Fisheries managers are close to being able to roll out relief for Virginia’s hard-hit fishing industries, although a small federal allocation to the commonwealth means payments aren’t likely to be large, Virginia Marine Resources Commission officials said Tuesday morning.
“Because there was so little funding and such great economic damage, the idea of sort of trying to make sure you make up the loss for people was not an option on the table,” VMRC Deputy Commissioner Ellen Bolen said during a presentation to the commission. “We just did not have enough money.”
Virginia’s fisheries have been pummeled by the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly as restaurants, one of their primary customers, have shuttered or severely curtailed their business. Officials have estimated direct losses to the industry of at least $100 to $120 million, not accounting for trickle-down effects to associated business like boat-building.
But of the $300 million the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act directed to U.S. fisheries, only $4.48 million was allotted to Virginia. The small allocation drew ire from Virginia leaders, with Secretary of Natural Resources Matt Strickler saying it fell “woefully short” of the state’s needs.
On Tuesday, officials repeatedly noted the scarcity of funds, which are funneled from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“We tried to do the best we could with what we had to work with, which was not a whole lot of money,” said VMRC Commissioner Steve Bowman. “Maine got $20 million. Even Georgia and South Carolina, I think, did fairly well. It was a really weird computation that they came up with.”
The final fisheries relief plan devised by the commission after consultation with a working group and public input will make $3.98 million in direct payments available to eligible holders of a VMRC license. An additional $500,000 will be available for eligible applicants who do not have such a license.
Other criteria for eligibility include Virginia residence and certification both that economic losses were greater than 35 percent compared to a previous five-year average and that at least 50 percent of the applicant’s income comes from fishing activities.
“We wanted to make sure that the people who were getting the money were people who were actually fishing and who relied on the fishing industry as their primary source of income,” said Bolen.
I hadn't realized how badly the fishing industry was hit, but I do see a sudden upturn in the amount of crabbing off the beach. You can see all the buoys for crab pots in the bay behind "Whitey," slightly out of focus.
We had a pretty good cool front came through last night with three quarter of an
inch of rain, which dropped the temperatures into the low 70s with low humidity,
clear skies, and not much in the way of humidity.
The beach was all but deserted, a few of the usual walking ladies. We found a few shark's teeth, 14, to finish the month that totaled 355 teeth.
Whitey, the Great White Heron had been AWOL for the last three days, showed back up again.
We have two themes bidding for top spot today, the Flynn hearing, and the
newly declassified documents that show the Russians had intelligence
that Hillary had created the "Russia hoax" to take attention away from her own
email scandal. This is, apparently, the big news that Lindsey Graham 2.0 has
been touting.
Not only were Russian officials aware of Hillary Clinton’s campaign plan to
accuse Donald Trump of being a Russian asset, top U.S. intelligence
authorities knew of Russia’s knowledge of Clinton’s plans,
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe disclosed to congressional
officials on Tuesday. Before they launched an investigation into whether Trump’s campaign was
colluding with Russia, intelligence agencies learned that Russia knew of
Clinton’s plans to tarnish Trump with the collusion smear.
At one
point, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Brennan
personally briefed then-President Barack Obama and other top U.S. national
security officials that Russia assessed Hillary Clinton had approved a plan on
July 26, 2016, “to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming
interference by Russian security services,” according to Brennan’s handwritten
notes.
Fired former FBI Director James Comey and fired former FBI
counterintelligence official Peter Strzok were even sent an investigative
referral on September 7, 2016, regarding Russia’s alleged knowledge of
Clinton’s plans to smear Trump as a treasonous Russian agent, Ratcliffe wrote.
Rather than investigate at the time whether Russian intelligence had
infiltrated the Clinton operation’s anti-Trump campaign and sowed Russian
disinformation within it, the FBI instead used
unverified gossip from a suspected Russian agent
to obtain federal warrants to spy on the Trump campaign.
There is
no evidence the FBI ever investigated the Clinton campaign’s documented use of
Russian agents and intelligence assets to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election,
raising questions of whether the top federal law enforcement agency may have
itself interfered in the election by using its powers to arbitrarily target
the campaign of the outgoing administration’s political enemy.
NOW:
@LindseyGrahamSC
tells
@CBSNews that
he is working to declassify notes cited in
@DNI_Ratcliffe
letter to the fullest extent possible + he questions whether the Sept 2016
"investigative referral" to FBI about an alleged effort by the Clinton
campaign to distract from
Let's get this straight: Hillary manufactured the Russian collusion hoax to
distract from her email server scandal and kept up the ruse for three plus
years, essentially preventing Trump from fully performing his duties as
President while he dealt with the nonsense she made up.
Graham said the newly uncovered documents may suggest a double standard at the
FBI.
“This latest information provided by DNI Ratcliffe shows there
may have been a double standard by the FBI regarding allegations against the
Clinton campaign and Russia,” Graham said in a statement. “Whether these
allegations are accurate is not the question. The question is did the FBI
investigate the allegations against Clinton like they did Trump? If not, why
not? If so, what was the scope of the investigation? If none, why was
that?”
Graham said he would question Comey about this report at the
hearing on Wednesday.
Recall that after Pres. Trump had won the election, Pres. Obama ordered the
hasty assembly of an “Intelligence Community Assessment” (ICA) on the nature
and impact of Russian interference so that he could take action against Russia
for its conduct before his term expired.
The CIA, FBI, and NSA
intelligence analysts quickly gathered available intelligence on the Russian
efforts and began making “assessments” with regard to the motives of various
Russian entities and actors involved. There was agreement among the agencies
that Russia had engaged in “active measures” to influence the campaign — but
not the election process itself — and there were varying levels of agreement
and support on the question of the motives behind such active measures.
One
issue over which there was disagreement was on whether to include in the body
of the ICA any information taken from the Steele Dossier memos attributed to
the PSS — the Russian Spy.
Normally, an ICA is a collection of
“intelligence” gathered by the various US agencies who conduct
intelligence-gathering operations. The CIA and NSA did not view the material
in the Steele Dossier memos attributed to the PSS — the Russian spy — to be
“intelligence” gathered by US intelligence agencies and took the position that
the Dossier material should not be in the ICA.
Jim Comey disagreed,
arguing that Pres. Obama had asked for “everything” the IC agencies had — not
just intelligence gathered by the IC agencies themselves. The internal debate
on the issue was revealed two months ago in the
Senate Intelligence Committee report
on the Russia Hoax affair. . . .
McCabe and Comey are both scheduled to testify in the next several days before
the Senate Judiciary Committee. The first question to each from Chairman
Graham must be
“Did you know the Primary Sub-Source was assessed as a Russian Agent at the
time you fought to put the Steele Dossier information from the Sub-Source in
the ICA?”
There is no good answer to that question, gentlemen. Good luck.
The hearing today in the courtroom of Judge Emmet Sullivan was an abject
showcase in judicial nuttery. The one good thing to come out of the
adversarial arguments was that millions more Americans got to hear first-hand
just how broken and corrupt the federal system of the judiciary has become.
The judicial farce was only exceeded by the legal nonsense exhibited by
Sullivan’s extra-judicial prosecutor/amicus John Gleeson.
At one
point in the proceedings Sullivan even threatened Flynn’s defense attorney
with a referral to the BAR association for her letter of introduction to AG
Bill Barr during the transition between defense counsel. Yes, the judicial
activism was that ridiculous.
Yes Alice, unfortunately the fiasco
is scheduled to continue… Sidney Powell discusses the day’s events with Lou
Dobbs:
After five hours spent on this today, Sullivan said he had not made up his
mind about whether or not to dismiss the case. He did say he was aware the
appeals court was looking for a quick decision from him. Does that mean he’s
going to finally reach a conclusion this week or is he trying to drag this
out until the election? I’m not sure what the strategy is here but both he
and his hand-picked attorney John Gleeson are behaving like aggrieved
partisan looking for a pound of flesh.
Judge Sullivan stated that he is still not prepared to dismiss the case.
His prolonging of the inevitable is fulfilling the expectations of the
panel, which wanted to take this case from his consideration. This should
have been dismissed five months ago. https://t.co/ZhXmOsiJM2
Barnett, who works in the FBI’s Washington field office, said that the CHS
harbored suspicions about Flynn following an event the retired general
attended in 2014 in which he unexpectedly left with another person.
The
allegation matches closely with a rumor that appeared in the media regarding
Flynn and a Russian-British researcher at the University of Cambridge in
February 2014.
Barnett said in an investigative memo that was
previously released in the criminal case against Flynn that the CHS claimed to
have witnessed the incident in question. That memo also indicated that Flynn’s
contact was Russian.
According to the latest memo, Barnett said he
initially believed the information was concerning and “potentially
significant” to the Flynn investigation. But Barnett said that intelligence
analysts were unable to locate information that corroborated the report
concerning Flynn’s contact. The bureau reached out to foreign intelligence
agencies for information for the investigation but found nothing derogatory
about Flynn or the other person, the memo says.
According to the
memo, Barnett made it clear that he did not believe the CHS’s claim that Flynn
left the event with the person. The memo does not say whether Barnett believed
the source was lying about the incident.
Didja hear the big story about how Trump only paid $750 in taxes? Or maybe it
was $1 million. Or $1,000,750. It was definitely one of those, probably. If it
even matters.
Does it matter? If so, why?
I would argue,
Dear Reader, that it does not matter.
The goal of stories like the
NYT’s latest “bombshell,” among our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters in the media, isn’t to
convince anyone of anything. And it certainly isn’t to inform anyone. No, the
goal is to reinforce the existing beliefs of their audience. People who hate
Trump read this earth-shattering story and say, “See? We told you!”
It makes me think of my old law school tax professor who liked to say that a
tax return is an offer, and you see if the government accepts it or makes a
counteroffer. Trump made his offer in 2010, and the government accepted it,
and sent him $72.9 million refund but also kept investigating. It's 10 years
later, and they're still hovering over him, threatening to take it back — with
interest and penalties.
The NYT editors say that the IRS needs more
more funding so it can quickly and aggressively enforce the existing tax code.
The headline speaks of "the profound inequities of the tax code," but the
editors never get around to proposing eliminating loopholes and complexity.
Why not? Is it because what they want is to get Trump, and changing the law
prospectively is irrelevant to that goal? The only thing that relates to Trump
is that the investigation is taking too long. If only the IRS could be more
aggressive perhaps they could have figured out by now whether it agrees with
Trump's interpretation of the over-complicated law or not.
New Yorkers should take special note of one part of
the Senate report
on Hunter Biden’s shady business dealings — because one of his wealthy
patrons got “economic development” tax breaks from our own Gov. Andrew
Cuomo.
Yes, the main implications are national: Hunter got
millions from foreign sources while his dad was veep, and though Obama
officials feared conflicts, they did nothing. Records “show potential
criminal activity between Hunter Biden, his family and his associates” and
Ukrainian, Russian, Kazakh and Chinese nationals, the report says.
And
the younger Biden sent “thousands” to folks who’ve been tied to
“transactions consistent with human trafficking” or have possible
associations with the porn industry or prostitution. Ugly stuff.
Yet
New Yorkers may care most about the section noting that Hunter’s firm,
Rosemont Seneca Thornton, got $242,000 from Russian billionaire Elena
Baturina, which it transferred to BAK USA — a Buffalo firm that raked in a
quarter-million in tax breaks under Cuomo’s START-UP NY scheme — and then
went belly up.
Rosemont, the report adds, got another $3.5
million from Baturina for unspecified “consulting,” but it’s not clear why
Biden’s firm was in the middle of payments from her to BAK; New Yorkers can
only wonder if Hunter profited off a deal made possible by their tax
dollars.
More important, though, BAK is yet another example of
Cuomo’s failed AndyLand approach to upstate’s economy: He picks winners (or
at least politically connected firms) and showers them with public funds —
in the hope they’ll survive and grow jobs. Alas, many deals have simply
flopped.
On Tuesday morning the Trump campaign requested a new rule for the first presidential debate: that a third party inspect both candidates for electronic devices or transmitters. President Trump had already consented to such an inspection, and the Biden campaign had reportedly agreed to this days ago, but, Ebony Bowden of the New York Post reported moments ago that they are now declining.
The Trump campaign has since confirmed this flip-flop.
Joe Biden’s handlers several days ago agreed to a pre-debate inspection for electronic earpieces but today abruptly reversed themselves & declined. Biden asked for multiple breaks during the debate, which President Trump doesn’t need, so we have rejected that request.
— Tim Murtaugh - Download the Trump 2020 app today! (@TimMurtaugh) September 29, 2020
“Joe Biden’s handlers several days ago agreed to a pre-debate inspection for electronic earpieces but today abruptly reversed themselves and declined,” Tim Murtaugh, communications director for the Trump campaign, said in a statement. “Biden’s handlers have asked for multiple breaks during the debate, which President Trump doesn’t need, so we have rejected that request. On top of the refusal to take a drug test, it seems pretty obvious that the Biden team is looking for any safety net they can find in the hours leading up to the debate.”
If I were the Trump campaign, I would provide the President with a small radio jammer, designed to produce a sharp squeal in the ear of anyone with a radio frequency. He can use it while Biden is getting his questions from Chris Wallace and his answers from his handlers.
True story. A few weeks ago, our garage door openers suddenly stopped responding correctly to the battery powered "clickers" we carry in the cars. Sometimes they worked, but at a very short range, sometimes they didn't. Georgia did a search today, and one of the common reports was that using LED lights in the openers interferes in the radio frequencies the openers use to receive commands from the "clickers." She had, indeed, put LED lights into the openers around the same time. She changed out the LEDs for some old incandescents we were hoarding, and indeed, it fixed them.
Armed with bombshell documents suggesting FBI misconduct, lawyers for Michael
Flynn on Tuesday will try to persuade a skeptical judge to vacate the former
national security adviser's guilty plea for lying and dismiss the charge.
Defense
lawyer Sidney Powell will be joined in her request by Justice Department
prosecutors, but she must convince U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan that the
evidence warrants the dramatic dismissal of a case originally brought by
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team.
Sullivan has solicited his
own adversarial advice, ordering a report from a former federal judge in New
York that recommended against dismissal on the grounds that DOJ's decision to
support dropping the charges was forced by President Trump's badgering.
"In
the United States, Presidents do not orchestrate pressure campaigns to get the
Justice Department to drop charges against defendants who have pleaded guilty
— twice, before two different judges — and whose guilt is obvious," the
retired U.S. District Judge John Gleeson wrote recently. "The government's
attempt to dress up a politically motivated dismissal that smacks of
impropriety as a 'policy judgment,' should be rejected."
But Powell
is armed with several new bombshell documents released by DOJ in the last
week, including one showing the lead FBI agent in the Flynn case,
William Barnett, declared there was never evidence of wrongdoing
by the retired general or Trump and the Russia probe was kept open by Mueller
simply because his team had a "get Trump" goal.
Barnett's claims
came in the form of an interview with DOJ officials in which he revealed FBI
agents recommended closing the Flynn case both in November 2016 and again in
January 2017 because there was no evidence of wrongdoing or intelligence
threats, but their bosses in FBI management overruled them and decided to
pursue the interview where Flynn was accused of lying.
One of those
supervisors, former
Assistant Director William Priestap, kept notes
questioning the decision to pursue the Flynn interview. Specifically, his
notes questioned whether the FBI's motive was to find the truth in the Russia
case or "to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired."
Barnett's
testimony suggested there was no evidentiary basis for the interview or the
pursuit of Flynn. "Barnett believed the prosecution of Flynn by SCO [special
counsel's office] was used as a means to 'get TRUMP,'" according to the
recently released interview report.
In addition, the
FBI has released text messages
showing some of the intelligence analysts who worked the Flynn case were so
concerned the FBI was engaging in misconduct that they bought liability
insurance fearing they could be sued after their bosses continued to keep the
investigation open based on "conspiracy theories."
"We all went and
purchased professional liability insurance," one analyst texted on Jan. 10,
2017, just 10 days before Trump took office.
1. You testified in 2017 that the Steele dossier was salacious and unverified
and yet you signed FISA warrants marked verified that relied on deeply flawed
evidence from the dossier. Why did you do that?
I suspect neither has offered this particular explanation under oath — or at
least they haven’t limited their explanation to this “rationalization”.
I
say that because the new information from Special Agent Barnett strongly
suggests the “Insurance Policy” was none other than General Michael Flynn
himself. You can make their “rationalization” fit into this concept if you
just accept that they weren’t going to name General Flynn individually when
they offered the rationalization. But when you put the context of events into
their words — and Agent Barnett’s recollection about what was done — or more
importantly what was not done — there is only one conclusion.
The Trump administration is preparing one of its biggest declassifications yet
in the Russia case, a super-secret document that could flip the collusion
theory on its head four years after the FBI first started its
investigation.
Multiple officials familiar with the planned
declassification, which could happen as early as this week, told Just the News
that the new evidence will raise the specter that Russian President Vladimir
Putin was actually trying to hurt President Trump, not help his election in
2016, as the Obama administration claimed.
The new evidence would
complement a revelation last week that the primary source for the Christopher
Steele anti-Trump dossier was known to the U.S. government to be tied to
Russia intelligence, raising the possibility that the Russians were
undercutting the GOP nominee.
Eventually, Hewitt came around to his main problem with Stelter’s book. He
notes that Stelter is criticizing Fox for its coverage of things like the
Mueller investigation but, in the end, that investigation found no evidence of
the long-promised collusion. Stelter’s reaction
is pretty amazing:
HH: We know the end of some stories that you criticize Fox for
their coverage of. We know the end of the Mueller report, right? There was no
collusion, correct?
BS: You know, I’m not going to play a game
about a word that is irrelevant to the question at hand. There’s still a lot
we don’t know about the President’s ties with Russia, period.
HH:
But Brian, that kind of asks, that begs the question. Your criticism in Hoax,
a lot of is based in the coverage of the Mueller investigation and how they
downplayed it and called it a Hoax. It turns out there was no collusion, and
it turns out we know this week, you couldn’t have known it during writing of
Hoax…
BS: Yeah.
HH: …that the primary sub-source of the
Steele dossier is probably a Russian agent, correct?
BS: I think
there’s a fantasyland that Fox promotes about what you’re describing, about
the Steele dossier and all of that that distracts from the key questions about
Trump’s ties with Russia. We now know from the New York Times hundreds of
millions of dollars of loans. Who does the President owe money to? We need to
know. We deserve to know that, Hugh.
HH: Brian, that’s a
deflection. The primary sub-source of the dossier was revealed last week to be
a Russian agent investigated by the Obama Department of Justice in 2009 and
’10. The dossier is discredited. There was no collusion. These are factual
matters. That’s my problem with Hoax.
BS: I’m reflecting, I’m a
media reporter, and I’m not a Steele dossier reporter. What I know is that
when you use the word hoax over and over again the way the President has, it’s
dangerous and poisonous, because it makes people think there’s nothing real
and nothing true anymore. And that’s what I think the problem is.
HH:
Will you at least agree with me that the primary sub-source of the dossier has
been revealed to be a Russian agent?
BS: I literally do not know,
because I’m a media reporter.
HH: Okay.
BS: I hate to
disappoint you. I just, I don’t cover the dossier over the air…
If
you follow the conversation closely here, Stelter first denies that collusion
is a settled issue. Then he calls the report that
Steele’s primary sub-source
was investigated as a likely Russian agent part of Fox’s “fantasyland” about
the dossier. Finally, when pressed, Stelter claims he doesn’t know the details
about the dossier’s source because that’s not his beat.
That’s
quite a series of deflections on Stelter’s part. How can you complain a
network isn’t reporting things accurately when you don’t know the facts in the
first place? Stelter doesn’t seem to have an answer for that.
"And then once I became a critic of Russiagate, I basically got banned from
the network, because I became a critic of their coverage of it," Greenwald
said.
"Are you saying you're banned from MSNBC?" Kelly asked.
"I have tons of friends there. I used to go
on all the time. I have producers who tried to book me and they get told, 'No.
He's on the no-book list,' " he responded.
First off, “morality” doesn’t have jack shit
to do with taxation. You pay what you legally owe. Nobody willingly pays the
government more than they legally owe.
This has always been this
way since America has had income taxes. There is endless court precedent. You
pay what you legally owe. That’s it. If you pay less than you legally owe,
then the government will fine or imprison you. If you pay more than you legal
owe, the government will laugh and laugh, because you are an idiot, and you
deserve to be poor.
Every single person who barks about how
somebody else should be paying more? They themselves are paying the minimum
they can get away with. As they should. As should you.
I remember
when I was taking my first tax class back in college. This class was all
accounting majors by this point. At the beginning of the semester the
professor (who’d had a long career as a tax guy) gave us an imaginary family
as our clients and had us do their taxes. One kid didn’t take advantage of all
the obvious deductions for his clients. When the professor asked why, the kid
said some mushy thing about how he didn’t think it was FAIR to keep that money
from the government… Holy shit. The professor ripped this kid a new asshole.
HOW DARE YOU!?! IT IS NOT THE GOVERNMENT’S MONEY! IT IS YOUR CLIENT’S MONEY.
YOU OWE THEM YOUR BEST! IT IS YOUR SACRED DUTY TO SAVE THEIR MONEY! YOU
DISGUST ME AND YOU SHOULD NEVER BE A CPA!
So. I finally read the NYT Trump tax story because I wanted to see what line
was being reported for taxes owed and I came across this about the $750 in
2016 and 2017. Per the NYT own story, Trump actually paid to the US Treasury
$1 million in 2016 and $4.2 million in 2017.
pic.twitter.com/ltnlMG0mKW
Did you see it? The years of employee compensation? So the NYT was given
compensation information for people who are not Donald Trump. Yeah, that
right there should make everyone spit fire from their eyes. What the hell
right does the NYT have to employee compensation?
Beginning Oct. 1, Maryland will become the first state to ban expanded polystyrene foam, or Styrofoam, food and beverage packaging. There is a growing awareness that Styrofoam is harmful to both our environment and public health.
Made from petroleum products in factories that spew toxic fumes and pollute our air, Styrofoam often ends up in our gutters and waterways as litter. It cannot be effectively recycled and causes permanent damage to our ecosystem. Foam absorbs more chemicals than other plastics, breaking down into particles that are difficult to collect. Fish eat the pieces of foam, thinking it is food; we eat the fish and ingest the toxic chemicals.
I see that claim a lot, but I never see any science to back it up. In fact, most toxic chemicals are attracted to a wide variety of natural particles, such as sediment and organic detritus, and in virtually every case the toxic compounds were less available and toxic than if they were not adsorbed to the particles and were dissolved in the water. I have a sneaky suspicion no one has tested plastics for this because they're afraid the answer will not fit the agenda, or they have, and have found it inconvenient to tout.
The New York Times has opened a new front in the war on Donald Trump with only
a few weeks before the election, after obtaining what it claims to be his tax
returns for the past many years. I say claim, because they won't actually show
the documents, likely out of fear that somehow the person(s) who leaked the
documents could be identified. There are basically three possible sources. 1)
A leak at the IRS, which would be federal crime. The federal bureaucracy has
not shied away from felonies in it's pursuit of Trump, as witness the leak of
the transcripts of Flynn's conversations with Russian ambassador Kislyak. 2) A
leak from a financial institution (eg. tax preparer) in possession of the
documents for work reasons, also a crime, and a breach of fiduciary duty, or
3) a deliberate preemptive leak by Trump or part of the Trump organization, to
get ahead of something coming. Seeing it's the NYT, this seems unlikely.
Anyway, as Althouse reports "Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the
presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750."
"He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely
because he reported losing much more money than he made. As the president
wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his
finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars
in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is
a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the
legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after
declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100
million.."
The NYT reports,
saying that it "has obtained tax-return data extending over more than two
decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his business
organization, including detailed information from his first two years in
office."
It's very interesting that the NYT, strongly motivated to find tax crimes and
connections to Russia, seems to have only found that Trump might be a faker —
not the billionaire business genius he purports to be. But, it seems, the main
thing he is doing is putting more money into his businesses than he takes out,
and that may be a wise or at least legally authorized way to run his affairs.
Now, he's forced to explain that to us, and maybe we will be outraged that the
tax laws are currently arranged to allow people to escape taxes, but maybe we
will accept instruction that the outrage should be directed at Congress...
even at Joe Biden.
Really, it's no secret that both real estate investing, and entertainment,
Trump largest areas of endeavor, offer ample opportunities to shield income
from taxes, largely due to tax breaks from Congress, passed with Democrats
complicity.
Lol at this offhand detail in the Times piece: "Nor do [tax records] reveal
any previously unreported connections to Russia."
https://t.co/XDQjag1gwC
In the
article
the Times completely obfuscates the way income taxes are strategically offset
by depreciation, mortgage interest and the entire reason why real estate
ownership is viewed as a business.
[…] So imagine our guy took out an $8 million mortgage at five percent,
paying $2 million cash. Now he’s got to pay $400,000 in mortgage payments.
He wants to make at least that much so he charges tenants an aggregate of
$425,000, which after upkeep comes out to $410,000 of net income. (Remember,
if the bank didn’t think he could make more in rent than the mortgage
payment, it probably wouldn’t have lent him the money.) The interest payment
on the loan–let’s call it $390,000–is deductible from his income, leaving
him with $20,000 in net income. He gets to keep that and pay no taxes on it,
however, because he still gets to apply the $370,000 depreciation charge. He
tells the IRS he lost $350,000.
Under our tax code, ordinary
business expenses can be deducted in the year they are incurred. But when a
business pays for a long-lasting item expected to produce income–like
machinery, vehicles, or an apartment building–it is considered a capital
investment. Instead of getting to write-off the cost all at once, the
business is required to write it off over the course of decades. After the
1986 tax code, this was set at 27.5 years for residential real estate. (more)
Anyone who has ever operated a business knows that offsetting income is one of
the primary reasons to be self-employed. Additionally, the Times completely
skips over the tens-of-millions in payroll taxes paid by the Trump
organization and tens-of-millions in property and sales taxes paid by all of
the various Trump properties.
What Ms. Bartiromo encapsulates is in-line with my own research and
interactions with people very close to the DC events. In essence, this
sentiment; in combination with AG Bill Barr having a keen awareness of the
undercurrent frustration outside the DC bubble; is at the heart of why USAO
Jeff Jensen has been channeling information to Michael Flynn’s defense counsel
Sidney Powell.
Bill Barr and Robert Mueller have been friends for 30+ years, going back to
their days together in the Reagan Justice Department.
It is my
belief that Bill Barr sees the work of the SCO, and the drafting of the SCO
report, as being not the product of the Robert Mueller he has known since the
1980s, but instead, the work of anti-Trump Democrat partisans who Mueller
brought to the SCO. As a private citizen — and former Attorney General — he
sent a scathing legal memo to Rod Rosenstein in the summer of 2018 challenging
the public reports about the nature of a criminal “obstruction” investigation
against the Office of the President that was being conducted by the SCO as a
surrogate for DOJ. When he was confirmed as Attorney General — and the SCO
staff knew they would be reporting to him now and no longer to Rosenstein —
the SCO announced in just a matter of a few weeks that the investigation would
be shut down.
Were those two events connected? Well, Andrew
Weissmann provided the answer to that question yesterday in an excerpt from
his book published in a Politico story:
But the limitations of our report were underscored on the night of March 24,
2019, as I stood in the doorway of my apartment in Washington, reading
Barr’s four-page letter on my iPad. Just two days after Mueller had handed
in our final report—the product of 22 months of intensive work by 59
prosecutors, agents and analysts—Barr issued a letter purporting to
summarize our report.
Barr’s letter was a shot across the bow,
signaling that the checking function Mueller provided on the actions of the
president had come to an abrupt end.
Weissmann “gives away the game” without even realizing the evil in his
presumption.
Where in the Special Counsel regulations does it say
that such an appointment by the Attorney General is to serve as a “checking
function” on the “actions of the President”?
Graham offered some insight into what the declassified records might
contain.
"There’s three buckets here," he said of alleged
wrongdoing in the Trump-Russia investigation.
The first focuses on
whether there was "any legitimate reason" for special counsel Robert Mueller
to be investigating the Trump team for a crime regarding Russia. "In 2017,
there was no evidence that anybody on the Trump campaign was working with the
Russians," Graham said.
The other two areas, according to Graham,
relate to how the FBI "lied its a-- off" to the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act court to obtain warrants to wiretap a member of President
Trump's 2016 campaign and
the case against retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who was briefly Trump's first national security adviser.
It was worse than we thought. We’re referring to the FBI’s 2016
investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia, as new documents this week
reveal.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham on Thursday
released newly declassified FBI documents that contain this stunner: The
bureau relied on a suspected Russian agent for the information it used to
obtain a secret surveillance warrant against former Trump adviser Carter
Page.
Four years into accusations about Russia-Trump collusion,
we finally learn that Russia’s main conduit for disinformation may have been
America’s FBI. Vladimir Putin must be howling with laughter.
While the Democrats and NeverTrumpers were accusing Trump of being Putin’s
tool, actually it was the Resistance that was Putin’s tool all along. . . .
Speaking of crimes, at Am Think, Jack Cashill is still talking about Seth Rich: The Murder Washington Doesn't Want Solved. I'm a skeptic, but it really could be that he was the source of the DNC hacks to wikileaks.
A Windsor Township man has been sentenced to prison for embezzling more
than $130,000 from the nonprofit Maryland sport-fishing association where he
was executive director.
David Jeffrey Smith, 40, of the 1600 block of Rosebrook Drive,
appeared in Maryland's Anne Arundel Circuit Court on Thursday and was
sentenced to five years in prison, with all but 18 months of that sentence
suspended, according to court records.
He also was sentenced to
five years' probation and ordered to pay $136,200 in restitution to the
Maryland Saltwater Sportfishing Association, records state.
"He's
going to have to live with what he's done," said Maryland attorney
Stephen Shechtel, who represents the MSSA and who was a member for more than
30 years. "He put us out of business. … There's nothing left to save."
Despite the MSSA not being in existence anymore, it still has significant
debts. The organization had about 8,000 members, the attorney said.
"It
owes so much money to so many people and so many entities," Shechtel said.
"There's almost a hundred grand just in bank loans."
If Smith
fails to pay restitution, he will be in violation of his probation and could
be jailed for the balance of his prison term, the attorney said.
For years, MSSA hosted a hugely popular spring trophy season tournament,
with the largest Striped Bass (or as we call them in Maryland, Rockfish)
brought back winning pretty significant prize money.
One of my fishing friends on Facebook commented that by going belly up, MSSA
did more for Striped Bass than they ever did as a conservation organization.
Skye and I got started after noon, but before lunch. On the way down Skye consented to my taking a picture of this tiny Pearl Crescent. This photo made me realize how they got the name. Do you see it?
A Calvert County style conversation
Pretty weather, low 70s, and lots of fluffy clouds, but no wind to speak of. It was almost dead high tide, so shark's tooth hunting wasn't too good. Only 14 smallish teeth.
Not too shockingly, most of today's items are still related to the themes from
the past couple of days, the new release of documents from the DOJ via the
Flynn defense team, which show the upper echelon of the FBI eager to get Trump
and hurt Flynn as a means to do so, and the revelations by Lindsey Graham 2.0
that the main source for the stories in the Steele dossier was a suspected
Russian spy, the FBI knew it, and didn't bother to inform the FISA court.
Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, formally notified
James Boasberg, the judge presiding over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court (FISC) about the information in a letter on Thursday.
“This letter, and the attached summary, details
what appear to be further failures on the part of the FBI to fully inform the
court of all of the facts related to the probable cause determination for the
Carter Page FISA applications,” Graham wrote.
“I feel that it is my
duty to alert the court to this information so that it can consider it as part
of its ongoing review of this matter.”
It was always a witch hunt designed to “get Trump.” Collusion was an illusion
invented by a suspected Russian spy but zealously embraced by malevolent
actors at the FBI and later by scheming prosecutors on Special Counsel
Robert Mueller’s
team of partisans.
These are the stunning revelations contained in
two sets of newly declassified documents that pull back the curtain on the
Russia Hoax, the dirtiest political trick in American history.
In testimony
that is corroborated by records, FBI Special Agent William J. Barnett has
exposed how the bureau’s collusion investigation of Donald Trump was based on
nothing more than “supposition on supposition” and devoid of any credible
evidence.
Assigned to lead the bureau’s original investigation into
former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Barnett came to
realize that the case against Flynn was being engineered or manipulated as way
to damage President Trump. Flynn, whose life and livelihood were ruined,
became collateral damage.
FBI investigators, who concluded there
was no plausible case against Flynn, were ignored. Instead of closing the
investigation down, the critical decision to move forward was made “top-
down.” Then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who had a contentious past
relationship with Flynn, was calling the shots. The retired three-star Army
general didn’t stand a chance.
#Durham
Full Story: Primary sub-source for Steele dossier was subject of 2009 FBI
counterintelligence case + those facts known to Crossfire Hurricane team Dec
2016 + more warnings dossier credibility Jan 2017 + dossier still used for 3
renewals.
@CBSNewshttps://t.co/DPl9v6uwxl
Most recently, it has been revealed the sub-source for the Steele Dossier—the
guy Christopher Steele relied upon for his vile lies—had already been
investigated by the FBI as, of all things, a Russian agent, making the Dossier
itself likely deliberate Russian disinformation that was accepted by the FBI
anyway because… well… by any means necessary. (The shameless liars at
Mueller’s operation claimed the Russians favored Trump, which is ludicrous
given this revelation plus the content of the Dossier.)
It’s
amazing it took three years for us to learn this.
But Sean H.
evidently made one, I regret to say serious, mistake, probably because he’s
basically a nice guy from a law enforcement family. He insisted all along that
the problems in the FBI were only at the top, the so-called “Seventh Floor,”
the domain of Comey, Strzok, McCabe, and the others.
Unfortunately,
no. Also just revealed after three years are 302s (near-contemporaneous notes
made after an interview) and texts that show lower-ranking FBI agents too were
aware of the malfeasances that were occurring in the early stages of the
Michael Flynn case.
In fact these agents were so alarmed they were
considering professional liability insurance lest they be sued for the
dishonest—one could even say treasonous— activities in which they were being
forced to participate.
Frankly, I never imagined a FBI agent could
even buy such insurance. The implications are unpatriotic on their face. But
live and learn.
James Herbert, an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts,
said he was compelled to issue the stunning rebuke Thursday over concerns Barr
was politicizing the Justice Department.
"While I am a federal
prosecutor, I am writing to express my own views, clearly not those of the
department, on a matter that should concern all citizens: the unprecedented
politicization of the office of the attorney general," Herbert wrote in
The Boston Globe. "The attorney general acts as though his job is to serve only the political
interests of Donald J. Trump. This is a dangerous abuse of power."
Herbert
cited Barr’s summary of former special counsel Robert Mueller's report
downplaying its findings in the Russia investigation and remarks echoing
debunked claims from
President Trump over
concerns about widespread fraud in mail-in ballots to argue that the attorney
general is using the DOJ to further the White House’s political interests.
“William
Barr has done the president’s bidding at every turn. For 30 years I have been
proud to say I work for the Department of Justice, but the current attorney
general has brought shame on the department he purports to lead,” Herbert
wrote.
Well, the AG works for the President. I suppose he objected when Eric Holder
did what Barack told him to do?
Herbert said he was inspired to speak out after Barr gave a speech earlier
this month at Hillsdale College, a conservative Michigan institution. The
attorney
raised eyebrows
in the speech by claiming virtual absolute power within his agency.
“What exactly am I interfering with? Under the law, all
prosecutorial power is invested in the attorney general,” Barr said in the
speech at Hillsdale College in response to claims he was interfering in cases
involving Trump associates.
“Letting the most junior members set
the agenda might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool, but it is no
way to run a federal agency,” he said.
If anything, this is a time when Joe should be out there talking about SCOTUS
and of all things, paying his respects to the late Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg. The Democratic base isn’t enthused by him. This is an issue that
could gin up support. Look, I’m not complaining. Keep the bunker mentality
going, Joe. Battleground states are only trending more towards Trump.
Yet, there could be another reason. The liberal media, which acted
as the Biden rapid response team, says he’s doing debate preparation. Yes, the
first debate is next Tuesday, but I think we’re forgetting the disastrous
interview Joe recently had with Axios. Yeah, Hunter Biden was brought up by
Mike Allen, the site’s co-founder. Joe didn’t handle it well.
The witness protection of Joe Biden by the media is starting to look like
election interference.
Exhibit A: The Senate interim report
released Wednesday detailing millions of dollars
Joe Biden’s son Hunter
received from corrupt foreign oligarchs and companies while his father was
vice president.
Despite its obvious news value, the report
immediately was pilloried by influential media outlets such as The New York
Times and The Washington Post as “inconclusive” partisan echoing of Russian
propaganda.
“Republican Inquiry Finds No Evidence of Wrongdoing
by Biden,” was the Times’ headline.
“GOP’s Hunter Biden report
doesn’t back up Trump’s actual conspiracy theory — or anything close to it,”
said The Washington Post.
“GOP senators’ anti-Biden report
repackages old claims” was another typical headline dismissing the report,
this from Politico.
Yet there are new and damning allegations in
the report about Hunter’s ability to leverage
his father’s position
as vice president into riches for himself and his friends.
The
old allegations were damning enough, anyway, despite the fact they have been
flushed down the memory hole. Take Hunter’s $50,000 monthly payment for
sitting on the board of Ukrainian natural-gas
firm Burisma Holdings, despite no relevant experience and a
history of drug problems, at a time when his father was in charge of US policy toward Ukraine.
But
here’s just one of the new revelations: Hunter received a
$3.5 million wire
transfer in 2014 from Elena Baturina, the wife of the former mayor of
Moscow, and a billionaire friend of Vladimir Putin.
