U.S. Ship Forced to Change Course After Being Harrassed by Iranian Vessels

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In an open act of harassment, a fast attack craft, belonging to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps approached a U.S. Navy coastal patrol ship in the central Gulf Sunday, coming within 100 yards of the vessel.

A statement from U.S. Defense Department officials called the encounter between the Iranian ship and the USS Firebolt, “unsafe and unprofessional due to lack of communications and the close-range harassing maneuvering.”

According to the department officials, uncovered weapons manned by members of the crew were visible on the Iranian ships.

As the ship continued to approach the U.S. vessel, the Firebolt tried unsuccessfully to make radio contact.

After three attempts at communication with the Iranian ship, the Firebolt was forced to change its course.

According to one official, Iranian ships have been responsible for 31 such incidents of harassment this year alone.

“We don’t see this type of unsafe and unprofessional activity from any other nation,” the official said.

In August, Fox News reported a similar occurrence, which took place in the Strait of Hormuz.

An official with the U.S. Navy confirmed that four ships from the IRGC fleet “harassed” the American destroyer USS Nitze.

The official reported that during a “high-speed intercept,” two of the Iranian ships were able to come within 300 yards of the Nitze.

The USS Nitze, which was on a “routine transit” in international waters, was joined by the USS Mason, a guided missile destroyer, when the incident occurred.

One official described the action of the Iranian ships as “unsafe and unprofessional.”

He went on to say the incident “created a dangerous, harassing situation that could have led to further escalation.”

The USS Nitze made 12 unsuccessful attempts to communicate with the Iranian vessel after which the USS Mason sounded its whistle 5 times, but the Iranian ships continued to approach.

Just like the USS Firebolt, the Nitze was forced to change course. (For more from the author of “U.S. Ship Forced to Change Course After Being Harrassed by Iranian Vessels” please click HERE)

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Threats of a Russian Election Hack a Mere Smoke Screen by Democrats for Power Grab

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The Democrats are now playing the Russia card. As Donald Trump rises in the polls against an increasingly unpopular Hillary Clinton, Democrats are raising the specter of the nefarious Vladimir Putin. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s famous Russian relations reset was a bust, but we are supposed to trust her to handle Putin in the future. More important, the Democrats are sowing grounds to challenge the election, relying on their unnatural ability to squeeze, as if by magic, extra votes from the courtroom.

There may be an even more insidious objective, Outgoing Nevada Sen. Harry Reid — never a fan of election fair play — warned of Russian tampering and called for an FBI investigation. This followed warnings by Jeh Johnson, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, of potential cyber-attacks come November. He indicated he was considering designating the election system “critical infrastructure.”

Why is that significant? This would be followed by a Washington campaign to “assist” and “protect” balloting, which inevitably would turn into control. The Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky warned that Johnson’s action “may be a way for the administration to get Justice Department lawyers, the FBI and DHS staff into polling places they would otherwise have no legal right to access, which would enable them to interfere with election administration procedures around the country.” That would dramatically, and permanently, transform the constitutional balance between the national and state governments.

Despite scare-mongering by Reid and Johnson, there is no evidence of any impending cyber-attack on the American electoral system. Even Johnson apparently admitted that he could point to no indications of such a threat. A far greater danger to the integrity of U.S. democracy is voter fraud, yet the courts seem determined to block any effort to even require identification to cast a ballot. This undermines the great strength of America’s elections, state control.

As von Spakovsky pointed out, “we have the most decentralized election system of any Western democracy.” This approach protects America from having Russia (or China or anyone else) manipulate electoral outcomes. Nationalizing the process actually would make U.S. elections far more vulnerable to outside attack.

Which demonstrates the continuing wisdom of the nation’s Founders in creating a system that kept most important public policies and activities at the state level. The national government was established to deal with national problems, not to elevate to the national level controversies which belonged closer to the people.

The Founders’ idea, called “federalism,” naturally grew out of Americans’ commitment to self-government. The people, not a king or emperor, were sovereign. They were to solve their own problems and chart their own futures. That required decision-makers to be close to each other and the challenges facing them.

In this way federalism had a lot in common with the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity. Whenever possible, higher, more distant institutions should leave undisturbed authorities below. Each government had a specific role and should not encroach upon the responsibilities of others.

Early Americans well understood the meaning of federalism: creating two distinct levels (local authorities being subsumed within states) of government with separate and defined duties. Unfortunately, however, the founding generations allowed ambiguity to creep in by calling the national government the “federal” government.

The very concept of federalism requires protecting the vibrancy of state (and local) institutions. The federal system meant dual authority rather than the unitary system prevalent in Europe, including in Great Britain. Although the Civil War established the ultimate supremacy of the national government, the conflict did not wipe out state sovereignty. The so-called federal government remained small, without much day-to-day impact on most people’s lives. Even enthusiastic nationalists at the time could not have imagined the wholesale federal takeover of education, health care, and welfare.

Of course, to speak of “federal” action now means to nationalize an issue. Thus, supporting the founding principle of “federalism” risks communicating the opposite of the truth to people, suggesting that the Constitution turned most problems over to the “federal,” that is, national government. And that continuing islands of state authority, such as running elections, are anomalies which should be wiped out.

Federalism in the original sense of the word always set American democracy apart from that of other nations. Power was separated and balanced; responsibility was accorded to institutions best able to confront problems. The people retained ultimate sovereignty and remained close enough to their officials to hold the latter accountable.

Unfortunately, these principles are under sustained attack. Attempts to tie Trump to Russia are just another attempt to expand federal, as in national, authority. With so many of their leaders AWOL, only the American people are left to stand up for their country’s founding principles. Only We the People. (For more from the author of “Threats of a Russian Election Hack a Mere Smoke Screen by Democrats for Power Grab” please click HERE)

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Polling Average Shows Trump-Clinton Race Tightening

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The 2016 presidential election has proven frustrating for many Republicans. The GOP nominee, a businessman with no political resume, has alienated key demographics, insulted prominent members of the press, and divided leading voices in the party. But despite all this, a recent average of national polls suggests he has closed the gap with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

One new CNN poll has Trump ahead by 1 point in a head-to-head match-up, while the RealClearPolitics’ (RCP) average of recent polls has Clinton up by a modest 3.3 points — a lead far smaller than the nearly seven-point lead she had in late August. And while a recent Washington Post-SurveyMonkey poll shows Hillary maintaining a comfortable lead, two poll experts cautioned a measure of skepticism about that polls’ methodology.

“Mark Blumenthal and Jon Cohen are two of the best pollsters in the business,” RCP Senior Elections Analyst Sean Trende told The Stream about the Post‘s online poll. “They do not put out a junk product. That said, it is a new methodology, and even the best methodology can’t fix sampling error.”

Robert Morris University (RMU) professor Philip Harold, Ph.D., was cautious about the poll results. “They surveyed a lot of people, and included all 50 states, but that does not mean it is an accurate poll,” he explained in an e-mail. “There is really no way in this poll to get the opinions of people who are less willing to share their views, which opens it up to significant non-response bias.”

According to Harold, the poll “assumes, in other words, that there is no significant difference between the populations of supporters for the candidates, and their willingness to share their opinion. That is a significant assumption, and one which is belied by the recent history of polling for Trump support, which finds his supporters more reticent to share their opinion (e.g. throughout the primary season he consistently gained 2% more support than the polls predicted).”

“The medium of an online poll may also very well favor Clinton supporters — people who are in front of computers all day and who take online surveys are not the downscale, working class voters who are enthusiastic about Trump,” Harold said. “The Texas results of this poll show that something might be off — it shows a dead heat between Trump and Clinton, which no one really thinks is true.”

Do Third-Party Candidates Matter?

One way of measuring the race is how Trump and Clinton match up when Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein are included in the polls. RCP’s average in a four-way race found that Clinton’s lead slips to 2.4 points over Trump, indicating that the secondary candidates are taking more from Clinton’s support than Trump’s.

It’s “hard to say” whether Johnson and Stein will factor into November’s elections, said Trende. “Third parties tend to fade down the stretch, except when they don’t (e.g. [Ross] Perot [in 1992]). Given the sky-high unfavorable for both candidates, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if things didn’t fade this year.”

Harold, however, said, “I tend to think that as people’s minds are focused in the months, days and weeks leading up to election day, Stein and Johnson’s numbers will drop. They will be factors and will pick up votes, definitely. But more of a factor will be who votes.”

“Clinton’s challenge is motivating voters who traditionally have had lower turnout, but who voted in much greater numbers the past couple elections for Obama — that is difficult to do,” Harold continued. “Trump’s task is to bring those who have not voted to the polls — that is also very difficult to do.”

“Getting supporters to the polls is what keeps the Clinton campaign up at night,” he said. “They have lots of money and technology, but they do not have an inspiring candidate. The key state in the electoral college is Pennsylvania. Trump needs to win there, and he should win there, given the kind of campaign he’s running. The nice 6-to-9-point gap there Clinton has opened up keeps the Trump campaign up at night.”

Conclusions

In 2012, many conservatives assumed that pollsters were overstating President Barack Obama’s excitement among voters. As Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey told The Stream, “The reason we were doing this so-called unskewing of the polls, which turned out to be a huge mistake, was that we were convinced the electoral model had changed from 2008 to 2010.”

“We were wrong in our assumptions because we were making assumptions,” said Morrissey. Obama ended up beating GOP nominee Mitt Romney by the same margin as the polls predicted. But in its recent poll showing Trump with a three-point lead over Clinton, The Los Angeles Times indicated that what conservatives got wrong in 2012 could end up being correct in 2016.

Harold also says pollster accuracy is a legitimate question in 2016. “Trump won the Republican primaries by bringing in new voters to the ballot box. That makes it very, very difficult for pollsters, who are relying on the statistics from previous elections, to filter out those who do not plan to vote and to weigh their samples.”

According to Trende, however, “Different pollsters have different methodologies. So while the averages are good, there is always a chance that some particular pollster ‘figured things out.’ It might be the LA Times. But it might also be SurveyMonkey (which has HRC +6), so over time you’ll be *closest* to the correct result using averages.”

And what if the popular vote in November comes down to the wire? “If you look closely, in [the RCP] averages, in 538’s averages, and in the SurveyMonkey polls, electoral vote #270 actually falls a touch on the Trump side of the popular vote. In a tied popular vote race, Trump probably has an edge.” (For more from the author of “Polling Average Shows Trump-Clinton Race Tightening” please click HERE)

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The Incredible Leadership of Phyllis Schlafly

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With the death of Phyllis Schlafly, America has lost an authentic heroine.

Schlafly was an American patriot, a true renaissance woman, an exceptional leader, and a wonderful human being.

At the age of 92, Phyllis was one day from releasing her latest book. While she wrote many, no one can forget the one that started it all: “A Choice Not an Echo.” That little book issued in paperback helped to spur the modern conservative movement.

I have one of those original books and it helped me to know what I believed and why I believed it. And for younger conservatives who are seeking the truth, that little book was re-released as a 50th anniversary addition, updated and expanded.

Schlafly’s Political Leadership

Phyllis will be remembered by most Americans as the lady who defeated the so-called Equal Rights Amendment. And she did, though she would be the first to tell you that it was the women across America, roused and incensed by learning the truth of how this amendment would demean their status and roles in the name of equality who took to the hallways of state capitols to stop ratification of this amendment to the United States Constitution.

Her leadership, however, was historic. She organized women (and more than a few men as well) under the banner of Eagle Forum to take their facts, their unique brand of lobbying, their winning smiles, and their messages of unintended consequences to scores of state legislators.

Phyllis was ever present at the state capitols but also on the television programs where her debating style, facts, and a smile disarmed many a host and frustrated the most fervent of her opponents. She never resorted to ad hominem attacks as her opponents often did because she had the truth and the facts on her side.

But, Phyllis Schlafly was a leader on so many other fronts that matter today. She loved the U.S. Constitution and believed it to be inspired. One of her greatest joys was being appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution. I worked for Reagan as his deputy for presidential appointments at the time and I don’t really know who was happier about this appointment—Reagan for being able to appoint Phyllis or Phyllis for receiving this appointment from Reagan.

She, of course, served with distinction alongside former Chief Justice Warren Burger in bringing the Constitution and its limits on federal government to millions of Americans.

National defense, anti-communism, American leadership, freedom around the world, limited government, parental choice in education, the strength of the traditional family, life, national security, the strategic defense initiative, national sovereignty, immigration reform—well, this is just a short list of the many major policy areas on which Phyllis spoke through her books, her Phyllis Schlafly Report, her conferences, and her public appearances. She was brilliant and a great communicator, a woman well-grounded in moral truths.

It is also an interesting note that she went to law school after raising her family, though she would have been admitted to Harvard Law after graduating from college. Phyllis certainly did not need a law degree, but found that liberals like Sen. Birch Bayh of Indiana sought to disdain her legal knowledge and debating skills because she did not have one. So she just decided to remove that little argument by getting that law degree, and so she did, graduating near the top of her Washington University Law School class.

Schlafly’s Legacy in the Conservative Movement

And Phyllis was a wonderful mentor to many. I first met her at a conference shortly after I came to Washington, D.C., as a 20-something young conservative. It was a meeting of the top conservative leaders in the country and I was the junior staff person giving out the registration materials.

Bill Rusher from National Review, Tom Winter and Allen Ryskind from Human Events, Stan Evans and Congressman John Ashbrook of the American Conservative Union, Frank Donatelli and Ron Docksai of the Young Americans for Freedom, Morton Blackwell, and the few other top leaders were there. When Phyllis Schlafly approached, I stood up and said, “Hello, Mrs. Schlafly,” to which she replied, I’m Phyllis, tell me your name.

We became friends and allies from that day forward.

She hosted me in her home on one of my earliest trips as political director of the American Conservative Union on whose board she served. We had a wonderful visit and I benefitted from her wisdom on the political and policy battles of the day. Eleven o’clock approached and she said that she always watched the news … it was the time that she did her 100 sit-ups every day. Phyllis was a disciplined woman, too.

Phyllis and Fred raised six children, but there are literally thousands of us around the country who feel a kinship to this extraordinary woman.

During my time as a member of the senior management at The Heritage Foundation, there have been numerous occasions for us to work together and she has always been one of Heritage’s treasured allies. Her student conferences were often held in our auditorium and Heritage staff would often slip in the back of the auditorium when Phyllis was about to speak. You could not be part of the conservative movement and not know of the enormous contribution Phyllis Schlafly has made to assure that we and future generations know the blessings of liberty and the battle we must wage to keep them.

Phyllis showed us how to live, to learn, to stand for our principles and values. She lived as the Prophet Micah wrote that the Lord requires of us: to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. We have been blessed with her friendship, her leadership, and her love. Her Lord has welcomed her home with the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Phyllis Schlafly, we will miss you. (For more from the author of “The Incredible Leadership of Phyllis Schlafly” please click HERE)

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What Zika Crisis Shows About Women’s Health Funding Debate

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After Congress failed to pass a Zika funding bill due in part to disagreements over restricting funds from going to Planned Parenthood, pressure is on for lawmakers to reach a deal this month to address the growing crisis.

But prospects for an agreement remain bleak, with Republicans standing firm on their belief that Planned Parenthood does not need more funding to contribute to the fight against the Zika virus, and Democrats insisting that they do.

In Florida, meanwhile, one major network of federally approved health care centers says it is ready to ramp up efforts against Zika, funding or no funding.

“We can handle it,” Tiffani Helberg, spokeswoman for Community Health of South Florida Inc., told The Daily Signal. “We have enough physicians and nurses and medical experts and health centers to handle anything.”

As Democrats and Republican lawmakers negotiate, Planned Parenthood has insisted that its organization is critical in the fight against Zika, and therefore should be included in any Zika funding bill.

“Often we are the only provider that someone will see all year and we are the front line of defense when it comes to battling Zika,” Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said during a press conference on June 30 after Senate Democrats blocked the $1.1 billion Zika measure.

In reality, clinics affiliated with Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest provider of abortions, are limited in the services they can provide in the fight against Zika.

In Puerto Rico, for example, Planned Parenthood is running an educational campaign, providing condoms and birth control, and informing women of their options if they do get pregnant while being infected with the Zika virus. If a woman believes she’s infected with the virus, she must go elsewhere for testing and treatment.

The $1.1 billion measure that already passed the House but failed in the Senate, Laguens said, “does not provide necessary planning for family planning resources in line with [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] recommendations.” The Planned Parenthood official added the bill “does not give money to the providers best suited to help fight the Zika virus, like Profamilias in Puerto Rico.”

Zika, which has hit Puerto Rico the hardest of all states and U.S. territories, is transmitted through mosquitoes and also sexually. The virus poses the greatest risk to pregnant women, as it’s known to cause microcephaly in as many as 13 percent of infants, which results in a baby’s head to be unusually small and its brain to be underdeveloped.

According to its website, Profamilias operates two women’s health care clinics in Puerto Rico under the umbrella of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

When President Barack Obama made his $1.9 billion Zika funding request back in February, he did not specifically ask Congress to fund Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood is not a qualified provider under the Medicaid program in Puerto Rico, which will distribute federal Zika money. Without a change to Medicaid provider eligibility, Planned Parenthood would not be eligible to receive funding through Obama’s request.

Instead, the Zika bill currently being negotiated would increase government funding for the 13 preventative clinics in Puerto Rico that already provide care through the Medicaid program. In addition, the bill calls for a 700 percent funding increase for community health centers across the United States.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Puerto Rico currently has 13,791 locally acquired Zika cases. Zika-infected mosquitoes also have made their way to Florida, where 35 people have been locally infected, in addition to 507 travel-related cases involving state residents.

Centers for Disease Control Director Thomas Frieden warned last week that the federal government is running out of resources to fight the virus, pressuring Congress to pass a spending bill.

“We don’t have the resources we need to mount the kind of robust fight against the disease,” Frieden said Aug. 30 during a Twitter town hall. “Without additional funding we will not be able to fully understand the impact of Zika.”

Blame Game

Since failing to pass a Zika funding bill this summer, Republicans and Democrats in both the House and the Senate have been blaming each other.

“Democrats would prefer to filibuster the bill [in the Senate] if there is no funding specifically for Planned Parenthood,” Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told The Daily Signal via email. “They’ve filibustered the bill twice already and I expect they will again.”

“Democrats have been calling for bipartisan negotiations for months, but instead of coming to the table, Republicans are holding a vote on a bill they know will fail,” Adam Jentleson, deputy chief of staff for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said, according to CNN. “Once this partisan exercise is over, we hope Republicans will finally engage in real negotiations to address this critical issue.”

The Daily Signal contacted Reid’s office for further comment, but they did not return the request.

The Heritage Foundation’s Paul Winfree, a budget expert, argued in an August interview that the Obama administration could shift up to $2.2 billion from an account established to counter the Ebola virus. But as of Tuesday, Congress was working toward reaching a deal on the Zika bill.

With the issue of Planned Parenthood a sticking point for both Republicans and Democrats, the question remains: How essential is Planned Parenthood in the Zika fight?

The Daily Signal contacted Planned Parenthood, but the group did not return the request for comment.

Is Planned Parenthood Equipped?

Casey Mattox, a lawyer at the conservative nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, argued that “for public health reasons alone,” federally qualified health centers—which don’t include Planned Parenthood—should be the recipients of any Zika-related health funds.

“We are facing a public health crisis with Zika and in a public health crisis, you want the places that can actually address that crisis to receive the funding,” Mattox said. “Federally qualified health centers are equipped to do that and Planned Parenthood simply is not.”

Federally qualified health centers each year provide comprehensive health care, including obstetrics and gynecology services, at little to no cost to millions of Americans who are uninsured, jobless, or among the working poor.

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, federally qualified health centers provide more than three times the total number of services that Planned Parenthood provides.

“In federally qualified health centers, you actually have medical professionals on staff—doctors and nurses on staff—to diagnosis and treat illness,” Mattox said, adding:

That’s what they’re there for. Planned Parenthood does not have that. They have people who can provide birth control, and can provide other women’s health screenings in some cases, but they don’t have medical professionals that can actually provide primary care services. And that’s what you need in a public health crisis, the ability to provide primary care services, determine whether someone has Zika, and advise them on how to not get Zika.

Currently, 13,540 clinics provide comprehensive health care for women in the U.S., compared with 665 Planned Parenthood locations, according to data collected by Alliance Defending Freedom and Charlotte Lozier Institute, the education arm of the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life advocacy group.

In Puerto Rico, where the Zika virus is hitting especially hard, 20 federally qualified health centers exist, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Profamilias, operating under International Planned Parenthood Federation, runs two permanent clinics in Puerto Rico in addition to 11 “service points” there, according to its website.

The Daily Signal sought comment from Profamilias, but it did not reply.

‘Not Overwhelmed at This Point’

In southern Florida, where the number of Zika cases continues to rise, a spokeswoman for one federally qualified health care network said its centers are ready and prepared to take on more Zika cases.

“We have seen some Zika patients and we’re working with the Health Department to handle the situation,” said Helberg, vice president for communications and development for Community Health of South Florida Inc. “We’re not overwhelmed at this point. I think everything’s being handled appropriately.”

Community Health of South Florida Inc. operates 11 centers covering the Florida Keys to Miami, where the majority of domestic Zika cases have been reported.

Helberg said she did not want to address the specific issue of Planned Parenthood and whether community health centers are more deserving of taxpayer funds to fight Zika.

But she said that if a pregnant woman goes to one of its centers to get tested for Zika, “we’ll take care of them throughout their pregnancy.”

“We treat everyone—children, adults, elderly, you name it—women, men, and we provide a host of services to them,” she said. “We are here to treat them with whatever needs they have, in any of the areas that we have services.”

Mattox, the lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom, argued that health care centers such as the network in South Florida unquestionably are better suited to receive federal Zika funds.

“If Planned Parenthood wants to address this problem, then, unlike federally qualified health centers, they are well-equipped to do that,” the lawyer said, adding:

In the last 10 years, Planned Parenthood has brought in over $750 million in excess income and they’re spending well over $20 million this election season in order to influence the outcome in November. So they have plenty of resources at their disposal if they want to pitch in and do what federally qualified health centers and many other nonprofits are doing without having the large bankrolls to be able to support that.

It makes a lot more sense for our taxpayer dollars to be supporting the efforts of the entities that don’t already have the billion-dollar reserves and actually need our resources to be able to provide those services.

More for Doctors and Hospitals

And while financially prepared to face the growing Zika crisis, Helberg said, the community health network of health centers in Florida would welcome more funding.

“We’ve had a lot of cutbacks in funding as of late and that is hurting us as a community health center,” she said. “We are the No. 1 resource for many people, whether you’re insured or uninsured, whether you’re homeless, whether you’re undocumented, we will provide you health care services. And without adequate funding, that’s difficult. Zika or no Zika.”

Prior to the Zika outbreak, conservatives had been calling on Congress to strip Planned Parenthood of its $500 million in taxpayer funding and instead divert that money to health care centers such as the network that Helberg helps to operate.

The effort, which ultimately failed, came after the Center for Medical Progress, a group that opposes abortion, released a series of undercover videos showing high-ranking Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of tissue from aborted babies. Planned Parenthood has denied illegal activity.

Some health care experts warned Congress that stripping Planned Parenthood of its taxpayer dollars could hurt the millions of patients the organization serves each year.

This time around, however, Republicans aren’t asking to take away money from the nation’s largest abortion provider—they’re arguing against giving it more.

The measure the Senate will take up again this week, which already passed in the House, “actually increased funding for health care,” Stewart, the spokesman for McConnell, said. “And yes, it goes to doctors, hospitals, community health centers.”

Whatever the outcome, Helberg said she remains optimistic about community health centers’ ability to step up if the Zika crisis gets worse.

“I think we’re equipped,” she said. “We’ve withstood many challenges—bird flu and all the other horrible things that have come through—and that’s the role of a community health center: to be here through good and bad times. We can handle it, we have enough physicians and nurses and medical experts and health centers to handle anything.” (For more from the author of “What Zika Crisis Shows About Women’s Health Funding Debate” please click HERE)

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Top 10 Findings From the FBI’s Hillary Labor Day Document Dump

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Over at the Washington Examiner, Ashe Schow boils down the FBI’s Labor Day weekend document dump to the bare essentials.

The top 10 revelations related to Hillary’s interview with the FBI?

10. Hillary Clinton is incompetent (part I): she claimed she didn’t know that a (C) marking on official government documents meant that it was classified as “Confidential”.

9. Hillary Clinton is incompetent (part II): she also claimed she didn’t know how document classification worked; say, that Top Secret, Secret and Confidential are the three basic levels of classified documents.

8. Hillary Clinton couldn’t recognize what documents should be protected: like emails regarding specific drone strikes, for instance. Hillary was fine with sending those over her unprotected, illegal, and bathroom-dwelling email server.

7. Hillary Clinton hid at least 18,000 work-related emails: far from turning over “all work-related emails”, she hid tens of thousands of government-related communications, because they were all about yoga lessons and Clinton Foundation bribes, but mostly bribes.

6. Hillary Clinton used more than a dozen mobile email devices for State Department business: so much for the using “one device for convenience” lie.

5. Hillary Clinton repeatedly lost her mobile devices: but there were just a bunch of state secrets on them, so what’s the big deal?

4. Hillary Clinton ignored government warnings not to use mobile devices for official business: “Clinton and her immediate staff were notified of foreign travel risks and were warned that digital threats began immediately upon landing in a foreign country, since connection of a mobile device to a local network provides opportunities for foreign adversaries to intercept voice and email transmissions…” — and Clinton and her immediate staff, of course, ignored such warnings.

3. Hillary Clinton was never authorized to conduct State Department business on her private server: she was required to solicit and gain approval from the government in order to conduct official business on her home-brew, bathroom email server. She failed to do so. She ignored all official guidance.

2. Hillary Clinton was terrified she’d been hacked: she had received a variety of phishing emails, including porn solicitations. No word on what category said porn fell into.

1. Clinton mass-deleted emails just after The New York Times revealed the private server: only three weeks after the Times revealed Clinton’s private email server, the “oh sh**” moment occurred, according to the FBI. Electronic shredding was the result.

(For more from the author of “Top 10 Findings From the FBI’s Hillary Document Dump” please click HERE)

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Why I Applaud Trump’s Plan to Show Teachers the Door

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There are not too many areas of policy on which Donald Trump and I agree. One of the few exceptions is on the topic of education policy, where Trump has rightly condemned the Department of Education as wasteful, meddlesome, and counterproductive. While the presidential candidate has waffled back and forth on whether he would eliminate the department outright or drastically scale it back, it’s clear that he has no love for the unconstitutional federal education bureaucracy.

Predictably, progressive groups are horrified at Trump’s proposal, and are scrambling to pull at the heartstrings of Americans, emotionally manipulating them into opposing this eminently sensible proposal. In this vein, the Center for American Progress (CAP) has released a policy paper claiming that eliminating the Department of Education (DoEd) would destroy jobs for nearly half a million teachers.

To which I can only respond: Good!

It’s time to punch a hole in this myth that teachers are some kind of noble, magical unicorns selflessly molding young minds out of the goodness of their hearts. While there are many good teachers who honestly want to help children learn, we need to get over this idea that every teacher is infinitely valuable simply by virtue of their chosen profession. Teaching is a job like any other, but unlike most other jobs, it’s one that has been badly corrupted by politics and government to the point where many teaching positions do more harm than good.

In particular, public school teachers have largely become glorified babysitters, tasked with crowd control, not education. And mandatory testing standards mean that many teachers are simply ”teaching to the test” rather than engaging in a genuine effort to enlighten their students. In some schools, the role of the teacher has been reduced to pressing play on a device containing a pre-recorded lesson plan. Yet these are the brave and noble souls that liberals think deserve special treatment compared to other workers.

Regarding the Department of Education itself, it’s important to note that the U.S. Constitution does not mention education as an enumerated power of the federal government, The Tenth Amendment makes explicit that anything not specifically given to the federal government is the sole province of the states, and the people. The Department of Education is therefore, by definition, illegal. Anyone who uses the argument that “we must uphold the rule of law” must likewise oppose the Department of Education, or risk falling into the fathomless abyss of hypocrisy.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s take a pragmatic look at what the Department of Education actually does. The Department’s core function is awarding large amounts of money to state and local school systems in the form of federal grants, with inevitable strings attached that hamstring localities’ ability to set their own curricula, standards, or procedures. The massively unpopular Common Core standards are a prime example of the kind of mischief the DoEd gets up to, as states were lured into the restrictive standards by massive amounts of funding through the Race to the Top program, only to discover that any semblance of flexibility was the cost of the grants.

Federal control over local schools makes no sense, as bureaucrats in Washington have no idea what is needed to educate students in Alaska, Alabama, or Maine. Additionally, the money handed out by the DoEd has not resulted in any measurable improvement in education outcomes over the forty or so years of its existence.

If, as CAP alleges, scaling back teachers and funding will be catastrophic for student outcomes, why is it that we have seen absolutely no benefit from the steady increase of both these variables over the past several decades? This is how government operates; it endlessly piles up spending and staff that were never necessary to begin with, and then screams that disaster will occur if they are removed.

This brings us back to teachers. At this point, most people are familiar with teachers’ unions and how they prevent bad teachers from being fired. We’ve all heard stories about hopelessly incompetent or even criminal teachers staying on staff because of their union’s political power. A business that is unable to get rid of its worst employees is always doomed to failure, unless, of course, it is being propped up by endless revenue streams courtesy of the American taxpayer, as public school are. These people don’t care about students; they care about lining their own pockets.

This diversion of funds from the private sector, where people spend money on things they care about, and where they try to find good value for their dollars, to politically favored groups like teachers who bear no responsibility for doing a good, or even acceptable job, is a tremendous waste, not just of money, but of young minds as well. I have no doubt that many of these teachers who are propped up by funding from the DoEd would be much more valuable to society in other roles, where their worth is determined by the services they provide to the public, not the lobbying of special interests.

In summary, children in public schools, especially those under the thumb of the federal government, are not taught, they are controlled. They are not encouraged, they are discouraged. They are told what to think, not how to think. They are brainwashed to obey authority without question, and punished when they dare to think differently. In my view, the fewer people we have engaging in such irresponsible treatment of our children, the better. (For more from the author of “Why I Applaud Trump’s Plan to Show Teachers the Door” please click HERE)

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Did Clinton and Her Cronies Destroy Email Server Evidence?

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House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah (C, 78%), has requested an investigation into new evidence that suggests Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton or her employees obstructed justice by destroying evidence related to Clinton’s private email server.

In a letter to Judge Channing D. Phillips, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Chaffetz described how the FBI’s files “reveal evidence that an engineer at Platte River Networks, the company responsible for maintaining the Secretary’s third personal email server, deleted Secretary Clinton’s email archives in March of 2015, despite knowing they were subject to preservation orders and a congressional subpoena.” Further, information from those files “raises questions about Secretary Clinton’s involvement.”

Chaffetz called for an investigation to determine if Clinton or her employees/contractors “violated statutes that prohibit destruction of records, obstruction of congressional inquiries, and concealment or cover up of evidence material to a congressional investigation.”

Additionally, Chaffetz sent a letter to Platte River Networks, requesting information related to potential evidence destruction.

“In brief, the summaries of the FBI’s interviews with a PRN engineer show that within days of a conference call with Secretary Clinton’s lawyers, the engineer deleted archives of Secretary Clinton’s emails, despite knowing those records were covered by preservation orders and a subpoena from Congress.

[…]

The sequence of events leading up to the destruction of Secretary Clinton’s emails… raises questions about whether Secretary Clinton, acting through her attorneys, instructed PRN to destroy records relevant to the then-ongoing congressional investigations.”

House Republicans have also requested that U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch investigate Clinton for perjury, citing discrepancies between Clinton’s sworn testimony before Congress in 2015 and the conclusions reached by the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s private server released in July.

Further, a recent FBI report indicated that Clinton used 13 different Blackberry devices and had State Department employees smash some with hammers, which isn’t suspicious in the least.

These allegations against Clinton follow what was an objectively terrible week for the Clinton campaign. With Republican candidate for president Donald Trump gaining a small lead in the latest CNN/ORC poll as of Tuesday, could Hillary Clinton’s corruption finally be catching up to her? (For more from the author of “Did Clinton and Her Cronies Destroy Email Server Evidence?” please click HERE)

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The Clinton Conspiracy Against America

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The Clinton Presidential Center sits near Interstate 30. It is located at 1200 President Clinton Ave in Little Rock, Arkansas. A mere 1,200 miles from the posh digs of the Clintons in Chappaqua, New York.

Little Rock advertises a “Billgrimage” to visit Bill Clinton’s roots in Little Rock, but the Clintons have gotten what they wanted out of Arkansas and Little Rock. And the Clinton Presidential Center.

They’ve moved on to bigger things since.

There isn’t much to do at the Clinton Presidential Center, an awkward glass building shaped like a bus that looks like it’s about to fall into the Arkansas River, but like the equally precarious political fortunes of the Clintons, never quite does.

There are exhibits of Bill’s rise to power. And there’s a gift shop offering a copy of GQ autographed by him for a mere $350, a bronze bust of him for only $29.95 and a t-shirt with the words, “I Miss Bill.”

But how can you miss somebody who never goes away?

They might miss Bill in Little Rock, which he left behind for wealthier places where he can mingle with those who can do far more to advance his career than the locals. Instead they have to make do with Buffalo Blue Cheeseburger at Forty Two, the Clinton Presidential Center’s restaurant, which also offers catering services.

If there’s one thing you can be sure of when it comes to the Clintons, they never miss an angle.

The Clinton Presidential Center website is just a gateway to the network of Clinton Foundation sites. The white banner and menu of the Clinton Foundation is meant to lure visitors in first.
And that’s appropriate, since the Center began as a front for the Foundation.

It’s become a tradition for presidents to have their own libraries. Bill Clinton wanted to raise a modest $200 million for his glass shoebox on President Clinton Avenue. But he had to settle for $165 million.

A lot of the money came from abroad. The Saudis ponied up millions. Clinton’s former FBI director described him begging for a donation to his library from Prince Abdullah during a meeting asking the Saudis to give the FBI access to suspects in a terror attack which had killed 19 Americans.

“Bill Clinton raised the subject only to tell the crown prince that he understood the Saudi’s reluctance to cooperate, and then he hit Abdullah up for a contribution to the Clinton Presidential Library,” he wrote.

The Clintons always have their priorities.

Cash also came from Marc Rich’s wife who bought a presidential pardon for the international fugitive for $450,000.

But the library wasn’t really a library. Bill Clinton wasn’t about to spend the rest of his days walking down President Clinton Avenue and deciding if he wanted to have breakfast at Gus’ World Famous Fried Chicken or Damgoode Pies. Hillary certainly wasn’t. The Clintons hadn’t made their base in Arkansas, but in New York. And they were drawing on taxpayer money to set up operations.

The Clintons were not retiring. They were not looking to their legacy. They didn’t care about the glass box on the Arkansas River. What they wanted was money and a platform for their comeback.

In that order.

The Clintons didn’t just need cash to pay for their mansion and all the other good things in life. To make a comeback, they needed a staff. A big one. People willing to do anything for them. And they weren’t about to pay them out of their pockets. So, in an unprecedented turn of events, they turned to the Former President’s Act, meant to provide for the retirement of presidents, to begin the process of making the former president’s wife into a future president by maintaining their loyalist staff.

The Clintons are not idea people. They are crooked, but unimaginatively crooked. Bill is the sort of guy who will give a terror state a pass before asking for money. Hillary lies compulsively and badly.

The gargantuan octopus of the Clinton Foundation wasn’t the brainchild of two grifters who couldn’t convincingly lie about what they had for breakfast. It was the invention of those staffers around them.

On a Saudi jet to Davos, a Clinton aide who would later sell access to Bill through his own company, had a brilliant idea, why not sell access to Bill through a foundation. That aide later gave Huma Abedin a gig in his company. Huma Abedin solicited a favor for a Clinton Foundation donor who was also a client.

At its peak, the idea people around the Clintons had a non-profit, private consulting jobs and government salaries through the State Department and occasionally the GSA. They had the best of government, the private sector and the non-profit sector rolled into one. The Clinton Network.

And they’re counting on a lot more of the same.

The Clinton Foundation was a spectacular slush fund, a fake charity that took in fortunes, paid out pittances and kept the country’s unwanted royal family and those around them in business.

Bill and Hillary were no longer individuals. They were a corporation, a business and a brand. Forget the sad gift shop in the Arkansas River shoebox. The Clinton Foundation let them go back to doing what they had done in office, tap into the deep pockets of foreign donors and lobbyists looking for access.

But the Clinton Foundation was a temporary cure. The Clintons were paying their staffers by selling access to themselves and assorted celebrities, corporations and billionaires. It was okay as a party, but you can only hear Bill’s funny stories twice before you reconsider the $15K ticket price tag.

For $250K, a company got some good publicity. But for that money, they could have plastered Manhattan with billboards.

To have access to sell, there had to be power to access. Hillary Clinton had to run for the Senate. Senators have more to offer than former presidents telling stories about the good old days. But you don’t pay six figures for a senator. You do pay six figures for access to a future president.

The Clinton Foundation scam, the hundreds of millions of dollars rolling in, depended on maintaining the narrative that Hillary would become President Hillary. And when she lost, she picked the position that would be most tempting to foreign donors and certain domestic corporations, Secretary of State.

Somewhere along the way the Clinton White House had become a permanent institution. It could change shape, but it wouldn’t go away. It could morph into the Clinton Foundation and wear a number of disguises before it was ready to shed its chrysalis and become the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign.

And yet they’re all the same thing.

After leaving the White House, the Clintons became a government in exile. Like the warlords or former kings living in Brussels or London, they maintained the structure of the old government. They sought out supporters who would help finance their return to power in exchange for future favors.

The Clinton Foundation is something alien to Americans, but quite familiar in certain settings. The Clintons and those around them treated term limits as a temporary setback to be overcome. And then the restoration of the Clinton Empire could commence. At the center were two corrupt, but not particularly bright royals, surrounded by a bevy of courtiers with extremely dubious agendas.

Some only wanted money. Others, like Huma Abedin, had more complex loyalties.

What all this amounted to was a coup. The Clintons were determined to become a perverse monarchy. And they were willing to take money from anyone and promise them anything to make it happen.

Even in the White House, Bill Clinton was willing to sell out murdered Americans to the Saudis in exchange for a big check. The Clinton Foundation was set up with blood money. It was funded by criminals and terrorists. And the final bill will only come due if Hillary Clinton takes office.

The Clintons have perpetrated a plot against America. They schemed with foreign interests to return to power. They subverted every democratic and ethical norm. They are not only criminals, but traitors.

American presidents were meant to retire. They were never supposed to use taxpayer money to set up cabals. It was unthinkable for them to solicit foreign rulers in a bid to return to power.

There have been calls to shut down the Clinton Foundation. But the Clinton Foundation is not a building or a letterhead. It is the permanent Clinton regime. If Hillary wins, it becomes the government.

It can’t be dismantled without breaking up the Clinton Network. Criminal conspiracies aren’t shut down by closing a front group. The only way to end the Clinton Conspiracy is to indict and imprison the key players in this plot against America. As long as this rogue government exists, it is a threat to the republic. (For more from the author of “The Clinton Conspiracy Against America” please click HERE)

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The One Trillion Dollar Consumer Auto Loan Bubble Is Perilously Close to Bursting

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Do you remember the subprime mortgage meltdown from the last financial crisis? Well, this time around we are facing a subprime auto loan meltdown. In recent years, auto lenders have become more and more aggressive, and they have been increasingly willing to lend money to people that should not be borrowing money to buy a new vehicle under any circumstances. Just like with subprime mortgages, this strategy seemed to pay off at first, but now economic reality is beginning to be felt in a major way. Delinquency rates are up by double digit percentages, and major auto lenders are bracing for hundreds of millions of dollars of losses. We are a nation that is absolutely drowning in debt, and we are most definitely going to reap what we have sown.

The size of this market is larger than you may imagine. Earlier this year, the auto loan bubble surpassed the one trillion dollar mark for the first time ever…

Americans are borrowing more than ever for new and used vehicles, and 30- and 60-day delinquency rates rose in the second quarter, according to the automotive arm of one of the nation’s largest credit bureaus.

The total balance of all outstanding auto loans reached $1.027 trillion between April 1 and June 30, the second consecutive quarter that it surpassed the $1-trillion mark, reports Experian Automotive.

The average size of an auto loan is also at a record high. At $29,880, it is now just a shade under $30,000.

In order to try to help people afford the payments, auto lenders are now stretching loans out for six or even seven years. At this point it is almost like getting a mortgage.
But even with those stretched out loans, the average monthly auto loan payment is now up to a record 499 dollars.

That is the average loan size. To me, this is absolutely infuriating, because only a very small percentage of wealthy Americans are able to afford a $499 monthly payment on a single vehicle.

Many middle class American families are only bringing in three or four thousand dollars a month (before taxes). How in the world do they think that they can afford a five hundred dollar monthly auto loan payment on just one vehicle?

Just like with subprime mortgages, people are being taken advantage of severely, and the end result is going to be catastrophic for the U.S. financial system.

Already, auto loan delinquencies are rising to very frightening levels. In July, 60 day subprime loan delinquencies were up 13 percent on a month-over-month basis and were up 17 percent compared to the same month last year.

Prime delinquencies were up 12 percent on a month-over-month basis and were up 21 percent compared to the same month last year.

We have a huge crisis on our hands, and major auto lenders are setting aside massive amounts of cash in order to try to cover these losses. The following comes from USA Today…

In a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ford reported in the first half of this year it allowed $449 million for credit losses, a 34% increase from the first half of 2015.

General Motors reported in a similar filing that it set aside $864 million for credit losses in that same period of 2016, up 14% from a year earlier.

Meanwhile, other big corporations are also alarmed about the economic health of average U.S. consumers. Just check out what Dollar General CEO Todd Vasos had to say about this just the other day…

I know that when we look at globally the overall U.S. population, it seems like things are getting better. But when you really start breaking it down and you look at that core consumer that we serve on the lower economic scale that’s out there, that demographic, things have not gotten any better for her, and arguably, they’re worse. And they’re worse, because rents are accelerating, healthcare is accelerating on her at a very, very rapid clip.

The stock market may seem to be saying that everything is fine (for the moment), but the hard economic numbers are telling a completely different story. What we are experiencing right now looks so similar to 2008, and this includes big institutions just dropping dead seemingly out of the blue. On Tuesday, we learned that ITT Technical Institute is immediately shutting down and permanently closing all locations. This is from a Los Angeles Times report…

The company that operates the for-profit chain, one of the country’s largest, announced that it was permanently closing all its campuses nationwide. It blamed the shutdown on the recent move by the U.S. Education Department to ban ITT from enrolling new students who use federal financial aid.

“Two quarters ago there were rumors about the school having problems, but they told us that anyone who was already a student would be allowed to finish,” said Wiggins, who works as the assistant manager for a family-run auto parts business and went to ITT to open new opportunities.

“Am I angry?” he said. “I’m like angry times 10 million.”

As a result of this shutdown, 35,000 students are suddenly left out in the cold and approximately 8,000 employees have lost their jobs.

This is what happens during a major economic downturn. Large institutions that may have been struggling under the surface for quite a while suddenly give up and drop a bomb on those that were depending on them. In the months ahead, there will be a lot more examples of this.

Already, some of the biggest corporate names in America have been laying off thousands of workers in 2016. Mass layoffs are usually an early warning sign that big trouble is ahead, so keep a close eye on those companies.

The pace of the economic decline has been a bit slower than many (including myself) originally anticipated, but without a doubt it has continued.

And it is undeniable that the stage is set for a crisis that will absolutely dwarf 2008. Our national debt has nearly doubled since the beginning of the last crisis, corporate debt has doubled, student loan debt has crossed the trillion dollar mark, auto loan debt has crossed the trillion dollar mark, and total household debt has crossed the 12 trillion dollar mark.

We are living in the greatest debt bubble in world history, and there are signs that this giant bubble is now starting to burst. And when it does, the pain is going to be greater than most people would dare to imagine. (For more from the author of “The One Trillion Dollar Consumer Auto Loan Bubble Is Perilously Close to Bursting” please click HERE)

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