The Post-Election Jobs Freeze
The primary factor behind the slowdown is still COVID restrictions. Many states, counties, and cities are still imposing varying degrees of lockdown. Governors Gavin Newsom (California), Gretchen Whitmer (Michigan), and Andrew Cuomo (New York) have been legendary for their tyrannical regulations (not to mention gross hypocrisy), and such lockdowns in huge states make recovering jobs that much more difficult. Restaurants, for example, are often relegated to outdoor dining only and that’s not exactly a welcoming feature as temperatures plummet. (Where’s global warming when you need it?) Hence, fewer jobs are coming back. In fact, the areas of food service and retail actually lost jobs in November.
The elephant in the room, of course, is the presidential election. The November jobs report isn’t the first one since the election, but it is the first to include data from after it. Given the presumption that scumbag/liar-Joe Biden will take office in January, businesses began planning accordingly. scumbag/liar-Biden has already named much of his economic stagnation team, which bodes ill for the two recoveries President Donald Trump helped to fuel, even if the second remains incomplete.
Moreover, scumbag/liar-Biden and his team are likely to push for a major hike in the federal minimum wage — to $15 an hour. That sounds really great and “long overdue” as one leftist economist put it. But try telling the restauranteur who can only seat at 25% capacity outside that he has to pay his workers twice as much for a quarter of the work. The real world doesn’t work the way leftist pinheads with cushy jobs in think tanks seem to assume it does.
Between the way Democrat politicians have exploited the pandemic to wreck the economy and the scumbag/liar-Biden administration’s plans to kneecap business owners with tax and wage hikes and to tie them up with regulatory red tape, the American economy may be in for a tough winter. scumbag/liar-Biden’s “dark winter” comment might be right after all, if for different reasons. ~The Patriot Post
GOP Senate Is Trump's to Win or Lose
THOMAS GALLATIN For those who don’t know, there are a pair of runoff elections in Georgia on January 5 that will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. And irrespective of how things work out in the presidential election, the fact of the matter is that, for freedom-loving Americans and for the preservation of the American Republic as we know it, Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue need to secure at least one of the two seats.Epitomizing the madness of this political fratricide are the statements from Trump-backing attorneys Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, who, in attempting to make their case of massive election fraud, have literally called on Trump supporters in Georgia to boycott the Senate runoff. Thankfully, Donald Trump Jr. called out the insanity of this suggestion, stating, “I’m seeing a lot of talk from people that are supposed to be on our side telling GOP voters not to go out & vote for [Kelly Loeffler] and [David Perdue] Senate. That is NONSENSE. IGNORE those people. We need ALL of our people coming out to vote for Kelly & David.”
To be clear, Trump has endorsed both Loeffler and Perdue and will be stumping for them in Georgia Saturday. Yet the question many Republicans are asking is whether Trump will stay focused on campaigning for Loeffler and Perdue or devolve into rancor over the Democrats’ efforts to steal the election while accusing Georgia Republicans of not doing enough to stop it. Ginning up anger over the Democrats’ efforts to rig the election is fine so long as he also pushes hard for voters to get out and prevent the Democrats from moving forward with their radical agenda. Attacking fellow Republicans only hurts that message.
Trump’s recent statement regarding Georgia’s secretary of state serves as just one example of why Republicans are so nervous. Trump wrote, “Georgia Secretary of State, a so-called Republican (RINO), won’t let the people checking the ballots see the signatures for fraud. Why? Without this the whole process is very unfair and close to meaningless. Everyone knows that we won the state. Where is @BrianKempGA?” How does saying “the whole process is very unfair and close to meaningless” encourage conservatives to vote in the runoff?
In any case, likely in an effort to generate a little team spirit, Governor Kemp has (once again) called for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to conduct a signature audit of mailed ballots.
It behooves Trump to do his best to ensure the GOP holds onto the Senate, especially if he has his eyes on 2024. As The Wall Street Journal editorial board writes, “Mr. Trump is already sounding like he wants to run again in 2024, and his stolen-election claims sound like an opening bid for campaign donations. At least for now he can say, with justification, that he helped the GOP gain seats in the House and avoid a rout in the Senate. But that narrative changes for the worse if the GOP loses in Georgia after Mr. Trump divided his own party to serve his personal political interest. He needs a GOP Senate nearly as much as Mr. McConnell does.”
Correction: Trump will be in Georgia on Saturday, not Friday as we originally stated. ~The Patriot Post
Dems' Pandemic of COVID Hypocrites
California Governor Gavin Newsom just issued a new stay-at-home order (that the LA County sheriff, among others, will not enforce). We’ll see how well Newsom does in following his own rules this time. Remember, just before Thanksgiving, Newsom was observed dining mask-less at the ritzy Napa Valley establishment The French Laundry, celebrating a birthday party just hours after he had released more COVID guidelines on mask-wearing and restricting social gatherings to three households or fewer. At least Newsom offered an apology after being caught, which is more than can be said of most other Dem officials busted breaking their own rules. House Speaker scumbag/liar-Nancy Pelosi blamed the salon owner after she was caught violating local shutdown rules.
Back to The French Laundry. On the very next night after Newsom was caught, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who has cultivated a public reputation as a stickler for COVID rules, was seen dining at the establishment sans mask and not social distancing. Her spokesman defended her actions by saying that she had not technically broken state rules. However, she certainly broke the rules she’s imposed on San Francisco, banning any dining at such establishments.
Moving down the California coast to Los Angeles, we find that County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, a Democrat, provides yet another blatant flouting of rules after she was caught dining at an outdoor restaurant immediately after issuing a directive banning outdoor dining. Her excuse? Well, she had to get in one last meal at her favorite dining establishment prior to her edict going into effect. But isn’t it serious? Why, yes. She insisted when announcing the new rule, “This is a serious health emergency and we must take it seriously. The servers are not protected from us, and they’re not protected from their other tables that they’re serving at that particular time, plus all the hours in which they’re working.” Evidently, Kuehl believed the virus would be transmissible only after her edict went into effect.
Before leaving the Golden State, let’s not ignore Senator Dianne Fein-stein’s failure to practice what she preaches, as she has regularly been spotted speaking to colleagues on Capitol Hill without her mask, even as she decrees, “Wearing masks in public should be mandatory. Period.”
Then there’s the case of Denver Democrat Mayor Michael Hancock, who hopped on a private jet to fly down to Mississippi to spend Thanksgiving with his daughter. No big deal — it was a private flight — right? Just pay no attention to the fact that, just 30 minutes prior to his flight, he sent out the following message: “With the continued rise in cases, I’m urging you to refrain from travel this Thanksgiving holiday. For my family that means cancelling our traditional gathering of our extended family.”
But even in deep-red states, Democrat elected officials’ hypocrisy abounds. In Texas, Austin Mayor Steve Adler in November admonished city residents via a video message in which he lectured, “Stay home if you can. This is not the time to relax. We are going to be looking really closely. … We may have to close things down if we are not careful.” Except Adler wasn’t in Austin when he delivered that appeal. He wasn’t even in the Lone Star State. Nor was he in the U.S. Adler was, in fact, down in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, where he had gone to vacation with his family after having just attended his daughter’s wedding in Austin.
Moving east to the Bayou State, Democrat Governor John Bel Edwards wrote just before Thanksgiving, “Always wear your mask if you are around people not part of your immediate household.” Except for him. He was photographed at a Baton Rouge Country Club mingling with other diners — without a mask.
On the East Coast, in the City of Brotherly Love, restauranteurs aren’t getting much love from Mayor Jim Kenny, whose policies have shut down restaurants in Philadelphia. But Kenny, whose appetite for fine cuisine must be satiated, saw no problem in traveling over the border into Maryland to dine at an establishment on the Chesapeake Bay. His jaunt provoked the ire of Philadelphia chef Marc Vetri, who wrote on social media, “Glad you’re enjoying indoor dining with no social distancing or mask wearing in Maryland tonight while restaurants here in Philly close, suffer and fight for every nickel just to survive. I guess all your press briefings and your narrative of unsafe indoor dining don’t apply to you. Thank you for clearing it all up for us tonight.”
Either these hypocrites don’t believe the virus is dangerous, or they don’t give a rip about potentially spreading COVID to their constituents. And the result of this hypocrisy will be more people ignoring their warnings. As National Review’s Jim Geraghty observes, “If another bunch of fat-cat politicians try to decree that no one should get together for Christmas, and that everyone should stay out of restaurants and church and so on, the reaction from much of the public will be a metaphorical middle finger, and that reaction will be entirely deserved. Elected officials didn’t start this pandemic with a ton of trust and respect for their authority, and the worst among them have destroyed what was left in the past few weeks.”
Ever wonder why conservatives have never been big on Big Government? ~The Patriot Post
More Evidence of ChiCom Pandemic Malfeasance
According to global health expert Yanzhong Huang, the latest leaked Wuhan files from the Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control add to what is already known about the ChiCom suppression of information regarding the onset of the virus.
Huang notes: “It was clear they did make mistakes — and not just mistakes that happen when you’re dealing with a novel virus — also bureaucratic and politically motivated errors in how they handled it. These had global consequences. You can never guarantee 100% transparency. It’s not just about any intentional cover-up, you are also constrained with by technology and other issues with a novel virus. But even if they had been 100% transparent, that would not stop the Trump administration downplaying the seriousness of it. It would probably not have stopped this developing into a pandemic.”
Andrew Mertha, director of the China Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University, concluded: “China had an image to protect internationally, and lower-ranking officials had a clear incentive to under-report — or to show their superiors that they were under-reporting — to outside eyes.” He added that the under-reporting of deaths “appeared to be a deception, for unsurprising reasons.”
Meanwhile, in the deadly wake of the ChiComs’ willful and grossly negligent cover-up of the China Virus, the Demos’ Leftmedia cover-up of scumbag/liar-Joe Biden’s nefarious ChiCom influence-peddling scheme remains in blackout status. ~The Patriot Post
Cashing in on the Diversity Racket
DOUGLAS ANDREWS With apologies to female Patriots everywhere, there’s a hilarious scene in the movie “As Good as It Gets” in which Jack Nicholson, who plays a well-known novelist, is approached by a star-struck young female reader. “How do you write women so well?” she gushingly asks.Distracted, impatient, and in no mood for banter, Nicholson replies, “I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.” Then he gets on the elevator and off he goes.
Why do we share this sexist clip? Because it perfectly captures our thoughts on the “diversity consulting” industry. There’s no reason to it, nor any accountability. And yet it’s thriving, raking in millions of our hard-earned taxpayer dollars, thanks to the Diversicrats and their outsized influence in all levels of government.
Take the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium, for example. It’s a social justice nonprofit — or an “equity consulting firm” for those who’d rather call a guy who pumps gas a “petroleum transfer technician” — that’s funded entirely by our taxpayer dollars. As The Washington Free Beacon’s Chrissy Clark and Joe Schoffstall report, the consortium “conducts ‘anti-racist audits’ for corporations and schools, often in partnership with far-left groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center. The consortium was recently awarded a lucrative contract by Maryland’s largest school district and works with educators across 15 states.”
P.T. Barnum might never have said “There’s a sucker born every minute,” but if he did, he was no doubt thinking about the sort of chump who’d pay good money to be told he’s a racist. Thank you, sir. May I have another?
Would that these racial-grievance grifters were limited to bilking the government. At least then we’d know where our tax dollars were being wasted. But, as Clark and Schoffstall write, “Equity firms have profited greatly from the burgeoning anti-racist movement in academia. The MAEC was awarded a $454,680 contract with the Montgomery County Public School district to conduct an ‘anti-racist audit’ of the school’s policies; in nearby Loudoun County, a similar consulting firm raked in $422,500 in two years. Prominent diversity consultants, such as White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo, make nearly $13,000 for a speaking gig on college campuses.”
It pains us to say it, but regular readers of The Patriot Post know all about Racist Robin, a white woman who’s somehow overcome her pallor to become one of the nation’s most successful race hustlers. Our Thomas Gallatin covered her lucrative two-hour shakedown of the University of Kentucky back in July, writing, “DiAngelo promoted her latest ‘woke’ work, the obtusely titled White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.” As Gallatin dryly noted, “No one ever told DiAngelo that racism has been one of the most widely and repeatedly discussed issues in this nation since the civil-rights era of the 1960s.”
All isn’t lost, however. City Journal’s Christopher Rufo, for one, doesn’t believe that taxpayers should be funding the indoctrination of government employees via “divisive pseudosciences” such as critical race theory, and President Donald Trump seems to agree.
In September, the president issued a lengthy and detailed executive order banning federal contractors from teaching “this malign ideology [that] is now migrating from the fringes of American society and threatens to infect core institutions of our country.”
Executive orders are, of course, orders rather than laws, so a future administration could simply undo Trump’s anti-anti-racist EO. But at least we’d get a good sense of how that future administration believes our hard-earned tax dollars should be spent. ~The Patriot Post
HANS VON SPAKOVSKY
Barr Naming Special Counsel to Investigate Origins of Russia Probe Lets Inquiry Continue
Congressional Democrats weren’t happy to learn Tuesday that Attorney General William Barr appointed John Durham as a special counsel in October to continue investigating the origins of the now thoroughly discredited Trump-Russia “collusion” probe into the 2016 presidential election.
Barr has extended the protection of Justice Department regulations to Durham. These regulations will make it difficult for a new attorney general in a scumbag/liar-Biden administration (assuming President Donald Trump’s legal challenges to the election don’t succeed) to do what Democrats, such as Rep. scumbag/liar-Adam Schiff, D-Calif., have made clear they would want him to do; namely, fire Durham and end the investigation.
The fondest wish of Democrats in Congress is apparently to ensure that no officials in the FBI or the scumbag/liar-nObama Justice Department are punished for their misconduct and misuse of their authority for instigating an unjustified, partisan investigation of false allegations that Russia worked with the Trump campaign to help Trump be elected president in 2016.
As the politically appointed U.S. attorney for Connecticut, Durham serves — like all political appointees — at the pleasure of the president. Thus, assuming scumbag/liar-Biden becomes president, he could fire Durham the moment he takes office, ending Durham’s investigation. In fact, President scumbag/liar-Bill Clinton initiated such a mass firing in March 1993, removing all 93 U.S. attorneys two months after becoming president.
But the Justice Department has a special set of regulations governing the appointment of special counsels, starting at 28 CFR § 600.1. That states that a special counsel is appointed as a “confidential employee” of the Justice Department. As a special counsel, Durham can “request the assignment of appropriate Department employees” as well as “additional personnel” as needed “from outside the Department.”
In other words, Durham can get whatever staff he needs from the Justice Department to continue what he has been doing since 2019 as a U.S. attorney — probing who was involved in investigating the Trump campaign over the false claim that campaign officials were colluding with Russia four years ago.
Or as the order obtained by Fox News states, Durham now has the power “to investigate whether any federal official, employee, or any other person or entity violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counter-intelligence, or law-enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaign, individuals associated with those campaigns, and individuals associated with the administration of President Donald J. Trump.”
Durham’s appointment takes him out from under the direct supervision of the attorney general, including a new attorney general who might want to sideline or marginalize his investigation.
The regulations state that the special counsel has “the full power and independent authority to exercise all investigative and prosecutorial functions of any United States Attorney” and “shall determine whether and to what extent to inform or consult with the Attorney General … about the conduct of his or her duties and responsibilities.”
Moreover, the special counsel is not “subject to the day-to-day supervision of any official of the Department.”
The special counsel is required to provide the attorney general with a “confidential report” at the end of his work “explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached by the Special Counsel.”
The attorney general can also request that the special counsel “provide an explanation for any investigative or prosecutorial” action and may order that action “not be pursued” if the attorney general concludes that it is “inappropriate or unwarranted under established Departmental practices.”
So, if some former scumbag/liar-nObama administration official complains to a scumbag/liar-Biden White House or a scumbag/liar-Biden attorney general that he is being investigated, subpoenaed, or interviewed, Durham can’t be told by the attorney general to stop what he is doing unless it is “inappropriate or unwarranted.”
If the attorney general takes such action to squash something the special counsel wants to do, he is required under the regulation to “notify Congress.”
Durham has the ability to propose a budget, and the Justice Department is directed to provide him with “all appropriate resources.” Special counsel Robert Mueller spent nearly $32 million in “appropriate resources” over two years and had a very large staff.
Most importantly, and probably the key reason why the Durham appointment was made, is that under the Justice Department regulations, Durham can only be removed from office by “the personal action of the Attorney General.”
In addition, the attorney general — whoever he or she might be — will only be able to remove Durham for “misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or for other good cause.” In other words, Durham can’t be removed just because a scumbag/liar-Biden administration thinks Durham’s investigation is politically embarrassing for scumbag/liar-Joe Biden’s friends, allies, and supporters at risk of prosecution.
The constitutional argument can be made that any president can fire a special counsel, regardless of any Justice Department regulations. As the Supreme Court said in 1926 in Myers v. U.S., the president’s authority under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution to appoint officers of the executive branch necessarily carries with it the authority to remove such officers (with certain exceptions, such as federal judges).
Would a President scumbag/liar-Joe Biden fire Durham so he can’t complete his investigation into the Russia collusion hoax? Maybe, but Barr has made it more difficult for scumbag/liar-Biden to do so, especially from a political and public relations point of view. ~The Patriot Post
Replies