♦Puerto Rico has a long history of public corruption and abuse of federal funds. Back in 2015 ten government officials in Puerto Rico were arrested for corruption, bribery, honest services wire fraud, extortion and various schemes related to giving payments to friends and family via federal contracts. [LINK] This is the typical corruption PR is known for.
♦A few weeks ago (June 28) the FBI, Public Corruption Unit, posted a notification of an ongoing corruption probe and provided a tip-line for leads related to bribery and/or corruption of public officials. [LINK] This probe is connected to the billions of dollars U.S. taxpayers have provided to Puerto Rico for recovery after hurricane Maria (2017).
So much money is poured into the island that hundreds of local and regional officials seized the opportunity to indulge their friends and family with funds from recovery accounts. This is the widespread corruption President Trump previously drew attention to. This overt and in-the-open corruption is why Nancy Pelosi took the entire Democrat caucus to Puerto Rico in January for a vacation with her favorite lobbyists. Everyone in/around PR knows this corruption is the norm, not the exception.
Today, six more people were indicted under new federal charges, including two government officials: Julia Keleher, who served as Puerto Rico’s education secretary until April; and Ángela Ávila-Marrero, who was the executive director of the Puerto Rico Health Insurance Administration until late June. They are variously charged with wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy, according to the 32-count indictment.
WASHINGTON – […] The federal indictment says the former officials illegally directed federal funding to politically connected contractors. The arrests come about a month after Congress approved a controversial disaster aid bill that earmarked additional funding for Puerto Rico’s recovery from Hurricane Maria in 2017, which were tied up in part because President Trump called Puerto Rico’s officials “incompetent or corrupt.”
Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), chair of the Natural Resource Committee that oversees Puerto Rico, called on Rosselló to resign amid the ongoing federal investigation.
“We’ve crossed that crucible now,” Grijalva said in interview. “The restoration of accountability is so key going forward.”
Prosecutors said Rosselló was not involved in the investigation, according to the Associated Press.
A spokesman for Rosselló did not immediately return requests for comment.
The arrests come as senior White House officials are searching for new ways to limit the amount of federal aid going to help Puerto Rico, and the island’s allies fear the arrests will give Trump greater justification for curtailing additional aid to the island.
“The governor of Puerto Rico and his administration have now given President Trump the ammunition he needed,” said San Juan Mayor Yulin Cruz, a political opponent of the governor. (read more)
President Trump was exactly right when he both informed and warned voters of what would happen with the money dumped into Puerto Rico. Here’s a reminder:
News we might have missed. Last week Catherine Engelbrecht announced a historic legal victory in her decade long battle against the IRS for targeting her group, True The Vote, as part of the Obama administration’s weaponization program against political opposition.
U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton issued a stunning ruling (full pdf below) in favor of True the Vote, and penalized the IRS. Judge Walton forced the IRS to pay maximum attorney’s fees due to discrimination against the conservative organization that stemmed from the Lois Lerner scandal. The financial award is likely to exceed $2 million.
.
Ms. Engelbrecht gave Breitbart News an interview where she discussed the victory, SEE HERE.
.Ms. Engelbrecht’s case is actually connected to the political surveillance operation used against presidential candidate Donald Trump. Factually, the 2010 program to weaponize the IRS looks like the precursor to the 2012 program to weaponize the NSA database.
Political spying 1.0 was the weaponization of the IRS. This is where the term “Secret Research Project” originated as a description from the Obama team. It involved the U.S. Department of Justice under Eric Holder and the FBI under Robert Mueller. It never made sense why Eric Holder requested over 1 million tax records via CD ROM, until overlaying the timeline of the FISA abuse:
The IRS sent the FBI “21 disks constituting a 1.1 million page database of information from 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The transaction occurred in October 2010 (link)
Why disks? Why send a stack of DISKS to the DOJ and FBI when there’s a pre-existing financial crimes unit within the IRS. All of the evidence within this sketchy operation came directly to the surface in early spring 2012.
The IRS scandal was never really about the IRS, it was always about the DOJ asking the IRS for the database of information. That is why it was transparently a conflict when the same DOJ was tasked with investigating the DOJ/IRS scandal. Additionally, Obama sent his chief-of-staff Jack Lew to become Treasury Secretary; effectively placing an ally to oversee/cover-up any issues. As Treasury Secretary Lew did just that.
Lesson Learned – It would appear the Obama administration learned a lesson from attempting to gather a large opposition research database operation inside a functioning organization large enough to have some good people that might blow the whistle.
The timeline reflects a few months after realizing the “Secret Research Project” was now worthless (June 2012), they focused more deliberately on a smaller network within the intelligence apparatus and began weaponizing the FBI/NSA database. If our hunch is correct, that is what will be visible in footnote #69:
Additionally, Matt Gaetz appears to have seen “a memo held in the Congressional Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) that contained previously-undisclosed information involving the Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) and Department of Justice (DOJ).” [LINK] Which sounds like the MOU in the footnote, and the memo that Trey Gowdy and Jason Chaffetz inquired about.
Recently, the “Wall Street Journal” (WSJ) reported you granted the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) new powers to store dossiers on United States citizens, even if said citizens are not suspected of any criminal activity.
With these new powers, the NCTC would have the ability to copy entire government databases holding information on flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students, as well as other data.
The WSJ goes on to report the new rules allow the NCTC to keep data about innocent United States citizens for up to five years and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited.
If the WSJ report is accurate, these new powers represent a sweeping departure from past practices, which barred the NCTC from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or the information sought was related to an investigation.
If the WSJ report is accurate, it raises numerous concerns and questions. As elected Representatives and members of the House Judiciary Committee, we are concerned such sweeping, fundamental changes would be made to existing policy without public input and Congressional approval. Changes, which fundamentally alter the relationship between the government and the governed, should only be made with input from the people by and through their elected Representatives. (more)
Fusion GPS was not hired in April 2016 to research Donald Trump. As shown in the evidence provided by the FISC, the intelligence community was already doing surveillance and spy operations. The Obama administration already knew everything about the Trump campaign, and were monitoring everything by exploiting the FISA database.
However, after the NSA alerts in/around March 9th, 2016, and particularly after the April 18th shutdown of contractor access, the Obama intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to create a legal albeit ex post facto justification for the pre-existing surveillance and spy operations. Fusion GPS gave them that justification in the Steele Dossier.
That’s why the FBI small group, which later transitioned into the Mueller team, are so strongly committed to and defending the formation of the Steele Dossier and its dubious content. The Steele Dossier contains the cover-story and justification for the pre-existing surveillance operation.
During a rather innocuous podcast discussion panel April 12th, 2019, one of President Trump’s personal lawyers Jay Sekulow mentioned the FBI had three FISA applications denied by the FISA court in 2016. [Podcast Here – Note comment at 25:05] The denials were always suspected; however, until now no-one in/around the administration has ever confirmed.
If Sekulow is accurate, this adds additional context to the actions of the FBI in the aftermath of Admiral Mike Rogers and an increased urgency in gaining legal justification for surveillance and spy operation unlawfully taking place. A valid FISA warrant would help the FBI cover-up the surveillance. The likely targets were Manafort, Flynn and Papadopoulos…. but it appears the DOJ/FBI were rebuked.
These FISC denials would then initiate institutional panic dependent on the election outcome. An insurance policy would be needed. The Steele Dossier becomes the investigative virus the FBI wanted inside the system. To get the virus into official status, they used the FISA application as the delivery method and injected it into Carter Page. The FBI already knew Carter Page; essentially Carter Page was irrelevant, what they needed was the FISA warrant and the Dossier in the system {Go Deep}.
Fusion GPS was not hired to research Trump, the intelligence community was already doing surveillance and spy operations. The intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to give them a plausible justification for already existing surveillance and spy operations.
Fusion-GPS gave them the justification they needed for a FISA warrant with the Steele Dossier. Ultimately that’s why the Steele Dossier is so important; without it, the DOJ and FBI are naked with their FISA-702 abuse.
The school resource officer, Scot Peterson, who did not respond during the shooting Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year, has been arrested on negligence, child neglect and perjury charges.
(NBC6 Miami) […] Peterson, 56, was arrested in Broward County on seven counts of neglect of a child, three counts of culpable negligence, and one count of perjury, Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials said.
The arrest comes after a 15-month investigation into the actions of law enforcement after the Feb. 14, 2018 shooting at the school that killed 17 students and staffers and left 17 others injured. Peterson was the school resource officer at MSD High School during the shooting.
“The FDLE investigation shows former Deputy Peterson did absolutely nothing to mitigate the MSD shooting that killed 17 children, teachers and staff and injured 17 others,” FDLE Commissioner Rick Swearingen said in a statement. “There can be no excuse for his complete inaction and no question that his inaction cost lives.” (read more)
CTH previously outlined how Broward County school police officers were primarily positioned to mitigate issues with criminal student engagement.
The Broward County diversionary school discipline program known as the “Promise Program” gained scrutiny after the Parkland shooting left 17 students dead.
The unstable shooter was identified as a prior benefactor of a county school district policy to reduced crime rates by exchanging criminal punishment for school discipline.
Many readers are aware CTH spent almost two years researching this practice in both Miami-Dade and Broward County. The downstream consequences were predictable when it first began; unfortunately, no-one wanted to accept the warnings – and the corruption is was systemic within the School and Police leadership, there’s was little hope to ever see it change.
Australia’s center-right government won a surprise victory over the left. Voters backed the center-right government in a slowing economy for another three years and rejecting the opposition’s progressive agenda which has been really pretty out there at times. Despite trailing in most opinion polls for years, Scott Morrison’s Liberal-National coalition won attacking Labor’s pledge to take tougher action on climate change and strip tax perks from wealthy Australians. Many are calling Labour’s loss for its leader Bill Shorten, the shock of all time up there with the loss of Hillary Clinton because the polls just got it wrong again.
The Australian election was held today; voting is compulsory as everyone over the age 18 is required to vote; turnout was greater than 95%… and all the media and pollsters are stunned, shocked, jaws-agape, as the conservative coalition has received a stunning, unexpected, unanticipated victory.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has won the election. Yes Alice, 2019 media in Australia look identical to media in the U.S. circa November 2016.
The economy, immigration and push-back against the insufferable climate-change nonsense appear to be the top issues that led to Morrison’s surprising win. None of the pollsters or media saw it coming. The BBC are stunned:
BBC – […] The final result of the election may not be known for some hours, but with more than 70% of votes counted the [Conservative] Coalition has won, or is ahead in, 74 seats in its quest for a 76-seat majority, with Labor on just 66 seats.
[…] Try finding someone who says they saw this result coming.
For well over two years, the coalition has trailed behind Labor in the opinion polls, and the assumption had been it would be Labor’s turn to govern.
But somehow Scott Morrison managed to turn things around at the 11th hour – and he did it largely on his own.
With some of his cabinet colleagues considered too toxic to appear in public on the campaign trail, ScoMo made this election about him, and his ability to be the trustworthy, daggy-dad Australia needed. (read more)
Labor leader Bill Shorten , who has led Labor since it lost office in 2013, conceded defeat and congratulated Morrison. Shorten’s losing moonbat platform was centered on creating a “fairer society”, similar to the social justice movement in the far-left U.S. Democrat party.
The labor movement planned to increase taxes on the wealthy and bring social justice demands to central government. Their agenda was counting on strong support from college-aged students and climate change activists. However, the majority of Australians saw the predictable economic damage that was certain from the proposals to raise taxes and institute the Australian version of the Green New Deal.
Australian left-wing media is going bananas….
The progressive movement is crying in the streets.
The new U.S. Army uniform is a near replica of the World War II version. Can the Army meet its recruitment quotas of teen millennials with a throwback image from the Greatest Generation? Bill Whittle thinks the it’s brilliant. There’s a place you can go to think, and unburden your mind, and share the fellowship of liberty-lovers like you. It’s a place of reasoned thought, civil discourse, and great humor. There you find like-minded folks who put their commitment where their convictions live. If you enjoy this video, you’re going to love being part of the team that produces it at https://BillWhittle.com
Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2008/10/20/Victor_Davi… Conservative columnist and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson discusses several accusations regarding Barack Obama’s political career. —– Victor Davis Hanson discusses Obama, Palin, and the Culture Wars. This event was part of the Hoover Institution’s Fall Retreat 2008. Victor Davis Hanson is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor emeritus at California University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches each fall courses in military history and classical culture. He was a full-time farmer before joining CSU Fresno, in 1984 to initiate a classics program. In 1991, he was awarded an American Philological Association Excellence in Teaching Award, which is given yearly to the country’s top undergraduate teachers of Greek and Latin. Hanson has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, International Herald Tribune, New York Post, National Review, Washington Times, Commentary, The New Republic, Claremont Review of Books, American Heritage, Policy Review, Wilson Quarterly, Weekly Standard, Daily Telegraph, and has been interviewed often on National Public Radio, PBS Newshour, the Hugh Hewitt Show, and C-Span’s BookTV. He serves on the editorial board of Arion, the Military History Quarterly, and City Journal. Since 2001, has written a weekly column for National Review Online, and in 2004, began his syndicated column for Tribune Media Services. In 2006, he began writing a blog for Pajamas Media, Works and Days.
National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow appears on Fox Business to discuss the most excellent April jobs report and the continued forecast for U.S. economic growth.
Director Kudlow points out the greatest current economic benefits are being felt in the blue-collar Main Street sector; and rebuts former Vice President Joe Biden’s comments on the administration policy.
COMMENT: Skeptics who believe a border wall will not stop illegals from entering the United States may want to look at what’s happening in Hungary.
On the day its border fence was completed, the influx of illegals entering Hungary went down from 6,353 per day to 870 the next day. For the remainder of that month, illegal border crossings were steadily below 40 per day, officials said.
“They don’t even try,” a local border guard told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “We haven’t had a single Muslim migrant in six months.” Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s pledge to stop illegals from flowing into the country appears to be a spectacular success.
Hungary’s 96-mile long, 14-foot-tall, double-line fence includes several layers of razor-wire capable of delivering electric shocks. The barrier features cameras, heat sensors, and loudspeakers ready to tell migrants they’re about to break Hungarian law if they as much as touch the fence, the DC report said.
Nearly every police officer in Hungary is part of a rotation to monitor the border fence at all times. Temporary military bases house the police while they do their rotation. Additionally, Hungary will train and pay more than 1,000 volunteers to deploy as “border hunters”.
Illegals who are caught are arrested and dropped off on the Serbian side of the fence. They don’t get a chance to apply for asylum unless they do so at a “transit zone” where they are held in housing containers while their cases get processed, the report said.
In September 2016, thousands of migrants streamed across the border every day as they made their way north to Austria, Germany, and Scandinavia. “It was an invasion,” Laszlo Toroczkai, the mayor of Asotthalom, told the Daily Caller. “Illegal immigration is a crime in a normal country. It’s not a normal thing to break into a country.”
“By mid-year, it was well beyond 100,000 people who came across”, said Zoltan Kovacs, a spokesman for the Hungarian government. “You should at least have the ability to handle what’s going on.” Kovacs added, “You might not like it, it’s not a nice thing, but… the only way to stop illegal border crossings is first building a fence, man it, equip it, and also, in parallel, build up your capabilities in terms of legal confines, legal circumstances to be able to handle what is coming.”
It’s no surprise the mainstream U.S. media refuses to report this story to the American public Can you imagine how support for a Southern border wall would spike?
REPLY: The people who claim Trump’s wall will not work just listen to the propaganda to defeat Trump. The entire objective is to be able to say he failed in 2020. He made a campaign promise to build the wall, and for that reason the Democrats must defeat the wall regardless of the truth. Romans built a wall between England and Scotland to prevent the Scots from raiding Roman settlements. The world’s earliest known civilization was also one of the first to build a defensive wall during the 21st century BC. The ancient Sumerian rulers constructed a massive fortified barrier to keep out the Amorites, who were a group of nomadic tribesmen who were pillaging their settlements.
The “Great Wall of Gorgon” was a 121-mile rampart that extended from the southern coast of the Caspian Sea to the Elburz Mountains in what is now Iran. It is often called the Great Wall of Alexander the Great or “Alexander’s Barrier” that prevented the barbarians from invading from the north. It was most likely constructed by the Sasanian Persians sometime around the 5th century AD, and remains one of the longest walls of antiquity.
Of course, there is China’s legendary Great Wall which stretches from the Gobi Desert to the North Korean border. It was constructed on the fortifications that began during in the 3rd century BC, and it was intended to keep the Mongols out. The completed wall was once the largest manmade object in the world. The Mongol leader Altan Khan bypassed the wall and raided Beijing in 1550.
Naturally, we should not forget the Berlin Wall, modern history’s most infamous wall, which was erected in 1961 to keep people in rather than out. More than 100 people were eventually killed while trying to escape through the maze of 12-foot walls, guard towers, and electrified fences. It stood for almost 29 years before East German authorities finally opened it on November 9th, 1989.
There are many examples of walls throughout history and the world.
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 