Tuesday, October 31, 2017

James Clapper: Trump Surveillance Never Fully Denied

James Clapper: Trump Surveillance Never Fully Denied 

James Clapper’s Non-Denial Denials, Revisited 
 
by Andrew C. McCarthy 
September 21, 2017 3:45 PM 
@AndrewCMcCarthy 
 
The former intelligence chief never actually refuted Obama administration spying on Trump. It would be peculiar if, as he now claims, James Clapper did not know about the Obama administration’s monitoring of Paul Manafort. At the time, which appears to have been the autumn of 2016, Clapper was Obama’s national intelligence director. The (dubious) raison d’ĂȘtre of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) — a post-9/11 layering of yet more bureaucracy atop bureaucratic sprawl — was to ensure efficient information flow through the “community” of U.S. intelligence agencies. 
That said, it is a gross exaggeration to contend, as some are doing, that new revelations about the surveillance of Manafort, the former chairman of the Trump campaign, show that Clapper lied in a March 2017 interview by NBC’s Chuck Todd. Instead, what we now know proves what I warned at the time of the interview: It was a mistake to construe Clapper’s answers to Todd as a blanket denial of Obama spying on the Trump campaign. 
Carefully parsed, Clapper’s comments left open the possibility — which some of us regarded as a high probability — that Manafort and other Trump associates had been under Obama-administration surveillance. 
Much is being made of Clapper’s assertion that “there was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president, the president-elect at the time, or as a candidate, or against his campaign.” But what commentators are omitting is a critical qualification that I highlighted right after the interview (as did our Jim Geraghty and NBC News itself). Clapper made clear that he could only speak, as NBC put it, “for the part of the national security apparatus that he oversaw.” 
Powered by Why was that significant? 
As I elaborated: 
 
The director of national intelligence does not “oversee” the entirety of the government’s national-security apparatus. By statute, for example, the attorney general (who of course runs the Justice Department) oversees the process of requesting and executing electronic surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA] (see Title 50 U.S. Code, Sec. 1801 et seq.). 
 
The surveillance of Manafort was conducted under FISA. It would have been known to the Justice Department, which presents warrant applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and to the FBI, which conducts the investigations. But the surveillance operation would be known to the national intelligence director only if the Justice Department, the FBI, and whoever else was in the loop chose to share it with him. Apparently, they did not — confirmation that the ODNI is the excrescence many of us predicted it would be. 
At the time of Clapper’s interview, the front-burner topic was whether Trump himself had been monitored. The president had just alleged, in a series of tweets, that his phone lines had been tapped at Trump Tower. I assumed (as I’m sure Clapper did) that Clapper would have been informed if Trump had been targeted for FISA surveillance when he was a candidate or president-elect. But even if that is a safe assumption, it does not mean that Clapper would have been alerted to every surveillance of a Trump subordinate or associate.
What about Clapper’s denials of wiretapping against Trump’s campaign, and at Trump Tower? 
Well, let’s put aside for the moment the salient caveat that Clapper was not responsible for (or apparently very well informed about) FISA surveillance. As we also pointed out at the time: 
 
The claims about wiretapping have never focused on the campaign qua campaign. The claim has been that associates of Trump with varying degrees of connection to the campaign and/or to a Trump Tower server were targeted for surveillance and wiretapped. 
 
The reporting indicated that the Obama Justice Department had received authorization from the FISA court sometime in October 2016. By then, Manafort’s brief stint as Trump campaign chairman had been over for about two months. He may have remained an informal adviser to the candidate (like his longtime associate Roger Stone), but Manafort was no longer part of the campaign. Thus, Clapper’s answers to questions framed in terms of the campaign did not cover relevant people who, at the time of the surveillance, lacked formal ties to the campaign — people such as Manafort and Stone. 
As for monitoring at Trump Tower, Clapper took pains to say that there had been none “to my knowledge.” Moreover, a question framed in terms of monitoring that targeted Trump Tower would miss monitoring that incidentally picked up communications at Trump Tower. Thus, as I wrote back in March, the FISA surveillance :
 
...may not have targeted Trump Tower, but it still could have targeted devices that moved through Trump Tower at least some of the time. For example, Paul Manafort, a Trump associate whose communications were reportedly intercepted by the government at some point, lived in Trump Tower, and until August, he was chairman of the Trump campaign headquartered in Trump Tower. If there were, say, FISA authorizations to monitor his cell phone, they would likely have resulted in monitoring at Trump Tower. In addition, there have been at least some suggestions that former national-security adviser Michael Flynn was at Trump Tower (where much of the transition activity took place) when he made the phone calls and wrote texts to Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak. Undisputed reporting indicates that the December call to Kislyak that ultimately led to Flynn’s dismissal was intercepted and eavesdropped on by the FBI. I strongly suspect that this is because the FBI, under FISA, was monitoring the phone of Kislyak. So even if neither Flynn nor Trump Tower was targeted for FISA surveillance, it may well be that some of Flynn’s communications from Trump Tower were intercepted pursuant to court-authorized FISA surveillance. 
 
Clapper told Todd that he “certainly hope[d]” he would have been made aware of any order authorizing Trump Tower surveillance; he reiterated, however, that “I can’t speak for other authorized entities in the government or a state or local entity.” Thus, I concluded: 
 
Again, it has not been alleged that Trump Tower was a court-authorized surveillance target, and it wouldn’t have needed to be in order for communications to be intercepted there if persons who were targeted by FISA orders frequented Trump Tower. And the fact that Clapper cannot speak for other investigative entities underscores that, while his position as national intelligence director was not unimportant, it did not provide oversight authority over all FISA surveillance. 
 
If you scrutinized what Clapper actually said, you knew the media were overplaying their hand. The Clinton/Obama-friendly media went ballistic over President Trump’s tweeted accusation that President Obama had wiretapped him. Not content to refute that narrow allegation, the press tried to demolish a more explosive (and more likely) possibility, namely that the Obama administration had spied on Trump associates and campaign officials during and after the campaign — and after the administration had bent over backwards to insulate Hillary Clinton from prosecution. 
 
That conclusion had been drawn by a number of us, attentively sifting through the media’s own reporting. Democrats and their media allies countered by inflating Clapper’s carefully qualified naysaying into a full-blown denial. If you scrutinized what Clapper actually said, you knew they were overplaying their hand. And now we know they were wrong.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451602/james-clapper-trump-surveillance-never-fully-denied

Monday, October 30, 2017

CRONY: Obama-Appointed Judge Seals Fusion GPS Bank Records; Ruling Insulates Obama, Clinton, FBI

CRONY: Obama-Appointed Judge Seals Fusion GPS Bank Records; Ruling Insulates Obama, Clinton, FBI 

CRONY: Obama-Appointed Judge Seals Fusion GPS Bank Records; Ruling Insulates Obama, Clinton, FBI


She donated campaign cash to Barack Obama. After his election, he appointed both her and her husband as judges. Looks like those moves are paying huge dividends.
The federal judge presiding over whether Congress gets to see the bank records behind the Trump Dossier company has placed the financial records under sealed protective order, effectively hiding them from the public and even most lawmakers. Only a select few lawmakers will get to see a select few GPS banking records.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is a long-time Barack Obama supporter and crony.
Her husband was appointed a judge by Obama too. And Chutkan also donated campaign funds to Obama prior to her and her spouse’s appointments to the bench. Oh yeah, almost forgot: Her mother-in-law kicked in for Obama’s presidential campaign too.
Fusion GPS itself has filed a motion to block the committee’s attempts to subpoena its bank records, citing it would divulge the confidential client list of the company. Chutkan largely agreed.
The mere fact that such a list could implicate Hillary Clinton and her former boss Obama is reason enough to believe Chutkan would opt on the side of The Swamp, in an effort to further protect Obama and his cartel which at this point may or may not include the federal judge who should have recused herself from the case.
Chutkan has a history of not recusing herself from cases with a direct and personal conflict so why would she stop now. She presided over a Homeland Security case without notifying the court or plaintiff’s attorneys she had a close family relative who works for DHS.
Judges may not preside over cases in which they have a direct personal bias or financial interest concerning a party to the case, according to federal law.
But Chutkan is the D.C. District Court’s poster girl for conflicts.
Chutkan is presiding also over the Imran Awan and Hina Alvi bank fraud case in D.C. Chutkan made headlines when it was reported she was appointed to the federal bench by Obama after she kicked thousands in campaign donations to his presidential campaign.
Obama also appointed Chutkan’s husband, Peter Krauthamer, a judge to the bench in the District of Columbia Superior Court in 2011.
That case too could implicate her former boss Obama.
Chutkan failed to disclose a family relationship with the defendant. She also failed to recuse herself and allow another district court judge to preside. According to federal law, Chutkan’s actions violate a number of laws governing the federal bench. According to the statue dealing with disqualification of judges, 28 U.S. Code § 455, Chutkan’s actions appear to have breached these guidelines:
  • Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify themselves in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.
  • She shall also disqualify herself where she has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party, or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding
  • She shall also disqualify herself where she or her spouse, or a person within the third degree of relationship to either of them, or the spouse of such a person Is known by the judge to have an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding;
Federal law enforcement sources said they have fading confidence that Chutkan will remain impartial on the Awan case. The judge has already come under fire for tilting the case in Awan’s favor, granting motions by his legal team to give the accused fraudster more leeway and travel freedom with his pretrial intervention program, while stifling third-party motions to offer evidence in the case.
A Justice Department source said the case has already been tainted by Chutkan’s conflicts with Obama, who could be implicated in the Awan case if were ever expanded by FBI. The source said there are plea talks that indicate no one will see significant jail time.
Chutkan contributed to his Obama’s first presidential campaign eight separate times. In all Chukan kicked over $4,000 to Obama’s campaign and PACs, almost maxing out the personal contribution limit set by the FEC, records show. Chutkan’s mother-in-law also contributed campaign cash to Obama, records confirm.
The explosive Awan case could also possibly implicate Obama as well as former attorneys general Holder and Lynch. Those tenets have not been lost on veteran federal agents with knowledge of the evidence unfolding in this complicated case against a family of alleged Pakistani IT gurus.
Chutkan, the federal judge on the Awan case, was born in Jamaica. She lived in Jamaica, the Bahamas, France and Spain before coming to the United States, federal law enforcement sources said.
Chutkan’s former law firm, where she worked until her appointment to the federal bench in 2014, currently represents Huma Abedin, the wife of disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner. The firm also is stacked with Democratic lawyers who worked for Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, and Barack Obama’s White House, just to name a few D.C. insiders.

In Shocking, Viral Interview, Qatar Confesses Secrets Behind Syrian War | Zero Hedge

In Shocking, Viral Interview, Qatar Confesses Secrets Behind Syrian War

In Shocking, Viral Interview, Qatar Confesses Secrets Behind Syrian War

Tyler Durden's picture
A television interview of a top Qatari official confessing the truth behind the origins of the war in Syria is going viral across Arabic social media during the same week a leaked top secret NSA document was published which confirms that the armed opposition in Syria was under the direct command of foreign governments from the early years of the conflict.
And according to a well-known Syria analyst and economic adviser with close contacts in the Syrian government, the explosive interview constitutes a high level "public admission to collusion and coordination between four countries to destabilize an independent state, [including] possible support for Nusra/al-Qaeda." Importantly, "this admission will help build case for what Damascus sees as an attack on its security & sovereignty. It will form basis for compensation claims."



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A 2013 London press conference: Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al Thani with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. A 2014 Hillary Clinton email confirmed Qatar as a state-sponsor of ISIS during that same time period. 
As the war in Syria continues slowly winding down, it seems new source material comes out on an almost a weekly basis in the form of testimonials of top officials involved in destabilizing Syria, and even occasional leaked emails and documents which further detail covert regime change operations against the Assad government. Though much of this content serves to confirm what has already long been known by those who have never accepted the simplistic propaganda which has dominated mainstream media, details continue to fall in place, providing future historians with a clearer picture of the true nature of the war.
This process of clarity has been aided - as predicted - by the continued infighting among Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) former allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with each side accusing the other of funding Islamic State and al-Qaeda terrorists (ironically, both true). Increasingly, the world watches as more dirty laundry is aired and the GCC implodes after years of nearly all the gulf monarchies funding jihadist movements in places like Syria, Iraq, and Libya.
The top Qatari official is no less than former Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, who oversaw Syria operations on behalf of Qatar until 2013 (also as foreign minister), and is seen below with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in this Jan. 2010 photo (as a reminder, Qatar's 2022 World Cup Committee donated $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation in 2014).

In an interview with Qatari TV Wednesday, bin Jaber al-Thani revealed that his country, alongside Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United States, began shipping weapons to jihadists from the very moment events "first started" (in 2011).
Al-Thani even likened the covert operation to "hunting prey" - the prey being President Assad and his supporters - "prey" which he admits got away (as Assad is still in power; he used a Gulf Arabic dialect word, "al-sayda", which implies hunting animals or prey for sport). Though Thani denied credible allegations of support for ISIS, the former prime minister's words implied direct Gulf and US support for al-Qaeda in Syria (al-Nusra Front) from the earliest years of the war, and even said Qatar has "full documents" and records proving that the war was planned to effect regime change.
According to Zero Hedge's translation, al-Thani said while acknowledging Gulf nations were arming jihadists in Syria with the approval and support of US and Turkey: "I don't want to go into details but we have full documents about us taking charge [in Syria]." He claimed that both Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah (who reigned until his death in 2015) and the United States placed Qatar in a lead role concerning covert operations to execute the proxy war.
The former prime minister's comments, while very revealing, were intended as a defense and excuse of Qatar's support for terrorism, and as a critique of the US and Saudi Arabia for essentially leaving Qatar "holding the bag" in terms of the war against Assad. Al-Thani explained that Qatar continued its financing of armed insurgents in Syria while other countries eventually wound down large-scale support, which is why he lashed out at the US and the Saudis, who initially "were with us in the same trench."
In a previous US television interview which was vastly underreported, al-Thani told Charlie Rose when asked about allegations of Qatar's support for terrorism that, "in Syria, everybody did mistakes, including your country." And said that when the war began in Syria, "all of use worked through two operation rooms: one in Jordan and one in Turkey."
Below is the key section of Wednesday's interview, translated and subtitled by @Walid970721. Zero Hedge has reviewed and confirmed the translation, however, as the original rush translator has acknowledged, al-Thani doesn't say "lady" but "prey" ["al-sayda"]- as in both Assad and Syrians were being hunted by the outside countries.
The partial English transcript is as follows:
"When the events first started in Syria I went to Saudi Arabia and met with King Abdullah. I did that on the instructions of his highness the prince, my father. He [Abdullah] said we are behind you. You go ahead with this plan and we will coordinate but you should be in charge. I won’t get into details but we have full documents and anything that was sent [to Syria] would go to Turkey and was in coordination with the US forces and everything was distributed via the Turks and the US forces. And us and everyone else was involved, the military people. There may have been mistakes and support was given to the wrong faction... Maybe there was a relationship with Nusra, its possible but I myself don’t know about this… we were fighting over the prey ["al-sayda"] and now the prey is gone and we are still fighting... and now Bashar is still there. You [US and Saudi Arabia] were with us in the same trench... I have no objection to one changing if he finds that he was wrong, but at least inform your partner… for example leave Bashar [al-Assad] or do this or that, but the situation that has been created now will never allow any progress in the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council], or any progress on anything if we continue to openly fight."
As is now well-known, the CIA was directly involved in leading regime change efforts in Syria with allied gulf partners, as leaked and declassified US intelligence memos confirm. The US government understood in real time that Gulf and West-supplied advanced weaponry was going to al-Qaeda and ISIS, despite official claims of arming so-called "moderate" rebels. For example, a leaked 2014 intelligence memo sent to Hillary Clinton acknowledged Qatari and Saudi support for ISIS.
The email stated in direct and unambiguous language that:
"the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region."
Furthermore, one day before Prime Minister Thani's interview, The Intercept released a new top-secret NSA document unearthed from leaked intelligence files provided by Edward Snowden which show in stunning clarity that the armed opposition in Syria was under the direct command of foreign governments from the early years of the war which has now claimed half a million lives.

The newly released NSA document confirms that a 2013 insurgent attack with advanced surface-to-surface rockets upon civilian areas of Damascus, including Damascus International Airport, was directly supplied and commanded by Saudi Arabia with full prior awareness of US intelligence. As the former Qatari prime minister now also confirms, both the Saudis and US government staffed "operations rooms" overseeing such heinous attacks during the time period of the 2013 Damascus airport attack.
No doubt there remains a massive trove of damning documentary evidence which will continue to trickle out in the coming months and years. At the very least, the continuing Qatari-Saudi diplomatic war will bear more fruit as each side builds a case against the other with charges of supporting terrorism. And as we can see from this latest Qatari TV interview, the United States itself will not be spared in this new open season of airing dirty laundry as old allies turn on each other.

Lou Dobbs Just Exposed “The Biggest Scandal in American History”

Lou Dobbs Just Exposed “The Biggest Scandal in American History”

Lou Dobbs Just Exposed “The Biggest Scandal in American History”

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Fox Business anchor Lou Dobbs has just named the biggest scandal to come from the Obama administration, and it’s one in which most people are not familiar.
Here’s the scoop, per Gateway Pundit:
Fox News’ Lou Dobbs spoke with ‘Clinton Cash‘ author Peter Schweizer Friday evening about the Uranium One scandal which involves the entire Deep State criminal cabal.
Dobbs said, “There is no clear statement as to why we would give up, for any reason, any price, 20% of our uranium in this country. And that is a question that is left open still unanswered. and secondly, have you ever heard of anyone putting $145 million, at one moment, into the hands of the Clinton foundation? And the answer is, of course not. These questions most basic and fundamental, were armed by the very committee made up of the very agencies, departments, and individuals responsible for national security. this, this is the biggest Obama scandal. I think it may well turn out to be the biggest scandal in American political history.”
More on the scandal, via The Hill:
Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States, according to government documents and interviews.
Federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show.
They also obtained an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill.
The racketeering scheme was conducted “with the consent of higher level officials” in Russia who “shared the proceeds” from the kickbacks, one agent declared in an affidavit years later.
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Rather than bring immediate charges in 2010, however, the Department of Justice (DOJ) continued investigating the matter for nearly four more years, essentially leaving the American public and Congress in the dark about Russian nuclear corruption on U.S. soil during a period when the Obama administration made two major decisions benefitting Putin’s commercial nuclear ambitions.
The first decision occurred in October 2010, when the State Department and government agencies on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States unanimously approved the partial sale of Canadian mining company Uranium One to the Russian nuclear giant Rosatom, giving Moscow control of more than 20 percent of America’s uranium supply.
When this sale was used by Trump on the campaign trail last year, Hillary Clinton’s spokesman said she was not involved in the committee review and noted the State Department official who handled it said she “never intervened … on any [Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States] matter.”
In 2011, the administration gave approval for Rosatom’s Tenex subsidiary to sell commercial uranium to U.S. nuclear power plants in a partnership with the United States Enrichment Corp. Before then, Tenex had been limited to selling U.S. nuclear power plants reprocessed uranium recovered from dismantled Soviet nuclear weapons under the 1990s Megatons to Megawatts peace program.
“The Russians were compromising American contractors in the nuclear industry with kickbacks and extortion threats, all of which raised legitimate national security concerns. And none of that evidence got aired before the Obama administration made those decisions,” a person who worked on the case told The Hill, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by U.S. or Russian officials.

Gowdy: Hillary Clinton Potentially Laundered Money Through a Law Firm to Avoid Transparency Laws

Gowdy: Hillary Clinton Potentially Laundered Money Through a Law Firm to Avoid Transparency Laws

Gowdy: Hillary Clinton Potentially Laundered Money Through a Law Firm to Avoid Transparency Laws

Written by  Pam Key
On this weekend’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) discussed the opposition research conducted on President Donald Trump in the so-called Russian dossier.
Gowdy said he was interested in looking into if the Hillary Clinton campaign attempted to  “launder all of this through a law firm” to avoid transparency laws.
Gowdy said, “I’m not an election law expert, but the good news is you don’t have to be too understated the absurdity believing you can just launder all of your campaign money by just hiring a law firm. Imagine if you and I were running for Congress, and we just hired a law firm and said ‘Hey, you go to all the opposition, you go by all the television, you go by all the bumper stickers, you go higher all the experts, and we will launder all of this through a law firm. I can’t think of anything that defeats the purpose of transparency laws more than that.”
He continued, “I am interested in that, and I am also interested in sharing some memory tricks with folks at the DNC because no one can remember who paid 10 million dollars to a law firm to do oppo research.

Sunday, October 29, 2017

A liberal spends a year with devout Trump voters, and discovers he's been wrong

A liberal spends a year with devout Trump voters, and discovers he's been wrong 

A liberal spends a year with devout Trump voters, and discovers he's been wrong

October 26, 2017 1:40 PM

President Trump stops motorcade to greet supporters

President Donald Trump arrives in Greenville, South Carolina, stops his motorcade, and greets his cheering supporters.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/opinion/article181039686.html#storylink=cpy

CNN's Undisclosed Ties To Fusion GPS

CNN's Undisclosed Ties To Fusion GPS


CNN’s Undisclosed Ties To Fusion GPS

CNN’s reporting on the Trump-Russia dossier has left out at least one crucial fact: the close ties between the network and the opposition research firm at the center of the dossier controversy.
CNN’s reporting on the dossier, led by justice correspondent Evan Perez, has been favorable to the firm, Fusion GPS, and hyped the dossier’s credibility. Left out of Perez’s reporting, which has relied largely on unnamed sources, is his personal closeness to Fusion GPS’ operatives. Fusion has repeatedly been described in Senate testimonies as a smear-for-hire operation that manufactures misleading or false media narratives for its clients.
Glenn Simpson, the Fusion co-founder most often associated with the dossier, is used to working on stories with Perez. As reporters at The Wall Street Journal, Perez and Simpson regularly co-authored stories on national security.
Another Fusion founder, Tom Catan, worked as a reporter for the Journal at the same time as Perez and Simpson. The third Fusion co-founder, Peter Fritsch, worked above Perez and Simpson as the senior national security editor.
Simpson and Fritsch left the WSJ in 2011 to launch Fusion. Perez jumped from the paper to CNN in 2013. Another longtime Journal reporter, Neil King, left the paper to join Fusion in December 2016.
Photos posted to Facebook underscore the personal closeness between Perez and the Fusion GPS operatives. One photo posted by Perez shows King, who left the Journal for Fusion in December 2016, and another man posing for a picture at The Bullpen, an outdoor bar right outside of the Washington Nationals’ stadium.
The Bullpen is a popular fan destination before baseball games. King is shown wearing a shirt with the Nationals name and logo across the front. The photo was posted in August 2016, four months before King joined Fusion GPS.
Screenshot/Facebook
Neil King is seen on the left, in a photo posted by CNN reporter Evan Perez. (Screenshot/Facebook)
Another photo, from September 2015, shows Perez, King and Fusion co-founder Peter Fritsch.
Screenshot/Facebook
Screenshot/Facebook
In 2011, the same year that Fritsch co-founded Fusion, Perez posted two photos on Facebook from an apparent fishing trip with Fritsch. The photos show the Wall Street Journal alum holding a fishing rod and standing ankle-deep in a lake. In one of the photos, Fritsch can be seen flipping the camera his middle finger.
At no point in Perez’s reporting did he disclose his close ties to the Fusion GPS operatives.
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board sounded the alarm about its former reporters in a remarkable editorial earlier this month, accusing Beltway media of being complicit in a coverup with Fusion. “Americans don’t need a Justice Department coverup abetted by Glenn Simpson’s media buddies,” the editors wrote in a scathing takedown of the firm.
Simpson’s wife, Mary Jacoby, bragged about his role in the dossier in a lengthy June 2017 Facebook post reviewed by The Daily Caller.
Jacoby claimed that “some people still don’t realize what Glenn’s role was in exposing Putin’s control of Donald Trump,” referencing the dossier’s thesis. The dossier claimed that Russians had evidence of damaging information on Trump that they would use to blackmail him, an explosive accusation for which there remains no public evidence. 
CNN’s coverage of the dossier has been relatively soft. CNN anchor Jake Tapper, usually known for his aggressive coverage, gave Fusion a pass while reporting on the story Wednesday evening.
“Certainly some of the more lurid charges in that dossier remain uncorroborated, but some of the details have been proven accurate,” Tapper said. But the newsman failed to mention reporting he did back in January that called the dossier’s credibility into question.
On Jan. 10, the day that BuzzFeed published the dossier, Tapper cited a government source who told him that a key claim in the dossier about Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, was false. The dossier alleged that Cohen traveled to Prague last August to meet with Kremlin operatives. But Tapper reported that government officials believed that a different Michael Cohen had actually traveled to the Czech Republic. Tapper has not acknowledge that reporting since that initial segment. (RELATED: Jake Tapper’s Dodgy Dossier Reporting)
CNN’s reporting on the dossier has similarly muddied the waters with incorrect information on multiple other occasions.
CNN did not respond to The Daily Caller’s request for comment about Perez’s ties to Fusion’s partners.
Fusion GPS, currently at the center of the Russia investigation, has a reputation for working misinformation into the media for political clients.
Thor Halvorssen, founder of the Human Rights Foundation, described Fusion GPS as “highly paid smear experts” in written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. He says that the firm went after him several years ago because he criticized a corrupt Venezuelan company Derwick Associates that counted Fusion as a client. 
Alek Boyd, a former associate of Halvorssen’s, says he was also targeted in a similar smear campaign because he drew attention to Derwick’s alleged financial misdeeds. He said he also faced false allegations of being a pedophile, sexual deviant and drug addict.
“Fusion is basically a pen-for-hire shop, whose owners are prepared to concoct completely spurious stories that are fed to media contacts developed over years of legitimate work in reputable outlets,” Boyd told TheDC.
Bill Browder, a renowned human rights activist and top Putin enemy, offered similar testimony before the committee.
Browder described how Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, the same attorney that met with Donald Trump Jr. last year, used Fusion GPS to conduct a smear campaign against him.
“Veselnitskaya, through Baker Hostetler, hired Glenn Simpson of the firm Fusion GPS to conduct a smear campaign against me and Sergei Magnitsky in advance of congressional hearings on the Global Magnitsky Act,” Browder stated in his written testimony.
“He contacted a number of major newspapers and other publications to spread false information that Sergei Magnitsky was not murdered, was not a whistle-blower, and was instead a criminal. They also spread false information that my presentations to lawmakers around the world were untrue,” Browder said.
Browder’s testimony drew bipartisan praise, with California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, praising Browder’s account as “some of the best testimony I’ve ever heard.”
CNN has faced scrutiny in the past for its reporting on the Russia probe. Two prominent CNN reporters and an editor were forced to leave the network after repeated mistakes in covering the Russia probe, including one report that CNN retracted entirely. (RELATED: CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Humiliates Colleague Over Quality Of Her Sources)

Conway To CNN: We Can't Get You To Cover Uranium One Now That Shoe Is On Other Foot

Conway To CNN: We Can't Get You To Cover Uranium One Now That Shoe Is On Other Foot 

Conway To CNN: We Can’t Get You To Cover Uranium One Now That Shoe Is On Other Foot

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway gave CNN’s Alysin Camerota a headache on Friday on how CNN is picking and choosing how to cover facts over innuendos.

Conway lowered the boom on Camerota when she mentioned how CNN was 24/7 Russia coverage before but when it came to the Washington Post story that indicated Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Convention was behind the Trump Dossier purchase.
The FBI informant who was just permitted to speak to Congress about the dealings of the FBI, Clinton and the State Department and their collusion with Russia has let the networks went silent. We’re talking cemetery quiet.
As usual, Camerota is not a seasoned counter-puncher which gave Conway the opportunity to provide the technical knockout.
Source: Free Beacon
Here is where you know Camerota is no match for Conway on the screen:
Camerota asked Conway whether Trump wants the former FBI informant to testify, noting, “Clearly he has some interest.”
“Shouldn’t you?” Conway responded. “Shouldn’t we all? CNN is so vested in Russia, Russia, Russia, don’t you want to hear from everybody now? Or are we just going to drop the word Russia forever morning because it gets a little too close to the woman who ran last time?”
“We have talked about this for the last year so let’s at least close the loop, can’t we?” Conway added. “And look at what the Clinton campaign and the Democrats did.”
Camerota pressed Conway on what about the uranium deal bothered her if the deal should have been struck.
Here’s where Conway put Camerota away for the night:
Zero,” Conway said. “What bothers me it is that we can’t get all of you who have been obsessed about Russia, Russia, Russia to cover it now that the shoe is on the other foot.”
“I think it’s exactly what people hate about corruption and politicians and the swamp,” she added. “I think they look at that and it’s not difficult for them to connect the dots that you have one spouse giving a half-a-million-dollar speech, [and] you have another one that’s the secretary of state.
“Whole 20 percent of the US. uranium rights go to a Russian interest. That’s not difficult for people to understand,” she added.
The entire segment is a trophy for Conway. It’s been more than a year, and the media still can’t corral her or take her down to where she’s not able to get back up. Conway is a fighter, a pillar of strength and you need to SHARE this video with your Twitter/Facebook timeline and show your friends and family another win for the Trump team.
Most of you do not watch CNN anymore, and I value your decision. I do not watch it either, however, these clips where we can get a Trump official making them look bad is worth its weight in gold, do you agree?

Obama Campaign Paid $972,000 To Law Firm That Paid Fusion GPS

Obama Campaign Paid $972,000 To Law Firm That Paid Fusion GPS

Obama’s Campaign Paid $972,000 To Law Firm That Secretly Paid Fusion GPS In 2016

Since April of 2016, Obama's campaign organization has paid nearly a million dollars to the law firm that funneled money to Fusion GPS to compile a dossier of unverified allegations against Donald Trump.
Former president Barack Obama’s official campaign organization has directed nearly a million dollars to the same law firm that funneled money to Fusion GPS, the firm behind the infamous Steele dossier. Since April of 2016, Obama For America (OFA) has paid over $972,000 to Perkins Coie, records filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show.
The Washington Post reported last week that Perkins Coie, an international law firm, was directed by both the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to retain Fusion GPS in April of 2016 to dig up dirt on then-candidate Donald Trump. Fusion GPS then hired Christopher Steele, a former British spy, to compile a dossier of allegations that Trump and his campaign actively colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 election. Though many of the claims in the dossier have been directly refuted, none of the dossier’s allegations of collusion have been independently verified. Lawyers for Steele admitted in court filings last April that his work was not verified and was never meant to be made public.
OFA, Obama’s official campaign arm in 2016, paid nearly $800,000 to Perkins Coie in 2016 alone, according to FEC records. The first 2016 payments to Perkins Coie, classified only as “Legal Services,” were made April 25-26, 2016, and totaled $98,047. A second batch of payments, also classified as “Legal Services,” were disbursed to the law firm on September 29, 2016, and totaled exactly $700,000. Payments from OFA to Perkins Coie in 2017 totaled $174,725 through August 22, 2017.
FEC records as well as federal court records show that Marc Elias, the Perkins Coie lawyer whom the Washington Post reported was responsible for the payments to Fusion GPS on behalf of Clinton’s campaign and the DNC, also previously served as a counsel for OFA. In Shamblin v. Obama for America, a 2013 case in federal court in Florida, federal court records list Elias as simultaneously serving as lead attorney for both OFA and the DNC.
OFA, which managed Obama’s successful re-election campaign in 2012, retooled after that campaign to focus on enacting the president’s agenda during his final term in office. The group reorganized again after the 2016 election and planned to use its staff and resources to oppose President Donald Trump. During the entire 2016 campaign cycle, the group spent only $4.5 million, according to FEC records.
Federal records show that Hillary Clinton’s official campaign organization, Hillary For America, paid just under $5.1 million to Perkins Coie in 2016. The DNC paid nearly $5.4 million to the law firm in 2016.
The timing and nature of the payments to Perkins Coie by Obama’s official campaign arm raise significant questions about whether OFA was funding Fusion GPS, how much Obama and his team knew about the contents and provenance of the dossier long before its contents were made public, and whether the president or his government lieutenants knowingly used a partisan political document to justify official government actions targeting the president’s political opponents named in the dossier. According to the Washington Post, Fusion GPS was first retained by Perkins Coie on behalf of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in April of 2016.
At the same time that Hillary’s campaign, Obama’s campaign organization, and the DNC were simultaneously paying Perkins Coie, the spouse of one of Fusion GPS’s key employees was working directly for Obama in the West Wing. Shailagh Murray, a former Washington Post reporter-turned-political operative, was serving as a top communications adviser to Obama while the Obama administration was reportedly using information from the dossier to justify secret surveillance of Trump campaign staff. Murray is married to Neil King, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who was hired by Fusion GPS in December of 2016. While at the Wall Street Journal, King worked alongside Fusion GPS’s core team, even sharing bylines with Glenn Simpson, the Fusion GPS executive who personally hired Steele to probe Trump’s alleged Russia connections.
The importance of the dossier funded by Democrats, commissioned by Fusion GPS, and compiled by Steele, is difficult to overstate given that its contents were reportedly briefed to both President Obama and then-President-Elect Trump. The dossier was eventually published in full by BuzzFeed on January 10. On January 12, according to CNN then-FBI Director James Comey had briefed Trump on the allegations in Steele’s dossier. Steele admitted in court filings that he had shopped much of the information in his dossier to numerous media outlets beginning in September of 2016.
Fusion GPS, which has been accused of illegally operating as an undisclosed agent of foreign governments, is currently facing multiple congressional inquiries into its activities and its clients. Bill Browder, whose attorney was allegedly murdered by Russian authorities after publicizing explosive allegations of Russian fraud and money laundering, alleged in congressional testimony last July that Fusion GPS was paid by Russians to undermine U.S. sanctions against the country. Late last week, Fusion GPS reportedly struck a deal with U.S. House investigators regarding a federal subpoena of the firm’s bank records. And in September, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who serves as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, reportedly requested that the U.S. Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit provide his committee with all suspicious activity reports related to Fusion GPS’s bank transactions.
Following reports of Perkins Coie’s role in funneling money to Fusion GPS, the Campaign Legal Center, a non-partisan campaign finance watchdog, filed a complaint with the FEC alleging that the secret funding schemes violated federal campaign disclosure laws.
Fusion GPS is also facing a separate defamation suit in federal court related to claims in the dossier. That case, which was brought by three Russian businessmen who claim to have been libeled in the Steele dossier, was filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., in early October. Fusion GPS is yet to respond to those allegations in court.

Friday, October 27, 2017

The Trickle-Down Lie

The Trickle-Down Lie
 
 by Thomas Sowell 
January 7, 2014 12:00 AM 
 
Nobody is advocating the trickle-down theory that the Left attacks. New York’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio, in his inaugural speech, denounced people “on the far right” who “continue to preach the virtue of trickle-down economics.” According to Mayor de Blasio, “They believe that the way to move forward is to give more to the most fortunate, and that somehow the benefits will work their way down to everyone else.” In the contest for the biggest lie in politics, this one is a top contender. While there have been all too many lies told in politics, most have some little, tiny fraction of truth in them, to make them seem plausible. But the “trickle-down” lie is 100 percent lie. It should win the contest both because of its purity — no contaminating speck of truth — and because of how many people have repeated it over the years, without any evidence being asked for or given. 
Years ago, this column challenged anybody to quote any economist outside of an insane asylum who had ever advocated this “trickle-down” theory. Some readers said that somebody said that somebody else had advocated a “trickle-down” policy. But they could never name that somebody else and quote them. Mayor de Blasio is by no means the first politician to denounce this nonexistent theory. Back in 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama attacked what he called “an economic philosophy” that “says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else.” Let’s do something completely unexpected: Let’s stop and think. Why would anyone advocate that we “give” something to A in hopes that it would trickle down to B? Why in the world would any sane person not give it to B and cut out the middleman? But all this is moot, because there was no trickle-down theory about giving something to anybody in the first place.
The “trickle-down” theory cannot be found in even the most voluminous scholarly studies of economic theories — including J. A. Schumpeter’s monumental History of Economic Analysis, more than a thousand pages long and printed in very small type. It is not just in politics that the nonexistent “trickle-down” theory is found. It has been attacked in the New York Times, in the Washington Post, and by professors at prestigious American universities — and even as far away as India. Yet none of those who denounce a “trickle-down” theory can quote anybody who actually advocated it. The book Winner-Take-All Politics refers to “the ‘trickle-down’ scenario that advocates of helping the have-it-alls with tax cuts and other goodies constantly trot out.” But no one who actually trotted out any such scenario was cited, much less quoted. One of the things that provoke the Left into bringing out the “trickle-down” bogeyman is any suggestion that there are limits to how high they can push tax rates on people with high incomes, without causing repercussions that hurt the economy as a whole. But, contrary to Mayor de Blasio, this is not a view confined to people on the “far right.” Such liberal icons as Presidents John F. Kennedy and Woodrow Wilson likewise argued that tax rates can be so high that they have an adverse effect on the economy. In his 1919 address to Congress, Woodrow Wilson warned that, at some point, “high rates of income and profits taxes discourage energy, remove the incentive to new enterprise, encourage extravagant expenditures, and produce industrial stagnation with consequent unemployment and other attendant evils.” In a 1962 address to Congress, John F. Kennedy said, “it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.” This was not a new idea. John Maynard Keynes said, back in 1933, that “taxation may be so high as to defeat its object,” that in the long run, a reduction of the tax rate “will run a better chance, than an increase, of balancing the budget.” And Keynes was not on “the far right” either. The time is long overdue for people to ask themselves why it is necessary for those on the left to make up a lie if what they believe in is true.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/367682/trickle-down-lie-thomas-sowell

Mick Mulvaney Explains Who Really Pays Taxes — And Why Every Tax Cut Can Be Called a “Tax Cut for the Rich”

Mick Mulvaney Explains Who Really Pays Taxes — And Why Every Tax Cut Can Be Called a “Tax Cut for the Rich”




RUSH: Friday, we’re gonna be starting with the audio sound bites here at the top. The U.S. economy was expected to grow in the last quarter at 2.7% but now they’ve actually revised the number up, and it’s now official. “U.S. Economy Grew at a 3% Rate From July to September.” Under Obama, the economy grew at an average of 2.1% a year.
It says here he had many quarters where growth exceeded at 3%. He didn’t! That’s the whole point. He didn’t. Obama’s economic growth sometimes was less than 2%. There’s no way Obama was in the three percents, especially here, what does it say, “many quarters.” Anyway, the economy is booming in a lot of sectors, and it’s one of the great unspokens and, as such, unreferenced aspects that are positive of the Trump administration.
And the Democrats are running around wondering why they haven’t been able to destroy Trump and why they haven’t really been able to do much damage in terms of approval numbers and so forth. And the answer is what James Carville always said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” And consumer confidence rolling into the Christmas season is said to be an all-time high. By the way, this is including the hurricanes. Despite the hurricanes, which are always used as an excuse for a slowdown in economic activity, this 3% growth happened despite the hurricanes.
Also, Mick Mulvaney, who is a Rush Baby. We’ve interviewed him for The Limbaugh Letter, and he is the director of Office of Management and Budget. You know, it turns out yesterday I was wrong about something, and it’s rare when I’m wrong. It’s so rare, people love pointing it out.
By the way, Dawn, were you up today at 3 o’clock to order the new iPhone X? (laughing) No, I don’t get up at 3 o’clock to order phones. Even if I was up at 3 o’clock, I wouldn’t have ordered that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I was just teasing. I knew you weren’t up. It’s not on your list of prioritized interests. That’s why I asked you. I was just being facetious.
Anyway, I thought yesterday that the top 1% are paying 40% and the top 10% were paying 60% of total tax revenue. There was a poll, it’s a Fox News poll, and it’s got some of the screwiest results in it. Something like 80% of the American people don’t think the rich are paying enough, unusually high numbers of people who think the middle class are paying too much. And none of that is accurate, but it’s what people think. And so that’s why there’s not gonna be a tax rate cut for the top 1%, or maybe even top 5%’s ’cause of that polling data. There’s not a politician in the world that wants to be seen giving the rich a tax cut when 80% of the people or 78% think the rich aren’t paying enough already.
But the real numbers are even more shocking. Try this, folks. Ninety-five percent of all taxes are paid by the top 20%. That is an all-time high. It has never been there. Last night, Georgetown University, Mick Mulvaney, who is the director of the Office of Management and Budget, spoke about Trump’s tax reform plan. And the moderator was somebody named Cathy Koch, and she said, “The way the benefits of this tax cut falls across different income taxes is going to be a real arithmetic trick.”
Does anybody know what that question means? This is a moderator of the event. Let me read the question. “The way the benefits of this tax cut falls” — it should be “the way the benefits of tax cut fall.” But “the way the benefits of this tax cut falls across different income taxes is going to be a real arithmetic trick.” What is the different income taxes? Now, I, your host, know what she meant. The way the benefits of this tax cut fall across the different rates, the different brackets, is gonna be a real arithmetic trick. No, it isn’t. There’s no trick here. There aren’t any arithmetic tricks. Arithmetic, math, is just pure logic. Anyway, here’s Mulvaney’s answer to whatever that question was.
MULVANEY: Top 20% pay 95% of the taxes. If you break the income tax universe into what we call quintiles, so equal sized 20% columns, the first two columns, the first quintile and the lower quintile, don’t pay any taxes at all. In fact, they net positive. We pay them when they file a tax return. That middle quintile, which you might describe, some people do, as middle class, pays an effective rate in the low single digits. And all of the taxes are paid by folks in the top two quintiles, and that last quintile pays almost fully, 95% I think, of the taxes.
RUSH: This is just unreal. Now, if you’re still confused about a quintile, it’s just dividing by five instead of by quarters. So they’re dividing the taxpayers into five different groups here, and each one of them equals 20%, obviously. So the top 20%, that top quintile, pays 95% of all income taxes. The top 20%! Now, let me give you another startling statistic. Now, this is not gonna be exact because I haven’t seen the recent revision of this.
But five years ago this was true. If you earned $55,000 a year, you were in the top 10% of income earners in America. Is that not shocking as well? Now, we think of the top 20% as the gazillionaires, the billionaires, the millionaires — and they’re in there, but you really need to go to the top 1% to get the gazillionaires and the billionaires, and the top 5% to pick up everybody that are millionaires — and maybe that wouldn’t even do it. Maybe the top 2%, 3% at most, is what you would do if you want to include millionaires in this.
So the top 20%, that’s a pretty broad income spectrum there. It still is just unreal that the top 20% are paying 95% of all tax revenue. You balance that against what the Fox News poll yesterday found. Nobody is aware of this. Well, not nobody. You are, because we’ve made this a seminal point of this program for all of the years that we’ve been here, because it matters. But a full 80% of taxpayers are paying 5% — and, as Mulvaney said, the bottom 40% are paying nothing and in effect are being given a refund every year via the earned-income tax credit.
There simply isn’t any truth to the notion that the rich are not paying their fair share, and there isn’t any truth to the notion that the middle class are paying most of the burden, and then Mulvaney… Now, this gets tough to listen to, because it’s numbers, but he tries to explain the math behind the so-called tax cut for the rich.
MULVANEY: People always ask all the time: Why do you want to give a tax cut to the rich? Here’s the math. We have a progressive tax system, which means that if you make a million dollars and a make $50,000, we both pay the exact same rate on the first, let’s say, $20,000. And then from the next 20 up to my 50 — and her next 20 to her next 50 — we pay the same. I think it’s now… I know it’s 12% or 15%. I can’t remember what the brackets are, and then she goes on to make her higher rates and I stop, right? Well, if you want to give me in the middle class a cut you take my 15% rate say down to 10%, right? That gives a middle class a cut. Guess who else benefits from that? She does, because she pays the same rate on the way up the brackets. You can sit there and do nothing and lower the rates on the middle class and all other things being equal you’re gonna give the rich a tax cut.
RUSH: Now, let me walk you through this. Did you…? Snerdley, did you understand that? (interruption) Yeah, it’s tough when you’re using numbers. It’s really tough when you’re using numbers. I’m gonna use different examples than the Office of Management and Budget director. I’m gonna use $100,000 ’cause it gives us more room to play here. We’ve got the brackets, and we’ll use the brackets of 39%, 35%, 28%, and 15%, and we’re talking about income of $100,000. If you make a $1 million, you still make $100,000 and to start with.
Not all of your $1 million is taxed at the… Well, no. In the case of millionaires, it is. In the case of millionaires, they don’t step through this. They charge you 39% on pretty much everything. So let’s say it’s income of $500,000. The person that makes $100,000 will pay on the first $10,000 or $20,000 and he earns the 12% or 15% rate, and then the next bracket of that $100,000 a year until pay at 28%. And then the last percentage of that $100,000 he earns he will pay the top rate of 35%. That’s the marginal rate.
The marginal rate is the last rate you pay on the income you earn. So if you earn $100,000 and somebody earns $50,000, you pay the same percentage on the income that’s equal: $50,000. The person making $100,000 earns $50,000 first, and the person earning $50,000, they pay the same rates on that they pay the same rates on that $50,000. Then the guy that’s earning a hundred has two more rates to pay on his way. He’ll have 28% and 35%, and I don’t know where the 35% kicks in.
But the point is the guy earning $100,000 is paying the same percentages on half of his income as the person making the person making $50,000. Mulvaney’s point is if you cut the 12% rate and the 15% rate, you’re also gonna be cutting that rate for the guy making $100,000 because the first $50,000 he makes will also be subject to the new lower rates. So his point is, when you lower rates for the middle class, you cannot help but lower rates for everybody, because everybody is gonna be subject to all of those brackets up to the total taxable income they report.
We’re talking taxable income here: $100,000 versus $50,000. So the person earning $50,000 will pay taxes… Well, actually, this person doesn’t pay much at all, but in the math example we’re using, that person would pay a percentage at 12% and a percentage at 15% and be done. The person making $100,000 would pay the same 12% and the same 15% up to his first $50,000, but then two more rates kick in for him: 28% and 35% on his way to a hundred grand.
But those first two rates — the 12% and the 15% — if they’re cut to 10% and 12%, they’re gonna be cut to 10% and 12% for everybody. So Mulvaney’s point is, you cut the middle class tax rates, it is axiomatic, it’s automatic, and it is unavoidable that the rich are gonna get the same tax cuts on the first $50,000 they earn. Not everything, just the first $50,000. So that’s what he was trying to explain here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let me give you one more stat here, folks, to illustrate who really pays taxes. What’s the population of New York City? Give me the number. What…? (interruption) Just the city. I’m not talking about the Tri-State area. Eight million people. Well, it’s probably 7.5 million because half a million have probably have left since the last time, but we’ll figure eight million, okay? Would you believe that one half of New York City’s tax revenue…? There are eight million people, and one half of the city’s income is paid by 34,500 people? They are the rich.
They are the people not paying their fair share: 34,500 people out of eight million are paying nearly half (or as Clinton would say, “contributing”) nearly half of the city’s taxes. You remember Clinton when he was raising everybody’s taxes referred to them as “contributions.” We needed more “contributions” from people. But, see, even these facts are not gonna sway anybody. It’s just etched in stone that the rich don’t pay their fair share, that the rich get all these tax breaks, that the rich aren’t paying anything, and that the middle class is bearing the full burden, and people believe it because the Democrats and…
Hell, it’s not just Democrats. The media, everybody’s been spreading that BS for decades. And it’s become part of the traditional class envy.