RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/05/23/21-million-brooklyn-field-hospital-closes-after-treating-zero-patients-n420444

A field hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y., built to deal with the coronavirus has been closed without treating a single patient. The $21 million facility was part of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s response to the growing number of coronavirus patients at New York City hospitals. That response included smaller facilities at the Billie Jean King Tennis Center and Stony Point (Long Island), and a huge, 1,100-bed medical center at the Javits Center.

All told, the state spent upwards of $350 million on facilities that were built but never used.

The City:

[City officials] expect the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pick up the costs for both of the temporary hospitals — which include an additional $2 million paid out to a second firm for construction management.

“As part of our hospital surge, we expanded capacity at a breakneck speed, ensuring our hospital infrastructure would be prepared to handle the very worst. We did so only with a single-minded focus: saving lives,” said Avery Cohen, a City Hall spokesperson.

Except they were building these facilities at “breakneck speed” at the same time the hospitalization rates for the virus were falling.

Dear President Trump,

This is an open letter written to ask: Would you speak to the nation about the virus we have confronted and the economic consequences of the response? I have read the speeches you gave in Warsaw in 2017, London in 2019 and at Davos this past January. Those were speeches that resonated with audiences. In the midst of this pandemic and economic slump, people need your leadership.

The country is fractured. COVID-19 has been politicized and has widened an already-deep divide. People are frightened. The lockdown has scared them further – lost jobs, a shrunken economy and collapsed financial markets. Reported economic numbers are backward looking, so will appear bad even as recovery takes hold. No one knows when or if a vaccine, or even a therapeutic, will be available. Nevertheless, people need confidence that tomorrow will be better than today, and they need it said fairly and honestly. They need to know that jobs will be restored, not just for the incomes necessary for food and shelter, but for the dignity a job provides. The desire to be independent is deeply ingrained in the American psyche. They need to know that shops, schools, restaurants and theaters will be re-opened safely. They don’t want platitudes. They want the truth, which gives rise to courage, pride and morale.

And they need to know that while the economy is being addressed those most vulnerable to the virus are being looked after. The American people are smart and empathetic. They need to be told the truth – that, like any virus, this one cannot be totally eradicated, but it can be managed.

This should be a speech that is not self-laudatory and does not assign blame. It should not be a campaign speech. It should be a recognition of where we are, not of where we might have been had different decisions been made. Leave speculation to others. It should be straight forward and honest. It should praise the bravery of healthcare workers, acknowledge the successes of governors and mayors and applaud the people for looking after one another. It should state the need to continue common-sensical practices of washing one’s hands, social distancing and wearing masks when with others. But it should also recognize the freedom of the American people – that liberty is the highest goal of a free people.

As well, it should be a speech that doesn’t shy from the economic costs incurred in combatting COVID-19, that the extraordinary debt government incurred – money printed  by the Federal reserve, the appropriation of funds by Congress and expenditures by the Executive – are obligations of the American tax payer.

I know this is asking a lot, but having listened to you, I know you are equal to the task. I recognize the press has not been your best friend, but it is the people who need your words, not the media.

Best regards,

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/michael-flynn-was-not-masked-because-fbi-framed-him-as-a-clandestine-agent-of-russia/

The point of all this was politics, not national security.

Well, the mystery is solved, at least if you can believe what the usual sieves — those courageously anonymous “former U.S. officials” — have told their notetakers at the Washington Post. As I surmised in last weekend’s column, Michael Flynn was not “unmasked” in connection with his controversial phone call with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. He was never masked in the first place. The Post reported that on Wednesday afternoon.

Meanwhile, the Post is leading the media–Democrat effort to contort the fact that many Republicans were wrong in assuming Flynn had been unmasked prior to his name’s being leaked to the Post in early 2017 into a storyline that those Republicans must have been wrong to claim the leak was illegal. To the contrary, the leak is a felony, regardless of whether an American’s identity should have been concealed. Information collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is classified. The point of classifying information is to keep all of it concealed, not just the names.

Though I was right that Flynn was never masked in connection with the Kislyak call on December 29, 2016, I was off the mark in hypothesizing that the conversation may be been intercepted by an intelligence agency other than the FBI — perhaps the CIA or a foreign intelligence service. Sadly, this owes to my giving the FBI the benefit of the doubt: Had Flynn been picked up on a FISA surveillance of which he was not the target (i.e., a surveillance of Kislyak), I reasoned that the FBI would have masked his identity under statutorily required “minimization instructions.” Indeed, we now know that Flynn’s identity was masked (and then unmasked) dozens of times before and after December 29, precisely because the government knew those minimization rules applied to him.

Alas, in this as in so much else throughout the Trump–Russia farce, the Bureau played fast and loose with the rules. When investigators are so inclined, it turns out the privacy vouchsafed by the minimization rules is illusory. FBI officials — if they thought about it at all — figured Flynn need not be masked because they did not see him as an innocent American incidentally caught up in foreign surveillance. They purported to suspect that he was a clandestine agent of Russia.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/499115-the-house-impeachment-inquiry-loses-another-round-and-yes-thats-still

At the urging of the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Supreme Court has granted a stay, at least temporarily blocking disclosure to the House Judiciary Committee of grand jury materials from the Mueller probe. 

The committee, chaired by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), represented to the justices that these materials — transcripts of testimony and other evidence — are vital to its continuing inquiry into whether President Trump should be impeached.

Yes, that’s still going on.

As we noted back in those footloose pre-pandemic days of the Ukraine kerfuffle, the fact that the House filed impeachment articles against the president meant neither that the House impeachment push was over (it never will be over as long as Trump is in the White House) nor that the House would necessarily refrain from filing new impeachment articles — or even the same impeachment articles, there being no double jeopardy bar against successive impeachments for the same alleged offenses.

That last point is not incidental. Double jeopardy does not apply to impeachment because it is a political proceeding, not a judicial proceeding. That is, House impeachment inquiries and Senate impeachment trials are congressional matters focused solely on the removal of political power. They are not criminal court cases to determine guilt and potential imprisonment. 

2020 has been a huge year for our transparency revolution! 

When California asked for a $1 trillion 50-state bailout, we exposed the 340,000 public employees and retirees making $100,000+ costing taxpayers $45 billion. Our investigation at Forbes has 450,000 views.

When Illinois asked for a $41.6 billion bailout, we exposed the 109,881 public employees and retirees making $100,000+ costing taxpayers $14 billion. Our investigation at Forbes has 845,000 views.

When the U.S. Senate passed the CARES Act ($2.2 trillion “coronavirus” bailout), our exposure of the bi-partisan corruption was published at Forbes (517,000 views). It was national news and showcased on The Drudge Report.

We exposed the $4 billion bailout of America’s museums proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congressional delegation, and The Met — despite their $3.6 billion endowment (82,000 views).

We exposed the $3.5 billion in U.S. taxpayer payments since 2010 to the World Health Organization. 

We exposed the 5,100 colleges and universities that have been allocated $12.5 billion in coronavirus bailout! (Including the 20 richest universities with a collective endowment of $350 billion who were allocated $800 million in virus bailout funds.)

Americans are hungry for the truth. And, right now, we need your help.

This type of traction doesn’t happen by accident. But as a non-profit organization, our work depends solely on the support of regular people.

We accept zero government funding. This makes the success of our fundraising efforts critical.