California Close to Forcing Uber, Lyft to Accept Labor Unions

Ben Sellers
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Bill ‘would fundamentally change what Uber and ridesharing is…’

Uber drivers lobby for ’employee’ designation in California. / IMAGE: Sacramento Bee via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A California appropriations bill that seeks to regulate ride-sharing services could prove to be another major rift in Democrats’ precarious web of identity politics.

Leftist policies have increasingly pitted one interest group against another, whether it be African–American wage-workers versus illegal immigrants, feminists versus transgender women, Muslims versus LGBT activists or Chinese refugees versus radical pro-abortionists.

Now, another battle is taking shape between the competing forces of socialism and labor unions.

Already, the two sides have clashed over plans such as Medicare for All that would undo the hard-fought boons that Big Labor has negotiated and extorted on behalf of its workers.

The next spat sees proponents of Silicon Valley’s corporate-backed collectivist ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft going up against drivers who seek to unionize and demand benefits, as well as a guaranteed minimum wage.

The current ride-sharing business model views the companies and their app-based platforms as conduits for user-to-user transactions, but increasingly they have evolved to become a major industry unto themselves.

The bill under consideration in the California Senate, AB 5, aims to reclassify the drivers—currently considered independent contractors—as employees, according to Vox.

The legislation was voted out of committee on Friday and sent to the Senate floor.

“If AB 5 passes the full Senate, it would essentially disrupt a business model championed and cherished by Silicon Valley,” said Vox.

“Uber, Lyft, and other app-based gig companies rely on hundreds of thousands of independent contractors to give rides, deliver food, and complete other tasks.”

Although it reportedly lobbied for an exemption, Uber found itself in a delicate position of trying to outwardly virtue-signal to drivers and customers in the state that it was still one of the ‘good guys’ while defending its profit margins.

“Uber is ready to do our part. That is why we have been at the table in California … to propose a truly innovative framework that we believe would preserve Uber’s key benefit for drivers (flexibility) and key benefit for riders (reliability), while improving the quality and security of independent work,” the company wrote in a blog post on Medium.

“California lawmakers should consider drivers’ unique needs first and foremost, and provide leadership with a new model for workers, not just add to the growing collection of industries,” it said.

Uber claimed that the designation as employees would, in fact, stifle the innovations its model proposed and deprive its workers of benefits even better than those that might be guaranteed to employees.

“To be very clear: despite what some are saying, we are not arguing for the status quo, nor are we denying that independent work needs to be improved,” said the blog post. “And a false promise that employment is without its own challenges purposefully ignores the opportunity before California today to modernize the law to benefit workers.”

The company also noted that turning it into a glorified taxi service “would fundamentally change what Uber and ridesharing is.”

And, of course, turning its business model into that of any old company would come with similar trade-offs.

“We would likely have to exert more control over drivers, telling them where to work, how to work, and who they can work for,” said the post.

“Uber would likely hire far fewer drivers than we currently support, and we’d likely have to require a minimum number of hours per week,” it continued. “Scheduling and rigid shifts would become the norm, and Uber would likely prevent drivers from working for other rideshare companies.”

Similar to the ride-sharing dispute in California, another blue-state metropolis has targeted the sharing economy that has sprung up around hospitality platforms like AirBnb.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was facing criticism for backing new industry regulations that would force the participating lodgings to obtain special permits, subjecting them to the same bureaucratic oversight as hotels.

One of the top supporters of de Blasio’s 2020 presidential campaign, the Hotel Trades Council, a hospitality labor union, was behind the push to tweak the city’s land-use review policies in order to muscle out the competition.

“I think we should extend it as far as we can with the City Council because what it does is it gives us the opportunity to determine what a hotel will mean for a community,” de Blasio said at a recent campaign rally, flanked by the hotel union bosses.

NC Republicans Lose Gerrymandering Court Fight to Eric Holder Strategy

Ben Sellers
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‘Thwarted at the U.S. Supreme Court, Holder has turned to state courts with Democratic majorities to… game the redistricting process…’

Eric Holder Mocks Trump Supporters: 'Exactly When Did You Think America Was Great?'
Eric Holder / IMAGE: MSNBC via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) North Carolina Republicans resigned themselves to permanent Democratic majorities after abandoning a politically charged courtroom fight over partisan gerrymandering in the historically red state.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled recently that federal judges had no business inserting themselves in left-wing activists’ bid to flip Republican-drawn districts through non-electoral means.

A North Carolina case, Rucho v. Common Cause, was one of two heard in the landmark SCOTUS ruling, with the other case challenging Democrat-led gerrymandering in Maryland.

But the high court’s decision left it at the discretion of the state courts to interpret whether their own constitutional bylaws prohibited the party in power from drawing politically favorable maps during the decennial redistricting process—typically done by the state legislatures.

A three-judge Superior Court panel from North Carolina sided with left-wingers in a ruling issued Tuesday for a parallel state-level case, also being pressed by the activist group Common Cause.

“The partisan gerrymandering of the 2017 Plans strikes at the heart of the Free Elections Clause” said the ruling.

“Using their control of the General Assembly, Legislative Defendants manipulated district boundaries, to the greatest extent possible, to control the outcomes of individual races so as to best ensure their continued control of the legislature,” it said.

‘Sue Till Blue’

Unlike RINO McCain, Bush 41 Leaves a Complicated Legacy for Conservatives
IMAGE: Screenshot via democraticredistricting.com

Since 2016, an initiative led by former Attorney General Eric Holder and former President Barack Obama under the umbrella of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee has deployed its “sue till blue” strategy by targeting vulnerable red states with court cases. Currently, it has about a dozen states in its cross-hairs.

Despite the Supreme Court setback, Holder remained not only determined to press forward, but well positioned to succeed in state courts dominated by unabashedly partisan, liberal judges.

“This case is the next step in Eric Holder’s drive to use judges to create a Democratic majority,” wrote North Carolina Senate Leader Phil Berger in a press release following Tuesday’s ruling.

“Thwarted at the U.S. Supreme Court, Holder has turned to state courts with Democratic majorities to, in his own words, ‘favorably position Democrats’ to game the redistricting process,” Berger said.

Any possible appeal of the recent North Carolina ruling faced grim prospects at the state Supreme Court, where six Democrat justices currently preside and only one Republican.

One of those justices, Anita Earls, had been involved as an attorney in a successful 2016 redistricting effort amid claims of racial gerrymandering, which already forced North Carolina to redraw its legislative maps prior to the 2018 midterm election.

Earls then won her own election to the court last year by unseating incumbent Barbara Jackson under dubious circumstances after another longtime Democrat attorney and activist, Chris Anglin, switched parties right before the filing deadline and split the Republican ticket.

While their plan worked at eliminating a veto-proof super-majority in the state General Assembly, Democrats in North Carolina failed to secure the legislative majorities they had hoped for and again cried foul on the forcibly redrawn districts that they had previously approved.

‘Time To Move On’?

After the latest courtroom defeat, Berger seemed to indicate that the Republican legislators named as defendants in the case would not appeal the ruling, given the unlikely odds of success at the state Supreme Court.

“We disagree with the court’s ruling as it contradicts the Constitution and binding legal precedent, but we intend to respect the court’s decision and finally put this divisive battle behind us,” he said.

“Nearly a decade of relentless litigation has strained the legitimacy of this state’s institutions, and the relationship between its leaders, to the breaking point,” Berger continued. “It’s time to move on.”

Unfortunately, the defeat could spell greater troubles for the GOP if the Democrats succeed in forcing maps more favorable to them that would allow them to steal the state legislature.

Many of the activist organizations involved in the “sue till blue” effort have made clear their intentions are to flip the statehouses during next year’s election so that they will be in power during the 2021 round of redistricting and able to create their own gerrymandered maps.

That would leave Republicans with little recourse except to press their own court battles and hope the partisan judges apply the same standards.

Trouble on the Horizon

Obama and Holder Team to Take Out Walker in 2018, Flip Ryan's Seat
Eric Holder & Barack Obama/PHOTO: WhiteHouse.gov

North Carolina’s fight over the electoral maps is likely to be a bellwether for other states—including its northern neighbor, Virginia, where similar Democrat-led redistricting flipped several congressional seats to the blue column in the 2018 midterm election.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a case pressed by Republican legislators in the Old Dominion lacked standing to be heard and that only the state’s Democrat attorney general, Mark Herring, had the authority to challenge the ruling on its redrawn map.

In response to Democratic activism by Holder and his well-funded NDRC, Republicans have sought to cultivate their own anti-gerrymandering organization, helmed by former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a political casualty of the “sue till blue” scheme in his home state last year.

As finance chairman of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, Walker has sought to counterbalance Holder’s heavy-hitting advocacy on the Left.

The two exchanged rhetorical blows last week via Twitter, reported The Hill.

Walker began by exposing Holder’s true intentions with a pair of tweets that included a copy of a 2017 IRS form seeking tax-exempt status for the NDRC.

Without addressing the evidence, Holder issued a denial in response, claiming “Scotty” was fudging the facts.

REPORT: Comey Spied on Trump During First Official Briefing

Ben Sellers
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‘One of the ways you undermine an adversary is to tell them you know all about it…’

Comey Questions Trump’s Credibility & House Intel Comm Report
James Comey (screen shot: NBC News via YouTube)

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Disgraced former FBI Director James Comey used a supposed defense briefing with newly-elected Donald Trump to spy on the president-elect, according to a report from The Epoch Times.

The meeting in question took place at New York’s Trump Tower on Jan. 6, 2017. There, Comey informed Trump of the allegations contained in the notorious Steele dossier, most notably that the Russians had compromising information on him involving “salacious” sex acts.

Three days later, the dossier was leaked to the media and went public, but it was swiftly debunked as poorly sourced and unverified information.

A recent investigation by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General determined that Comey was indirectly responsible for the leaking of FBI memos that contained classified information to The New York Times.

Other high-ups in the agency during the Obama administration also were determined to have been systematically leaking information—sometimes illegally.

Comey’s deputy director, Andrew McCabe, was later fired for perjuring himself before Congress after lying about his leaking.

Comey was fired less than five months into the Trump presidency, which in turn triggered the nearly two-year Mueller investigation.

While that investigation—after spending an estimated $30 million—found no evidence of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, both DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz and special prosecutor John Durham have continued to investigate the collusion between the Hillary Clinton campaign and the FBI that likely was the source of the hoax.

The Steele dossier, compiled by ex British spy Christopher Steele, was commissioned indirectly by the Clinton camp through partisan research firm Fusion GPS, which used the husband–wife duo of Bruce and Nellie Ohr to transmit it to the FBI.

The agency then used the information to launch its own investigation into the Trump campaign, including the wiretapping of at least one campaign adviser, Carter Page.

In a warrant application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) court, it falsely cited the Steele dossier as a verified source.

But The Epoch Times said that Horowitz’s report on Comey, released last week, revealed even more evidence of spying—not only with his direct knowledge, but conducted by the then-FBI director, himself.

“Comey told Horowitz that the information he obtained from his conversation with Trump ‘ought to be treated…[like] FISA derived information or information in a [counterintelligence] investigation,'” said The Epoch Times in an article posted Sunday.

“In other words, his meeting with Trump had very direct surveillance overtones and intentions—and directly counters what he had testified to Congress,” it said.

Comey previously insinuated before a Republican-led congressional investigative committee that the aim had been to offer full transparency to Trump.

“He needed to know this was being said,” Comey testified. “I was very keen not to leave him with an impression that the bureau was trying to do something to him.”

He reportedly told Trump point-blank at the meeting that he was not under investigation.

However, in subsequent public accounts by Comey himself, he struck a more antagonistic tone, relaying how he had met with then-President Barack Obama and CIA Director John Brennan to determine whether to divulge the dossier allegations to Trump.

They agreed to do it because “one of the ways you undermine an adversary is to tell them you know all about it,” Comey told an audience at Queens University in March.

Comey also met with key FBI players involved in the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into Trump—among them, McCabe and chief counsel James Baker—where they decided that he should use the meeting to gather additional intelligence.

“Multiple FBI witnesses recalled agreeing ahead of time that Comey should memorialize his meeting with Trump immediately after it occurred,” said the IG report.

As soon as he left Trump Tower, Comey began composing the first of the series of memoranda intended to undermine Trump, some of which he later leaked to the media.

“Comey said he had a secure FBI laptop waiting for him in his FBI vehicle and that when he got into the vehicle, he was handed the laptop and ‘began typing [Memo 1] as the vehicle moved,'” said the IG report.

Although the IG’s office referred Comey for prosecution previously, the Justice Department declined. The new report, while it confirmed the leaking had occurred, stopped short of saying Comey violated the law.

Comey took to Twitter afterward to, once again, mislead the public with a deceptively worded statement suggesting that the memos did not contain classified information and that the report exonerated him.

Press Dubs Special Election a ‘Bellwether’—But Only If Dem Wins

Ben Sellers
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‘Although Democrats already rocketed into the House majority last November, this do-over election means much more for the Republicans, who are desperate to avoid an embarrassing setback…’

NC Lawmaker Offends Jihad Media with Term 'Jihad Media'
Dan Bishop/YouTube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Less than a year ago, left-wing media feigned shock as Dan McCready, the Democratic candidate in North Carolina‘s 9th Congressional District, came within a thousand votes of winning the historically red district.

It was one of many ‘bellwether’ races during the 2018 midterms that were supposed to be a mandate on the halfway point of President Donald Trump’s first term.

Now—after the state election commission invalidated the race that saw Republican Mark Harris defeat McCready amid questions of absentee ballot fraud—the press is at it again with McCready’s new opponent, state Sen. Dan Bishop.

“[A]lthough Democrats already rocketed into the House majority last November, this do-over election means much more for the Republicans, who are desperate to avoid an embarrassing setback in a critical 2020 state,” declared a breathless NBC News article on Saturday.

Midterm Shenanigans

While it is reasonable to assert that last year’s turnover of 40 House seats in Congress—as well as several governorships—to Democrats was a statement on Trump’s presidency, the spin on the Left conveniently left out several major factors that added important context.

Among these was the fact that Trump’s loss of seats was paltry compared to the losses faced by presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in their first midterms.

When the numbers are fully crunched, there is a natural disadvantage for the sitting president’s party in midterms that is as clear as the coattail election-year advantage.

While Trump’s loss fell on the upper end of the historical averages in the modern era, several other behind-the-scenes moves by Democrats helped it along.

Dem. Attorney Marc Elias Used Activist Court Rulings to Redraw GOP Districts 1
North Carolina’s Congressional districts/IMAGE: USA Today via Youtube

This included Democratic efforts to use the court system to forcibly redraw districts in several red states where it claimed racially or politically motivated gerrymandering had benefited the GOP.

North Carolina was one of these states, and its 9th District—which had drawn a narrow swath half-circumscribing the city of Charlotte in suburban areas densely populated by white, affluent voters—suddenly became far more rural.

Democrats had pressed for the redistricting after claiming that the Republican-led legislature had factored race into the map in order to minimize opponents’ political power. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the decision, and the new district maps were approved in 2017.

The dual effect of this was both diluting the suburban GOP voter base and making the existing base more conservative than previously.

But the result was also a much more narrowly split district that could play into the hands of fake blue-dog Democrat McCready, who won the suburbs by a margin of nearly 5,000 votes.

That, in turn, gave new legs to the false media narrative about Trump’s political headwinds entering into his own re-election.

Shifting Electorate

GOP Candidate Harris Calls for New Election During Ballot Fraud Hearing
Mark Harris / IMAGE: WRAL screenshot

Harris, a Baptist minister who also happened to be pro-Trump, shook the NC Republican establishment when he unseated incumbent Robert Pittenger prior to the 2018 election.

The centrist Pittenger had taken a firm stance against the Trump wave, but that was not the death-blow in his congressional career so much as the prior year’s redistricting, which stretched his district deep into the backwoods of rural Carolina.

On paper, the 9th District may have gained conservatives, but the split between the middle-of-the-road suburban voters and the more conservative voters east of Charlotte became apparent in the 2018 race between Harris and McCready, which was punctuated by an influx of funding from outside donors that flooded McCready’s campaign coffers.

Despite his opponent’s fundraising advantage, Harris narrowly won—until a partisan member of the state elections board claimed fraud in the newly added rural districts, where he, himself, had deep ties to a corrupt ballot-harvesting ring that had previously benefited both Democrat and Republican candidates.

This led to a dramatic hearing, during which Harris—whose son was forced to testify against him—withdrew from the race, citing the impact on his health.

Bishop, a conservative veteran of the state General Assembly, emerged as the candidate best equipped to take on McCready and his massive war-chest of outside donations.

Like Harris, Bishop has conservative bona fides that play well in the rural counties. He also has a solid base of support in southern Mecklenberg, the county that houses Charlotte, which sent him as its representative to Raleigh.

However, his ideological differences with Pittenger’s brand of Republican politics (the previous GOP congressman backed another challenger and made claims about Bishop that resulted in the threat of a lawsuit) may yet create problems in the fast-growing outskirts of Charlotte.

False Narrative

NC County Allegedly Counted Early Votes Illegally, Shared Results
Dan McCready/IMAGE: MSNBC via YouTube

Even just a whiff of vulnerability is enough to launch a media feeding frenzy of articles doting on how the dynamic and dauntless McCready campaign has persevered in the district, which has voted Republican since the early 1960s.

NBC astoundingly managed to turn the fact that Bishop had overcome a substantial deficit and brought the race to an even split into yet another reason to cast McCready as the heroic underdog in the “Battle of the Dans.”

“McCready began the race far better known than Bishop, indicating Bishop probably has more room for his support to grow—especially considering the 9th District voted for Trump by double digits,” it said.

Should Bishop win the race, it would mark, for all intents and purposes, the addition of a brand-new reliably conservative district—potentially as valuable to Trump as the 11th District where Trump’s close confidant Mark Meadows, the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, holds court in the western part of the state.

But, unsurprisingly, it would not be newsworthy to find that the district had grown more conservative, despite all odds, since that wouldn’t fit the mainstream media narrative.

“Fresh off losing their majority and beset by a new wave of retirements, Republicans badly need a morale boost,” NBC News wrote.

“… But it’s not just about the House: Trump’s re-election depends on North Carolina, and a Democratic upset would be a genuine sign of danger for the president heading into 2020,” it said.

Sushi Helps Expose Partisan Fed’s Big Inflation Lie

Ben Sellers
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‘As it turns out, sushi prices are a fairly reliable proxy for the cost of living in a given area…’

Sushi Helps Expose Partisan Fed's Big Inflation Lie
Photo by adactio (CC)

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Left-wing economists have made much of the gathering storm of recession signals, blaming the policies of President Donald Trump, including his trade war with China, for the pinch on consumer purse-strings.

One former Federal Reserve official has gone so far as to encourage the top U.S. bank to crash the economy in order to force the president’s hand on trade issues—or better yet, force him out of office.

But the analysis of another Asian market—the price of sushi—tells a different tale.

The Fed—which maintained near-zero interest rates for nearly the entirety of former President Barack Obama’s term, keeping his stagnant economy on life-support, has progressively raised its rates amid the booming Trump economy.

Those rates, in turn, raise the price of everything down the line as it costs banks more to borrow money, which they then inflict on their own borrowers.

Yet, the Fed has insisted that the inflation rate has barely budged since the rate uptick.

While the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks the consumer-price index, suggests the average rate on the year is less than 2 percent, “anybody who has been to a restaurant, supermarket or paid a rent check over the past decade can tell you: Prices are rising much faster than the CPI would have you believe,” wrote ZeroHedge.

It cited the price of sushi as a novel but reliable indicator of consumer habits, more reflective than the basic staples like bread and milk listed in the CPI.

“As it turns out, sushi prices are a fairly reliable proxy for the cost of living in a given area,” said ZeroHedge, reporting on the “Sushinomics” statistics maintained by Bloomberg.

By that standard, the cost of living had increased nearly 3 percent, with some growing markets, such as Charlotte, North Carolina, seeing the cost rise as high as 6.7 percent.

The overall gap between the sushi prices and the CPI data was the highest it has been since the metric started being recorded in 2011. That 6.5 percent difference either signals that the fish morsels are becoming more valuable as a commodity or that the CPI numbers are being under-adjusted.

However, the deceitful financial games being played by deep-state bureaucrats and financial puppet-masters could prove catastrophic.

ZeroHedge said that the hidden inflation costs are literally eating into the savings of consumers, so that another major economic downturn could have nothing to cushion the blow.

President Donald Trump has severely criticized the Fed for its refusal to lower the rates, with Trump even questioning whether Fed Chairman Jerome Powell was a worse adversary for the U.S. economy than China’s Xi Jinping.

Newspaper Calls Out Biden’s Fake War Story, Then Gives Him a Free Pass

Ben Sellers
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‘President Trump’s routine falsehoods have changed the standards by which other presidential aspirants, including Biden, should be judged…’

Biden Grows Upset as Obama Flirts With Younger Democratic Presidential Contenders
Joe Biden/PHOTO: Kelly Kline via Creative Commons

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Former Vice President Joe Biden claimed to have offered solace to student survivors of the Parkland, Fla. school massacre—even though it happened after the end of his administration.

On Thursday, the Democratic primary front-runner was caught in another embellishment about traveling to Afghanistan to pin a silver star on the lapel of an injured Navy captain.

The Washington Post relayed the riveting anecdote, delivered to a New Hampshire audience of 400 during a speech last week.

“Except almost every detail in the story appears to be incorrect,” reported the Post on Thursday.

“Based on interviews with more than a dozen U.S. troops, their commanders and Biden campaign officials, it appears as though the former vice president has jumbled elements of at least three actual events into one story of bravery, compassion and regret that never happened,” said the paper.

It comes as Biden faces increasing scrutiny over a series of gaffes and misstatements that threaten to derail his presidential bid—or at least narrow his double-digit lead in the nominating contest to take on President Donald Trump next year.

“In the space of three minutes, Biden got the time period, the location, the heroic act, the type of medal, the military branch and the rank of the recipient wrong, as well as his own role in the ceremony,” the Post said.

Biden defended his telling of the story in a follow-up interview with the Post after their initial report had been published.

“I was making the point how courageous these people are, how incredible they are, this generation of warriors, these fallen angels we’ve lost,” he told opinion columnist Jonathan Capehart. “I don’t know what the problem is. What is it that I said wrong?”

The Post noted that the 76-year-old Biden’s flourishes were more than simply the effect of senility. Rather, they touched on a longstanding pattern of blurring fact and fiction, including a plagiarism scandal that ended his first run for president in 1988.

Similar troubles plagued 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who caught figurative flak for falsely claiming to have taken literal flak—or rather, sniper fire—after landing at a Bosnian airport.

After defending his account to the Post, Biden later denied, during a stop in South Carolina on Thursday, that he was even aware of the newspaper’s reporting.

He reiterated his line to the Charleston Post and Courier that the spirit of his story was truthful, if not the substance, according to Politico, even partially retelling the tale in language that closely paralleled the earlier version.

“I don’t understand what they’re talking about, but the central point is it was absolutely accurate what I said,” Biden said. “He refused the medal. I put it on him, he said, ‘Don’t do that to me, sir. He died. He died.’”

Although the Post analysis noted that the tear-jerking story had been told and revised many times through the years as Biden sought to highlight his patriotic, pro-military sentiments, the paper seemed to give him a pass on the long-repeated falsehood, saying the Trump era had recontextualized the telling of political mistruths.

The Jeff Bezos-owned paper then cited a widely disputed statistic from its own partisan-leaning fact-checkers that Trump told more than 12,000 lies from the start of his presidency through mid-July of 2019.

“One big question facing candidates and voters more than 30 years later is whether President Trump’s routine falsehoods have changed the standards by which other presidential aspirants, including Biden, should be judged,” the paper’s news section opined.

WASH POST: Words Like ‘Reason’ and ‘Civility’ Are Racist Dog-Whistles

Ben Sellers
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‘The reasonable right’s rhetoric is exactly the same as the antebellum rhetoric … Rhetoric, to be precise, in support of the slave-owning South…’

University Attempts to Move Ben Shapiro Event Far from Campus
Ben Shapiro/Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC)

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Once counted foremost among the virtues of sound and effective leadership, calls for reason and civility in politics are now considered racist in left-wing circles, according to an op-ed that ran Thursday in The Washington Post.

Writer Eve Fairbanks—a freelance commentator for liberal mouthpieces like The New Republic, HuffPo and Buzzfeed—charged in her recent take-down of a movement dubbed the “reasonable right,” embraced by conservative thinkers like Ben Shapiro, that its arguments closely mirrored those of Southern leaders prior to the Civil War.

Fairbanks—a self-described history buff who grew up in northern Virginia—wrote, “The reasonable right’s rhetoric is exactly the same as the antebellum rhetoric … Rhetoric, to be precise, in support of the slave-owning South.”

However, she made no mention in her historical account of nation-rending episodes like the “Bleeding Kansas” movement, in which non-slave-holding settlers in the midwestern territory were brutally murdered and pillaged by free-soil abolitionists as politicians haggled over whether to allow slavery in the proposed state.

“Proslavery rhetoricians talked little of slavery itself,” Fairbanks wrote. “Instead, they anointed themselves the defenders of ‘reason,’ free speech and ‘civility.'”

Whether the abolitionist ends justified the means of radicals like John Brown—whose acts of domestic terrorism helped trigger Southern secession—continues to be debated today.

Still, Fairbanks’ false equivalency between antebellum and modern-day calls for compromise is all the more shocking when the context of slavery is removed.

“All of this is there in the reasonable right,” wrote Fairbanks: “The claim that they are the little people struggling against prevailing winds. The argument that they’re the ones championing reason and common sense. The allegation that their interlocutors aren’t so much wrong as excessive; they’re just trying to think freely and are being tormented. The reliance on hyperbole and slippery slopes to warn about their adversaries’ intentions and power.”

As she goes on to dismiss the notion that members of the “reasonable right” are a suppressed minority, Fairbanks leaves lingering the insinuation that the modern Right supports slavery—or some contemporary version thereof. But others have connected the dots for her.

At a recent campaign stop in North Carolina, in a bid to downplay valid criticisms of divisive left-wing pandering, Sen. Kamala Harris declared that political opponents had supplanted ‘coded’ language like “race card” with new ‘dog-whistle’ terms like “identity politics.”

Others, such as the far-left members of “The Squad” have made race-baiting a signature part of their rhetoric, no matter the argument—whether addressing border security, the Electoral College or plans to nationalize vast sectors of the American economy.

“Many reasonable-right figures find themselves defending the liberties of people to the right of them,” Fairbanks said. “Not because they agree with these people, they say, but on principle.”

She accused conservative centrists of passive-aggressively enabling extremism and guilting leftist radicals into silence by weaponizing their so-called tolerance against them.

“Joining the reasonable right seems to render these figures desirable contributors to center-left media outlets,” Fairbanks said.

“That’s because, psychologically, the claim to victimhood can function as a veiled threat,” she continued. “It tricks the listener into entering a world where the speaker is the needy one, fragile, requiring the listener to constantly adjust his behavior to cater to the imperiled person.”

Fairbanks went on to claim that conservatives had subversively used their victim-posturing to sway infallibly left-leaning newsrooms and college campuses into condoning their errant perspectives.

“With this threat, the reasonable right has recruited the left into serving its purpose,” she asserted. “Media outlets and college campuses now go to extraordinary lengths to prove their ‘balance’ and tolerance, bending over backward to give platforms to right-wing writers and speakers who already have huge exposure.”

Fairbank’s argument implicitly invoked a leftist trope of the inevitable march toward ‘progress’ that puts supporters of the status-quo on the ‘wrong side of history.’

“If somebody says liberals have become illiberal, you should consider whether it’s true,” Fairbanks wrote. “But you should also know that this assertion has a long history … People who make this claim aren’t ‘renegades.’ They’re heirs to an extremely specific tradition in American political rhetoric, one that has become a dangerous inheritance.”

Yet, her myopic historical analysis misses one crucial point: The radical Left’s insistence on its own unyielding rectitude often leads to violent and bloody outcomes.

Prudent though it may have been for former President Abraham Lincoln, R-Ill., to “hang his hat” on the abolitionist movement, continuing, without cause, to beat the drums of a 150-plus-year-old grievance assures that the same turmoil which defined America’s past will also guide its future.

Trump Shreds ‘Disgraced and Excoriated’ Comey after IG Report

Ben Sellers
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0

‘He should be ashamed of himself!’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) President Donald Trump clapped back at former FBI Director James Comey‘s claim that a damning report by the Department of Justice’s inspector general had exonerated him.

The report, released Thursday, said Comey had violated FBI policy and his own employment agreement repeatedly when he purloined classified memos of his meetings with the president and shared them with a friend at Columbia University who then leaked them to The New York Times.

Trump’s firing of Comey in May 2017—coinciding with the leaking of the memos—helped trigger the two-year, $30-some-million Mueller investigation into Russian collusion, which earlier this year concluded that Trump had not conspired with the Kremlin.

White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham echoed the president in her official statement, saying Comey “disgraced himself and his office to further a personal political agenda,” Fox News reported.

The report stopped short of saying Comey had criminally leaked classified information and declined to recommend charges against him, but many speculate that an ongoing DOJ investigation by special prosecutor John Durham is the most likely avenue for holding accountable Comey and a rogue’s gallery of corrupt, partisan subordinates who ran the agency during the Obama administration.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been working closely with Durham on his case and has recently relayed information after closing his own investigations into figures like ex-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok.

After falsely claiming on Twitter that the report cleared his name—which some in the media seemed to repeat without examining the actual report—Comey also took a swipe at Trump.

Many other Republican leaders in Congress and elsewhere responded to the report though indicating that the release may be just the beginning of Comey’s troubles.

‘Clown’ Comey Continues to Deny Wrongdoing, Contradicts New DOJ Report

Ben Sellers
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‘I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a “sorry we lied about you” would be nice…’

Comey Blasts FISA Memo After Release: ‘That’s It?’
James Comey/IMAGE: YouTube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A damning report released Thursday by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General’s Office found that disgraced former FBI Director James Comey repeatedly violated agency policy, but it declined to recommend charges against him.

“We conclude that Comey’s retention, handling, and dissemination of certain Memos violated Department and FBI policies, and his FBI Employment Agreement,” the report stated unequivocally.

The probe related to memos Comey kept of his meetings with President Donald Trump in the early days of the administration, while Trump sought to gauge Comey’s loyalty and trustworthiness.

As their public rift deepened over uncorroborated claims of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, Comey was eventually fired in May 2017.

However, the circumstances surrounding Comey’s firing and the leaking of his memos to the media helped trigger the special counsel investigation by Robert Mueller, which lasted nearly two years at a cost estimated to be around $30 million.

Comey later acknowledged that it was his intent to force such an investigation by leaking the memos.

Subsequent disclosures revealed that the FBI had been conducting its own Trump investigation based on the now-debunked information contained in the Steele Dossier, which was commissioned by the campaign of Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. The agency used that investigation as a pretense to wiretap and spy on Trump campaign officials.

Following Thursday’s release of the IG report, Comey immediately went into spin mode, claiming on Twitter that it was an exoneration by cherry-picking the minute detail that he had leaked memos to a friend who then leaked them to the press, rather than sharing them directly.

He misleadingly suggested that the memos contained no classified information, contrary to the actual findings that “much of the content of the Memos was directly tied to FBI investigative activities.”

Comey also took a victory lap over the decision not to file charges, and used the opportunity to attack Trump.

The odd reaction seemed to reinforce for many that something was amiss in Comey’s warped version of the facts and to validate the questions raised about his character.

“[T]he former FBI Director seems to have read a different report than the one released Thursday,” noted BizPac Review.

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., said the extent of Comey’s moral depravity reached absurd levels.

“To call James Comey a clown, would be offensive to the carnival community,” Gosar said.

Comey likely remains under investigation by the DOJ in a related probe led by special prosecutor John Durham.

Earlier in the week, Inspector General Michael Horowitz was said to have referred files on Comey’s deputy director, Andrew McCabe, to Durham’s office.

However, some doubted that either of the top FBI officials—nor others implicated in the Russia scandal—would face any serious criminal consequences due to the highly politicized nature of the case.

A prior IG investigation into former FBI counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok concluded with a determination that he violated the law by leaking information to the press, but it also declined to file criminal charges.

Several GOP members who previously had led congressional oversight investigations into the conspiracy reacted to the IG release.

“The Inspector General’s report is a stunning and unprecedented rebuke of a former Director of the FBI,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Graham said he expected “several more ugly and damning rebukes” to follow suit.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, ranking minority member of the House Oversight Committee, called it a “disappointing reminder” of partisanship touching on the highest ranks to destroy public trust and faith in law-enforcement.

“By leaking his confidential communications with the President in an attempt to save face in the wake of his firing, Mr. Comey believed he was above the rules of the DOJ,” Jordan said. “His actions were disgraceful and part of a wider effort within the Obama Justice Department to undermine President Trump.”

Other top GOP leaders echoed similar sentiments, including Reps. Mark Meadows, R-NC; Doug Collins, R-Ga.; and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, head of the Senate Finance Committee.

Most praised Horowitz and his team for their efforts to seek the truth regarding the origins of the Russia scandal and the FBI’s role in it.

“I’m grateful to Inspector General Horowitz for his characteristically thorough and professional work,” said Collins, the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee.

“… This further cements the need for us to get to the root of how the Russia investigation began,” Collins continued. “It’s time to restore Americans’ confidence that federal law enforcement is committed to justice and free from political gamesmanship.”

Feds Raid Top UAW Officials in Probe Reminiscent of Teamsters’ ‘Devil’s Pact’ w/ Mafia

Ben Sellers
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‘We have a very anti-union federal government that’s very much out to get them as much as they can…’

FBI officials raid the home of UAW President Gary Jones in Canton Township, Mich. / IMAGE: WDIV via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A four-year investigation into racketeering and corruption involving the United Auto Workers labor union and Fiat Chrysler reached new levels Wednesday with raids on the residences of top UAW officials.

Among the five homes and offices raided Wednesday were those of current UAW President Gary Johnson and prior President Dennis Williams.

The probe, which already has netted eight convictions, may result in the federal government assuming oversight of the country’s sixth-largest union, The Detroit News reported.

“This is the nuclear option,” former federal prosecutor Peter Henning, now a Wayne State University law professor, told the paper.

Such a move would likely indicate criminal culpability for the Michigan-based union with deep ties to Democratic politicians including House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and House Oversight Chair Elijah Cummings.

In the 2018 election cycle alone, it spent roughly $4 million on contributions to Democratic candidates and political-action committees, as well as another $4 million in lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Not surprisingly, noted the Media Research Center, two of the three major network news broadcasts completely ignored the story. Although CBS included it in Wednesday’s coverage, neither ABC nor NBC reported on it.

Meanwhile, some liberals went so far as to appear to rally behind the allegedly corrupt union and blame the investigators.

“Federal oversight completely and profoundly changes the direction of the union,” UC-Berkeley economist Harley Shaiken told The Detroit News. “The fact that it is even being discussed is disturbing news. One would need to see evidence of sustained institutional malfunction.”

Arthur Wheaton, an automotive industry specialist at Cornell University, doubted it would reach the level of a government takeover but said the raids showed that the Justice Department meant business..

“We have a very anti-union federal government that’s very much out to get them as much as they can,” Wheaton said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they really tried to take it to them.”

The case resembles one brought against the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in the 1980s that resulted in 25 years of oversight after U.S. Attorneys charged that the union had a “devil’s pact” with the Mafia.

Although the government monitoring was fazed out starting in 2015, it resulted in the removal of more than 200 officials—including 50 chapter presidents—and more than 600 disciplinary charges.

Henning said the move to an oversight consent agreement likely meant the current leadership of the union was refusing to cooperate and that removal was the only option.

“Maybe the U.S. Attorney’s Office feels it has reached a dead-end and they’re not getting cooperation, that they’re getting stonewalled,” he told The Detroit News. “A trustee or monitor could come in and open up the books and make them available to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”

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