Published December 29, 2020
Congress officially passed a $900 billion coronavirus relief package which was attached to a broader, $1.4 trillion government spending bill, clearing the House and Senate by overwhelming majorities.
This bill is a monstrosity, running 5,593 pages long, but is perhaps the best of the many Congressional boondoggles with which to illustrate the current practice of bundling a ridiculous range of interests into one omnibus bill.
This tactic most often is used to get one or more highly controversial elements approved with relative ease. You want your favorite pork measure to get approval? Then tie it to a bill that 95 percent of Americans and their elected representatives believe “must” be approved.
Much of government over-spending and outrageous legislative measures have been born of this underhanded, but too-often successful tactic.
The “billionibus” bill has been inaptly referred to as a coronavirus relief measure. While it does fund coronavirus relief and some very beneficial things, it has a lot of money in it for other countries.
For example, at least $15,000,000 for democracy programs and not less than $10,000,000 for gender programs, in Pakistan; $86 million for assistance to Cambodia; $130 million to Nepal, $1.3 billion for Egypt and their military; $135 million to Burma; $453 million to Ukraine; $700 million to Sudan; and $505 million to Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.
It also gives $40 million for the necessary expenses for the operation, maintenance and security of The Kennedy Center (which has been closed, due to the coronavirus), and includes funds for the Resource Study of Springfield (Illinois) Race Riot that occurred in 1908.
A proper House and Senate would write bills that dealt with, ideally, one single issue, or perhaps a couple of closely-related ones, instead of a popular issue with a bunch of self-serving, narrow, partisan, voter-attracting measures attached.
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President Donald Trump pardoned Michael Flynn to end the nightmare against a man who had served his country valiantly for many years in the U.S. Army, retiring at the rank of lieutenant general, and had accepted President-elect Trump's offer for the position of National Security Advisor in 2016 and then briefly served as National Security Advisor.
People opposing the pardon rely on the claim that Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, but they fail to consider the sordid circumstances of that plea.
An FBI agent, who worked in the disastrous special counsel investigation into supposed Russian involvement with the Trump campaign and administration headed by Robert Mueller, “told investigators he thought the probe into Gen. Michael Flynn was ‘unclear and disorganized,’ and that the former national security adviser wasn't conspiring with Russia,” National Public Radio reported in September.
William Barnett was interviewed by Justice Department investigators, and his position on the Flynn matter was summarized in a 13-page document.
Later, FBI agents prepared to close the investigation of Flynn, having found no wrongdoing, but former FBI intelligence agent Peter Strzok demanded it be kept open. You may remember that Strzok, and his paramour and fellow FBI employee Lisa Page, were knee-deep in official FBI malfeasance. The lengthy and ridiculously expensive Mueller probe failed to find the much-ballyhooed collusion with Russia.
Desperately trying to get Flynn, in early 2017 FBI agents went to the White House to interview him. According to an article at Townhall.com, their handwritten notes said, "What's our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"
Ultimately, the FBI successfully blackmailed Flynn into pleading guilty to lying. This they accomplished by causing him to run up legal costs that broke him, forcing him to sell his home, and then they threatened to go after his son.
How many of Flynn’s critics would have done the same as he did to escape being persecuted by the FBI?
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We have seen some pretty out-there things occur recently, but please, don’t make the mistake of thinking that things cannot get any crazier.
A major American city plans to allow perpetrators of many crimes to have their charges dismissed if poverty, mental illness or substance-abuse disorder is the reason they committed the crimes. This will be classified as a poverty defense, according to the elected officials who champion this idea.
If you are poor and living on the street, and break into a business or a home and steal something, your criminal charge will be dismissed, and you are free to sell the stolen items in order to help you survive.
And, in order to acquire adequate shelter, trespassers will be allowed to set up camp on private property.
Other wrongdoings on this list of allowable crimes, when committed for the reasons listed, are assault and harassment.
Want to guess in which U.S. city this is happening? Seattle, Washington. An organization called Decriminalize Seattle is behind this movement. It has also called for defunding police by at least 50 percent, and using those funds for “community led health and safety systems.”
This is the sort of “leadership” we find today in Democrat-run cities and states. Will a Democrat administration allow this twisted reasoning to be applied nationwide?
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