What happened at SVB? Will this be Biden’s Waterloo? I find it amusing that the left is now using their old stand by. Things went wrong so it must be Trumps fault. First we had a run on SVB. 40 BILLION in withdrawals in one day would bring down most banks. Also the Fed stopped doing the stress tests on banks in 2018. And it’s coming out that this bank as of late has been mismanaged.
Who was the Fed chief in 2018? If you guessed Powell, you’re correct. Same guy who’s raising these interest rates and caused the inflation to continue. And of course Biden reappointed Powell after Trump admitted he made a mistake appointing Powell in 2018.
Alt estimated that rate increases have “effectively wiped out approximately 28% of all the capital in the banking industry as of the end of 2022.”
Under the Obama- Biden administration, hundreds of banks failed. Is this a repeat of past performance? We have had I believe six banks that have ben shut down. This isn’t over and let’s see how this administration handles things. See the chart below.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., is now learning fortunes can change quickly in the Golden State. Less than a year ago, Newsom was celebrating a projected $100 billion budget surplus — a fiscal boon that prompted the governor and legislature to craft a budget exceeding $300 billion.
Now, California faces a $22.5 billion deficit, leaving the governor scrambling for ways to tighten the state’s monetary belt.
He can start by calling off his plan to expand California’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal, to all undocumented immigrants.
The expansion was a bad idea when the state’s coffers were flush. Now that California is struggling to make ends meet, using taxpayer money to cover non-citizens is simply irresponsible.
Newsom has been working for years to usher more and more undocumented immigrants into Medi-Cal, which already covers roughly one-third of the state’s 39 million residents.
That process began in 2016, when Newsom’s predecessor Gov. Jerry Brown expanded Medi-Cal to cover undocumented children up to age 18.\
In 2020, Newsom went a step further, granting Medi-Cal coverage to undocumented immigrants under the age of 26. More recently, Newsom has allowed illegal immigrants age 50 and older to enroll in Medi-Cal.
The final leg of this expansion — which would offer Medi-Cal to 700,000 illegal immigrants ages 26 to 49 — is supposed to take effect next January. But the state’s current fiscal situation makes this massive taxpayer-funded giveaway impossible to justify.
This latest proposed expansion is projected to cost a whopping $2.6 billion a year. That might have been easier to swallow in the days of a $100 billion budget surplus. But those days are gone.
But there’s no reason to stop there. Rolling back the previous Medi-Cal expansions would bring California that much closer to eliminating the budget deficit. The state currently spends an estimated $1.3 billion a year providing Medi-Cal to unauthorized residents 50 and older — a cost borne entirely by Golden State taxpayers without any federal support.
Even those estimates likely understate the real cost of the expansions by a significant margin. A program that rewards those who come to California illegally by providing them taxpayer-financed health insurance will almost certainly lead to more undocumented immigrants making their way to the Golden State. How could it not? In the long term, Medi-Cal’s rolls will swell — and the cost of the program will exceed today’s projections.
California can ill afford to make open-ended spending commitments, given that the state’s tax take is quite volatile from year to year.
California’s budget is largely financed through income taxes. Tax revenues are highly sensitive to the performance of the stock market and of industries like film and tech that dominate the state economy.
In other words, this current budget crisis won’t be the last one for California.
The argument in favor of expanding Medi-Cal to undocumented immigrants gets even weaker after considering the questionable quality of care the program provides.
Consider evidence from Oregon.
A landmark study of the Medicaid program in California’s northern neighbor compared health outcomes between patients who gained access to Medicaid through a random lottery and similar patients who remained uninsured.
According to that analysis, after two years, there were “no significant improvements in measured physical health outcomes” for patients covered by Medicaid compared to the uninsured control group.
How can California justify spending billions of scarce taxpayer dollars providing coverage that delivers little benefit to people in the country illegally?
Gov. Newsom has some tough decisions to make to eliminate California’s budget deficit this year. But rolling back Medi-Cal coverage for undocumented workers shouldn’t be one of them.
Sally C. Pipes is president, CEO, and the Thomas W. Smith fellow in healthcare policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is “False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All,”
On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” Columbia University Professor and New York Times newsletter author John McWhorter argued that “equity” is a “sneaky, terrible” “weasel word” for “bringing people into positions that they’re not qualified for yet” and that doing so is “dehumanizing” and “diversity and equity” are just new terms for tokenism.
McWhorter said the difference between equity and equality “is a truly sneaky, terrible thing. Equity is this wormy word, the idea is that you’re going to have equality by forcing the issue, by bringing people into positions that they’re not qualified for yet so that everything looks ‘like America.’ So, it sounds like equality and you say equity and you figure it’s the same thing, but it’s a euphemism. They’re trying to slip in without letting you know that it’s going to be equality accomplished in a way that you probably wouldn’t like. It’s like if you say to somebody, ‘well, before I let you go,’ and you say that to them and they didn’t say that they wanted to be let go, really you just want to get rid of them. Or if you talk about diversity, well, imagine talking to Franklin D. Roosevelt about diversity. When we say diversity, what we mean is changing standards for various reasons for black and Latino and sometimes Native American people. That’s what diversity means. You just don’t want to say it. Equity means that you force equality and you kind of weasel your way through it. And so, it’s like you take the word equality and you kind of knock the ‘al’ out of it.”
He continued, “And the people who do this think that that’s the right thing because they are on the side of the angels and we have to have this fake equality. And what it means is this: This DEI, it’s not an accident that DEI is the first three letters of deity. These people think of themselves as gods. None of this is an accident. So, that’s what equity means…it’s a weasel word.”
McWhorter added that pushing for change is needed, but “if you force it to that extent that you say that next week, everything has to be equal — what it comes down to is this: What that does to, for example, black people, is that you go through an entire life knowing that nothing that you’ve been asked to do, nothing that you’ve been granted can be completely separated from the fact that somebody wasn’t thinking about the fact you were a pretty color and it would make them look good to bring you in. You spend your whole life that way, yes that does include me. That is something that we have to think about with these sorts of policies where you force it really quickly and you drag people in to be what used to be called — what happened to the term ‘token black?’ Remember, we used to say that. Now, it’s called diversity and equity. It won’t do. So, yes, but you can’t do it too much, too fast, or you’re dehumanizing everybody but white people.”
What happens when Liberal Journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger are testifying under oath to what happened with the weaponization of Tweeter? Hate from Progressives.
For those who don’t know, Taibbi and Shellenberger are Liberals. But also Journalists who write the truth sometimes giving us the facts. But the far left didn’t care cause it didn’t fit their warped narrative.
Shellenberger a environmentalist who ran for governor in California as a Democrat. Taibbi well you can find him on the AP and the NY Times best sellers list. Both voted for Biden and Obama.
But the extremists on the committee attacked their credentials. Now when Trump was President and information was leaked, never was there a call from the left to find out the source. Same when Twitter would allow those leaks to be posted.
But now that Musk owns Twitter, the left is demanding to know the Journalists give up their source. What changed?
WASHINGTON, DC – DECEMBER 19: Attorney Steven Metcalf (2nd L), representing seditious conspiracy defendant Dominic Pezzola for his role in the attacks of January 6 at the U.S. Capitol, arrives at the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse December 19, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
By Gary Bai for The Epoch Times
March 9, 2023Updated: March 10, 2023
FBI agents ordered to alter or destroy evidence
The trial of Dominic Pezzola, one of the defendants of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach, was paused on Thursday due to classified FBI messages revealed in court, which the defense attorneys say show FBI agents discussing the altering of evidence.
Pezzola is one of the Proud Boys members on trial for obstruction and conspiracy charges related to the Jan. 6 Capitol breach. He was arrested on Jan. 15, 2021, and indicted the same month. Pezzola’s trial began in January of this year.
“There are a couple of emails between FBI agents casually discussing altering a document and destroying hundreds of pieces of evidence. It’s very disturbing and right now we have more questions than answers,” Roger Roots, an attorney at John Pierce Law, wrote to The Epoch Times. Roots confirmed that Washington District Court Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee, paused the trial on Thursday after the leaked messages were shown in court.
The exchange Roots referred to came into light on Wednesday during the testimony of FBI special agent Nicole Miller, who was involved in the agency’s investigations of the Jan. 6 defendants.
When cross-examining Miller, Nick Smith, an attorney representing Proud Boys member Ethan Nordean (listed as co-defendant on Pezzola’s case), revealed classified FBI emails that were hidden in a tab in an Excel spreadsheet. Roots, in Pezzola’s case, used this evidence to support a motion to dismiss (pdf) the charges against Pezzola, which Roots’s team filed on Wednesday.
In the motion, Pezzola’s team said the emails showed that the FBI monitored communications between Nordean and his lawyer, violating the Sixth Amendment, which prohibits invasions of the right to counsel (Matter of Fusco v. Moses).
“In the Nordean case, confidential attorneys-client trial/defense strategy and position was wrongfully obtained by the government, about which was overheard, shared, utilized, where potentially ‘338 items of evidence’ were ordered to be ‘destroyed,’ said Pezzola’s legal team in the motion to dismiss.
According to a separate filing by Nordean’s lawyers, Miller said in one correspondence that “[her] boss assigned [her] 338 items of evidence [she has] to destroy”; Nordean’s lawyers allege that another email show an agent requesting Miller to “go into [a] CHS [informant] report” that Miller “just put [together] and edit out that [the agent] was present.”
The emails show Miller “admitted fabricating evidence and following orders to destroy hundreds of items of evidence,” Pezzola’s lawyers wrote in its motion to dismiss, and that the government obtained information that benefitted itself in the trial, causing substantial prejudice to each of the defendants, including Pezzola.
“If justice means anything, it requires this case to be dismissed,” Pezzola’s lawyer said.
Roots is representing Pezzola on a pro bono basis. Legal non-profit National Constitutional Law Union (NCLU) is helping cover Roots’s expenses while he is in Washington, according to NCLU Executive Director Natalie Danelishen.
“My thoughts are we need a longer pause to get to the bottom of some of Agent Miller’s emails,” Roots told The Epoch Times.
As of Thursday evening, the court has not issued an order responding to the motion to dismiss.
Alleged Brady Violations
In addition to their argument about the Sixth Amendment, Pezzola’s lawyers also argued in their motion to dismiss that newly surfaced footage of events of the Jan. 6 Capitol breach constitutes exculpatory evidence. The defendants’ lawyers say the government, by withholding that evidence, violated their client’s constitutional rights as defined in Brady v. Maryland, a 1963 case in which the Supreme Court held that prosecutors must make available exculpatory evidence to defense counsel.
The defendants’ motion comes two days after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) released more than 40,000 hours of Jan. 6 footage to Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, who then aired some of the footage on his show on Monday and Tuesday.
One tape aired Monday showed Capitol Police officers walking alongside Jacob Chansley, a Jan. 6 defendant serving a 41-month sentence after pleading guilty to an obstruction charge. Chansley was unarmed and walked past several Capitol police officers.
The aired footage “is plainly exculpatory,” Pezzola’s lawyers said in the motion.
The FBI declined to comment and referred The Epoch Times to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for comment.
U.S. Attorney’s Office did not provide The Epoch Times with comment by
Trump supporters occupy the West Front of the Capitol and the inauguration stands on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
In another example of Washington’s inexorable slide into banana republic territory, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) took to the floor of the U.S. Senate on Tuesday to call for the removal of an American journalist.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen an anchor treat the American people, and American democracy, with such disdain,” Schumer said during his seven-minute authoritarian tirade. “And he’s going to come back tonight with another segment. Fox News should tell him not to. Fox News, Rupert Murdoch—tell Mr. Carlson not to run a second segment of lies. You know it’s a lie.”
Schumer later reiterated his demand to a group of journalists who, rather than denounce one of the most powerful government officials in the country attempting to silence an influential member of the media, dutifully reported Schumer’s bleating without question.
Republican senators including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) joined the fray, echoing Schumer’s faux concerns over “national security.”
Clearly, it’s panic time. The White House, Congress, and the Democratic Party propaganda arm that is the corporate media realize their carefully engineered narrative about January 6 is imploding in real time. Which is why they’re accusing Carlson of “whitewashing” and “rewriting” the events of January 6. Anything less than total fealty to regime-approved talking points about what happened before and after that day now is considered a “threat to democracy.”
But facts are facts. And no amount of pearl-clutching by the hags on “The View” or threats made by U.S. senators can alter the reality of January 6. Between video recordings, witness testimony, court filings, and news reporting, the undeniable truth about January 6 cannot be willfully wished away even by the most skilled spinmeisters.
Here’s what we know:
Some people acted badly. A handful came ready for a fight while others admit they were caught up in a mob mentality that unfolded over the course of the afternoon.
The overwhelming majority of protesters did not act badly or violently. Not only do security footage and other video sources demonstrate that is indeed true, the Justice Department’s own data supports it. “Parading” in the Capitol, a class B misdemeanor, is by far the most common charge in the Justice Department’s sweeping investigation. According to an update published this week, 919 out of 1,000 defendants face trespassing charges. Of the 518 who accepted plea agreements, 385 pleaded guilty to misdemeanors and 133 pleaded guilty to a felony.
The most common felony is not “insurrection” but rather obstruction of an official proceeding. Fewer than 20 people face seditious conspiracy charges.
Roughly 100 defendants are accused of attacking police officers with a dangerous weapon. No one is charged with carrying or using a firearm inside the building.
Speaking of police, body-worn camera and independent video show outrageous misconduct by law enforcement. D.C. Metropolitan Police launched an aggressive and unnecessary offensive against the crowd assembled on the west lawn. Even though protesters were respecting police lines at the time, footage shows officers throwing stun grenades into and other devices containing rubber bullets into the crowd beginning shortly after 1:00 p.m.
Video and testimony by Capitol police officers at trial confirmed how that activity enraged the crowd. Other officers shoved women down stairs and shoved one man off the upper terrace balcony.
This conduct continued inside the building. Some officers shoved and hit individuals inside the Rotunda and other areas. A brutal scene in the lower west terrace tunnel unfolded as police used their batons to beat at least two women on the head resulting in bleeding and injuries.
Excessive force caused the deaths of four Trump supporters: Ashli Babbitt, Rosanne Boyland, Kevin Greeson, and Benjamin Phillips.
On the flip side, despite persistent claims even by Attorney General Merrick Garland and White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre as recently as this week, no police officers died as a result of injuries sustained on January 6. Officer Brian Sicknick is on video walking around after he suffered a pepper spray attack; he died of a stroke the next day. There’s no evidence the reported suicides of other officers after January 6 were related to the protest.
Further, the responsibility of sufficiently protecting the Capitol with enough officers fell to the Capitol Police board—staffed by the sergeant-at-arms for then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund repeatedly testified that he requested additional help including National Guardsmen days before January 6. Even as the chaos unfolded that day, House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving and Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger delayed pursuing the proper authorization of the National Guard.
Irving told House Republicans that his staff as well as members of the House Administration committee began planning for January 6 weeks before the protest. Jamie Fleet, a security staffer for both Pelosi and the committee overseeing Capitol functions, told the January 6 select committee that he started preparations for January 6 in the summer of 2020.
When the building was breached at around 2:15 p.m., Congress was not voting to certify the electoral college results at the time, a common misperception. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Arizona) were in the process of disputing the election outcome in Gosar’s home state, a process permitted under the Electoral Count Act. The joint session of Congress technically had been adjourned an hour earlier so debate could begin.
For all the wasted energy spent over the past two years that democracy almost died on January 6, the chaotic protest only delayed the certification ceremony for seven hours. Joe Biden officially was declared president at 3:00 a.m. the next day.
The surveillance video viewed by Carlson’s team has not been made available to defense attorneys, arguably in violation of defendants’ constitutional rights.
A separate trove of tapes that captured activity from the hours between noon and 8:00 p.m. was turned over to the FBI in early 2021 to use in its investigation. With few exceptions, all footage remains under protective orders. Defense attorneys consistently have complained that access to the full archive is constrained by the protective orders.
Plenty of other falsehoods and misrepresentations animate the fable of January 6. But for those honestly seeking the truth, consider this a cheat sheet for future use.
Biden a man who will save the chickens. Giphy Giff
Biden and the Chicken Vaccine. I’m sure you’ve heard by now that Joe Biden is on a mission to save as many chickens as he can. Yes my friends Joey Boy wants the drug companies to come up with a vaccine so we can all live in Harmony with the chickens.
New reports indicate the White House may soon consider launching a mass bird flu vaccine campaign to protect America’s chickens from the H5N1 virus outbreak. Reports estimate that approximately 60 million birds in the US and 200 million globally have already been culled to prevent the spread of the virus.
USDA approval could be granted if an updated shot proves effective, followed by a comprehensive vaccination campaign to reach the affected poultry industry.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., informed The Hill on Wednesday that he would be leading an investigation into the now-dissolved House Jan. 6 Select Committee. Loudermilk, who chairs the House Administration Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight, said that his panel is …… [Full Story]
President Joe Biden shakes hands with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California last month before Biden’s State of the Union address, his first before the new Republican-controlled House. (Getty Images)
House Democrats attempted to defend social media censorship at a hearing of the new U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on Thursday on the Twitter files.
No more advertising the woke crowd. Please.(Photo by Mark LoMoglio/NHLI via Getty Images)
Winning. The Minnesota Wild admitted on Wednesday that it decided as a team not to wear their gay pride jerseys for its warmup period during Tuesday’s gay pride night game.
It also appears that the auction to benefit the LGBTQIA+ community was deleted from the team’s website.
The team has worn pride-themed jerseys in the past. However, the last time was in March of last year, Fox added.
This instance of refusing to wear a gay pride jersey is only the latest in a mounting number of teams worldwide that are turning away from wearing gay pride-themed paraphernalia.
In Jan., Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov skipped warmups because he refused to wear the gay pride jersey the team sponsored for its gay pride night game. Provorov said that bowing to the gay agenda violated his religious freedom and First Amendment rights.
That same month members of the New York Rangers team celebrated Pride Night on Friday but did not wear pride-themed jerseys or use rainbow tape during the event.
In 2022 several members of a rugby team in Sydney, Australia, refused to participate during the team’s gay pride pandering.
About seven members of the Sea Eagles refused to wear the gay pride jersey during the team’s game in July last year. Players added that the team planned its gay pride night without consulting them.
I guess butchering children’s genitals wasn’t a super popular cause for the Minnesota Wild so they skipped over it last night. 🤡
I still find it remarkable people can bring themselves to line the pockets of these people. https://t.co/gXYewBqM2p
Minnesota wild players as an organization refused to wear pride jerseys in warmups last night ( good for them ) now look at the woke mob freaks attacking A PRIVATE ORGANIZATION! I say F EM ! Let the freaks attack !!!
Hey Biden? When does it end? Will we need a national search? Nine more boxes found.
“When NARA [National Archives and Records Administration] contacted President Biden’s personal counsel on November 3, 2022, to arrange to pick up boxes from the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., they informed NARA that Mr. Moore had moved other boxes from the Penn Biden Center to Mr. Moore’s law firm in Boston,” the letter states.
In addition, the archives notified the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General on Nov. 4 that the documents had been moved. The documents were then picked up on Nov. 9 and were secured in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.
Gary Stern from NARA emailed Biden’s lawyer Patrick Moore: “Also, please ensure that the boxes in your office in Boston remain secure in a locked space and are not accessed by anyone. Thanks.”
