As many people are aware, CTH has decided to go back through two years of documents, releases, reports, testimony and media interviews; including interviews with fired FBI Director James Comey; question all prior assumptions; re-examine the entire framework within all the known granular DOJ and FBI activity; and finally contrast it all against the full scope of released messaging between FBI Counterintelligence Agent Peter Strzok and DOJ Special Counsel assigned to Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page.
Suffice to say, this project was no small task; reading the messages in a chronological order takes a minimum of four to six hours. It is understandable why so much mystery and confusion circles the rather complex storyline. However, before going into the deep weeds – two distinct issues must frame what will soon follow:
♦First, notice a catch-phrase by fired FBI Director James Comey in every interview: “that was not my understanding.” That phrase is Mr. Comey’s ‘go-to’ lead-in at the beginning of every explanation, amid challenging questions presented to him, on his current book tour. That phrase is also a highly legalized linguistics and deployed for a specific reason.
♦Second, if you are going to endeavor to read through all of the released messages between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok; and/or review an outline of content that utilizes their communication as the background to understand events within the FBI and DOJ-NSD; it helps to have a familiarity from their perspective.
Having said that, this encapsulation of the Page and Strzok outlook by “Newhere” is both fair and accurate:
The nature and tone sound like a couple of earnest, self-important, professional bureaucrats who see themselves as high-achieving stand-outs among their peers, doing the “right thing” or at least the “best” thing among some ugly office politics and broader forces.
Among the two of them, they unquestionably believe themselves “the good guys,” with appropriate motives and judgment.
They are preoccupied with their professional reputations, ambitions and positioning. They spend lots of time dissecting the minutiae of day-to-day interactions and orchestrating mundane office dynamics, and often reassure each other on their respective “excellence” and superiority. All to a degree that pegs their maturity and self-awareness at a level of maybe adolescent. They interpret events and decisions around them in insular terms, like teenagers passing notes in homeroom about high school social cliques.
Takeaways?
— They weren’t driven by specifically by partisan bias. Viewing it as simple bias only minimizes the bigger problem. They were consummate professional bureaucrats, intuiting, anticipating, and expanding upon the goals of leadership, both spoken and implied. Contempt for the implicated political actors was a given; all politicians are intellectually and morally inferior, and (in their minds) the country needs professionals like them having the tools to stand watch and “protect” the country when necessary.
— Trump was viewed as so obviously “dangerous” that extreme measures were necessary. This wasn’t a *partisan* sentiment — it was (again, in their minds) a professional judgment. Which is how they managed the cognitive dissonance of behaving as they did while seeing themselves as moral actors.
These aren’t sociopaths with no consciences. They have the conscience of a common, professional technocrat. Self-delusion and self-importance that warps the moral compass (e.g., they feel aggrieved by things like being left out of a meeting, and they hyper-focus on their own “credit-seeking” vs. “team player” motivations, as if THESE are the pressing moral issues at stake . . ). They are professional technocrats like a lot of professional technocrats, who believe their jobs are singularly important, that they face pressures that are uniquely complicated — who know they hold replaceable jobs, but secretly believe themselves irreplaceable.
Professionalism becomes its own ethic, from which perspective actual ethics are quaint, a luxury for academics or simpletons. This isn’t spoken or acknowledged.
— The scariest part: conduct in the the Clinton/Trump investigations wasn’t anomalous. The fact that these “professionals” behaved this way with only a faint notion of the significance of what they were doing suggests it was more business-as-usual than the biggest scandal of our lifetimes. Meaning it’s even a bigger scandal.
— They did have at least a faint notion that they had ventured well outside of “by the book” territory, but were again deluded by feeling indispensable, hand-picked by the highest echelons of bureau hierarchy, to which they aspired. Page, in particular, felt special because she was chosen by McCabe. Their moral compasses were aimed at pleasing those whose favor they sought.
— They seemed to see the FBI as white hats vis a vis DOJ. I think they truly believed that any corruption/politicization came from DOJ, and FBI jockeying/mischief was trying to set things right against all these other corrupting [political] forces.
–Page’s final “never write to me again” doesn’t seem like a hostile snub. Seems more like a signal/coded message to a friend: “We’re scr*wed. Every (wo)man for himself. I’m looking out for myself. You should too.”
Message: I am a great fan of your blog and read all with interest. I was surprised to read £10 notes have been canceled, as I still regularly get £10 and £20 notes and send them even though electronic money transfer is increasingly the norm
MR
REPLY: Britain introduced the new “tenners” last September. There was a period when both could circulate. That term expired here in the Spring of 2018. You can exchange them at a bank, but you must have an account. If you do not have an account like myself, the currency exchange operations charge 20%. The eliminated the paper one pound notes back in 1984. They will be doing the same with £20 notes. They have not yet announced any release date for that one. The speculation is that the £50 notes will be discontinued.
The Bank of England actually prints itself internally £1 million and £100 million pound notes. They are used only internally to back the paper currency issued by other banks such as the Bank of Scotland. They are used to back those notes which are exchangeable to Bank of England notes.
The head of the EU, Jean-Claude Juncker celebrates the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx in Germany. What is really stunning, is that Karl Marx is not merely the champion of Communism which he adopted from the French Commune experiment during the French Revolution, but he has ignored the little fact that no other person in history is responsible for killing tens of millions of people, more than all the wars combined, who gave their lives for his ideology.
To celebrate Karl Marx which advocates suppressing the people and taking all wealth from them and handing it to the state politicians is in itself a demonstration of exactly how the EU looks at its role today. We live in a very dangerous era for this is the collapse of Marxism and they will fight back with every ruthless means possible to save their theory of living off of other people’s money.
As many people are aware, CTH has decided to go back through two years of documents, releases, reports, testimony, media interviews; including interviews with fired FBI Director James Comey; question all prior assumptions; re-examine the entire framework within all the known granular DOJ and FBI activity; and finally contrast it all against the full scope of released messaging between FBI Agent Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
Within this project some breakout discoveries need to be highlighted. One of those discoveries pertains to the Fox News interview with James Comey and Bret Baier.
Within the interview Mr. Comey is questioned about the announcement of re-opening of the Hillary Clinton email investigation on October 28th, 2016. In his response to why there was a delay between the FBI being notified by New York on September 28th, and waiting until October 28th, James Comey revealed a very important nugget.
The New York U.S. Attorney (SDNY) called Main Justice in DC to ask about why they were not receiving authority for a search warrant. We knew that call took place on October 21st, 2016. Now we know “why” and who New York called at DOJ HQ.
Listen closely to James Comey at 06:06 to 07:30 of the interview (prompted):
Baier: “Did you know that Andrew McCabe, your deputy, had sat on that revelation about the emails”?
Comey: “Yeah, I don’t know that, I don’t know that to be the case. I do know that New York and FBI headquarters became aware that there may be some connection between Weiner’s laptop and the Clinton investigation, weeks before it was brought to me for decision – and as I write in the book I don’t know whether they could have moved faster and why the delay”
Baier: “Was it the threat that New York Agents were going to leak that it existed really what drove you to the ‘not conceal’ part?
Comey: “I don’t think so. I think what actually drove it was the prosecutors in New York who were working the criminal case against Weiner called down to headquarters and said ‘are we getting a search warrant or not for this’? That caused, I’m sorry, Justice Department Headquarters, to then call across the street to the FBI and poke the organization; and they start to move much more quickly. I don’t know why there was, if there was slow activity, why it was slow for those first couple of weeks.”
There’s some really sketchy stuff going on in that answer. Why would SDNY need to get authorization for a search warrant from DC, if this is about Weiner’s laptop? Yes, you could argue it pertains to a tightly held Clinton investigation run out of DC but the Weiner prosecution issues shouldn’t require approval from DC.
But let’s take Comey at face-value…. So there we discover it was justice officials within SDNY (Southern District of New York) who called Main Justice (DOJ in DC) and asked about a needed search warrant for “this”, presumably Weiner’s laptop by inference. Now, let’s go look at the Page/Strzok description of what was going on.
Here are the messages from Lisa Page and Peter Strzok surrounding the original date that New York officials notified Washington DC FBI. It’s important to note the two different entities: DOJ -vs- FBI.
According to the September 28, 2016, messages from FBI Agent Peter Strzok it was the SDNY in New York telling Andrew McCabe in DC about the issue. Pay close attention to the convo:
Notice: “hundreds of thousands of emails turned over by Weiner’s attorney to SDNY”.
Pay super close attention. This is not an outcome of a New York Police Dept. raid on Anthony Weiner. This is Weiner’s attorney going to the U.S. attorney and voluntarily turning over emails. The emails were not turned over to the FBI in New York, the actual emails were turned over to the State Attorney in the Southern District.
Key point here: Weiner’s attorneys turned over “emails”. Actual “emails”.
♦If the U.S. Attorney in New York has the actual physical emails on September 28th, 2016, why would they need a search warrant on October 21st, 2016? (Comey’s call explanation)
♦Why would Weiner’s attorney be handing over evidence?
Think about this carefully. I’ll get back to the importance of it later; but what I suspect is that Weiner had physical material that was his “insurance policy” against anything done to him by Hillary Clinton. Facing a criminal prosecution Weiner’s lawyer went to the U.S. Attorney and attempted to exploit/leverage the content therein on his client’s behalf.
Fast forward three weeks, and we go back to FBI in DC.
On October 21, 2016, this is the call referenced by James Comey in the Bret Baier interview. Someone from New York called “Main Justice” (the DOJ National Security Division in DC) and notified DOJ-NSD Deputy Asst. Attorney General George Toscas of the Huma Abedin/Hillary Clinton emails via the “weiner investigation”.
[I would point out again, he’s not being notified of a laptop, Toscas is notified of “emails”]
George Toscas “wanted to ensure information got to Andy“, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe…. so he called FBI Agent Peter Strzok…. who told George Toscas “we know”.
Peter Strzok then tells Bill Priestap.
Of course, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe already knew about the emails since September 28th, 2016, more than three weeks earlier.
In his Bret Baier interview FBI Director James Comey says this call is about a search warrant. There is no indication the call is actually about a search warrant. [Nor would there be a need for a search warrant if the call was actually about the emails that Wiener’s attorney dropped off on 9/21].
However, that phone call kicks off an internal debate about the previously closed Clinton email investigation; and Andrew McCabe sitting on the notification from New York for over three weeks – kicks off an internal FBI discussion about McCabe needing to recuse himself.
Now it’s October 27th, 2016, James Comey chief-of-staff Jim Rybicki wants McCabe to recuse himself. But Rybicki is alone on an island. Lisa Page is furious at such a suggestion, partly because she is McCabe’s legal counsel and if McCabe is recused so too is she.
At the same time as they are debating how to handle the Huma Abedin/Hillary Clinton emails, they are leaking to the media to frame a specific narrative.
Important to note here, that at no time is there any conversation -or hint of a conversation- that anyone is reviewing the content of the emails. The discussions don’t mention a single word about content… every scintilla of conversation is about how to handle the issues of the emails themselves. Actually, there’s not a single person mentioned in thousands of text messages that applies to an actual person who is looking at any content.
Quite simply: there is a glaringly transparent lack of an “investigation”.
Within this “tight group” at FBI, as Comey puts it, there is not a single mention of a person who is sitting somewhere looking through the reported “600,000” Clinton emails that was widely reported by media. There’s absolutely ZERO evidence of anyone looking at emails or scouring through laptop data…. and FBI Agent Peter Strzok has no staff under him who he discusses assigned to such a task…. and Strzok damned sure ain’t doing it. So what gives?
Moving on – Note to readers. Click the graphics and read the notes on them too:
It’s still October 27th, 2016, the day before James Comey announces his FBI decision to re-open the Clinton investigation. Jim Rybicki still saying McCabe should be recused from input; everyone else, including FBI Legal Counsel James Baker, is disagreeing with Rybicki and siding with Lisa Page.
Meanwhile the conversation has shifted slightly to “PC”, probable cause. Read:
While Lisa Page is leaking stories to Devlin Barrett (Wall Street Journal), the internal discussion amid the “small group” is about probable cause.
The team is now saying if there was no probable cause when Comey closed the original email investigation in July 2016 (remember the very tight boundaries of review), then there’s no probable cause in October 2016 to reopen the investigation regardless of what the email content might be.
This appears to be how the “small group” or “tight team” justify doing nothing with the content received from New York. They received the emails September 28th and it’s now October 27th, and they haven’t even looked at it. Heck, they are debating if there’s even a need to look at it.
Then on October 28th, 2016, the FBI and Main Justice officials have a conference call about the entire Huma Abedin/Hillary Clinton email issue. Here’s where it gets interesting.
George Toscas and David Laufman from DOJ-NSD articulate a position that something needs to happen likely because Main Justice is concerned about the issue of FBI (McCabe) sitting on the emails for over three weeks without any feedback to SDNY (New York).
Thanks to Deputy Director McCabe, Main Justice in DC, specifically DOJ National Security Division, now looks like they are facilitating a cover-up operation being conducted by the FBI “small group”. [which is actually true, but they can’t let that be so glaringly obvious].
As a result of the Top-Tier officials conference call, Strzok is grumpy agent because his opinion appears to be insignificant. The decision is reached to announce the re-opening of the investigation. This sends Lisa Page bananas…
…In rapid response mode, Lisa Page reaches out to Devlin Barrett again to quickly shape the media coverage. Now that the world is aware of the need for a Clinton email investigation 2.0 the internal conversation returns to McCabe’s recusal.
Please note that at no time in the FBI is anyone directing an actual investigation of the content of the Clinton emails. Every single second of every effort is devoted to shaping the public perception of the need for the investigation. Every media outlet is being watched; every article is being read; and the entire apparatus of the small group is shaping coverage therein by contacting their leak outlets.
So let’s go back to that Comey interview:
♦What exactly would SDNY need a search warrant for?
♦Anthony Weiner’s lawyer has delivered SDNY actual emails. Why would he do that?
Now lets connect those questions to an earlier report.
According to ABC News Comey writes in “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership,” that he became the public face of the investigation partly because of a mysterious development which he felt could cast “serious doubt” on Lynch’s independence.
“Had it become public, the unverified material would undoubtedly have been used by political opponents to cast serious doubt on the attorney general’s independence in connection with the Clinton investigation,” Comey writes, according to ABC. He calls the material a “development still unknown to the American public to this day.” (ABC Link)
On page six of the IG report on Andrew McCabe (point number 4) we find a conference call between Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe and the FBI field office in New York where the subject of the Weiner/Abedin/Clinton email findings overlap with: the Clinton Foundation (CF) investigation; the Clinton Email investigation; pressure for Asst. Director McCabe to recuse himself, and Washington DC via Loretta Lynch using DOJ Main Justice leverage from the Eric Garner case against the NY FBI office and New York Police Department.
4. The Attorney General Expresses Strong Concerns to McCabe and other FBI Officials about Leaks, and McCabe Discusses Recusing Himself from CF Investigation (October 26, 2016)
McCabe told the OIG that during the October 2016 time frame, it was his “perception that there was a lot of information coming out of likely the [FBI’s] New York Field Office” that was ending up in the news. McCabe told the OIG that he “had some heated back-and-forths” with the New York Assistant Director in Charge (“NY-ADIC”) over the issue of media leaks.
On October 26th, 2016, McCabe and NY-ADIC participated in what McCabe described as “a hastily convened conference call with the Attorney General who delivered the same message to us” about leaks, with specific focus being on leaks regarding the high-profile investigation by FBI’s New York Field Office into the death of Eric Garner. McCabe told us that he “never heard her use more forceful language.” NY-ADIC confirmed that the participants got “ripped by the AG on leaks.”
According to NY-ADIC’s testimony and an e-mail he sent to himself on October 31, McCabe indicated to NY-ADIC and a then-FBI Executive Assistant Director (“EAD”) in a conversation after Attorney General Lynch disconnected from the call that McCabe was recusing himself from the CF Investigation.
What makes this explosive is the timing, and what we now know about what was going on amid the FBI “small group” in DC.
On September 28th, 2016, Andrew McCabe was made aware of emails given to New York State Attorney (SDNY) directly from Anthony Weiner’s lawyer. Again, the information relayed to DC is not about a Weiner laptop, it’s about actual emails delivered by Weiner’s lawyer. The laptop was evidence in the Weiner “sexting” case involving a minor; however, the laptop did, reportedly, also contained thousands of State Department documents from Hillary Clinton and her aide Huma Abedin, Weiner’s wife.
When Weiner’s lawyer walked into SDNY to deliver his leverage emails, Preet Bharara, a Clinton-Lynch ally, was the United States Attorney.
Again, look at the text messages between FBI Agent Peter Strzok (Inbox) and FBI Special Counsel to Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page (Outbox):
[The letter to “Congress” at the end of the text exchange relates to notification of the re-opening of the Clinton investigation – Actual date of notification 10/28/16]
According to later reporting, FBI Director James Comey was not notified of the emails until after October 21st, 2016. However, in late October and early November, there were reports from people with contacts in New York police and New York FBI, about Washington DOJ officials interfering with the Weiner investigation.
On the same date (October 26th, 2016) as the Lynch, McCabe and NY FBI phone call, former NY Mayor Rudy Giuilani was telling Fox News that an explosive development was forthcoming. Two days later, October 28th, 2016, Congress was notified of the additional Clinton emails.
However, a few more days later, November 4th, 2016, an even more explosive development as Erik Prince appeared on radio and outlined discoveries within the Huma Abedin/Anthony Weiner/Hillary Clinton email issues that was being blocked by AG Lynch.
Prince claimed he had insider knowledge of the investigation that could help explain why FBI Director James Comey had to announce he was reopening the investigation into Clinton’s email server last week.
“Because of Weinergate and the sexting scandal, the NYPD started investigating it. Through a subpoena, through a warrant, they searched his laptop, and sure enough, found those 650,000 emails. They found way more stuff than just more information pertaining to the inappropriate sexting the guy was doing,” Prince claimed.
“They found State Department emails. They found a lot of other really damning criminal information, including money laundering, including the fact that Hillary went to this sex island with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Bill Clinton went there more than 20 times. Hillary Clinton went there at least six times,” he said.
“The amount of garbage that they found in these emails, of criminal activity by Hillary, by her immediate circle, and even by other Democratic members of Congress was so disgusting they gave it to the FBI, and they said, ‘We’re going to go public with this if you don’t reopen the investigation and you don’t do the right thing with timely indictments,’” Prince explained.
“I believe – I know, and this is from a very well-placed source of mine at 1PP, One Police Plaza in New York – the NYPD wanted to do a press conference announcing the warrants and the additional arrests they were making in this investigation, and they’ve gotten huge pushback, to the point of coercion, from the Justice Department, with the Justice Department threatening to charge someone that had been unrelated in the accidental heart attack death of Eric Garner almost two years ago. That’s the level of pushback the Obama Justice Department is doing against actually seeking justice in the email and other related criminal matters,” Prince said. (Link)
An earlier Grand Jury in New York had refused to return an indictment against the NYPD in the Garner case. As an outcome of that grand jury finding, and as an outcome of their own investigation, the local FBI office and Eastern District of New York DOJ office was not trying to pursue criminal charges against the NYPD officers involved. This created a dispute because federal prosecutors (EDNY) and FBI officials in New York opposed bringing charges, while prosecutors with the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department in Washington argued there was clear evidence to do so.
On October 25th, 2016, Loretta Lynch replaced the EDNY New York prosecutors:
New York Times (Oct. 25) – The Justice Department has replaced the New York team of agents and lawyers investigating the death of Eric Garner, officials said, a highly unusual shake-up that could jump-start the long-stalled case and put the government back on track to seek criminal charges.
With that move on Oct. 25th, 2016, AG Lynch was now in position to threaten criminal prosecutions against the NYPD, and repercussions against the NY FBI and EDNY using the Garner case as leverage, just like Erik Prince outlined in the phone interview above.
Additionally, we see confirmation from the IG report, the Garner case was brought up in the next day (Oct 26, 2016) phone call to the NY FBI field office; just as Erik Prince outlined. Obviously Prince’s sources were close to the events as they unfolded.
The NY FBI and Eastern District of New York (EDNY) were threatened by Washington DC Main Justice and FBI, via Loretta Lynch and Andrew McCabe to drop the Clinton/Abedin/Weiner email investigation matters, or else the Garner DOJ Civil Rights Division would be used as leverage against the NYPD. And Loretta Lynch had SDNY U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara as the enforcer waiting for her call.
And so it was…
“Had it become public, the unverified material would undoubtedly have been used by political opponents to cast serious doubt on the attorney general’s independence in connection with the Clinton investigation,” Comey writes, according to ABC. He calls the material a “development still unknown to the American public to this day.” (ABC Link)
The emails Anthony Weiner’s lawyer brought to Preet Bharara was Weiner’s leverage to escape prosecution. Likely those emails were exactly as Eric Prince sources outlined. However, the SDNY responding to upper level leadership buried those emails.
In DC the FBI (Comey and McCabe) created the appearance of a re-opening of the Clinton investigation to keep control and ensure the investigative outcomes remained out of the hands of the Eastern District (EDNY) and New York FBI field office. They had no choice.
However, once they opened the investigation October 28th, they did exactly the same thing they had done from September 28th to October 28th… they did nothing.
A few days later they declared the second investigation closed, and that was that.
President Trump is not pulling any punches today as he pushes back against the terrible personal attacks against WH Doctor, and former VA nominee, Admiral Ron Jackson:
Chairman Devin Nunes calls in to Fox News for an interview with Neil Cavuto to discuss the HPSCI report on Russian active measures (pdf also below):
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fyi, late last night I decided to reset all assumptions about the ‘small group’ and go back to the beginning of the Lisa Page and Peter Strzok texts and re-read every single message that has been released. *Note* it takes, at a very minimum, six hours to chronologically review every document containing their messages. I’m writing up a summary of that review today.
China is on its way to reaching the title of the Financial Capital of the World post-2032. However, that is also NOT going to be accomplished all on its own. In part, this is the moving trend and the shift our computer has been forecasting also because the West is in a Sovereign Debt Crisis and by raising taxes and imposing stiff regulations to try to keep the game going, GDP in the West will decline.
Nevertheless, China has some adjustment it must go through before it reaches that goal. It will surpass the EU, but the EU is hard at work of just trying to protect the jobs of bureaucrats rather than to actually make Europe a better place to live. Right now, China’s Debt to GDP stands at 250% mainly because to stimulate their economy, they actually lent money to people. The Western government bought their own bonds back to the “indirectly stimulate” the economy which never made it to the people. This is why Europe is still in deep trouble. The US took the bad loans from the banks and stuffed them in Freddie & Fannie. The EU left the bad loans on the books of the banks because it was seen as a bailout for Southern Europe. Now we have a banking crisis in Europe that never ends.
China’s debt problem is quite different. On the back of a boom in property prices, household borrowing has been climbing for the past 10 years straight. We are now approaching the correction point in this trend. The borrowing had expanded at a pace that exceeded the biggest speculative booms in the West. Now, some $6.7 trillion in personal debt also exists and this is now 50% of GDP. Private debt is now approaching crimping consumer spending power and therefore lies the recession ahead.
We will be focusing on China at the Singapore World Economic Conference in June 2018.
The Chinese government had finished its rail freight service between China and London. This is expanding the New Silk Road creating a direct rail link straight from China to Great Britain. This route moves from Beijing, across Asia and Europe, and then reaches London. Of course, this will move both ways. This will certainly enable a greater array of products to move compared to shipping
The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), who track GDP -and- U.S. Labor Department (DoL) Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS), who track wage growth, have released the initial sets of analysis for Quarter 1 of this year (Jan-March). The first quarter growth in GDP comes in at 2.3%. [Most estimates initially expected 2.0% or slightly less.]
CBS – […] It’s common for economic growth to slow in the first quarter and then accelerate later in the year. Still, the January-March increase was better than expected: Economists had foreseen a 2 percent annualized rate. In the current quarter, economists expect growth to surpass 3 percent.
The 2.3% first quarter result puts 2018 on track to achieve President Trump’s targeted growth rate: over three percent combined growth for the full year. Due to seasonal fluctuations the first quarter is historically the weakest for GDP growth. The second quarter will likely rebound well above 3.5% as the historic Q1 -vs- Q2 trend shows above.
One of the positive factors driving the strong Q1 outcome was growth in exports that helps to offset climbing imported purchases, and the continued trade deficits which POTUS Trump is confronting.
Additionally, beyond the strong GDP result, we see a very positive sign in wage growth. Year-over-year wage growth well exceeded expectations at 2.9%
Compensation costs for private industry workers increased 2.8 percent over the year. Wages and salaries increased 2.9 percent for the current 12-month period. (link)
Continual wage growth is a part of President Trump’s MAGAnomic policy; and remember the lowered tax rates went into effect in December. Meaning Q1 wages were higher and simultaneously income tax withholding on those wages are lower… that means more take home pay. Emphasis:More Take-Home Pay!!
CTH has been predicting that MAGAnomics as applied would mean in “Quarter Two” of this year we would begin the period of strongest wage rate growth in three decades. [ FYI, that’s right now ] We have repeatedly predicted that April through June 2018 is the beginning of “the big lift” in blue-collar wages.
A key part of the America-First MAGAnomic ‘Main Street’ policy is to protect the middle-class by driving wages up at a faster rate than the rate of inflation.
This is how the middle-class is able to afford a higher standard of living, and simultaneously ‘savers’ will gain higher rates of return on their savings.
For 30 years economic policy was doing exactly the opposite; now, with MAGAnomics in full swing, we are reversing that trend. CNBC begins to note the activity:
CNBC – […] According to surveys, the tax cuts did not reflect on many workers’ paychecks until late in the first quarter. Income at the disposal of households increased at a 3.4 percent rate in the first quarter, accelerating from the fourth quarter’s 1.1 percent pace. Households also boosted savings during the quarter. (link)
Earlier today the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) released their final report on Russia Active Measures (full pdf below). House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes issued the following statement today:
“The Intelligence Community has finished its declassification review of the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation final report. Given the substantial public interest at stake, the Committee is publishing the redacted version we’ve received. However, we object to the excessive and unjustified number of redactions, many of which do not relate to classified information. The Committee will convey our objections to the appropriate agencies and looks forward to publishing a less redacted version in the near future.” (LINK)
There are some initially revealing aspects to the release including: revelations that DNI James Clapper was a leaker to CNN about the Steele Dossier content and Presidential Briefing [SEE HERE]; and that Former Dianne Feinstein staff raised $50 million after the election to continue funding Fusion-GPS and Christopher Steele [SEE HERE] Likely much of that money was used to pay journalists and continue the Muh Russia narrative.
The revelation about James Clapper leaking to CNN doesn’t come as a surprise because we actually noted the strong likelihood on the day of the report [January 10th, 2017 – see here], and then again after much of the suspicions were confirmed [HERE].
However, the revelations of Senator Dianne Feinstein participating in the overall post-election scheme to deploy the insurance policy [SEE HERE] do answer a nagging question that always seemed to lay quietly below the surface.
During 2016 Senator Feinstein was part of the Gang of Eight by way of her position as vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It always seemed odd that Feinstein gave up that position immediately following the 2016 presidential election.
There was something about Feinstein’s abdication that appeared to be a move to diminish risk. With the discovery that her top staff was actually involved in close coordination with Fusion-GPS, Christopher Steele and the advancement of the Russian conspiracy/collusion narrative, Feinstein’s move to create distance after the election makes sense.
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
Centinel2012 