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2023-05-16 07:00 by Karl Denninger
in Corruption , 2197 references
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America, that is.

There is one last chance to save it: The FBI and DOJ must be disbanded, everyone working for it fired with no pensions, no benefits, no nothing, and if we need the functions of either agency and/or DHS they must be reconstituted with hard criminal penalties for anything that even smells like this in the future.

If not, well, we're done.

We're done because it is now seven years after this injustice occurred, it was not minor, it was not due to "oversight" or "accident" and by the most-charitable read the reason it happened is political bias through the entire organization from the top down leaving nobody to challenge it.

Further, knowing this the Democrat party political campaign of the time (Hillary's) deliberately suborned the acts of the FBI and instead of being told to shove it and being publicly outed for their attempt they got what they wanted including the personal and financial destruction of several people.  huge number of members of Congress then went on to use their speech and debate clause to slander people left, right and center all based on these lies.  Current law and the Constitution provide us no means of punishment of said members of Congress due to that speech and debate clause but no such protection exists for the principals nor the FBI personnel involved.

Let me just cite this:

Given the foregoing, and viewing the facts in a light most favorable to the Crossfire Hurricane investigators, it seems highly likely that, at a minimum, confirmation bias played a significant role in the FBI's acceptance of extraordinarily serious allegations derived from uncorroborated information that had not been subjected to the typical exacting analysis employed by the FBI and other members of the Intelligence Community. In short, it is the Office's assessment that the FBI discounted or willfully ignored material information that did not support the narrative of a collusive relationship between Trump and Russia. Similarly, the FBI Inspection Division Report says that the investigators "repeatedly ignore[d] or explain[ed] away evidence contrary to the theory the Trump campaign ... had conspired with Russia .... It appeared that ... there was a pattern of assuming nefarious intent." 1749 An objective and honest assessment of these strands of information should have caused the FBI to question not only the predication for Crossfire Hurricane, but also to reflect on whether the FBI was being manipulated for political or other purposes. Unfortunately, it did not.

That's the most-charitable read.

I decline to provide that given the repeated and amplified abuse out of the Democrat Party, including from Hillary, Schiff and others particularly considering that exactly zero of said persons have apologized or in any other way backed off from their knowing lies.

Folks the capacity to do this on a forward basis must be destroyed.  This is not optional.  No republic can continue to exist when it becomes trivially easy for one political faction or another to deliberately weaponize law enforcement to go after disfavored individuals based on their political affiliation, inventing not just domestic events but claimed collusion with foreign powers that never occurred.

Indeed it is arguable that these very same people were in fact doing what they accused Trump of, but with Ukraine and China instead of Russia -- and there is now developing hard evidence of the money flows involved in same.  The extent to which they reached into policy during the Obama years and to which it influenced or even controlled the policies of the administration during the pandemic, an outbreak that we have every reason to believe sourced from that very same China, is not yet known.

There are over 1 million dead Americans over the last three years as a direct and indirect consequence and sixty million, roughly, children who got screwed in whole or part out of their education during those three years.  Never mind all the other people who got screwed and all of the inflation which we have and will continue to suffer under.

If that's not enough just this last evening it was reported that the IRS, at DOJ instruction, removed the entire team investigating Hunter's tax matters in quite-clear retaliation for the whistle-blower inside the IRS -- a clear violation of federal law and yet another demonstration of said corruption.  Coming on the back of the Durham report it is clear that the entire DOJ and FBI cannot be "redeemed" or "reformed."  The myriad claims that the DOJ and FBI have "learned" and "reformed" as a result of what happened with Crossfire Hurricane are not only laughable -- they're criminally insane.

This cannot stand nor go without redress.

Period.

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2023-05-12 07:01 by Karl Denninger
in Corruption , 788 references
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These are allegations at this point, but they're serious ones and if you don't take them seriously you're not a serious person.  In fact, you're supporting -- directly -- thuggery, bribery and corruption.

Cormer claims that the House Oversight Committee has uncovered a network of of roughly a dozen shell companies that moved money around in various transactions and had no business purpose at all.  In other words, other than taking in cash from someone -- foreign entities -- and distributing those funds through a series of smaller transactions the firms had no offices, no people, conducted no business and produced nothing, whether at a profit or loss.  The beneficiaries, that is the final persons, all in Biden's family, who received the funds did not produce anything in return for same and couldn't have given the convoluted path the funds took.

The structuring of transactions for the purpose of concealing the source or destination of funds is money laundering -- also known as "structuring."  It is a serious felony even if no other criminal charge is proved; the intent is to evade reporting requirements.  In these cases the attempt to evade the reporting failed as SARs were filed anyway, but that doesn't matter.  The attempt is illegal.

FCPA prohibits taking funds from a foreign entity for corrupt purpose; that is, an effective bribe in exchange for anything of value where the other end of the transaction is outside the United States is illegal.  That is also a serious criminal felony and has applied to all US persons since 1977 and, since 1998, to foreign entities as well if the funds or acts touch the United States.

Specifically, the anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA prohibit the willful use of the mails or any means of instrumentality of interstate commerce corruptly in furtherance of any offer, payment, promise to pay, or authorization of the payment of money or anything of value to any person, while knowing that all or a portion of such money or thing of value will be offered, given or promised, directly or indirectly, to a foreign official to influence the foreign official in his or her official capacity, induce the foreign official to do or omit to do an act in violation of his or her lawful duty, or to secure any improper advantage in order to assist in obtaining or retaining business for or with, or directing business to, any person.

This is black-letter law folks.  Being VP at the time is no defense.  There is zero exemption available to anyone irrespective of their position when it comes to this law; indeed, the entire point of it is to prevent US businesses from bribing foreign government entities and to prevent foreign entities from bribing US Government officials and instrumentalities.

The structuring of transactions so as to "break them up" and conceal is otherwise a straight-forward payment from one person to another is evidence of knowledge that the act is in fact corrupt and illegal; nobody bothers to conceal a lawful transaction as there is simply no purpose to it.

These findings demand a hearing in open court with all the evidence.  The FBI apparently has hard evidence backing this they refuse to turn over, although House Oversight has obtained many SARs and bank records and those, standing alone, appear to make a prima-facia case that Biden family members received funds in size in exchange for....... nothing.

What sort of legitimate claim could someone make here that isn't a criminal enterprise?  Are you really going to tell me that unrelated foreign entities gave gifts to a whole list of Biden family members with no expectation of anything in return?  Really?

C'mon folks.  This looks like wild-eyed bribery by foreign entities buying influence from the Vice President of the United States.

Calling that "Treason" is factually wrong; Treason is defined in the Constitution and in fact is the only crime that is.  However, it is evidence of a series of serious felonies and every member of the Biden family that received any of the funds is implicated AND MUST BE INDICTED.  In addition the foreign entities forced to divulge what they were attempting to obtain from the United States Government in exchange for those funds.

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2023-05-11 07:00 by Karl Denninger
in Corruption , 343 references
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Yep, I said it -- SCAM.

Congress is intending to vote on a package of bills that includes "E-Verify" upgrades, enhancements and similar.

This is a scam.

It is precisely a scam because it include two pilot projects to attach detailed bio-identifying information to E-Verify, which is a wild-eyed violation of everyone's rights in that said data will be collected and, you can bet once it is, abused.

E-Verify is simple to use and enforce and if so-used would end illegal immigrant employment in one day.  It requires only a simple bill which states the following:

  • All employers SHALL, prior to an employee performing work, use E-Verify with the credential presented by the employee claiming eligibility to work in the United States and SHALL keep the control numbers returned for a period of ten years after said employment ends.  The data collected and submitted must include the date of birth along with the Social Security Number.

  • All employers SHALL NOT employ a person which E-Verify returns a status that said person is not eligible for employment, or in which the claimed data is facially implausible (e.g. a person claiming to be 25 when in fact they appear to be 50, or vice-versa.)

  • All employers SHALL include said control number with all tax deposits for both withholding and employment taxes.

  • Any person in any firm who fails to comply with said provisions is deemed guilty of a criminal felony.  The penalty for non-compliance is personal, joint and several, and carries a 10 year in federal prison, serve every day sentence along with a $100,000 fine per act of non-compliance that may not be reduced or set aside levied against the employing entity.

The problem with such a law, which is simple and fits within one page is that the federal government must then actually enforce it.  That is, you would also have to include a clause that requires employees of the federal government to dispatch when E-Verify states a person is ineligible or questionable and, in the case where a tax deposit is made with either a questioned or known-negative result, or where the control number is invalid, duplicated or otherwise fraudulent and go arrest and prosecute the offender(s).

If such a law was enforced there would be zero illegal alien employment within one day in the United States because any firm that did so, no matter the size, would instantly be put out of business and the persons who submitted the fraudulent returns would be in prison.

We do not have a problem that requires complex, privacy-invading and abusable laws.  You already must fill out a W-9 to work but many people in fact cheat.  We know this.  We also know that illegal aliens often buy stolen credentials, some of them of deceased persons, some duplicates of live persons and others that are simply made up -- and in the case of duplicates most are wildly implausible and thus known bogus (e.g. someone is working on a farm in Idaho and yet allegedly also working at a tech company in Seattle.)  E-Verify flags all of those immediately and yet nobody is dispatched to figure out who is the fraudster and who is the legitimate person, arresting the fraud-committing parties.

This problem does not get solved because nobody in Washington DC wants it solved.

Every single one of the Representatives and Senators, in short, wants the illegal aliens here and thus is directly and personally responsible for every crime they commit as an accessory before the fact.

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2022-06-18 07:00 by Karl Denninger
in Corruption , 663 references
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A reasonable postulate for virtually every thing that is wrong in the US -- and much of the rest of the world -- can be stated as "selective prosecution has ruined the world, and cannot be fixed until the people enforce equal application of the law."

"ESG", which in the vernacular is "Environmental, Sustainability and Governance", all are externally-imposed costs on corporations, specifically public corporations.  Unlike laws, which are also externally-imposed costs, these costs are imposed by a cartel, and cartels under penalty of being "disinvested" or even having your leadership ejected by force.

Cartels are illegal in the United States, with few exceptions:

Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $100,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $1,000,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.

This law (Clayton, which is the second of two, the first being Sherman which criminalized the act while Clayton was rapidly passed to criminalize the attempt irrespective of success) dates to 1890.

It does not just impose a fine (of up to $100 million) but also 10 years in the pokey in the form of a criminal felony conviction for each person involved.

So if you and I get together, agree to impose cost by coercion on other people and in doing so our intent is to do so in a cohesive fashion such that competitors must all comply we have committed a criminal felony.

Cost is cost no matter how it works or what sort of cloaking and greenwashing you do with it.  If myself and three other large Internet providers in a given area all get together over some beers, lament that now we can't get people to work because the government has turned into a free-money fest for them and decide together to all raise prices by a dollar on our customers so we can all offer our employees a nice fat raise we have committed a serious federal offense.  When I ran MCSNet I wouldn't even contemplate having lunch or beers with one of our serious competitors in my market lest the conversation go in that sort of direction and I've now done something that could, quite-reasonably, lead to me doing 10 years in the federal slammer.

Corporations must comply with the law and to the extent that some organization or group lobbies to get laws passed, which all comply with, that's not a felony. 

But absent law such coercion is a felony.

Why?

Because without coercion one or more of the competitors in a market will tell said "ESG" people to pound sand.  That firm will have lower operating costs and as a result will tattoo those who do enact said policies.  This is called competition -- and, to be precise, productivity and it is productivity, doing more with less, that is responsible for every bit of our standard of living in the modern world.

In 1890 we, through our representative process, declared such coercion by other than law imposed evenly on all a felonious act.  There is no exemption for "investment companies" like Vanguard, Blackrock and similar to these laws.  None.  Yet here we are, and just like in 2008 when nobody committed any crimes (to directly quote Gary Johnson who was at the time running for President as a Libertarian, and was lying like a bearskin rug) we are facing record-high gas prices and inflation to a large degree precisely because we are not prosecuting acts that, under the law, are declared as crimes.

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2020-06-10 07:29 by Karl Denninger
in Corruption , 711 references
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Are you done yet?

Probably not.

Who is Christine Grady?

Why.... she works at the NIH.  She's a medical type - well, sort of.  She's got a BS in nursing, and went on to get a PhD in philosophy from Georgetown.

Notice that she's claimed, on the NIH site, to be a "Doctor."  That's an intentionally misleading claim.  She does not have a doctorate in medicine.  She's a nurse, from a medical perspective.  There's an argument that anyone with a PhD is a "Doctor" but when you say "doctor" in the context of medicine you're not talking about holding a PhD in philosophy.  Don't get me wrong -- nursing is a great profession and nurses have a decent amount of medical knowledge, obviously -- but they're not doctors.

She serves as the chief in charge of "bioethics."  In other words, the person who gets to make decisions on exceptions to the FDA rules when it comes to things like drugs and vaccines, along with other exceptions to the normal, allegedly-transparent process that is supposed to take place before drugs and other things get into the American marketplace.

If you read her NIH page you will also find something quite-curious.  There's no mention of her personal life.  That, standing alone, is not uncommon among professional listings.  After all, one's personal life isn't really connected to professional credentials and achievements -- most of the time.

But in this case, the omission appears to be rather intentional.

You see, according to reports, which are now circulating around social media, she's Anthony Fauci's wife.

Who is the director of NIAID, a division of the NIH.

Who was appointed to said position in 1984.

Approximately one year before he married the person who now gets to make exceptions to the rules and transparency, who works for the same government agency that he works for, and from which position in said government he "advises" people, including now President Trump, on the path "forward" where and when such transparency and required scientific proof can be exempted.

Gee, why do I hear echoes of Vader with his hand out talking about "father and son", except this time it's "husband and wife"?

Exactly how much attention has this received in the media and Congress again and exactly how did all that happen?

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