RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/democrats-for-the-people-act-election-reform-bill-unconstitutional/

At some level, you have to give House Democrats some credit for ambition. They may have just sent to the Senate the most comprehensively unconstitutional bill in modern American history. It’s called the “For the People Act,” and it’s a legislative buffet of bad ideas.

The alleged purpose of the bill, H.R. 1, is to “expand Americans’ access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, and strengthen ethics rules for public servants.” In reality, the bill represents an extraordinary federal power grab. At every turn, it grants federal regulators more power. Time and again, it renders federal election law more complex — creating a chilling effect on political communication through sheer uncertainty and confusion.

The free-speech problems are so obvious that free-speech organizations on the left and right are united in opposition. Comprehensive analyses from the Institute for Free Speech and the American Civil Liberties Union are worth reading in their entirety and raise remarkably similar concerns.

At a time of extraordinary public harassment, boycotts, intimidating public shame campaigns, the act would expand financial-disclosure requirements, including in some circumstances requiring public disclosure of the names and addresses even of donors who did not know about or perhaps even support the political message of the organization they funded. Donors may give money, for example, to fund one aspect of an organization’s mission only to be involuntarily exposed as a “political donor” when the organization chooses — without the donor’s knowledge or consent — to mention a politician by name in a different context. As the ACLU points out, “it is unfair to hold donors responsible for every communication in which an organization engages.”

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/09/18-real

“In the post-Trump era, the phrase “rule of law,” has come to take on an Orwellian opposite, like “Freedom is slavery” or “Ignorance is strength.” The violations of the law committed to “get Trump” are characterized as necessary steps to protect the law at the same time partisan legal minds declare every Trump action to be illegal or unconstitutional. Little or no analysis is applied in service to the one law that seems to have displaced 2,000 years of legal tradition: Hurting Trump is “legal.” Helping trump is “illegal.” It’s as simple as that.”

Donald Trump, we are told over and over and over again, threatens the “rule of law.” To pick a piece at random, I note that Joel Mathis of The Week recently wrote, “When we talk about Trump and the rule of law, mostly we talk about how he’s flouting and evading the constraint of laws he doesn’t like: His newly declared state of emergency to circumvent Congress’ refusal to appropriate funds for a Mexican border wall is just the best recent example.” You don’t have to take my word for the absurdity of this claim that the emergency declaration flouts the rule of law; read the New York Times: Trump has, at a minimum, a colorable legal claim for this emergency declaration.

In the Mathis example, as in most of these cases, the “violation” generally amounts to a policy difference or the departure from a “norm” like the one used to buck presidential oversight of powerful federal agencies.

The suffocating sanctimoniousness of the “Trump-is-threatening-the-rule-of-law” crowd is exceeded only by their hypocrisy. Don’t believe me? Here is a list of 18 actual violations of the law and Constitution done in service of removing Trump from office. I’ll bet you can’t find a single objection from any of these “rule-of-law” hand wringers to these flagrant and unpunished transgressions of the law.

Unmasking: Obama Administration officials “unmasked” hundreds of Americans who were caught up in government surveillance of foreign nationals. It’s illegal for the government to spy on Americans without a warrant. So when an American is heard speaking to a target of a legal foreign wiretap, the government is supposed to take action to shield the American from the effect of the surveillance. Without those safeguards, it’s just the government spying on an American citizen without a warrant. Hundreds of Americans were outed (unmasked) by former United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power and other Obama officials in the closing months of Obama’s tenure, despite the fact that Power as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. had no reason to be perusing the private conversations of American citizens.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/09/a-

You really have to give it to the suits in Barack Obama’s intelligence services and Department of Justice (many of whom, of course, are still strutting about in Donald Trump’s administration). It was quite a web they wove, and tangled with complexity. Yet their prodigious practice also made it nearly impenetrable to anyone not inside their charmed circle.

That adamantine carapace of impenetrability is a sign of their high style, their assiduity, the reason that a “word of encouragement” did not come amiss.

Put your hand on your heart. Can you really tell me what happened and who all the major players are in the Get Trump farce that has been occupying the nation for more than two years now? There have been various worthy efforts to unpack the drama—I’ve made a few myself—but at bottom it is like Russia according to Winston Churchill, “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”

Part of the problem is the shifting roles of the main players. Or rather, the shifting roles that elevate one or more players at one moment only to demote them back to the chorus a week or two later. How many people were suddenly cast into starring roles only, a few days or weeks later, to find themselves pushed back into bit-player status? George Papadopoulos: remember him? For a brief shining moment, he was the key to the whole “Russian Collusion” mythos. The New York Times told us so. But after he strutted and fretted his hour upon the stage he faded from sight and now is heard no more.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/fed-up-house-republican-releases-bruce-ohr-testimony-showing-major-conflict-of-interest/

In a surprise move Friday, Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, unilaterally released the 268-page transcript of an August 2018 interview with Justice Department official Bruce Ohr.

Collins explained that his patience with the Justice Department “has grown thin.” He took to the House floor and asked that the full, unredacted transcript be put on the record.

In his testimony, Ohr revealed that former British spy Christopher Steele was simultaneously paid by both the FBI and the Democrat opposition research firm Fusion GPS during the 2016 election.

The transcript also shows claims conflicting with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson on several key points, including the timing of their meeting to discuss the Steele dossier.

Additionally, Ohr testified that Simpson provided false information to federal officials regarding Cleta Mitchell, a Republican campaign finance attorney who used to work for the NRA.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/paul-manafort-worked-for-ukraine-not-russia/

He is a scoundrel, but he was never a Kremlin operative.

Paul Manafort, the clandestine agent of Russia at the heart of the Trump campaign’s “collusion” scand — oh, wait.

Have you ever noticed what Paul Manafort’s major crime was? After two years of investigation, after the predawn raid in which his wife was held at gunpoint, after months of solitary confinement that have left him a shell of his former self, have you noticed what drew the militant attention of the Obama Justice Department, the FBI, and, ultimately, a special counsel who made him the centerpiece of Russia-gate?

According to the indictment Robert Mueller filed against him, Manafort was an unregistered “agent of the Government of Ukraine.” He also functioned as an agent of Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s president from 2010 to 2014, and of two political parties, the Party of Regions and its successor, the Opposition Bloc.

Manafort was not an unregistered agent of Russia. Mueller never alleged that Manafort was a clandestine operative of the Kremlin. He worked for Ukraine, not Putin. Indeed, for much of his time in Ukraine, he pushed his clients against Putin’s interests.

https://www.openthebooks.com

In the final month of the fiscal year, federal agencies scramble to spend what’s left in their annual budget.

Agencies fear that leaving excess funds might prompt Congress to appropriate less money the next year.To avoid this, agencies spend like crazy every September. We call it the “use-it-or-lose-it” phenomenon, and it’s all on the taxpayer dime. 

Our latest oversight report, which broke this morning on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, quantified the $97 billion federal agencies spent in the final month of fiscal year 2018. That’s a 39-percent increase from fiscal year 2015.These last-minute transactions purchased a range of services and products including fidget spinners, guns and ammunition, alcohol and lobster tail, CrossFit equipment, musical instruments, and more. For the next six days, we are making this report available to you for free. Download your free copy of our breaking report today.

https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/03/article/contrary-to-claims-us-jobs-bust-not-a-fluke/

US payroll employment grew by just 20,000 in February, against a market consensus forecast of 170,000 growth. Administration officials pointed to the 3.4% growth in average hourly earnings as a sign of economic health, but low employment growth and higher wages are twin images of the same picture. US employment growth has been concentrated in labor-intensive, low wage sectors, and that is where hourly earnings have risen the fastest.

Higher wages are NOT leading to inflation, as the Phillips curve predicts, but to lower growth. Household budgets are tight and consumers balk at price increases. The unexpected slump in hiring in labor-intensive sectors is consistent with the unexpected slump in retail sales and personal spending in December.

I expect not a US recession but a slowdown in growth to the 1%-1.5% range, down from last year’s 3%. The US consumer, as I wrote yesterday, remains the world’s biggest macro risk.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/03/25/mark-janus-the-man-who-ended-compulsory-union-dues/

He asked the Supreme Court to acknowledge his First Amendment rights, and it did

An average guy, provoked enough, can accomplish things that are above average.

Mark Janus is such a guy. Provoked by what he believed was a bald violation of his First Amendment rights, he took action to see them protected. And he prevailed. Big time, as an average guy might say.

His name, italicized, will live on now in legal textbooks and amicus curiae footnotes, will be cited at length in law-school seminars and oral arguments, will be uttered with contempt in union headquarters, with respect in conservative gatherings. And it will be classified under “landmark.” Maybe even give birth to a phrase, “Janus rights.”

Last June, in Mark Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, commonly known as Janus v. AFSCME, the United States Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that public-sector unions may not automatically enroll workers as members and collect fees from them. Janus was a loss for labor. A big loss. And it was a major — even surprising, and far-reaching — victory for conservatives and First Amendment champions.

Mark Janus describes himself as “just an average guy, a middle-class person who goes to work every day.” And work is where this saga of jurisprudence, of constitutional rights, of modern-day politics and union power, all begins. A lifelong resident of Springfield, Ill., Janus, a down-to-earth civic-minded citizen (he is an Eagle Scout), graduated in 1975 from Illinois College, a business-administration major whose career path meandered. He worked for his dad’s beauty-supply company and then at the Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs, where his duties centered on economic-development small-business loans.

Janus soon returned to the private sector, as an accountant for a printing company and then in his own spiral-binding business, which he eventually sold. Then followed an encore as a government employee.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/the-tireless-ron-desantis/

He has led a burst of pro-market, limited-government reforms that are making Florida even greater.

The last time most Americans heard of Ron DeSantis, the former GOP congressman had edged past Mayor Andrew Gillum (D., Tallahassee) in their rough-and-tumble wrestling match for Florida’s governorship. After contested recounts in Broward and Palm Beach Counties, DeSantis, 40, prevailed over Gillum, 39, by a margin more svelte than Palm Beach — 49.6 percent to 49.2 percent. Among 8.1 million ballots cast, just 32,463 votes divided victor from vanquished.

Since his January 8 inauguration, DeSantis has done far more than rearrange the gubernatorial furniture. Indeed, he has led a burst of pro-market, limited-government reforms that are making Florida even greater.

• Most significantly, DeSantis replaced three Florida supreme court justices who were required to retire at age 75. His appointees — Barbara Lagoa, Robert J. Luck, and Carlos Muñiz — have shifted the court’s composition from four liberals and three conservatives to one liberal and six conservatives. This jump to the right should keep the Sunshine State’s top tribunal safe for constitutionalism.

• DeSantis pioneered Florida Deregathon — a one-day summit in which agency heads targeted red tape, especially in occupational licensing. While eye surgeons and airline pilots should certify their competence, why do nail polishers and boxing timekeepers need Tallahassee’s permission to work? Florida’s 1,200-hour training requirement for new barbers, for instance, stymies competition by boosting costs and headaches for new entrants.