Can Things Get Any Worse In Haiti?

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Can Things Get Any Worse In Haiti?

  • For those interested in why some countries become wealthy while others remain in extreme poverty, Haiti is one of the most important case studies.

  • Despite being only a few hundred miles from the U.S. mainland, and even closer to Puerto Rico, with investment capital readily available and unlimited opportunities for trade, Haiti has essentially no economic development and is one of the poorest countries in the world.

  • And instead of improving, conditions in Haiti only get worse. The past few weeks have seen yet a new extreme low point, with the Prime Minister locked out of the territory and the country taken over by armed gangs.

  • At this blog I have returned repeatedly to the subject of Haiti over the years, in the attempt to understand how things could have gone, and continue to go, so terribly wrong.

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The Latest Pre-Election Bait And Switch On Poverty Statistics

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The Latest Pre-Election Bait And Switch On Poverty Statistics

  • It’s September, in an even year. Labor Day has passed. The big mid-terms are less than two months away. It’s time for a pre-election bait and switch on poverty statistics to deceive any low information voters who aren’t paying attention to how the poverty scam works.

  • The poverty scam has been a big topic over the years at this blog, although perhaps less so in the most recent couple of years. This link will take you to all my prior posts on Poverty, some 129 in total.

  • The most important recurring theme has been that the government cynically manipulates the poverty statistics so that the official measured rate of poverty never goes meaningfully down, no matter how much taxpayer money is spent, thus manufacturing a fake basis to hit up the people for ever increasing funding at regular intervals.

  • But there is an exception. When a big election is coming up and the Democrats are in power, suddenly alternative statistics magically emerge showing that poverty has dropped dramatically, all of course due to compassionate programs put in place by the Democrats.

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What Do You Believe About The Sussman/Baker Conversation?

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  • The first week of the Michael Sussman criminal trial has now ended.

  • Sussman stands accused by Special Counsel John Durham of “lying to the FBI.” Lying to the FBI is a crime. (It’s covered by 18 USC Section 1001.). The alleged lie happened at a meeting that occurred on September 19, 2016. That was about a month and a half before the 2016 presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and thus at the very height of the campaign.

  • At the time, Sussman was a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm, and Perkins Coie was counsel both to the Democratic Party and to the Clinton Presidential campaign.

  • On the September 19 date, Sussman met at his request at FBI headquarters with Bureau General Counsel James Baker. In the meeting, Sussman asserted he had learned of something the Bureau should investigate, namely a supposed secret “back channel” between Russia’s Alfa Bank and the Trump campaign. Special Counsel Durham alleges that both before and at the meeting Sussman represented that he was acting as a private citizen, and not on behalf of any client, in bringing this information to the attention of the Bureau.

  • Just curious: What do you believe was really going on here?

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Can There Be Any Doubt That Hillary Was Behind The Trump/Russia Collusion Hoax?

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Can There Be Any Doubt That Hillary Was Behind The Trump/Russia Collusion Hoax?

  • I feel that I should comment on the indictment of lawyer Michael Sussman by Special Counsel John Durham while the issue is still current. Very likely you have already read extensively about Durham’s indictment of Sussman, which came down on September 16. Sussman was one of the lawyers, although not the head lawyer, at the firm of Perkins Coie, who worked for the DNC and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign in 2016.

  • This indictment is another instance by which we are learning step by step how the Democratic powers and their press side-kicks, through strict control of a “narrative,” think that they can get a critical mass of the American people to believe literally anything, no matter how preposterous. And to a remarkable extent, they are right.

  • From mid-2016 to mid-2019, we had about three years of non-stop Russia! Russia! Russia! obsession from the Democratic Party and its media adjunct. The stories advancing the narrative numbered in the thousands, and ultimately turned into nothing when Special Counsel Robert Mueller finally issued his report at the end of that period.

  • But how did this whole thing get going and continued for such a long period of time?

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Manhattan Contrarian Guide To Campaign Finance Law

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As a sophisticated observer of the political scene and reader of the Manhattan Contrarian, you undoubtedly know why we have strict and intricate campaign finance laws:  They are "to get money out of politics."  Or something like that.

Or are they really about protecting incumbents and putting roadblocks in the way of challengers?  Or, even worse, are they about giving partisan prosecutors some tools to take down inconvenient Republicans while Democrats get a pass?  I'll let you be the judge.

First, the basics of how this works.  Much of which, by the way, you can blame on the recently-departed John McCain, via the so-called McCain-Feingold campaign finance law of 2002.  One of his many mistakes in life -- but then, we all make mistakes.  The central provision of this campaign finance law is that contributions to "campaigns" for federal office are limited in amount, essentially to $2700 per election cycle for an individual or $5400 for a couple.  Obviously, for such a restriction to work, it must then be illegal for a "campaign" to pay "campaign expenses" from a source other than the funds contributed in accordance with the limits.  Equally obviously, since you have raised "campaign funds" for your "campaign" in accordance with strict limits and representations, it must be illegal to use the "campaign funds" for other than "campaign purposes."  And, to make this all work seamlessly, all "campaign expenses" over $200 must be reported and accurately described to the bureaucrats at the Federal Election Commission.  Needless to say, any violation of these rules is a crime.

So let's see how these rules get applied in a few recent examples:

Trump/Cohen . . .

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The Difference Justice Gorsuch Has Made

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Neil Gorsuch was confirmed to the Supreme Court on April 7 last year, and on April 9 I welcomed him with a post titled "A Few Places Where Justice Gorsuch Can Make A Difference."   That post took note of the remarkable fact that, while the "conservative" justices on the Supreme Court often disagreed with each other in high-profile cases, that was never the case for the "liberals."  In any case viewed as politically important to achievement of some policy outcome favored by the progressive movement, the "liberal" justices could always be counted on to vote as a unified bloc.  From that post:

The overriding philosophy of the "liberal" bloc has been discussed many times on this blog, and there is nothing complicated about it.  The basic concept is that the government consists of neutral, apolitical experts whose job it is to move us all towards greater and then perfect justice and fairness through the magic of more and more laws, rules and regulations.  The neutral experts must be given full authority and discretion to rule over the people in order to complete this project.  Obviously the government [and not the people] must run the country, because otherwise there would be chaos!  Or, even worse, unfairness!

Once you observe this unified voting for more bureaucratic power over the people enough times, you might even get the impression that perhaps these justices care little about upholding the Constitution, and mostly care about making sure that "our side" wins and the other side gets suppressed.

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