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December 2021

Corrupt Politicians Beware: Adam Andrzejewski

https://openthebooks.us20.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=2cf2a73e6220e59e3c1c4a60c&id=e2b29384a0
OpenTheBooks is on a mission to post every single dollar of public spending online, and in real time.

And government bureaucrats haven’t made our job easy.

After painstaking efforts, we’ve successfully posted 85% of funds taxed and spent by every single substantial unit of government across America.

Today, the Transparency Revolution marches forward!

Here are three highlights from 2021:
We’ve filed 40,500 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
We’ve captured 25 million public employee pension and salary records.
We’ve made significant progress on our lawsuit to open up the California state checkbook. CA is the lone holdout and the third state we have sued. We’ve never lost.

These are the first steps in a much larger battle.

Imagine… how will voters feel when they’re able to see and show corruption under a white-hot spotlight?

No media spin to cover dirty politicians. Just cold, hard facts.

OpenTheBooks is on a war footing and we have huge plans for 2022.

We will publish 500+ investigations (up from 290+ in 2021) with one single goal: to capture government spending and expose to the American public how your tax dollars are being “invested.”

We are working hard.

But right now, we need to raise $25,000 before midnight on December 31st to fuel our progress.

Will you consider joining us as a partner with a gift of $25, $50, or $100?

RENEWABLE? SUSTAINABLE? GREEN BUZZ WORDS: WILL COGGIN

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/12/13/renewable-sustainable-dissecting-green-buzzwords/

Remember when Humpty Dumpty lectured Alice, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less”? With talk of climate change constantly in the news, marketing departments are increasingly getting in on that game. One in every six consumer products touts sustainability claims. So should you trust what is on the label? 

Some terms like “organic,” for farming practices, have been around long enough to have their own third-party certification programs. While not perfect, it’s at least a layer of scrutiny that is missing from newer buzzword claims.

One of those newer terms is “renewable.” The word invokes thoughts of clean energy and boundless resources. 

Reality check: “Renewable” only means a product has been sourced from something that cannot be depleted. Paper is often labeled renewable since trees and forests regrow and are replanted. But that doesn’t make products made from renewable resources automatically better than other products. 

Water cartons, for example, have been touted as a “renewable” alternative to plastic bottles. Alaska Airlines recently announced it would be getting rid of plastic water bottles and replacing them with boxed water. But there’s a catch.

The paper in cartons is renewable, but the cartons are not merely paper. After all, paper’s not waterproof. As any kid knows after taking a juice box apart, there are glued layers of plastic and aluminum needed to waterproof the product. 

Crucially, that means while the paper part of the carton is “renewable”, the cartons themselves are difficult to recycle. Cartons cannot be recycled in areas where 40% of the country lives. Carton production releases roughly the same amount of greenhouse gases as the production of a recycled plastic bottle. A carton is better off being incinerated, according to a study by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency. 

Does the “renewable” label mean the product is better for the environment? Not necessarily. 

Almost Anybody Can Now Vote in New York Democrats on the City Council give 800,000 noncitizens the franchise, as others dissent.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/almost-anybody-can-now-vote-in-new-york-noncitizen-illegal-alien-election-interference-11639331608?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

The New York City Council approved a bill last week to let about 800,000 noncitizens vote in local elections, and Mayor Bill de Blasio has said he won’t veto it. The measure passed 33-14, over some strong dissents, including from Democrats.

“It’s unconstitutional under state law. It’s very clear,” said Councilman Kalman Yeger, a Brooklyn Democrat, during Thursday’s debate. That was seconded by Councilman James Gennaro, a Queens Democrat. “I and everyone in this body took an oath—an oath!—to uphold the constitution of the state of New York.”

New York’s constitution guarantees citizens the right to vote, “provided that such citizen is eighteen years of age” and has been a resident for 30 days. The progressive argument is that this language doesn’t explicitly exclude noncitizens, so New York City can grant them the franchise.

But think what else this implies. The constitution only specifically says that a “citizen” must be 18 to vote. So could the city expand local elections to 12-year-old noncitizens? Ditto for the constitution’s 30-day residency rule. Could the city let noncitizens cross the Hudson River declare residency, and vote the next day? As legal analysis, this isn’t what New York’s constitution means.

The city’s bill at least requires 30-day residency by noncitizen voters. But Councilman Mark Gjonaj, a Bronx Democrat, said that would cover “a transient,” who’s “coming in for the duration of that job or that project and going back to their home country.” He warned it would make New York “vulnerable to outside influence,” including from Russia, suggesting a one-year residency requirement instead.

Because noncitizens can’t participate in federal or state races, a practical problem is that the city’s Board of Elections, which is legendary for ineptitude, would have to manage a second voting list and set of ballots. What about people who don’t speak the basic English required by the citizenship test? Councilman Mark Treyger, a Brooklyn Democrat who abstained on the bill, said he once asked for a law requiring interpreters at polling sites, and “I was told that we didn’t have the authority.”

Green-card holders pay taxes, yet so might second homeowners, international students, and illegal aliens. For voting, citizenship is a clear place to draw a bright line. Mr. Gennaro, the Queens Democrat, said noncitizens can’t hold office, so under the city’s bill “they’re good enough to vote for Mayor but not be Mayor.” Cynics, he added, would say “we’re looking for permanent residents to vote for us, but you don’t get a chance to, like, run against us.”

Other arguments were less, well, philosophical. Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo, a Brooklyn Democrat, said she worried the bill wouldn’t “amplify” black voices. “The top three ethnic groups that will benefit from this,” she said, are “the Dominican Republic, China, as well as Mexico.” She added that although it’s “not politically correct,” she is concerned that “many of our Latino brothers and sisters voted Republican, for President Trump.” So she opposed the bill.

These dissenting Democrats didn’t win the day, but let’s hope the courts say the whole thing is unconstitutional.

The Six Most Disastrous Members Of The Biden Administration

https://thebluestateconservative.com/2021/12/12/the-six-most-disastrous-members-of-the-biden-administration/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=today-s-posts-from-the-blue-state-conservative_1

In this installment of our weekly Sunday Six conversation, PF Whalen and Parker Beauregard of The Blue State Conservative discuss their choices for the six most disastrous members of President Joe Biden’s Administration, not counting Mr. Biden himself.

#6: Vice President of the United States – Kamala Harris

#5: Secretary of the Treasury – Janet Yellen

#4: Attorney General – Merrick Garland

#3: Secretary of Defense – Lloyd Austin

#2: Director of the NAIAD – Anthony Fauci

#1: White House Chief of Staff – Ron Klain

Biden’s catastrophic collapse of American leadership The Biden administration is hell-bent on reversing many of President Trump’s achievements: Monica Crowley

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/biden-collapse-american-leadership-monica-crowley

It turns out that going from America First to America Last has real world consequences.

President Joe Biden’s rejection of President Donald Trump’s approach to national security and foreign policy has created devastating harm to American interests abroad and our security at home.

Trump’s main goal was to prioritize our interests, thereby leveraging American power to deliver greater global stability, certainty and relative peace. Biden prioritizes multilateralism and globalism, reversing Trump-era gains and introducing increasing chaos, instability, uncertainty and conflict.

President Trump’s critics often complained his America First policies were damaging our alliances and rewarding our enemies. The exact opposite was true: like President Ronald Reagan before him, Trump delivered peace through strength. Biden has diluted American power, and as a result, our allies no longer trust us and our enemies no longer fear us. American weakness always invites the wolves, and the wolves have returned.

Let’s recall where we were just one year ago.

The Trump administration had provided unwavering support to Israel and achieved historic peace agreements in the Middle East, agreements which cultivated economic and other cooperation that, in turn, is delivering enduring peace.
It had successfully pushed back on China’s economic aggression, human rights abuses, and geopolitical adventurism in the South China Sea and Pacific Rim.
It had successfully contained Russia’s expansionism and slowed the progress of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
It had productive diplomacy underway to contain North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
It had withdrawn from the catastrophic Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and was using its extensive sanctions authority to restrict Iran’s nuclear program.
It had negotiated a plan for a managed, conditional exit from Afghanistan that would have secured us a continuing intelligence capability.
It had realigned our relationship with our NATO allies, holding them to their promises of the alliance.
It had successfully negotiated fairer, more reciprocal trade deals with China, Canada, Mexico, South Korea and Japan, among others.
It had begun to modernize and rebuild our military, left hollowed out by the Obama-Biden administration.
It had largely solved the immigration issue through a more secure border and commonsense diplomatic agreements.

“Is the Biden Administration at War with Israel?” by Guy Millière

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18010/biden-administration-israel

“The US does not want to open a consulate merely to have a place for diplomatic connections with the PA [Palestinian Authority]. If that is all they wanted, they could easily do this by opening a mission in Abu Dis or Ramallah — where most other countries conduct their relations with the PA… the purpose of opening the consulate is to recognize Palestinian claims to Jerusalem.” — Eugene Kontorovitch, professor, George Mason University, Antonin Scalia School of Law, Israel Hayom, December 5, 2021.

The 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations states that “a consular post may be established in the territory of the receiving State only with that State’s consent”. In other words, reopening the consulate may be done only with the consent of the Israeli government.

All this cannot be dissociated from the general hostile attitude of the Biden administration towards Israel from the moment it came to power.

Earlier in March, an internal memo from the US State Department was leaked to The National, a daily newspaper in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. It explains that “The Biden administration memo recommends voicing US principles on achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace under a two-state solution framework ‘based on the 1967 lines'”.

The author of the memo is Hady Amr, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs and Press and Public Diplomacy in the Biden administration, and also in charge of US negotiations with Israel and Palestinian organizations. It is hard to imagine that Amr was chosen as an “honest broker”. Amr has a long history of anti-Israeli activities.

Amr is also is the lead author of a report published by the Brookings Institution in December 2018 in which some proposals are made that could be regarded as disturbing. The report says that the United States must “reconnect” with Hamas, a fundamentalist terrorist group; seek “to create a Palestinian unity government integrating Hamas”, and “compel Israel to make major concessions”, even if it may “endanger Israel”. The report never defines Hamas as a terrorist group, and never says that Hamas’s goal is to destroy Israel. The report adds, “should Israel prove uncooperative with American efforts, the United States could signal it will move ahead anyway.”

The behavior of the Biden administration towards Israel is all the more worrying in that at the same time, it places itself in a weak position regarding negotiations with Iran and seems ready to make a deal with the mullahs’ regime at any price, in a resolution that has already been called “less for less”, or, worse, “less for more”.

An Israeli diplomatic service briefing recently announced the Biden administration is ready to accept a deal with Iran that includes only two elements: the removal of all international sanctions still imposed on Iran, and Iran’s pledge to stop enriching uranium, which would mean that Iran’s nuclear program would remain intact and that Iran’s regional destabilization actions, including its threats against Israel, could continue.

Two days before the current negotiations began, chief Iranian Army spokesman Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi said to the Iran Students News Agency (ISNA) that Israel’s annihilation is his country’s “greatest ideal before us and the greatest goal we pursue.”

Iran claims, truthfully or not, that it already has enough enriched uranium to produce a nuclear warhead on short notice. On November 8, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh, announced that Iran will only agree to sign a deal with the US if all sanctions are unconditionally lifted. “Either we agree on everything, or we agree on nothing,” he said.

The US Biden Administration seems…. at a time finally of peace, deliberately acting to destabilize not only Israel’s new coalition government but, more importantly, the entire region. The United States seems once again to be igniting, on the heels of its failure in Afghanistan, yet a second, unnecessary disruption, with all the carnage, global damage and pandemonium that will result. Those two historic upheavals will be the legacies of the Biden Administration. If Biden is looking for yet another disaster to notch on his belt, this is it.

On May 2018, when the United States Embassy in Jerusalem was inaugurated on the 70th anniversary of the State of Israel’s founding, the US consulate in Jerusalem became useless and quickly shut its gates. Now, in 2021, the current US Biden administration wants to reopen the consulate, “for the Palestinians”, Arabs ruled by the Palestinian Authority.

Seeing this proposal as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett declined the request.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

 

Israeli innovations continue to flow at an amazing pace. This week’s newsletter includes medical cures for Alzheimer’s and Covid; a cancer mutation database and saliva-based testing kits. The EU awarded a top prize to a female Israeli innovator; Israelis developed innovative devices for the disabled; and Innovation: Africa showcased to 25 African UN Ambassadors. Technological innovations include a new process for extracting hydrogen from water; purifying polluted water using UV LED light; capturing atmospheric CO2 in balloons; and destroying coronavirus using millimeter radiation. In business, Mastercard has opened an Israeli innovation lab; Israeli smart trolleys are heading to the US; and an Israeli startup has launched more virtual shops…..Michael Ordman

 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Breakthrough in Alzheimer’s research. Scientists at Israel’s Technion Institute have developed a method of removing copper ions that cause the toxic buildup of amyloid plaque in Alzheimer’s patients. Professor Galia Maayan and PhD student Anastasia Behar have patented the groundbreaking “chelation” (extraction) process.
https://nocamels.com/2021/11/israel-scientists-molecule-alzheimers-disease-technion/
 
Genetic database saves lives in 44 countries. Israel’s Genoox (see here previously) has developed Franklin – a repository of genetic biopsy information relating to cancer mutations. Doctors in more than 1700 healthcare organizations in over 44 countries use Franklin to personalize cancer treatments to the patient’s genetic makeup.
https://nocamels.com/2021/11/genoox-precision-medicine-analyzing-genetic-data/
 
Covid treatment reduced deaths by 70%. (TY Hazel) In its latest Phase 2 trial at three major Israeli hospitals, MesenCure from Israel’s Bonus BioGroup (see here previously) reduced Covid-19 deaths to 6.7% compared to 23.3% of the control group. It is now aiming for emergency use authorization in US, EU, and Israel.
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/coronavirus/israeli-drug-for-severe-covid-reduces-death-by-70-percent-phase-2-trial-686879
 
Saliva-based test kits. Israel’s Salignostics has developed Salistick, the world’s first and only saliva-based rapid pregnancy test kit. It detects the pregnancy hormone β-hCG and delivers a test result in 10 minutes. Another of Salignostics kits, SaliCov, detects Covid-19 from saliva in just 15 minutes.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3922310,00.html   https://www.salignostics.com/salistick/  
https://nocamels.com/2021/11/salignostics-world-first-saliva-based-pregnancy/  https://www.salignostics.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WinGNhtSBnw
 
The memory can aid healing. Researchers at Israel’s Technion (a team of Jews and Arabs) have discovered that the brain can induce a psychosomatic response not only to cause illness, but also to heal it. Inflammation in mice activated specific neurons which later could be manipulated to re-create or control the inflammation.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286742101223X?dgcid=coauthor
 
UK extends partnership for research into aging. The Britain-Israel Research and Academic Exchange (BIRAX) partnership has launched a new £1.6 million grant program to fund joint research between Israeli and UK scientists in the field of ageing. (see here for 2018 initiative)
https://english.tau.ac.il/news/healthy-aging-research   https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/316469
 
Stay on your feet. Comprehensive article describing the innovative device from Israel’s Votis (see here previously) that can identify peripheral artery disease (PAD) in its very early stages.
https://www.israel21c.org/finding-diabetic-foot-disease-before-symptoms-show-up/
 
$75 million initiative to tackle diabetes. Bar-Ilan University is creating a program to transform diabetes care. The Social Precision-medicine Health Equity Research Endeavour (SPHERE). is supported by a $20 million grant from the Russell Berrie Foundation and will identify genetic mutations that cause diabetes.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/316803
 
Fixing hearts of children from the Congo. (TY I24 News) Israeli charity Save a Child’s Heart (SACH – see here previously) is bringing its first group of Congolese children to the Jewish state for life-saving heart surgery at the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDTcl8UqLZo
https://unitedwithisrael.org/watch-israeli-ngo-brings-african-children-to-jewish-state-for-heart-surgery/
 
Saving a life while wearing pajamas. United Hatzalah volunteer EMT Noemie was asleep after finishing a late shift in the pediatric ward of Sheba Hospital. She was suddenly alerted to go to the aid of a 92-year-old unconscious woman but had no time to get dressed. She saved her patient, performing CPR in her pajamas!
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/316902
 

Sydney Williams: It’s Not My Fault

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Being accountable for one’s actions and taking responsibility are fading qualities in our “woke” age. In the mid 1960s, on a snowy street in New Hampshire after a day’s skiing, my father, driving home, knocked a woman down, sending her to the hospital. The police told him it was not his fault. Nevertheless, he assumed responsibility, visiting her regularly until she recovered and was released. Such chivalry no longer exists. Like merit, hard work and objective truth, gallantry and graciousness are now, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote in the December issue of The Spectator, “manifestations of heredity and ‘whiteness,’” – therefore to be condemned.

“Victory has a thousand fathers, while failure is an orphan,” is an old quote used by President Kennedy. Today’s politicians no longer take blame for policies gone wrong. Instead, they follow advice Napoleon is alleged to have given: “Never retreat, never retract, never admit a mistake.” When the January 6 march on the Capitol turned disastrous, Donald Trump never admitted that his words that afternoon helped provoke it. But neither has Hillary Clinton accepted blame for the Steel dossier, which was at the heart of the $40 million (taxpayer money) discredited Mueller investigation. Governor Andrew Cuomo placed COVID-19 infected patients in nursing homes, leading to a plethora of unnecessary deaths. Has he expressed remorse or assumed responsibility? No. Has he expressed sorrow for abusing women who worked in his office? No. “Oh yes, the past can hurt,” says the shaman Rafiki in The Lion King, “but you can either run from it or learn from it.” Politicians choose to run from their past, not learn from it.

Dr. Anthony Fauci belittles those who disagree with him by claiming an attack on him is an attack on science. Yet the science about COVID-19 has changed as more has been learned. But his arrogance forbids any display of humility, or admission of personal responsibility regarding helping to fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. (Dr. Fauci’s denial gained two Pinocchio’s from left-leaning The Washington Post.) The recent rise in energy prices, according to Senator Elizabeth Warren, is due to oil and gas producers “putting their massive profits, share prices and dividends…ahead of Americans.” Apparently higher prices have nothing to do with restrictions on drilling and cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline extension, policies which the Massachusetts Senator supports. In a recent article in The Epoch Times, Victor Davis Hanson wrote, regarding the disastrous flight from Afghanistan: “Few, if any, high-ranking officers have yet taken responsibility – much less resigned – for the worst military fiasco in the past half century.” 

Civilizational Suicide, Not Omicron, Is Killing Us Emergencies justify emergency powers, and emergency powers mean that you can push ahead with your agenda on all fronts.  By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/11/civilizational-suicide-not-omicron-is-killing-us/

Last week in this space, I included a few words about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s remarkable new book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. I also included a link to Kennedy’s appearance on “Tucker Carlson Today.” 

It was a remarkable exchange and I commend both the book and the interview to your attention. I disagree with Kennedy about various things, including the efficacy of vaccines in general, but his assessment of the highest-paid employee of the federal government, Anthony Fauci, is worth the price of admission. 

As I remarked a couple of weeks ago, I thought I had done writing about COVID. Surely, I thought, the hysteria is on the wane. Most people are rational. They know that the flimsy porous masks you see everywhere are useless tokens of conformity. They understand that the disease is serious for only a tiny part of the population. They also know staying home and practicing “social distancing” has its own liabilities, not least of which is a diminution in the potency of one’s immune response.

Unfortunately, the people making the rules are not “most people.” They are bureaucrats being advised by public health “experts” like Anthony Fauci who has demonstrated ostentatious incompetence at least since the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. When news of the so-called Omicron variant first surfaced a few weeks back, I assumed the fact that doctors first described it as very contagious but also with symptoms that were “very mild,” meant the “experts” would let us get on with our lives.

Fat chance. It’s not just the old Rahm Emanuel wheeze of never letting a crisis go to waste. It’s also a matter of fabricating crises where none exist because emergencies justify emergency powers, and emergency powers mean that you can push ahead with your agenda on all fronts using the fake crisis as justification for bending or discarding the rules. 

So, even as Fauci warns that it is a matter of “when not if” the definition of “fully vaccinated” will change to include at least one who-knows-how-many booster shots, the CEO of Pfizer, dollar signs in his eyes, has already said that a fourth jab may be needed “sooner than expected” because of the Omicron variant.

Twelve Cities Set Murder Records for 2021 By Liz Sheld

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/09/morning-greatness-twelve-cities-set-murder-records-for-2021/

Welcome to Murderville, USA. Twelve cities have already set records for the number of murders in 2021 and the year isn’t even over yet. What is going on here?

“Nobody’s getting arrested anymore,” Robert Boyce, retired chief of detectives for the New York Police Department said. “People are getting picked up for gun possession and they’re just let out over and over again.” Note: the most vicious anti-gun cities are not prosecuting gun violence. Chew on that.

ABC News reports: “The FBI crime data shows that the number of arrests nationwide plummeted 24% in 2020, from the more than 10 million arrests made in 2019. The number of 2020 arrests — 7.63 million — is the lowest in 25 years, according to the data. FBI crime data is not yet available for 2021.”

Social justice racketeers have pressured cities to cut their police forces. Soros prosecutors are declining to charge criminals for their crimes. Bail has been abolished in some places and violent criminals go free before their trial to continue their crime sprees. Police are retiring and getting out of the business and the ones who remain are terrified to the point that they do not engage with perpetrators lest they become the next internet video star. Many of these SJW politicians have historically complained there there are too many criminals in jail and advocated accordingly. Now we have fewer criminals in jail and more criminals walking the streets. Victory?

Get away from these cities and go live somewhere that has not abolished law and order.