Lev Parnas worked with Giuliani, the attorney has said
previously, as part of his dealings in Ukraine that involved efforts to
encourage the nation to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and
his son, Hunter Biden.
See the 21 page indictment here:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/read-charges-against-giuliani-associates-igor-fruman-lev-parnas-n1064641
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
Bi-Partisan Senate Report on Russian Election Intereference
UNITED STATES SENATE BI PARTISAN REPORT ON RUSSIAN ELECTION INTERFERENCE
The Senate Intelligence
Committee released Tuesday the second volume of its report on Russian
interference in the 2016 presidential election, which focuses on the
social media disinformation campaign led by the Kremlin-backed Internet
Research Agency.
Why it matters: The
report, which provides further bipartisan evidence of Russia's election
meddling in 2016, finds "the IRA sought to influence the 2016 U.S.
presidential election by harming Hillary Clinton’s chances of success
and supporting Donald Trump at the direction of the Kremlin."
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Text - Declassified whistleblower complaint on President Donald Trump and Ukraine
Read: Whistleblower complaint regarding President Trump and Ukraine
Updated 11:27 AM ET, Thu September 26, 2019
The declassified whistleblower complaint on President Donald Trump and Ukraine has been released.
Read it below:
Dear Chairman Burr and Chairman Schiff:
I am reporting an "urgent concern" in accordance with the procedures outlined in 50 U.S.C. §3033(k)(5)(A). This letter is UNCLASSIFIED when separated from the attachment.
In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President's main domestic political rivals. The President' s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.
Over the past four months, more than half a dozen U.S. officials have informed me of various facts related to this effort. The information provided herein was relayed to me in the course of official interagency business. It is routine for U.S. officials with responsibility for a particular regional or functional portfolio to share such information with one another in order to inform policymaking and analysis.
I was not a direct witness to most of the events described. However, I found my colleagues' accounts of these events to be credible because, in almost all cases, multiple officials recounted fact patterns that were consistent with one another. In addition, a variety of information consistent with these private accounts has been reported publicly.
I am deeply concerned that the actions described below constitute "a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, or violation of law or Executive Order" that "does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters," consistent with the definition of an"urgent concern" in 50 U.S.C. §3033(k)(5)(G). I am therefore fulfilling my duty to report this information, through proper legal channels, to the relevant authorities.
I am also concerned that these actions pose risks to U.S. national security and undermine the U.S. Government's efforts to deter and counter foreign interference in U.S. elections.
To the best of my knowledge, the entirety of this statement is unclassified when separated from the classified enclosure. I have endeavored to apply the classification standards outlined in Executive Order (EO) 13526 and to separate out information that I know or have reason to believe is classified for national security purposes.
If a classification marking is applied retroactively, I believe it is incumbent upon the classifying authority to explain why such a marking was applied, and to which specific information it pertains.
I. The 25 July Presidential phone call
Early in the morning of 25 July, the President spoke by telephone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. I do not know which side initiated the call. This was the first publicly acknowledged call between the two leaders since a brief congratulatory call after Mr. Zelenskyy won the presidency on 21 April.
Multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call informed me that, after an initial exchange of pleasantries, the President used the remainder of the call to advance his personal interests. Namely, he sought to pressure the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the President's 2020 reelection bid. According to the White House officials who had direct knowledge of the call, the President pressured Mr. Zelenskyy to, inter alia:
initiate or continue an investigation into the activities of former Vice President Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter Biden;
assist in purportedly uncovering that allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election originated in Ukraine , with a specific request that the Ukrainian leader locate and turn over servers used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and examined by the U.S. cyber security firm Crowdstrike, which initially reported that Russian hackers had penetrated the DNC's networks in 2016; and
meet or speak with two people the President named explicitly as his personal envoys on these matters, Mr. Giuliani and Attorney General Barr, to whom the President referred multiple times in tandem.
The President also praised Ukraine's Prosecutor General, Mr. Yuriy Lutsenko, and suggested that Mr. Zelenskyy might want to keep him in his position. (Note: Starting in March 2019, Mr. Lutsenko made a series of public allegations-many of which he later walked back -- about the Biden family's activities in Ukraine, Ukrainian officials' purported involvement in the 2016 U.S. election, and the activities of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. See Part IV for additional context.)
The White House officials who told me this information were deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call. They told me that there was already a "discussion ongoing" with White House lawyers about how to treat the call because of the likelihood, in the officials' retelling, that they had witnessed the President abuse his office for personal gain.
The Ukrainian side was the first to publicly acknowledge the phone call. On the evening of 25 July, a readout was posted on the website of the Ukrainian President that contained the following line (translation from original Russian-language readout):
"Donald Trump expressed his conviction that the new Ukrainian government will be able to quickly improve Ukraine's image and complete the investigation of corruption cases that have held back cooperation between Ukraine and the United States."
Aside from the above-mentioned "cases" purportedly dealing with the Biden family and the 2016 U.S. election, I was told by White House officials that no other "cases" were discussed.
Based on my understanding, there were approximately a dozen White House officials who listened to the call -- a mixture of policy officials and duty officers in the White House Situation Room, as is customary. The officials I spoke with told me that participation in the call had not been restricted in advance because everyone expected it would be a "routine" call with a foreign leader. I do not know whether anyone was physically present with the President during the call.
In addition to White House personnel, I was told that a State Department official, Mr. T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, also listened in on the call.
I was not the only non-White House official to receive a readout of the call. Based on my understanding, multiple State Department and Intelligence Community officials were also briefed on the contents of the call as outlined above.
II. Efforts to restrict access to records related to the call
In the days following the phone call, I learned from multiple U.S. officials that senior White House officials had intervened to "lock down" all records of the phone call, especially the official word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced -- as is customary -- by the White House Situation Room. This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call.
White House officials told me that they were "directed" by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored for coordination, finalization, and distribution to Cabinet-level officials.
Instead, the transcript was loaded into a separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature. One White House official described this act as an abuse of this electronic system because the call did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective.
I do not know whether similar measures were taken to restrict access to other records of the call, such as contemporaneous handwritten notes taken by those who listened in.
III. Ongoing concerns
On 26 July, a day after the call, U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker visited Kyiv and met with President Zelenskyy and a variety of Ukrainian political figures. Ambassador Volker was accompanied in his meetings by U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. Based on multiple readouts of these meetings recounted to me by various U.S. officials, Ambassadors Volker and Sandland reportedly provided advice to the Ukrainian leadership about how to "navigate" the demands that the President had made of Mr. Zelenskyy.
I also learned from multiple U.S. officials that, on or about 2 August, Mr. Giuliani reportedly traveled to Madrid to meet with one of President Zelenskyy' s advisers, Andriy Yermak. The U.S. officials characterized this meeting, which was not reported publicly at the time, as a "direct follow-up" to the President's call with Mr. Zelenskyy about the "cases" they had discussed.
Separately, multiple U.S. officials told me that Mr. Giuliani had reportedly privately reached out to a variety of other Zelenskyy advisers, including Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and Acting Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov.
I do not know whether those officials met or spoke with Mr. Giuliani, but I was told separately by multiple U.S. officials that Mr. Yermak and Mr. Bakanov intended to travel to Washington in mid-August.
On 9 August, the President told reporters: "I think [President Zelenskyy] is going to make a deal with President Putin, and he will be invited to the White House. And we look forward to seeing him. He's already been invited to the White House, and he wants to come. And I think he will. He's a very reasonable guy. He wants to see peace in Ukraine, and I think he will be coming very soon, actually."
IV. Circumstances leading up to the 25 July Presidential phone call
Beginning in late March 2019, a series of articles appeared in an online publication called The Hill. In these articles, several Ukrainian officials -- most notably, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko -- made a series of allegations against other Ukrainian officials and current and former
U.S. officials. Mr. Lutsenko and his colleagues alleged, inter alia:
that they possessed evidence that Ukrainian officials -- namely, Head of the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine Artem Sytnyk and Member of Parliament Serhiy Leshchenko -- had "interfered" in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, allegedly in collaboration with the DNC and the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv;
that the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv -- specifically, U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who had criticized Mr. Lutsenko' s organization for its poor record on fighting corruption -- had allegedly obstructed Ukrainian law enforcement agencies' pursuit of corruption cases, including by providing a "do not prosecute" list, and had blocked Ukrainian prosecutors from traveling to the United States expressly to prevent them from delivering their "evidence" about the 2016 U.S. election; and
that former Vice President Biden had pressured former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in 2016 to fire then Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in order to quash a purported criminal probe into Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company on whose board the former Vice President's son, Hunter, sat.
In several public comments, Mr. Lutsenko also stated that he wished to communicate directly with Attorney General Barr on these matters.
The allegations by Mr. Lutsenko came on the eve of the first round of Ukraine's presidential election on 31 March. By that time, Mr. Lutsenko's political patron, President Poroshenko, was trailing Mr. Zelenskyy in the polls and appeared likely to be defeated. Mr. Zelenskyy had made known his desire to replace Mr. Lutsenko as Prosecutor General. On 21 April, Mr. Poroshenko lost the runoff to Mr. Zelenskyy by a landslide. See Enclosure for additional information.
It was also publicly reported that Mr. Giuliani had met on at least two occasions with Mr. Lutsenko: once in New York in late January and again in Warsaw in mid-February. In addition, it was publicly reported that Mr. Giuliani had spoken in late 2018 to former Prosecutor General Shokin, in a Skype call arranged by two associates of Mr. Giuliani. to
On 25 April in an interview with Fox News, the President called Mr. Lutsenko's claims "big" and "incredible" and stated that the Attorney General "would want to see this."
On or about 29 April, I learned from U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the situation that Ambassador Yovanovitch had been suddenly recalled to Washington by senior State Department officials for "consultations" and would most likely be removed from her position.
Around the same time, I also learned from a U.S. official that "associates" of Mr. Giuliani were trying to make contact with the incoming Zelenskyy team.
On 6 May, the State Department announced that Ambassador Yovanovitch would be ending her assignment in Kyiv "as planned."
However, several U.S. officials told me that, in fact, her tour was curtailed because of pressure stemming from Mr. Lutsenko's allegations. Mr. Giuliani subsequently stated in an interview with a Ukrainian journalist published on 14 May that Ambassador Yovanovitch was "removed ... because she was part of the efforts against the President."
On 9 May, The New York Times reported that Mr. Giuliani planned to travel to Ukraine to press the Ukrainian government to pursue investigations that would help the President in his 2020 reelection bid.
In his multitude of public statements leading up to and in the wake of the publication of this article, Mr. Giuliani confirmed that he was focused on encouraging Ukrainian authorities to pursue investigations into alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and alleged wrongdoing by the Biden family. 12
On the afternoon of 10 May, the President stated in an interview with Politico that he planned to speak with Mr. Giuliani about the trip.
A few hours later, Mr. Giuliani publicly canceled his trip, claiming that Mr. Zelenskyy was "surrounded by enemies of the [U.S.] President... and of the United States."
On 11 May, Mr. Lutsenko met for two hours with President-elect Zelenskyy, according to a public account given several days later by Mr. Lutsenko. Mr. Lutsenko publicly stated that he had told Mr. Zelenskyy that he wished to remain as Prosecutor General.
Starting in mid-May, I heard from multiple U.S. officials that they were deeply concerned by what they viewed as Mr. Giuliani's circumvention of national security decisionmaking processes to engage with Ukrainian officials and relay messages back and forth between Kyiv and the President. These officials also told me:
that State Department officials, including Ambassadors Volker and Sondland, had spoken with Mr. Giulianiin an attempt to "contain the damage" to U.S. national security; and
that Ambassadors Volker and Sandland during this time period met with members of the new Ukrainian administration and, in addition to discussing policy matters, sought to help Ukrainian leaders understand and respond to the differing messages they were receiving from official U.S. channels on the-one-hand, and from Mr. Giuliani on the other.
During this same timeframe, multiple U.S. officials told me that the Ukrainian leadership was led to believe that a meeting or phone call between the President and President Zelenskyy would depend on whether Zelenskyy showed willingness to " play ball" on the issues that had been publicly aired by Mr. Lutsenko and Mr. Giuliani. (Note: This was the general understanding of the state of affairs as conveyed to me by U.S. officials from late May into early July. I do not know who delivered this message to the Ukrainian leadership, or when.) See Enclosure for additional information.
Shortly after President Zelenskyy' s inauguration, it was publicly reported that Mr. Giuliani met with two other Ukrainian officials: Ukraine's Special Anticorruption Prosecutor, Mr. Nazar Kholodnytskyy, and a former Ukrainian diplomat named Andriy Telizhenko. Both Mr. Kholodnytskyy and Mr. Telizhenko are allies of Mr. Lutsenko and made similar allegations in the above-mentioned series of articles in The Hill.
On 13 June, the President told ABC' s George Stephanopoulos that he would accept damaging information on his political rivals from a foreign government.
On 21 June, Mr. Giuliani tweeted: "New Pres of Ukraine still silent on investigation of Ukrainian interference in 2016 and alleged Biden bribery of Poroshenko. Time for leadership and investigate both if you want to purge how Ukraine was abused by Hillary and Clinton people."
In mid-July, I learned of a sudden change of policy with respect to U.S. assistance for Ukraine. See Enclosure for additional information.
ENCLOSURE: Classified appendix
(U) CLASSIFIED APPENDIX
(U) Supplementary classified information is provided as follows:
(U) Additional information related to Section II
According to multiple White House officials I spoke with, the transcript of the President's call with President Zelenskyy was placed into a computer system managed directly by the National Security Council (NSC) Directorate for Intelligence Programs. This is a standalone computer system reserved for codeword-level intelligence information , such as covert action. According to information I received from White House officials, some officials voiced concerns internally that this would be an abuse of the system and was not consistent with the responsibilities of the Directorate for Intelligence Programs. According to White House officials I spoke with, this was "not the first time" under this Administration that a Presidential transcript was placed into this codeword-level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive — rather than national security sensitive — information .
(U) Additional information related to Section IV
[Redaction]
I would like to expand upon two issues mentioned in Section IV that might have a connection with the overall effort to pressure the Ukrainian leadership. As I do not know definitively whether the below-mentioned decisions are connected to the broader efforts I describe, I have chosen to include them in the classified annex. If they indeed represent genuine policy deliberations and decisions formulated to advance U.S. foreign policy and national security, one might be able to make a reasonable case that the facts are classified
I learned from U.S. officials that, on or around 14 May, the President instructed Vice President Pence to cancel his planned travel to Ukraine to attend President Zelenskyy' s inauguration on 20 May; Secretary of Energy Rick Perry led the delegation instead. According to these officials, it was also "made clear" to them that the President did not want to meet with Mr. Zelenskyy until he saw how Zelenskyy "chose to act" in office. I do not know how this guidance was communicated, or by whom. I also do not know whether this action was connected with the broader understanding, described in the unclassified letter, that a meeting or phone call between the President and President Zelenskyy would depend on whether Zelenskyy showed willingness to "play ball'' on the issues that had been publicly aired by Mr. Lutsenko and Mr. Giuliani,
On 18 July, an Office of Management and Budget (0MB) official informed Departments and Agencies that the President "earlier that month" had issued instructions to suspend all U.S. security assistance to Ukraine. Neither OMB nor the NSC staff knew why this instruction had been issued. During interagency meetings on 23 July and 26 July, OMB officials again stated explicitly that the instruction to suspend this assistance had come directly from the President, but they still were unaware of a policy rationale. As of early August, I heard from U.S. officials that some Ukrainian officials were aware that U.S. aid might be in jeopardy, but I do not know how or when they learned of it.
Updated 11:27 AM ET, Thu September 26, 2019
The declassified whistleblower complaint on President Donald Trump and Ukraine has been released.
Read it below:
Dear Chairman Burr and Chairman Schiff:
I am reporting an "urgent concern" in accordance with the procedures outlined in 50 U.S.C. §3033(k)(5)(A). This letter is UNCLASSIFIED when separated from the attachment.
In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President's main domestic political rivals. The President' s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.
Over the past four months, more than half a dozen U.S. officials have informed me of various facts related to this effort. The information provided herein was relayed to me in the course of official interagency business. It is routine for U.S. officials with responsibility for a particular regional or functional portfolio to share such information with one another in order to inform policymaking and analysis.
I was not a direct witness to most of the events described. However, I found my colleagues' accounts of these events to be credible because, in almost all cases, multiple officials recounted fact patterns that were consistent with one another. In addition, a variety of information consistent with these private accounts has been reported publicly.
I am deeply concerned that the actions described below constitute "a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, or violation of law or Executive Order" that "does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters," consistent with the definition of an"urgent concern" in 50 U.S.C. §3033(k)(5)(G). I am therefore fulfilling my duty to report this information, through proper legal channels, to the relevant authorities.
I am also concerned that these actions pose risks to U.S. national security and undermine the U.S. Government's efforts to deter and counter foreign interference in U.S. elections.
To the best of my knowledge, the entirety of this statement is unclassified when separated from the classified enclosure. I have endeavored to apply the classification standards outlined in Executive Order (EO) 13526 and to separate out information that I know or have reason to believe is classified for national security purposes.
If a classification marking is applied retroactively, I believe it is incumbent upon the classifying authority to explain why such a marking was applied, and to which specific information it pertains.
I. The 25 July Presidential phone call
Early in the morning of 25 July, the President spoke by telephone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. I do not know which side initiated the call. This was the first publicly acknowledged call between the two leaders since a brief congratulatory call after Mr. Zelenskyy won the presidency on 21 April.
Multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call informed me that, after an initial exchange of pleasantries, the President used the remainder of the call to advance his personal interests. Namely, he sought to pressure the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the President's 2020 reelection bid. According to the White House officials who had direct knowledge of the call, the President pressured Mr. Zelenskyy to, inter alia:
initiate or continue an investigation into the activities of former Vice President Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter Biden;
assist in purportedly uncovering that allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election originated in Ukraine , with a specific request that the Ukrainian leader locate and turn over servers used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and examined by the U.S. cyber security firm Crowdstrike, which initially reported that Russian hackers had penetrated the DNC's networks in 2016; and
meet or speak with two people the President named explicitly as his personal envoys on these matters, Mr. Giuliani and Attorney General Barr, to whom the President referred multiple times in tandem.
The President also praised Ukraine's Prosecutor General, Mr. Yuriy Lutsenko, and suggested that Mr. Zelenskyy might want to keep him in his position. (Note: Starting in March 2019, Mr. Lutsenko made a series of public allegations-many of which he later walked back -- about the Biden family's activities in Ukraine, Ukrainian officials' purported involvement in the 2016 U.S. election, and the activities of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. See Part IV for additional context.)
The White House officials who told me this information were deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call. They told me that there was already a "discussion ongoing" with White House lawyers about how to treat the call because of the likelihood, in the officials' retelling, that they had witnessed the President abuse his office for personal gain.
The Ukrainian side was the first to publicly acknowledge the phone call. On the evening of 25 July, a readout was posted on the website of the Ukrainian President that contained the following line (translation from original Russian-language readout):
"Donald Trump expressed his conviction that the new Ukrainian government will be able to quickly improve Ukraine's image and complete the investigation of corruption cases that have held back cooperation between Ukraine and the United States."
Aside from the above-mentioned "cases" purportedly dealing with the Biden family and the 2016 U.S. election, I was told by White House officials that no other "cases" were discussed.
Based on my understanding, there were approximately a dozen White House officials who listened to the call -- a mixture of policy officials and duty officers in the White House Situation Room, as is customary. The officials I spoke with told me that participation in the call had not been restricted in advance because everyone expected it would be a "routine" call with a foreign leader. I do not know whether anyone was physically present with the President during the call.
In addition to White House personnel, I was told that a State Department official, Mr. T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, also listened in on the call.
I was not the only non-White House official to receive a readout of the call. Based on my understanding, multiple State Department and Intelligence Community officials were also briefed on the contents of the call as outlined above.
II. Efforts to restrict access to records related to the call
In the days following the phone call, I learned from multiple U.S. officials that senior White House officials had intervened to "lock down" all records of the phone call, especially the official word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced -- as is customary -- by the White House Situation Room. This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call.
White House officials told me that they were "directed" by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored for coordination, finalization, and distribution to Cabinet-level officials.
Instead, the transcript was loaded into a separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature. One White House official described this act as an abuse of this electronic system because the call did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective.
I do not know whether similar measures were taken to restrict access to other records of the call, such as contemporaneous handwritten notes taken by those who listened in.
III. Ongoing concerns
On 26 July, a day after the call, U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker visited Kyiv and met with President Zelenskyy and a variety of Ukrainian political figures. Ambassador Volker was accompanied in his meetings by U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. Based on multiple readouts of these meetings recounted to me by various U.S. officials, Ambassadors Volker and Sandland reportedly provided advice to the Ukrainian leadership about how to "navigate" the demands that the President had made of Mr. Zelenskyy.
I also learned from multiple U.S. officials that, on or about 2 August, Mr. Giuliani reportedly traveled to Madrid to meet with one of President Zelenskyy' s advisers, Andriy Yermak. The U.S. officials characterized this meeting, which was not reported publicly at the time, as a "direct follow-up" to the President's call with Mr. Zelenskyy about the "cases" they had discussed.
Separately, multiple U.S. officials told me that Mr. Giuliani had reportedly privately reached out to a variety of other Zelenskyy advisers, including Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and Acting Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov.
I do not know whether those officials met or spoke with Mr. Giuliani, but I was told separately by multiple U.S. officials that Mr. Yermak and Mr. Bakanov intended to travel to Washington in mid-August.
On 9 August, the President told reporters: "I think [President Zelenskyy] is going to make a deal with President Putin, and he will be invited to the White House. And we look forward to seeing him. He's already been invited to the White House, and he wants to come. And I think he will. He's a very reasonable guy. He wants to see peace in Ukraine, and I think he will be coming very soon, actually."
IV. Circumstances leading up to the 25 July Presidential phone call
Beginning in late March 2019, a series of articles appeared in an online publication called The Hill. In these articles, several Ukrainian officials -- most notably, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko -- made a series of allegations against other Ukrainian officials and current and former
U.S. officials. Mr. Lutsenko and his colleagues alleged, inter alia:
that they possessed evidence that Ukrainian officials -- namely, Head of the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine Artem Sytnyk and Member of Parliament Serhiy Leshchenko -- had "interfered" in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, allegedly in collaboration with the DNC and the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv;
that the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv -- specifically, U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who had criticized Mr. Lutsenko' s organization for its poor record on fighting corruption -- had allegedly obstructed Ukrainian law enforcement agencies' pursuit of corruption cases, including by providing a "do not prosecute" list, and had blocked Ukrainian prosecutors from traveling to the United States expressly to prevent them from delivering their "evidence" about the 2016 U.S. election; and
that former Vice President Biden had pressured former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in 2016 to fire then Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in order to quash a purported criminal probe into Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company on whose board the former Vice President's son, Hunter, sat.
In several public comments, Mr. Lutsenko also stated that he wished to communicate directly with Attorney General Barr on these matters.
The allegations by Mr. Lutsenko came on the eve of the first round of Ukraine's presidential election on 31 March. By that time, Mr. Lutsenko's political patron, President Poroshenko, was trailing Mr. Zelenskyy in the polls and appeared likely to be defeated. Mr. Zelenskyy had made known his desire to replace Mr. Lutsenko as Prosecutor General. On 21 April, Mr. Poroshenko lost the runoff to Mr. Zelenskyy by a landslide. See Enclosure for additional information.
It was also publicly reported that Mr. Giuliani had met on at least two occasions with Mr. Lutsenko: once in New York in late January and again in Warsaw in mid-February. In addition, it was publicly reported that Mr. Giuliani had spoken in late 2018 to former Prosecutor General Shokin, in a Skype call arranged by two associates of Mr. Giuliani. to
On 25 April in an interview with Fox News, the President called Mr. Lutsenko's claims "big" and "incredible" and stated that the Attorney General "would want to see this."
On or about 29 April, I learned from U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the situation that Ambassador Yovanovitch had been suddenly recalled to Washington by senior State Department officials for "consultations" and would most likely be removed from her position.
Around the same time, I also learned from a U.S. official that "associates" of Mr. Giuliani were trying to make contact with the incoming Zelenskyy team.
On 6 May, the State Department announced that Ambassador Yovanovitch would be ending her assignment in Kyiv "as planned."
However, several U.S. officials told me that, in fact, her tour was curtailed because of pressure stemming from Mr. Lutsenko's allegations. Mr. Giuliani subsequently stated in an interview with a Ukrainian journalist published on 14 May that Ambassador Yovanovitch was "removed ... because she was part of the efforts against the President."
On 9 May, The New York Times reported that Mr. Giuliani planned to travel to Ukraine to press the Ukrainian government to pursue investigations that would help the President in his 2020 reelection bid.
In his multitude of public statements leading up to and in the wake of the publication of this article, Mr. Giuliani confirmed that he was focused on encouraging Ukrainian authorities to pursue investigations into alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and alleged wrongdoing by the Biden family. 12
On the afternoon of 10 May, the President stated in an interview with Politico that he planned to speak with Mr. Giuliani about the trip.
A few hours later, Mr. Giuliani publicly canceled his trip, claiming that Mr. Zelenskyy was "surrounded by enemies of the [U.S.] President... and of the United States."
On 11 May, Mr. Lutsenko met for two hours with President-elect Zelenskyy, according to a public account given several days later by Mr. Lutsenko. Mr. Lutsenko publicly stated that he had told Mr. Zelenskyy that he wished to remain as Prosecutor General.
Starting in mid-May, I heard from multiple U.S. officials that they were deeply concerned by what they viewed as Mr. Giuliani's circumvention of national security decisionmaking processes to engage with Ukrainian officials and relay messages back and forth between Kyiv and the President. These officials also told me:
that State Department officials, including Ambassadors Volker and Sondland, had spoken with Mr. Giulianiin an attempt to "contain the damage" to U.S. national security; and
that Ambassadors Volker and Sandland during this time period met with members of the new Ukrainian administration and, in addition to discussing policy matters, sought to help Ukrainian leaders understand and respond to the differing messages they were receiving from official U.S. channels on the-one-hand, and from Mr. Giuliani on the other.
During this same timeframe, multiple U.S. officials told me that the Ukrainian leadership was led to believe that a meeting or phone call between the President and President Zelenskyy would depend on whether Zelenskyy showed willingness to " play ball" on the issues that had been publicly aired by Mr. Lutsenko and Mr. Giuliani. (Note: This was the general understanding of the state of affairs as conveyed to me by U.S. officials from late May into early July. I do not know who delivered this message to the Ukrainian leadership, or when.) See Enclosure for additional information.
Shortly after President Zelenskyy' s inauguration, it was publicly reported that Mr. Giuliani met with two other Ukrainian officials: Ukraine's Special Anticorruption Prosecutor, Mr. Nazar Kholodnytskyy, and a former Ukrainian diplomat named Andriy Telizhenko. Both Mr. Kholodnytskyy and Mr. Telizhenko are allies of Mr. Lutsenko and made similar allegations in the above-mentioned series of articles in The Hill.
On 13 June, the President told ABC' s George Stephanopoulos that he would accept damaging information on his political rivals from a foreign government.
On 21 June, Mr. Giuliani tweeted: "New Pres of Ukraine still silent on investigation of Ukrainian interference in 2016 and alleged Biden bribery of Poroshenko. Time for leadership and investigate both if you want to purge how Ukraine was abused by Hillary and Clinton people."
In mid-July, I learned of a sudden change of policy with respect to U.S. assistance for Ukraine. See Enclosure for additional information.
ENCLOSURE: Classified appendix
(U) CLASSIFIED APPENDIX
(U) Supplementary classified information is provided as follows:
(U) Additional information related to Section II
According to multiple White House officials I spoke with, the transcript of the President's call with President Zelenskyy was placed into a computer system managed directly by the National Security Council (NSC) Directorate for Intelligence Programs. This is a standalone computer system reserved for codeword-level intelligence information , such as covert action. According to information I received from White House officials, some officials voiced concerns internally that this would be an abuse of the system and was not consistent with the responsibilities of the Directorate for Intelligence Programs. According to White House officials I spoke with, this was "not the first time" under this Administration that a Presidential transcript was placed into this codeword-level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive — rather than national security sensitive — information .
(U) Additional information related to Section IV
[Redaction]
I would like to expand upon two issues mentioned in Section IV that might have a connection with the overall effort to pressure the Ukrainian leadership. As I do not know definitively whether the below-mentioned decisions are connected to the broader efforts I describe, I have chosen to include them in the classified annex. If they indeed represent genuine policy deliberations and decisions formulated to advance U.S. foreign policy and national security, one might be able to make a reasonable case that the facts are classified
I learned from U.S. officials that, on or around 14 May, the President instructed Vice President Pence to cancel his planned travel to Ukraine to attend President Zelenskyy' s inauguration on 20 May; Secretary of Energy Rick Perry led the delegation instead. According to these officials, it was also "made clear" to them that the President did not want to meet with Mr. Zelenskyy until he saw how Zelenskyy "chose to act" in office. I do not know how this guidance was communicated, or by whom. I also do not know whether this action was connected with the broader understanding, described in the unclassified letter, that a meeting or phone call between the President and President Zelenskyy would depend on whether Zelenskyy showed willingness to "play ball'' on the issues that had been publicly aired by Mr. Lutsenko and Mr. Giuliani,
On 18 July, an Office of Management and Budget (0MB) official informed Departments and Agencies that the President "earlier that month" had issued instructions to suspend all U.S. security assistance to Ukraine. Neither OMB nor the NSC staff knew why this instruction had been issued. During interagency meetings on 23 July and 26 July, OMB officials again stated explicitly that the instruction to suspend this assistance had come directly from the President, but they still were unaware of a policy rationale. As of early August, I heard from U.S. officials that some Ukrainian officials were aware that U.S. aid might be in jeopardy, but I do not know how or when they learned of it.
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
Statement of The Speaker of the House of Representatives on Impeachment
The following is the statement made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
D-Calif., on Tuesday evening announcing the House leadership’s decision
to start impeachment proceedings against President Trump:
Good afternoon.
Last Tuesday, we observed the anniversary of the adoption of the
Constitution on September 17th. Sadly, on that day, the intelligence
community inspector general formally notified the Congress that the
administration was preventing him from turning over a whistleblower
complaint – on Constitution Day. This is a violation of the law. Shortly
thereafter, press reports began to break of a phone call by the
president of the United States calling upon a foreign power to intervene
in his election. This is a breach of his constitutional
responsibilities. The facts are these: The intelligence community
inspector general, who was appointed by President Trump, determined that
the complaint is both of urgent concern and credible, and its
disclosure, he went on to say, relates to one of the most significant
and important of the director of national intelligence’s responsibility
to the American people. On Thursday, the inspector general testified
before the House Intelligence Committee, stating that the acting
director of national intelligence blocked him from disclosing the
whistleblower complaint. This is a violation of law. The law is
unequivocal. … It says the DNI, director of national intelligence, shall
provide Congress the full whistleblower complaint.
For more than 25 years, I’ve served on the Intelligence Committee as a member, as the ranking member, as part of the Gang of Four, even before I was in the leadership. I was there when we created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence – that did not exist before 2004. I was there even earlier in the ’90s when we wrote the whistleblower laws, and continued to write them, to improve them, to ensure the security of our intelligence and the safety of our whistleblowers. I know what their purpose was, and we proceeded with balance and caution as we wrote the laws. I can say with authority, the Trump administration’s actions undermine both our national security and our intelligence and our protections of the whistleblowers. … This Thursday, the acting DNI will appear before the House Intelligence Committee. At that time, he must turn over the whistleblower’s full complaint to the committee. He will have to choose whether to break the law or honor his responsibility to the Constitution.
On the final day of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when our Constitution was adopted, Americans gathered on the steps of Independence Hall to await the news of the government our founders had crafted. They asked Benjamin Franklin: What do we have a republic or a monarchy? Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Our responsibility is to keep it. Our republic endures because of the wisdom of our Constitution, enshrined in three coequal branches of government serving as checks and balances on each other.
The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the Constitution, especially when the president says, “Article II says I can do whatever I want.” For the past several months we have been investigating in our committees and litigating in the courts so the House can gather all the relevant facts and consider whether to exercise its full Article I powers, including a constitutional power of the utmost gravity – approval of articles of impeachment. And this week, the president has admitted to asking the president of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically.The actions of the Trump presidency revealed the dishonorable fact of the president’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections. Therefore, today, I’m announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry. I’m directing our six committees to proceed with their investigations under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry. The president must be held accountable. No one is above the law.
Getting back to our founders: In the darkest days of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine wrote, “The times have found us.” The times found them to fight for and establish our democracy. The times have found us today – not to place ourselves in the same category of greatness as our founders but to place us in the urgency of protecting and defending our Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. And the words of Ben Franklin, to keep our republic.
I thank our chairmen … Chairman Nadler of Judiciary; Chairman Schiff of Intelligence; Chairman Engel, Foreign Affairs; Chairman Cummings of Oversight. And Chairman Cummings I’ve been in touch with constantly – he’s a master of so much but including inspectors general and whistleblowers. [Congressman] Richie Neal of the Ways and Means Committee. Congresswoman Maxine Waters of the Financial Services Committee. And I commend all of our members, our colleagues, for the thoughtful, thoughtful approach to all this, for their careful statements.
God bless them, and God bless America. Thank you all.
https://www.pressherald.com/2019/09/24/read-the-text-of-house-speaker-pelosis-statement-on-impeachment-inquiry/
Good afternoon.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California Andrew Harnik/Associated Press
For more than 25 years, I’ve served on the Intelligence Committee as a member, as the ranking member, as part of the Gang of Four, even before I was in the leadership. I was there when we created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence – that did not exist before 2004. I was there even earlier in the ’90s when we wrote the whistleblower laws, and continued to write them, to improve them, to ensure the security of our intelligence and the safety of our whistleblowers. I know what their purpose was, and we proceeded with balance and caution as we wrote the laws. I can say with authority, the Trump administration’s actions undermine both our national security and our intelligence and our protections of the whistleblowers. … This Thursday, the acting DNI will appear before the House Intelligence Committee. At that time, he must turn over the whistleblower’s full complaint to the committee. He will have to choose whether to break the law or honor his responsibility to the Constitution.
On the final day of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when our Constitution was adopted, Americans gathered on the steps of Independence Hall to await the news of the government our founders had crafted. They asked Benjamin Franklin: What do we have a republic or a monarchy? Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Our responsibility is to keep it. Our republic endures because of the wisdom of our Constitution, enshrined in three coequal branches of government serving as checks and balances on each other.
The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the Constitution, especially when the president says, “Article II says I can do whatever I want.” For the past several months we have been investigating in our committees and litigating in the courts so the House can gather all the relevant facts and consider whether to exercise its full Article I powers, including a constitutional power of the utmost gravity – approval of articles of impeachment. And this week, the president has admitted to asking the president of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically.The actions of the Trump presidency revealed the dishonorable fact of the president’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections. Therefore, today, I’m announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry. I’m directing our six committees to proceed with their investigations under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry. The president must be held accountable. No one is above the law.
Getting back to our founders: In the darkest days of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine wrote, “The times have found us.” The times found them to fight for and establish our democracy. The times have found us today – not to place ourselves in the same category of greatness as our founders but to place us in the urgency of protecting and defending our Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. And the words of Ben Franklin, to keep our republic.
I thank our chairmen … Chairman Nadler of Judiciary; Chairman Schiff of Intelligence; Chairman Engel, Foreign Affairs; Chairman Cummings of Oversight. And Chairman Cummings I’ve been in touch with constantly – he’s a master of so much but including inspectors general and whistleblowers. [Congressman] Richie Neal of the Ways and Means Committee. Congresswoman Maxine Waters of the Financial Services Committee. And I commend all of our members, our colleagues, for the thoughtful, thoughtful approach to all this, for their careful statements.
God bless them, and God bless America. Thank you all.
https://www.pressherald.com/2019/09/24/read-the-text-of-house-speaker-pelosis-statement-on-impeachment-inquiry/
Friday, August 23, 2019
Mentally Unfit to Hold Nuclear Trigger - Forensic Psychiatrists
Bandy X. Lee has been ringing the alarm bell for three years. Now she’s wheeling out the gong.
The Yale University forensic psychiatrist published a book in 2017 called “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” in which she and more than two-dozen other mental-health experts warned -- despite the “Goldwater rule,” which prohibits psychiatrists from diagnosing someone they have not personally examined -- that the new president’s mental capacity was in doubt.
Lee and her colleagues have now pored over former special counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report into Russia’s election interference and President Trump’s “obstructive behavior,” and used it to put together a new mental-health analysis of the president. The information in the Mueller Report, they concluded, is even better than a personal clinical examination of the president.
In their analysis, Lee told Raw Story this week, “we highlighted the greater importance of collateral information in a functional, not diagnostic, exam -- in other words, reports on [Trump’s] capacity to fulfill the duties of his office by co-workers and close associates are more valuable than a personal interview, which can distort the actual situation by presenting a desired scenario of events rather than reality.”
The upshot?
“In sum,” the mental-health experts wrote in their Mueller Report analysis, “[Trump] failed every criterion of sound mental capacity to make rational, reality-based decisions, which are critical to functioning in the role of President.”
See article here - https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2019/07/psychiatrists-use-mueller-report-to-track-donald-trumps-mental-state-warn-there-is-very-little-time-now.html
Buy the book here - https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Case-Donald-Trump-Psychiatrists/dp/1250212863/ref=dp_ob_title_bk
Saturday, July 27, 2019
UPDATE: Beating Trump
INCOMPETENCE - He is unable to fulfill the duties of POTUS in all areas; here are some examples:
ADMINISTRATIVE FAILURE - He has a very high rate of appointee and employee turnover while many of the critical positions in the Federal government are vacant or occupied by temporary placeholders.
CRIMINAL APPOINTEES - Many of his former senior administration and campaign staff are in prison.
AGENCIES CRIPPLED - Many of his appointees to critical agencies are lobbyists for the companies they now regulate with resulting harm to the country.
FOREIGN WARS - His policies have brought the United States to the brink of war in North Korea, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and possibly others.
INTELLIGENCE SERVICES - The National Security of the United States depends on accurate and unbiased information from our intelligence services. He has fired many of the top officers in those agencies and harmed the morale of the agents who place their lives in danger every day. Some of our spies have been outed and probably killed.
TRADE WAR - He has escalated a discussion of foreign trade imbalances into a trade war; that war has damaged several of our economic sectors, notably American agriculture.
There are others, but the narrative below returns to the personal flaws -
Experience in defeating David Duke in a statewide election shows that Dems should attack the candidate personally as a threat to the very existence of our American government and way of life.
He will likely attack any Dem personally and relentlessly and Dem policy arguments likely will not overcome those attacks. Even if there is an effective impeachment, the apathetic voter may not be motivated.
Any attack should be repeated endlessly at every opportunity; there should be no room for doubt.
FLOUTING THE RULE OF LAW - He thinks and acts as if he is above the law. If re-elected he will simply ignore the law; He has already shown that behavior. The Constitution won't survive his attacks.
PEDOPHILE - He has a history of raping underage girls. He will continue this shameless behavior if given cover of darkness from the press.
FELON - His acts of obstruction in the Mueller probe would result in a felony conviction for any other person. He escapes only because he is President.
RAPIST - There are many documented cases where he has raped women.
TRAITOR - He has repeatedly placed the interests of Russian oligarchs above the interests of the American people.
DEADBEAT - He has used the court system to defraud vendors and customers repeatedly.
RAMPANT CORRUPTION - His appointment officials and his family have all used the office for personal enrichment.
CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE - His campaign officers and personal attorney are in jail for various criminal acts. This will only get worse if he stays in office.
PHILANDERER - He has used his authority over employees to seduce their wives by telling the wife the husband complains about her at work.
Only by demonstrating his evil nature and acts can the apathetic voter by motivated and only then can he be defeated.
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
Is There Too Much Capital ?
Most economists recognize that income inequality is too high and problematic for the well-being of the population.
That is true today regardless of which country is considered.
One of the secondary effects of high income inequality is a rise in savings; people with high incomes have extra cash to save or invest.
The ratio of Bank Deposits to GDP is about 60% for Brazil and over 80% for the USA. The St. Louis FED has prepared charts which are available at these links:
USA - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DDOI02USA156NWDB
BRAZIL - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DDOI02BRA156NWDB
There is so much cash floating in the banking systems that interest rates have fallen to just about zero. It can be argued that interest rates this low obscure the real cost of projects and encourage marginal investments.
Interestingly, the marginal income tax rate in the US was cut from 70% in 1984 to under 30%. The current USA marginal tax rate is about 39%
The ratio of bank deposits to GDP peaked at about 70% then, fell to historical levels of about 55% in 1995 and then rose to current levels.
Sunday, July 21, 2019
Family Love Letter to a Trump Supporter
Hey Cuz - Hope Betty and your family are doing real well. Haven't heard much from you recently, and you know me and my big mouth.
Anyways, it seems you're hard to talk with these days and also you seem to have got a case of bad attitude recently and, well frankly it's beginning to worry us all out here.
We're all family you know and, well, we are really worried about you. We stand or fall together. We ARE family and you are always welcome; but, the welcome comes with a little bit of advice, for free.
It's no secret these times are hard for you, and for us too, truth be told. But that orange headed grifter stayin with you, well you know he is up to no good.
I know you say he's your bud and that you really like him, but Cuz, we are seeing some real problems.
First off, he's raping your 14 year old little girl. Maybe you don't know that. You better look into it. If he knocks her up, he'll take off like a scared rabbit. Then his buddies in church, well they have run all the abortion docs out of town. Gonna leave you and your girl with a big problem. Maybe you thought that family planning was a settled issue and help was easy to get, but think again. Your darlin girl will be left to fend for herself with no help at all.
And, his drug dealin buddies are just ruining your town with the prescription pain meds. Another thing, you know that national park you like to hunt and fish in, well he sold that to an oil company and they gonna rip it up real soon. There won't be any jobs though - all the jobs will go to foreigners and out of towners. Some of his Wall Street buddies want to take your Social Security too. He's a real piece of work alright.
I know the orange grifter says he'll take care of you, but mostly he is taking care of his buddies, of which you are not one. Your water well will be ruined when the new oil company starts pumping crap into the ground to force up the oil and, ooops, also ruins the aquifer.
Here's another thing - that guy has installed a bunch of dog cages around your property and he's locking up children in there. Hard to believe, but it's true. On top of that, some of the guards are raping and beating the kids. This is all on your land and some of us are real upset about it. That's another thing you better be looking at.
I know he says that those foreign kids are taking your jobs, but, Cuz, the only people taking your job is the corporation you work for. The ones taking your jobs sure as hell ain't no helpless kids or desperate immigrants. As for immigrants, well we're them too; our grandparents came from Europe and Africa. It's a lot harder to get here now than it was. The stuff they have to go through is unbelievable. They know more about America than you or I combined. Those folks are just looking for a safe place to raise their kids, after all.
You can go ahead and hate on them if you want to; your hate just shows your fear. But, if you harm anyone of them, you'll go directly to jail, just as sure as anyone of them will go to jail if they harm any one of us.
I could go on, but you get the idea. We love you and we are in it together. We all make mistakes and it just proves we are human after all.
We want to help you, really help you. There a lot of folks working real hard to help you.
But this orange grifter is in the way, You gotta help us get rid of him so we can make your life better.
If you don't help us get rid of him, we'll be in for a world of hurt.
Your Cuz
Modern Monetary Theory, a Primer
There is some discussion of MMT, or Modern Monetary Theory as a way to pay for social programs.
The essential idea is to install a new program and then expand the deficit and debt by borrowing money through Treasury Bills to pay for the new program.
The logic appeals - if Republicans can use that mechanism to pay for tax cuts, then perhaps Democrats can use it to pay for new social programs.
It's like paying for a new car with a credit card - you hope that the new job you may get will give you the income to make the monthly payments for the car.
But Republicans use the discredited Laffer curve to hope that tax cuts will pay for themselves through increased economic activity and new tax revenues. But, it doesn't work.
It's possible that a Democrat program might actually raise economic activity so much that it would pay for itself, but right now I can't think of any program that might do that.
Perhaps it is better to just do things because they are right for the country and figure out how to pay for them later. That idea seems to work for most Nordic countries. It can work here if we are brave.
In the meantime, the critical question arises of our debt, interest payments and GDP levels.
Investors are willing to buy Treasuries and fund our deficits because they seem safe. And, they will continue to appear safe IF we can maintain the current percentage ratios among GDP, debt as a percentage of GDP and interest payments as a percentage of federal expenditures.
Once we blow up that delicate balance, then investors may ask for higher interest rates on T-Bills.
Then, our party will be over and we'll be just like Greece.
Saturday, July 6, 2019
The Sale of Our Freedom
Trump, Senate Republicans and FOX are cooperating with Putin to force our country to further Putin's goal. Putin's goal is to allow his associates free access to our markets, policies and intelligence in order to financially benefit him and his associates. Putin and his associates are thugs who murder their enemies in cold blood regardless of where they reside.
While the FBI has systematically documented the cooperation between Trump and Russia, many of the United States intelligence specialists who conducted the investigation have been fired and the report has been buried. The public has the right to read the report, but access has been withheld. The separate Mueller report had a limited, criminal focus. It was published in large part despite the Administrations' efforts to stop that release and subsequent publicity.
Democratic party leaders are trying to create public opinion in favor of prosecuting Trump for his many crimes. Since impeachment is a censure device and does not necessarily result in removal from office, and since it requires Senate approval to proceed, the better course is to build an overwhelming consensus among voters that the election must defeat Republicans and Trump. If he wins the 2020 election it is likely that Trump will install a tyrannical government . Among other things, Democracy in the United States will be gone. The likely result of that eventuality is a civil war.
See Rachel Maddow for some background: https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-attacks-intel-leaders-alarmed-by-russia-s-support-for-trump-63375429721
Monday, July 1, 2019
Putin Uses Chechen Thugs Internally
Dear Sir/Madam,
Chechnya’s Significance to Russia’s Internal and Foreign Policy
The Polish Institute of International Affairs presents the next issue of the PISM Bulletin.
Jakub Benedyczak
The actions of the head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, towards the neighbouring republics of the Russian Federation have increased tensions in the North Caucasus region. The Russian authorities tolerate Kadyrov’s policy because of the significance of Chechnya to Russian politics in the Middle East and the fight against terrorism. Kadyrov remains loyal to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is the most important guarantor of the Chechen leader’s position. However, in the long run, once Putin leaves office, the Chechen Republic may attempt to gain independence.
In autumn last year, Kadyrov forced the neighbouring Republic of Ingushetia to resolve a territorial conflict with the Chechen Republic that had lasted since the collapse of the USSR. As a result of the agreement, Ingushetia renounced 10% of its territory to Chechnya. This led to massive protests of the Ingush people, and as a result, the resignation of Ingushetia’s head. Then, Kadyrov forced the Republic of Dagestan to join similar talks on territorial changes. Fearing a repetition of the Ingushetia scenario in April, the parties suspended negotiations. Despite the tensions in Ingushetia, the Russia’s Constitutional Court approved the Chechnya-Ingushetia border agreement, and the central authorities will not intervene in this unprecedented shifting of borders within the Russian Federation.
Chechnya’s Quasi-Sovereignty. Since the end of the active phase of the Second Chechen War (2000), the Russian authorities have transferred control over the republic to local elites in exchange for tamping down aspirations of independence. This has led to the formation of an informal and unique status for the Chechnya Republic in the Russian Federation called an “internal foreign”, which is characterized by the limited authority of the central authorities over the republic. In the republic, the institutions and offices of federal offices only formally function based on the law of the Russian Federation. In practice, they are subject to Kadyrov directives, informal local schemes, and customary Chechen laws.
Contrary to federal law, the authorities of the Chechen Republic conduct their own Chechenisation and Islamisation practices based on at times extreme interpretations of local cultural and religious jurisprudence: allowing polygamy, marriages of underage women, “matrimonial” kidnappings, honour killings, and the domination of the Chechen language in media, offices, and local government meetings. This has been taking place with the tacit agreement of the central authorities, along with mass persecution of opponents and the use of torture and collective repression.
The basis of Chechnya’s autonomy is the 10,000–30,000-strong local armed formation, the so-called Kadyrovtsy. Formally, they are subject to the Russian Ministry of International Affairs and the National Guard. In reality, they are Kadyrov’s private army, led by his associates. Almost all defence and security units are under the control of the authorities in the Chechen Republic, with only the local Federal Security Service left.
Kadyrov’s clan has monopolised the local economy. The Russian government controls only the energy sector in the republic, although 80% of its revenues comes from the federal budget. The Chechen authorities also derive tribute paid by local state and private institutions in the form of payments for the benefit of the Akhmad Kadyrov Foundation, connected to the leader of the republic.
The quasi-sovereignty of the Chechen Republic and the politics of Chechenisation strengthen the strong feeling of separateness and superiority among Chechens over other Caucasian nations. This also makes the Russian language, culture, andate alien to the inhabitants of the republic, consolidating the conviction of their area as an independent country belonging to the Chechens, including the neighbouring republics of the North Caucasus, which further increases the separatist tendencies.
Chechnya’s Significance in Russian Politics. Chechnya is an important element of Russia’s fight against terrorism in the North Caucasus. The Kadyrovtsy supported the Russian services in the so-called “zachistka” (mopping-up) of separatists and Islamic fundamentalists, consisting of the fighters’ absorption into their ranks or killing them, isolating them from cities and depriving their families of their livelihoods. The Kadyrovtsy also reportedly supported 4,000–5,000 of the region’s militants’ travel to Iraq and Syria to join ISIS, including around 600–1,500 Chechens, and now are preventing their return. This has made it easier for Russian military intelligence to infiltrate ISIS and also to break up the Caucasus Emirate, a terrorist organisation responsible for many acts of terror in Russia. Fighting Islamic radicals with the Chechen forces increases the effectiveness of Russia’s anti-terrorist policy. In 2010-2018, the number of victims of violence and acts of terror in the North Caucasus decreased by almost 90% (from 1,710 to 110), and in Chechnya by over 70% (from 250 to 35). In addition, the involvement of Chechen troops allows federal authorities to avoid responsibility for acts against civilians.
The Kadyrovtsy often act without agreement with the federal authorities. Justifying this by the fight against terrorism, they have fought Kadyrov’s political opponents, organised armed raids in Ingushetia and Dagestan, and carried out murders outside the territory of the Chechen Republic. Thanks to Kadyrov’s protection, the Kadyrovtsy avoid criminal liability for these actions—the exception being the Chechens convicted in 2017 for the murder of former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov. This has led to the emergence of a conflict between Kadyrov and the heads of Russian power structures, who would like to limit the leader of the Chechnya’s freedom to act as he wishes. However, they are currently unable to weaken his position because he enjoys Putin’s personal protection.
The Russian president perceives the Chechen leader as a guarantor of Russian priorities towards the North Caucasus, ensuring the stability of Chechnya and keeping it within the Russian Federation. It can be assumed that only if Kadyrov attempts to take over further Russian Federation territory will he meet a firm reaction from Putin.
Chechnya’s Significance in Russian Foreign Policy. Kadyrov has become an important instrument of Russian politics in North Africa and the Middle East. In the last four years, he and his associates, as special representatives of President Putin and the Russian Federation, have held dozens of meetings with the highest authorities of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, and Libya. Two close Kadyrov advisors pursue Russian policy in the region: Lev Dengov is the head of the Russia-Libya contact group, working to regain Russian influence in the Libyan economy, and Ziyad Sabsabi, Kadyrov’s envoy for the Middle East and North Africa, is responsible for the repatriation of Russian women and children from Iraq, Libya, and Syria.
An important role is played by Kadyrov’s troops, who have fought or are fighting in the Russian-Georgian conflict, in Donbas in the Ukraine, and also in Syria, where the Russian military sided with Bashar Al-Assad. Currently, about 1,000 Chechens are stationed in Syria. In addition to intelligence tasks, they protect strategic objects, humanitarian aid and the reconstruction of mosques, financed by the Akhmad Kadyrov Foundation. The foundation also establishes contacts with the relatively large Chechen diaspora, including in Turkey, Syria, and Jordan, thus building Kadyrov’s influence in the Middle East. This strengthens the Chechen leader on the Russian political scene, leveraging power over structures hostile to him.
Conclusions and Perspectives. For the Russian authorities, Kadyrov’s seemingly independent actions are the price for his contribution to the fight against terrorism and the stabilisation of Chechnya. For this reason, the quasi-sovereignty of the republic will be preserved, allowing Kadyrov to further strengthen his political position, deepen Chechnya’s independence within the Federation, and expand its influence in the region. This will be supported by maintaining Kadyrov’s role as an intermediary in Russian politics in the Middle East and North Africa.
In the short term, a scenario in which Kadyrov’s actions threaten the stability of the North Caucasus or the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation is unlikely. The massive scale of repression Kadyrov has used against the Chechens, as well as the conflict with the Russian power structures, mean that the republic’s leader must remain loyal to the federal authorities to maintain his power and security. However, if he attempts to change the status quo in the region, the Russian authorities will use all means, including military force, to restore full control over the North Caucasus.
As the most important guarantor of the current status of Chechnya and Kadyrov’s position is Putin, in the long term, after the change in the leader of the Russian Federation, the existing model of relations between the central authorities and the republic could be revised. If Putin’s departure weakens the federal authorities, it is possible that Chechnya will attempt to gain independence and expand its borders into neighbouring republics, as it did after the collapse of the USSR and considering the separatist tendencies still present in the republic.
Yours faithfully,
Katarzyna Staniewska
Bulletin PISM
Research Office
Polish Institute of International Affairs
1A Warecka Street
00-950 Warsaw, Poland
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
RUSSIAN NUCLEAR POWERED MISSILES. Report
June 24, 2019
Dear Sir/Madam,
The Polish Institute of International Affairs presents the next issue of the PISM Bulletin.
Military Application of Nuclear Propulsion:
Russian 9M730/SSC-X-9 Cruise Missile Project
Marcin Andrzej Piotrowski
Russia presents its Burevestnik cruise missile with nuclear propulsion as a new type of strategic weapon that should change the strategic balance with the U.S. and open new areas of arms control and arms-reduction negotiations. However, a series of failed tests has resulted in the perception of the missile as an element of Russian propaganda. Nevertheless, the continued development of this missile might prompt stronger NATO nuclear deterrence and missile defence against all types of Russian cruise missiles.
What We Know. In March 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin presented six new models of weapons in response to advancements in U.S. missile defence systems. According to Putin, these models disrupt strategic stability between Russia and the U.S. He focused especially on the projects named 2M39 Poseidon, a drone-torpedo with a 10,000 km range, and 9M730 Burevestnik, a cruise missile described as having “unlimited range”. Both weapons are based on nuclear propulsion (small reactors that supply non-stop power) and both could deliver nuclear warheads. Putin’s presentation was illustrated with a few images of the 9M730 being launched as well as a computer visualisation of its flight path. In 2018, Russian media often featured the 9M730 project, but always illustrated their reports with virtual visualisations. In July 2018, the Russian Ministry of Defence made an announcement from an assembly building belonging to defence contractor Novator where at least four 9M730 missiles were visible, or at least mock-ups of them. The presentation was aimed at weakening the effects of Western media reports about the crash of a prototype missile and the subsequent Russian search mission in the Barents Sea. In February 2019, Russia announced it had conducted a successful test flight of the missile. Also noteworthy is that, in available sources, so far there is has been no discussion about the future role of this missile in either Russia’s military doctrine or strategy.
That Russia is developing the 9M730 was confirmed by a few media leaks from U.S. intelligence, which reportedly detected it for the first time in 2016 at the Kapustin Yar range, with the missile then designated as KY-30. After further flights at this range and in Novaya Zemlya, the missile was designated by NATO as SSC-X-9 Skyfall. By January 2019, U.S. intelligence had detected altogether 13 tests of prototypes, with 11 ending in crashes just after the missile left its launcher. In all cases, the problem appeared to be with the continuation of flight in the transition from the start-engine to the initiation of the reactor as the missile’s main engine. Even the two relatively successful flights ended after just a few minutes and a short distance. According to U.S. intelligence, the majority of the missile tests were prepared at Putin’s demand and against the suggestions of engineers from Novator and the research centre responsible for the development of nuclear propulsion. These tests are seen as the cause of the increased presence of radioactive Ruthenium and Iodine in Scandinavia, possibly stemming from the 9M730’s main engine.
Problems with Nuclear Propulsion. Russian information about the miniaturisation of nuclear reactors has been questioned by some Western non-governmental experts. They point to the many difficulties with the miniaturisation of nuclear propulsion. These opinions, though, do not seem to consider that Rosatom, the state company responsible for the development of civilian and military nuclear technologies, has received since 2010 around a 30% real increase in its budget. These funds could have allowed Russia to make significant progress in the construction of miniature nuclear reactors and propulsion systems for the Burevestnik and Poseidon systems.
It also should be noted that the Burevestnik’s development faces many of the same technical and safety issues identified in projects initiated by the U.S. and USSR at the beginning of the Cold War. Then, the concept of nuclear propulsion on strategic bombers was studied, which would give aircraft the capability of long-endurance flights and near permanent combat readiness. However, after the construction of a few prototypes in both countries, it became clear that an aeroplane-based reactor presented a threat to crews and materials. Moreover, with the start of the 1960s, both powers activated relatively secure nuclear-powered submarines with ballistic missiles, which ended the need for further work on nuclear-powered aeroplanes. The U.S. refocused its efforts on the SLAM missile-drone, which could carry up to 24 thermonuclear warheads, but even with successful tests of its main engine, the project was cancelled in 1964 because of the risk of a huge radioactive dust cloud emitted by its main engine. It’s also likely that similar risks associated with the potential crash of a Global Hawk reconnaissance drone with nuclear propulsion were the reason for halting research into it (2003-2012).
Problems of the New START Treaty (NST). Even if Russia is still facing technical issues with the development of the Burevestnik and Poseidon projects, they have huge political and propaganda importance. These are tied to the uncertain future of the NST, the last treaty limiting the Russian and American nuclear arsenals after Russia’s violation of the Treaty on Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces and planned August 2019 withdrawal of the U.S. Signed in 2010, the NST limited the quantity of strategic nuclear warheads and means of delivery—intercontinental ballistic missiles, sea-launched ballistic missiles, and strategic bombers. The NST will expire in February 2021, though there is the possibility of an extension to 2026. Russia has declared its support for the NST extension because the quantity and quality limits are the best guarantees for parity with the U.S. With the continuation of the NST, Russia would avoid the risk of additional costs for maintaining its strategic forces at levels above what they are today.
Until recently, there has been no clear position from the Trump administration regarding the U.S. position on extending the NST. The president’s suggestion that the NST and INF should expand to include China is unrealistic due to the Chinese categorical rejection of both treaties. On the other hand, an extension of the NST for another five years may allow the U.S. not only to remain on par with Russia’s strategic capabilities but also to monitor and verify its nuclear arsenal. At the same time, Trump and his advisors see the expiration or termination of the NST as a chance at more flexible paths to the modernisation of U.S. nuclear forces. If the NST expires, they view the lack of quantitative and qualitative limits as a means to strengthen the credibility of U.S. deterrence toward Russia and China.
Thus, the importance of the Burevestnik missile is tied to the fact that it is not subject to the precise definitions and limits of the NST but that it is still a strategic weapon system, with its planned intercontinental range and nuclear warhead. From the point of view of the Russian government, the missile is intended as a bargaining chip during negotiations with the U.S., meant to preserve the value of maintaining the rules of the NST. A new ground-launched cruise missile could illustrate that Russia has the capabilities to develop new strategic systems not foreseen by the treaty. If the NST expires in 2021, Russia is hoping that this new missile could be treated as a negotiation tool to gain a brand new bilateral treaty or agreement. However, the lack of successful long-range tests seems to limit Russia’s goals. Further tests and investments in the development of the 9M730 missile, or other innovative weapons, has become even more probable after 2021. Only with success in these efforts will there be a credible reason for the U.S. to conclude that the interests of both nuclear powers are better ensured by treaties controlling their strategic arsenals.
Conclusion. The limited information about the actual progress of development of the 9M730 Burevestnik suggests problems with the missile, even though the programme is personally supported by President Putin. Contrary to the opinions of some experts, this missile project has more than a disinformation-propaganda function and Russia’s desire to miniaturise reactors should not be dismissed. A U.S. decision not to extend the NST could encourage Russia to develop new nuclear weapons technology and new strategic weapons systems. Uncertainty about the future of the NST and the direction of the nuclear triad modernisation plans of Russia and the U.S. increase the concern among American allies. They want to avoid an uncontrolled arms race between the U.S. and Russia at both the strategic and regional levels. In this context, and especially with Russia’s testing of systems not covered by the NST, there is the possibility NATO members may arrive at different political positions. Nevertheless, the Burevestnik missile’s development needs to be treated as a potential military threat to NATO states. It is capable of delivering nuclear warheads at long range and with a flight profile similar to other Russian cruise missiles. These factors support the argument for a parallel strengthening of nuclear deterrence and building up a multi-layered NATO missile defence—topics so far avoided or blocked by some allies.
Yours faithfully,
Katarzyna Staniewska
Bulletin PISM
Research Office
Polish Institute of International Affairs
1A Warecka Street
00-950 Warsaw, Poland
https://clearinghouseprojectrussia.blogspot.com/2019/06/russian-nuclear-powered-mssiles-report.html
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
REVISED: Effective Campaign Finance Reform
This is a very long post with the entire text of the proposal.
[Links to sources available only in Kindle edition. ©2019, Mike P. McKeever, San Francisco, CA, USA]
TOWARD EFFECTIVE CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM: Adapting Ancient Codes
PREFACE
Do we need to worry about the fact that 40% of United States Congressmen and Congresswomen women are millionaires?
Maybe it's just fine that rich people make our laws and policies, after all they must be good at stuff since they are rich.
But, wait a second. In a word: No. They're not good at everything just because they are rich.
It is not OK that rich people make our laws.
The reason is simple - rich people want to stay rich and get richer. It's what they do.
And, when you're rich and in Congress you can make laws that make you even richer. Or, hear about opportunities for profit before the rest of us.
And, yes, all that is illegal. But, guess what: the laws ain't working. Income and wealth divides in the USA are getting bigger and bigger. And this is despite the fact that some elected officials have been prosecuted for ethics violations.
I think Americans want people in our government to do things that are right for all of us. It's time to take away the opportunity for the rich to profit at our expense while they are in government.
It's especially important today since the problems we face are species wide. If we don't get the right answers, homo sapiens might become extinct. That's right. As a species, we are facing real threats to our survival.
That means we need people in government who make decisions for all of us, not just for themselves.
SOLUTION
Here is a proposed solution: require all public servants to place their assets into a blind trust while they are serving.
That way, they won't be able to make a profit from their actions and, perhaps, will make better decisions for all of us. It's a really good idea and there is more about it below.
But, it is unlikely that the rich people in our government will agree to make it a mandatory thing.
So, perhaps it is time to ask all our officials whether or not they have VOLUNTARILY placed their assets into a trust. Officials whose assets are not under their control while they are serving will be more likely to make better decisions for all of us.
TOWARD EFFECTIVE CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM
Table of Contents
a. Introduction
b. Biographical Note
c. Past response History
d. Suggested Goal
e. Look to Ancient Codes
f. Ancient advice to a ruler
g. Adapting Ancient Codes
h. Creating a Blind Trust Process
INTRODUCTION
It is apparent to all but the most myopic observers that our current political and economic systems are based on a zero sum game model; that is to say, I can have more for me and my family only by taking it from you and your family.
The result of this approach is an adversarial society in which businesses try to lower wage costs by any available means and workers are disadvantaged since they don’t have the political power that business owners have. Labor unions were an attempt to balance the scales; and, when unions were effective, they did a reasonably effective job of balancing incomes and wealth.
Capital responded in the legislature by weakening the power of labor unions to negotiate for workers. The days of unions representing workers effectively are over. Capital runs amok.
But, even that was tolerable so long as the challenges that we as human beings faced were relatively benign and stable.
Unfortunately the challenges we face today are species wide. These challenges – global warming, population growth, the rise of tyranny – are simply stronger than the collective will that we can assemble in an adversarial society. Collectively these challenges are existential to our species.
Many observers have noted that when a political body is severely unbalanced, the likelihood of a violent change becomes stronger.
The United States has a recent history of providing opportunities for the ‘few’ to enrich themselves at the expense of the ‘many’.
Those conditions are well documented elsewhere and are taken as givens here.
PAST AMERICAN RESPONSE - HISTORY
Those conditions referred to above have led to past and current calls for ‘campaign finance reform’ as a means to encourage our system to protect the ‘many’. These calls, however, are based on the simplistic assumption that the primary reason for the American system’s failure to protect the many is due to direct campaign contributions to politicians in exchange for access to the politicians who can influence legislation affecting the donors’ interests.
The logic of past proposals has been this: Once the identities of the donors are made public, the receiving politicians will be ashamed to provide favors for the donors.
Congressional ethics and conflict of interest laws were adopted in the 1970's in an attempt to control legislative behavior. [https://ethics.house.gov/financial-dislosure/policies-underlying-disclosure]
But, several members of Congress have been jailed or fined due to corruption since the 1980's; a detailed list prepared by the Washington Post is available here:
[washingtonpost - the-fix, 2015.07.29]
Here are a few examples from that article:
‘2015
Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.): on 29 counts (with others involved), accused of racketeering and misappropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars following his failed run for mayor of Philadelphia in 2007.
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.): on 14 counts, including eight counts of bribery, in connection with helping a friend and supporter with his business interests. The case is still open, and Menendez is still in the Senate, vowing to fight.
2013
Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) : on 20 counts, including five counts of mail and and wire fraud and three counts related to filing false tax returns, in connection with a Manhattan restaurant he ran called "Healthalicious." He was sentenced this month to eight months in prison.
2008
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska): on seven counts, including making false statements, in connection with more than a quarter of a million dollars allegedly gifted from oil company executives to upgrade his home. His subsequent conviction was later overturned.
Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.): on 35 counts, including conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering, and accused of influencing a land deal in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars. He was sentenced to three years in prison.
2007
Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.): on 16 counts, accused of accepting about $500,000 in bribes. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison. The FBI found $90,000 in his freezer.
2005
Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas): accused of conspiring with political associates to influence Texas state legislative races through a PAC that illegally gave corporate contributions for candidates. He was convicted, but the conviction was overturned by a court in 2013.
2001
Rep. James Traficant (D-Ohio): on multiple counts, including bribery, tax evasion and accepting illegal gifts, and accused of a "pattern of racketeering" by soliciting bribes in return for official favors. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.’
The campaign finance laws adopted in the 1970’s did not eliminate the problem. Elected officials did not rise to the challenges we face as a species.
An apparent weakness of Congressional Ethics laws seems to be that the laws rely on public disclosure as the primary punishment for illegal behavior, failing any criminal prosecutions. In other words, there does not appear to be any enforcement mechanism except court actions resulting from public disclosure or voter disapproval. These disclosure principles and practices operate in an environment where incumbents have a distinct advantage in re-election campaigns AND in a society where many businesses believe - and act - that a criminal act is a good business decision whenever the reward is more than the fine or punishment.
SUGGESTED GOAL
One goal can be a legislature which acts for our common good instead of for their own self-interest.
But, current laws designed to reduce the influence of money and self-interest have proven ineffective in achieving that goal.
Perhaps the question becomes this: How do we create a group of legislators that will act for the common good of the species?
What we want is a government composed of people who serve to make our lives better. Since our past efforts at campaign reform have failed to provide that, perhaps it is time to consider a different approach.
It would be good if any proposed system will improve governing even if it is not universally adopted. That means that adopting the proposal can be voluntary and not forced.
If a few legislators adopt the proposal, voters will see their actions as more responsive and less self interested. The hope is that those few officials are re-elected easily. Once the share of legislators approaches 50%, it is likely that most will join voluntarily. Any remaining holdouts will become pariahs.
LOOK TO ANCIENT CODES FOR A NEW SOLUTION
The proposed system herein is modeled on our ancient practices of rulers who governed very closely to their subjects.
The proposal will remove the possibility of Legislators profiting from their decisions while in office. Perhaps then legislators will make choices for our nation instead of their own wealth.
This may be less naive than it appears. That’s because the people who aspire to public service will do so because they think that they can make things better for the entire country instead of looking to profit personally from their decisions.
As background, I return to an ancient philosophy of governing from a time when leaders were known to the people. Government was more direct - if the leader failed it was evident immediately and the leader was replaced or the society suffered.
Perhaps we can adapt some ideas from that earlier time. Although the ideas herein were generated in Medieval Ireland, it is very likely that such ideas were universal at that time. It was a time in which the Cathedrals and forts, remains of which dot the European landscape today, were built.
The following is taken from a blog post by Stiofán MacAmhalghaidh in 'FÃr Flathemon, Collective Responsibility and Social Order in Early Medieval Ireland', a link to which is provided below.
ADVICE TO A RULER
Audacht Morainn
"Let him raise truth, it will raise him.
Let him exalt mercy, it exalth him
Let him care for his tribes, they will care for him
Let him help his tribes, they will help him
Let him soothe his tribes, they will soothe him"
[Fergus Kelly, A Guide To Early Irish Law, DIAS, 1988, 18-21. Kelly tends to favour 'justice' as a translation of fÃrinne, though one of the purposes of the present discussion is to show that 'truth' may be closer to the original meaning in most cases.]
'The advice in Audacht Morainn is built on a set of ideas about the individual's place in society and the rights and responsibilities this brings, about proper social order and the impact individual action has on this order and about the proper ordering of nature and the impact that the balance of social order has on that natural order. Cath Maige Tuired, though a mythical tale of the Túatha Dé Danann, is structured such as to demonstrate both the effects of disrupting the social and natural order and of restoring the balance to both systems. The central role of the rÃ, as the pinnacle of the social hierarchy, means that attention naturally falls on the actions of the holder of that position in both texts, especially in Audacht Morainn. This does not mean that his actions are the only ones that have an impact, and while this is implied in Audacht Morainn it is a constant theme in Cath Maige Tuired. Everyone has a place in society, everyone's actions have consequences, and everyone is affected by those consequences. Lug's request for knowledge from Bres completes the loop of action and consequences, linking individual, society and nature. The individual affects society, society affects nature, nature affects the individual.
Audacht Morainn, though written in the form of advice sent to a young ruler, contains within it a world-view capable of informing the actions of everyone in early medieval Irish society. Cath Maige Tuired, written as a mythical history of the gods and goddesses of Ireland's ancient past, contains in it a working-out of the world-view of Audacht Morainn and, though not structured as a lesson, it, too, can also inform the actions of the medieval Irish individual. For us, Cath Maige Tuired, though perhaps failing to give us a 'mirror on the Iron Age' can at least hold up a mirror to the society of early medieval Ireland.'
Blog post by Stiofán MacAmhalghaidh; Stiofán MacAmhalghaidh is Project Manager of the IRQUAS online Irish heritage project and Editor of INSIGHT Journal
FÃr Flathemon, Collective Responsibility and Social Order in Early Medieval Ireland: Using Audacht Morainn to Interpret Cath Maige Tuired
ADAPTING ANCIENT CODES TO A 21ST CENTURY SYSTEM
So then, the question becomes: "How is it possible to adapt that concept of responsibility to 21st Century Society?"
One answer for the United States may be to change the ethics rules for all United States Federal employees who are elected and/or Confirmed by the Senate so that they do NOT have any incentive to act in their own, personal interests and against the people's interests.
The goal is to ensure as much as possible that all Officials cannot make a monetary gain from their positions while serving.
The Proposal
** Require that all elected officials have an option to place all their assets exceeding One Million Dollars into a blind trust so that they cannot make any additions to or subtractions from the trust until 90 days after they are out of office.
** Require that all appointed and confirmed officials must place their assets above One Million Dollars into a blind trust so long as they serve.
** Require that all elected or appointed officials submit their federal tax returns each year to the FBI OFFICE OF ETHICS ENFORCEMENT while they hold the office.
** The FBI shall proactively examine each individual's financial transaction to look for violation of conflict of interest or other pecuniary gain and shall bring enforcement actions whenever it is warranted.
This is different from the current system, which relies on public disclosure to ensure compliance.
CREATING A BLIND TRUST PROCESS
The House Ethics Committee shall create a procedure whereby the Committee Staff will provide a blind trust facility to all qualified and interested parties.
HOUSE ETHICS COMMITTEE MEMBERS AND STAFF CONTACTS
Ethics Committee Members - Republicans
Susan W. Brooks, Indiana - Chairwoman; Kenny Marchant, Texas; Leonard Lance, New Jersey; Mimi Walters, California; John Ratcliffe, Texas
Democrats
Ted Deutch, Florida - Ranking Member; Yvette D. Clarke, New York; Jared Polis, Colorado; Anthony Brown, Maryland; Steve Cohen, Tennessee
The Staff Director is Tom Rust, Chief Counsel & Staff Director
HOUSE ETHICS COMMITTEE
1015 Longworth House Office Building (LHOB)
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: 202-225-7103
Fax: 202-225-7392
Office Hours: Mon. - Fri.
9:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Sunday, May 26, 2019
Spring 2019 Country Studies
Four Specialists have written analyses of the economic condition of the United States of America in cooperation with MIEPA.
Each study can be read here: http://www.mkeever.com/usa.html
The Specialists are: Specialist Steven Choi; Specialist Alex Colina; Specialist Seth Hill; and, Specialist
Antonio Sanahuja.
The Mike P. McKeever Institute of Economic Policy Analysis [MIEPA]
www.mkeever.com
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