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Scammers Stole an Insane Amount of Pandemic Unemployment Money Katie Pavlich

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2022/09/23/scammers-stole-an-insane-amount-of-pandemic-funding-n2613497

According to a new Department of Labor Inspector General report, scammers were able to steal nearly $46 billion in pandemic cash through state unemployment insurance [UI] programs. 

“Inspector General Larry D. Turner, U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), announced that the Office of Inspector General’s (DOL-OIG) investigations have resulted in more than 1,000 individuals being charged with crimes involving Unemployment Insurance (UI) fraud since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.1 The DOL-OIG also issued an Alert Memorandum identifying $45.6 billion in potentially fraudulent UI benefits paid to individuals with Social Security numbers: (1) filed in multiple states, (2) of deceased persons, (3) filed with suspicious email accounts, and (4) of federal prisoners,” the Office of the Inspector General released this week.

The office also found pandemic relief programs were vulnerable for abuse given how much money the federal government was quickly pushing out the door without proper accountability and tracking programs or mechanisms in place. 

“Following the start of the pandemic in the United States in early 2020, unemployment compensation claims rose exponentially to historically unprecedented levels. Prior to the pandemic, numbers of UI claims were historically low. On March 14, 2020, the Department reported 282,000 initial claims. Within 2 to 3 weeks, initial claims rose to 10 times pre-pandemic levels, far higher than state systems were designed to handle. Within 5 months, through August 15, 2020, the Department reported 57.4 million initial claims, the largest increase since the Department began tracking UI data in 1967. The CARES Act provided significant funding to the federal-state UI program, which resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars in additional payments,” the office explains.

Woke Youth’s State-Sanctioned Rebellion All these woke youths have accomplished is to fundamentally transform themselves into blunt instruments shoved into the arsenal of the leftist establishment.  By Thaddeus G. McCotter

https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/23/woke-youths-state-sanctioned-rebellion/

Though I know the cliché has lost its cache, I am, in fact, old enough to remember when youthful rebellion was organic, autonomous, and anti-establishment. Such is no longer the case amongst today’s woke youth, who have been indoctrinated to serve as tools of the leftist establishment.

Woke youth’s “rebellion” is not organic. This is not to say that woke youth’s rebellious streak isn’t innate. But their youthful “outrage” is conditioned; and their rebellious acts are channeled at progressivism’s opponents by the Left’s civil religion and its high priests—namely, the deep state, the Democratic Party power-brokers, woke corporations, and the dinosaur media and social media.

Encapsulated by the DIE cult (“diversity, inclusion, and equity”), the Left’s civil religion has been inculcated into woke youth from birth—in some cases, by their leftist parents, and/or by leftist institutions, such as public K-12 schools and those of “higher learning.” Ultimately, their “rebellious” streak continues to be honed by public and private institutions and, of course, corporate and social media. It is this external, controlling impact of these leftist entities that prevents woke youth from committing organic acts of rebellion. And it is by design. 

Because it is inculcated by the leftist establishment to serve its civil religion, woke youth’s “rebellion” is not organic and, ergo, it is incapable of being autonomous. The leftist establishment provides the targets, the rules of engagement, the propaganda and justifications, and the rewards for rebellious woke youth. Thus, woke youth have about as much autonomy over their rebellious acts as an “at will” employee. 

It is stunning how woke youth refuse to understand an elementary fact that is, however, not lost upon the objects of their rebellion—namely, that the Left are now the American establishment. In many ways, this has long been the case and it is the more so the harder the Left continues to deny it. Bluntly, they must. To concede they are the current establishment will destroy the Left’s most cherished, core myth: that they speak—and rebel—for the downtrodden and dispossessed. If one recognizes the Left is speaking, not for the poor, but to do the bidding of Bill Gates, Big Tech, the deep state, et al.—how outré! One knows this is the case, however, because their acts of rebellion garner not rebukes, but praise in the pages of the Washington Post and social media posts across cyberspace. Where is the “noble” rebellion in that? 

Is Biden deliberately destroying America’s military defenses? By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/09/is_biden_deliberately_destroying_americas_military_defenses.html

It’s not just the newest Air Force Academy initiative that explicitly bars straight men. It’s everything!

The Supreme Court has made clear that discriminating against people based on sex or sexual orientation is illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. That has not stopped the Air Force Academy from initiating a new program explicitly closed to “cisgender men.” Horrible as that is, it pales compared to some of the other things Biden has been doing that will destroy America’s military readiness.

The Air Force Academy notified its cadets (i.e., students) that it is offering a new fellowship program—the Brooke Owens Fellowship—for “gender minorities” only, with straight men explicitly excluded:

If you are a cisgender woman, a transgender woman, non-binary, agender, bigender, two-spirit, demi gender, genderfluid, genderqueer, or another form of gender minority, this program is for you. If you are a cisgender man, this program isn’t for you… but we encourage you to check out our spin- off programs, the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship and the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship Program!

The Brooke Owens fellowship was established to encourage more women to enter the aerospace field. That kind of discrimination has long been accepted, although it shouldn’t be. The feeling was that it was still a necessary form of affirmative action for women. The program’s having morphed from women to myriad imaginary genders, though, blows apart any pretense that this is a women-only program. It’s now discriminating against both women and men.

New York Seeks Marijuana Dealers ‘With Experience’ High taxes and licensing preferences for ex-cons make a hash of the state’s market for legal weed. By Jonathan Turley

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-seeks-marijuana-dealers-with-experience-convictions-regulation-licenses-dispensaries-commerce-cannabis-weed-11663949176?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

New York state seeks people “with experience” to help establish what could become the biggest legal marijuana market in the country. The explanation sounds like a punch line: New York will offer licenses and subsidies to people with marijuana convictions on their records.

New York legalized the possession and use of marijuana for adults last year and created a licensing system to govern eventual sales in brick-and-mortar stores. New Yorkers will even be able to get joints delivered.

The application window for these licenses closes Sept. 26. The state anticipates the first legal dispensaries will open before the end of the year. The size of the legal marijuana market in New York could ultimately be more than $7 billion annually.

Politicians are eager to tax and regulate all this commerce, and the legal marijuana market could be the source of massive new revenue for New York. Many states have already piled excessive taxes on legal weed sales. New York plans an array of taxes, including a complex tax based on the potency of the pot. There will also be rules preventing cannabis businesses from writing off standard expenses. That is in addition to a 9% state sales tax and any local sales taxes that get tacked on.

But what legislators ignore is that all these taxes have the perverse effect of increasing black-market demand. After Prohibition ended, people didn’t continue to buy bathtub gin when legal and safer alcohol was available. But states also didn’t massively increase the price of newly legal alcohol to make bathtub gin more attractive. In New York there is already a $2 billion marijuana black market.

The FBI Paid for Russian Disinformation While Punishing a Patriot Ben Weingarten

https://www.newsweek.com/fbi-paid-russian-disinformation-while-punishing-patriot-opinion-1745574

To understand the state of disrepair of our national security and law enforcement apparatus, look to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s contrasting treatment of Russian disinformation-spinner Igor Danchenko, and whistleblowing Special Agent Steven Friend.

We recently learned the Bureau rewarded the former for his lies, while punishing the latter for his truths.

Danchenko, a Russian national, was the key researcher behind the key document—the Steele dossier—behind the key effort to undermine candidate, and then topple, President Donald J. Trump: Russiagate.

Today, we know Danchenko fabricated communications with the purported central source behind some of the document’s most salacious claims. By lying to the FBI about that, and much else that would have called into question his credibility, as well as the dossier’s veracity, Danchenko played a seminal role in corrupting our political and legal systems. He helped subvert a presidency and the will of the public, foist a fraud on the FISA court, and eviscerate the civil liberties, ravage the reputations, and drain the banks accounts of those wrongfully ensnared in the Russiagate hoax—along with our rotten Deep State.

Compounding the outrage, after the FBI learned Danchenko had misled it, it claimed in multiple FISA warrant applications used to spy on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page and Trump world that Danchenko, Steele’s “primary sub-source,” was “truthful and cooperative.”

Rosh Hashanah guide for the perplexed, 2022 Yoram Ettinger

The evening of September 25, 2022 will launch Jewish New Year of 5783.

1. Genesis. Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the Jewish New Year is celebrated on the 6th day of Creation, when the first human-being, Adam, was created.  Adam is the Hebrew word for a human-being (אדמ), which is the root of the Hebrew word for “soil” (אדמה) – a metaphor for humility. Moreover, the Hebrew letter  הis an abbreviation of God, the Creator.

The Hebrew word Rosh (ראש) means first/head/beginning and Hashanah (השנה) means the year.  Rosh (ראש) constitutes the root of the Hebrew word for Genesis (בראשית), which is the first word in the Book of Genesis.

Rosh Hashanah is celebrated on the first day of the Jewish month of Tishrei – “the month of the Strong Ones” (Book of Kings A, 8:2) – when the three Jewish Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) and the Prophet Samuel were born.   

Tishrei means beginning/Genesis in ancient Acadian. The Hebrew letters of Tishrei (תשרי) are included in the spelling of Genesis (בראשית). Furthermore, the Hebrew spelling of Genesis (בראשית) includes the first two letters in the Hebrew alphabet (אב), a middle letter (י) and the last three letters (רשת) – representing the totality of the Creation.    

2.  Self-examination.  The root of the Hebrew word Shanah (שנה) is both “repeat” and “change.” Rosh Hashanah (ראש השנה) constitutes an annual reminder of the need to enhance one’s behavior through a systematic study of one’s track record, re-studying moral values and avoiding past errors.  Rosh Hashanah ushers in the Ten Days of Repentance, which are concluded on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).

Martha’s Vineyard Residents Wallow in Their Disgusting Hypocrisy It will be a long time before many Americans can pronounce the words “Martha’s Vineyard” without the pained eye roll once reserved for the now funereal adjacent island of Chappaquiddick. By Paul du Quenoy

https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/22/marthas-vineyard-residents-wallow-in-their-disgusting-hypocrisy/

“VINEYARD HYPOCRITES!” announced a banner towed by a light aircraft for about 45 minutes earlier this week over the Martha’s Vineyard hamlet of Aquinnah, which until 1997 was known as “Gay Head.”

The demonstration was just one of many hard knocks Vineyard residents have endured since 48 mostly Venezuelan migrants were removed from the “sanctuary” island by the National Guard last Friday. After receiving basic support, but no invitations to stay on an island where 63 percent of homes are vacant in the offseason, the migrants now reside at Joint Base Cape Cod (JBCC), a military installation in mainland Massachusetts.

Critics have been relentless in calling out Vineyard hypocrisy. As a “sanctuary” jurisdiction in a self-proclaimed “sanctuary” state, Martha’s Vineyard joined other such places, which promise never to inform on migrants to immigration authorities. Yet it did precisely that the second even a small number of them appeared in their midst. 

The Vineyard community allowed the migrants to sleep in a church hall and gave them basic meals before the military took them away in the presence of cheering crowds of well-off locals who sincerely believe they did a good and honorable deed.

From the moment their “humanitarian crisis” began, Vineyard residents congratulated themselves and lectured an incredulous world on their monumental virtue and inexhaustible compassion. The church where the migrants stayed, now styling itself “St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church and Sanctuary,” has advertised a service of “prayer, reflection, gratitude, and visioning” to celebrate the Vineyard’s resident “angels,” but not the “Venezuelan friends” they sent away a week earlier. 

It was unclear if any migrants would attend, but they are now so far away it is hard to imagine how they could. The Vineyard’s status as an affluent resort island, where nearly 80 percent of residents voted for Joe Biden, and where signs purportedly welcoming immigrants, refugees, and indigenous peoples abound, enhanced the delicious irony.

Democrats Continue to Lie About Police Deaths on January 6 Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and congressional Democrats fuel a false narrative intended to stoke outrage in an already deeply divided country. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/22/democrats-continue-to-lie-about-police-deaths-on-january-6/

U.S. Representative Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) is a sterling example of the degradation of an Ivy League education.

Following a lengthy riff about the horrors of the January 6 “insurrection” during which he described his Republican colleagues as fascists, Jones, a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard School of Law, unloaded a whopper. 

“How many more people needed to die to reach your definition of an insurrection?” Jones yelled across the room at Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) during a House Judiciary Committee meeting on Wednesday. “On January 6, at the direction of Donald Trump, a violent mob stormed the Capitol. In the process, 138 Capitol and D.C. police officers were injured. A Capitol police officer was bludgeoned to death.”

Jones, of course, was referring to Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick. 

On January 8, 2021, the New York Times reported that Sicknick had been killed during the protest by Trump supporters using a fire extinguisher. For weeks, that false account, attributed to two anonymous law enforcement officials, persisted in the news media, prompting public outcry. Sicknick’s remains laid in honor in the Capitol Rotunda; the country’s top political leaders, including Joe and Jill Biden, paid their respects before a hero’s burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

After the theatrical optics served their purpose—to blame Trump supporters for murdering a cop on January 6—the Times retracted the story. In April 2021, the D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office released an autopsy report concluding Sicknick died of natural causes, specifically a stroke.

By bringing up Sicknick’s death, Jones sparked a heated debate between Republicans and Democrats.  “Are we talking about Sicknick or are we talking about someone else?” Bishop asked Jones, who refused to correct his statement, downplaying it as a “minute point in the midst of the gravity of what happened on January 6.” Jones again claimed “multiple police officers” died that day.

Amid pushback from House Republicans to correct the official record, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) berated the other side for refusing to concede that Sicknick died as a result of the protest. “You bring shame on this body,” Dean said. “He engaged on our behalf the insurrectionists. The conversation you all engaged in is so shameful, I hope the Sicknick family isn’t watching this.”

Why I am an American Supremacist and a MAGA Independent An open letter to President Biden. by Jason D. Hill

https://www.frontpagemag.com/why-i-am-an-american-supremacist-and-a-maga-independent/

Mr. President, your speech delivered on September 1, 2022, at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, PA has left me thinking for a long time now on the significance of your remarks and how deeply implicated I might be in them in a manner you might not have imagined.

Your speech may be summarized in two sentences. First, it was a clarion call to halt what you called the ongoing threats to our democracy. Second, you declared MAGA Republicans to be guilty of threatening our democracy. An ominous but accurate conclusion would be to state that your speech was a declaration of war against approximately fifty percent of the American populace.

But President Biden, a word of correction is needed. Rather than correctly refer to our unprecedented political identity as a republic, you deliberately used the ghastly term democracy. The United States of America is most emphatically not a democracy; and should we ever regress to become one, it should be destroyed as quicky as possible. We are a constitutional republic. There is a huge difference between a constitutional republic and a democracy, and you know it. As the philosopher Immanuel Kant realized in the 18th century, democracies are dangerous phenomena.

So, Mr. President, here is a brief disquisition on the difference: with a republic such as the one we retain in the United States, power rests in the hands of the individual citizens and laws are made by elected representatives of the people. In a democratic system, something much different occurs: laws are made by the majority, and the will of a majority can and does override the existing rights of citizens.

Letter Reveals Obama Foundation Is Keeping Classified Docs in Abandoned Furniture Warehouse By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/09/22/letter-reveals-obama-foundation-is-keeping-classified-docs-in-abandoned-furniture-warehouse-n1631408

The Obama Foundation stored classified documents in an abandoned furniture warehouse, according to a 2018 letter from the Obama Foundation to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

The letter, available on the Obama Foundation website and dated Sept. 11, 2018, reveals that the Obama Foundation not only acknowledged possessing classified documents but also admitted that they kept them in a facility that did not meet NARA standards for the storage of those documents.
Media reports confirm that the Obama Foundation had rented space from Hoffman Estates to store these documents, and extended their original lease for four more years back in August.

“While no firm date has been announced for the completion and opening of the Barack Obama Presidential Library near the University of Chicago, its future contents will stay in Hoffman Estates for four more years,” the Daily Herald reported. “Village board members unanimously approved an extension to the special-use permit that enables landlord Hoffman Estates Medical Development LLC to lease the 74,200-square-foot former Plunkett Furniture store at 2500 W. Golf Road to the National Archives and Records Administration through Dec. 31, 2026.”