#department of defense inspector general

[tomorrowusa]

Trump White House staffers were apparently big pill poppers. And we're not talking about generic ibuprofen or Vitamin C.

The White House has its own pharmacy. It's run by the military because the president happens to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces. But during the Trump administration things went awry – as you might expect.

For years, the White House Medical Unit, run by the White House Military Office, provided the full scope of pharmaceutical services to senior officials and staff—it stored, inventoried, prescribed, dispensed, and disposed of prescription medications, including opioids and sleep medications. However, it was not staffed by a licensed pharmacist or pharmacy support staff, nor was it credentialed by any outside agency. The operations of this pseudo-pharmacy went as well as one might expect, according to the DoD OIG's alarming investigation report. The investigation was prompted by complaints in May 2018 alleging that an unnamed "senior military medical officer" was engaged in "improper medical practices." [ ... ] Provigil is a drug that treats excessive tiredness and is typically used for patients with narcolepsy, sleep apnea, and other sleep disorders. Brand-name Provigil is 55 times more expensive than the generic equivalent. Between 2017 and 2019, the White House pharmacy spent an estimated $98,000 for Provigil. In that same timeframe, it also spent an estimated $46,500 for Ambien, a prescription sedative, which is 174 times more expensive than the generic equivalent. Even further, the White House Medical Unit spent an additional $100,000 above generic drug cost by having Walter Reed National Military Medical Center fill brand-name prescriptions.

While they were plotting to repeal Obamacare for millions of Americans, Trump staffers were getting brand name stimulants and sedatives cheap and sticking US taxpayers with the bill.

They were handing out baggies of drugs to staffers going on trips overseas.

The staffer told OIG investigators that ahead of overseas trips, the staff would prepare packets of controlled medications to be handed out to White House staff. "And those would typically be Ambien or Provigil and typically both, right. So we would normally make these packets of Ambien and Provigil, and a lot of times they’d be in like five tablets in a zip‑lock bag. And so traditionally, too, we would hand these out. ... But a lot of times the senior staff would come by or their staff representatives... would come by the residence clinic to pick it up. And it was very much a, 'hey, I’m here to pick this up for Ms. X.' And the expectation was we just go ahead and pass it out."

Trump wanted to send the US military into Mexico to go after drug kingpins. But he was running his own out of control drug dispensing operation financed by tax money.

The Department of Defense Inspector General's report detailed how Schedule II drugs were poorly inventoried and monitored. (emphasis added)

The Code of Federal Regulations requires that registered pharmacies maintain inventories and records of Schedule II controlled substances separately from all other pharmacy records.16 In our site visit to the EEOB Clinic, we concluded that the clinic maintained the controlled substance inventory records in a binder on hand‑written paper logs, stored in the EEOB clinic’s medication dispensing area. The inventory records showed that White House Medical Unit stocked four different types of Schedule II opioid pain medications (fentanyl, hydrocodone, morphine, and oxycodone), as well as medications from Schedules III through V, such as stimulants and sedatives. However, White House Medical Unit kept the records for its Schedule II medications in the EEOB’s inventory binder together with records for all other controlled medications and not maintained separately as required by the CFR.

So the Trump White House pharmacy also included opioids which were not properly kept track of. The Trump drug mill was a microcosm for his administration as a whole.

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

The Washington Post reported that administration officials informed Congress of the 100 foreign military sales to Israel in a classified briefing. Few details are known of the sales, because keeping each one small meant their contents remained secret, but they are reported to have included precision-guided munitions, small diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other lethal aid. The Arms Export Control Act makes significant exceptions for arms sales to close allies – a limit of $25m for ‘major defense equipment’, defined as big-ticket items that require a lot of research and development, but the limit rises to $100m for other “defense articles” like bombs. “This doesn’t just seem like an attempt to avoid technical compliance with US arms export law, it’s an extremely troubling way to avoid transparency and accountability on a high-profile issue,” Ari Tolany, director of the security assistance monitor at the Centre for International Policy thinktank, said. She added that, in exploiting the loophole, the Biden administration was following the steps of its predecessor. “They’re very much borrowing from the Trump playbook to dodge congressional oversight,” Tolany said. The state department office of the inspector general found that between 2017 and 2019, the Trump administration had made 4,221 below-threshold arms transfers to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, worth an estimated total of $11.2bn.

[stupittmoran]

For the 7th year in a row, the Pentagon has failed its financial audit, unable to account for 60% of its $4.1 trillion in assets. Yes… that’s a staggering $2.46 trillion unaccounted for. If a private citizen failed even a few IRS audits, they’d likely face hefty fines and possible jail time for tax evasion. Yet, despite repeated failures, the Department of Defense still receives its full $824 billion annual budget. Conducted by independent auditors and overseen by the DoD Inspector General, these audits, costing $178 million and conducted by 1,700 auditors. Sources: The Hill, GAO

[darkmaga-returns]

Julia Gledhill

Nov 04, 2024

Time is running out for Congress to pass the annual defense policy bill. After the election, lawmakers must reconcile the differences between their versions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and set the topline for Pentagon spending in fiscal year 2025. When they do, they must strip two measures that will make it easier for contractors to engage in price gouging.

While the House abided by the spending caps Congress established in last year’s debt deal, the Senate added about $25 billion to the president’s budget request for the Pentagon — bringing the department’s topline to a whopping $912 billion. This is excessive, and the increase will not make Americans any safer. Lawmakers should communicate that to those negotiating the final NDAA.

Members of Congress cannot, however, overlook two seemingly benign provisions in the House version of the bill. If retained, Sections 811 and 812 of the House-passed NDAA would bolster contractors’ ability to price gouge the Pentagon — already a significant issue for the military. Just this week the Department of Defense (DOD) Inspector General found that Boeing overcharged the Air Force by nearly a million dollars on various products for the C-17 military transport aircraft. In one case, Boeing overcharged the military for a soap dispenser by nearly 8,000%, more than 80 times the commercial price.

[bighermie]

Bombshell Report: Oversight Subcommittee Finds Pentagon Deliberately Delayed National Guard Deployment on January 6 — Cover-Up by DoD Inspector General Exposed | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hᴏft

[dertaglichedan]

Bombshell transcripts: Trump urged use of troops to protect Capitol on Jan. 6 , but was rebuffed

Key lawmaker says interviews prove Pentagon wrongly allowed optics to overwhelm security concerns in lead-up to fateful day. The Pentagon's top brass did not comply with Trump's orders because of political concerns and "optics."

Then-President Donald Trump gave clear instructions to Pentagon brass days before the Jan. 6 riots to “do whatever it takes” to keep the U.S. Capitol safe, including deploying National Guard or active-duty troops, but top officials did not comply because of political concerns, according to transcripts of bombshell interviews conducted by the Defense Department's chief watchdog that shine new light on government disfunction ahead of the historic tragedy.

Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff, confirmed to the Pentagon inspector general three years ago that during a Jan. 3, 2021, Oval Office meeting Trump pre-approved the use of National Guard or active duty troops to keep peace in the nation’s capital on the day Congress was to certify the results of the 2020 election.

Milley's interviews were among several key to transcripts obtained by House Administration Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., and shared with Just the News.

“The President just says, ‘Hey look at this. It’s going to be a large amount of protesters come in here on the 6th, and make sure that you have sufficient National Guard or Soldiers to make sure it’s a safe event,’” Milley told the inspector general in one of two interviews he did in spring 2021 during a probe of the Pentagon’s response to Jan. 6.

Milley said then-Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, himself a former general, assured Trump there was an adequate safety plan for Pentagon assistance to Washington, D.C. “Miller responds by saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got a plan, and we’ve got it covered.’ And that’s about it,” Milley recalled.

[empirearchives]

Changes to the Tax Collection System in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France

My translation from Le prix de la gloire: Napoléon et l’argent by Pierre Branda.

This part is specifically about the reforms made to the tax collection system. Problems with taxation had been the source of many woes, so it went through major changes.

“The [tax] work of the Consulate mainly concerned the reorganization of tax collection. Until now, this essential element was not administered directly by the Ministry of Finance. The Constituent Assembly had wanted the tax rolls for direct contributions, that is to say the ‘tax slips’, to be established by municipal administrations. Their work was complex, because each year it was necessary to draw up a list of taxpayers, determine each person’s share of tax and send them the amount of the contribution to pay. Poorly motivated (or even corrupt), the municipalities had put little care in the execution of their mission since a large part of the taxpayers had not yet received anything for their taxes of year VIII, or even of year VII or year VI. Also, with two or three years of delay in preparing the rolls, it was not surprising that tax revenues were low (nearly 400 million francs were thus left outstanding). If the sending of tax matrices left something to be desired, the collection of direct contributions was hardly better. The tax collector was also not an agent of the administration: this function was assigned to any person who agreed to collect taxes with the lowest possible commission (otherwise called ‘collecte à la moins-dite’). With such a system, there were numerous inadequacies, often due to incompetence, but also due to the prevailing spirit of fraud. However, in their defense, the profits of the collectors were most of the time too low to provide such a service; also, to compensate for their losses, they were ‘forced’ to multiply small and big cheats. In any case, in such a troubled period, letting simple individuals carry out such a delicate mission could only be dangerous for the regularity of public accounts. In short, the mode of operation of taxation that Bonaparte and Gaudin inherited was failing on all sides and threatened to sink the State.”

“One month after Gaudin’s appointment, on December 13, 1799, the Directorate of Direct Contributions was created with the mission of establishing and sending tax matrices. This administration, dependent on the Ministry of Finance, was made up of a general director, 99 departmental directors and 840 inspectors and controllers. The organization of direct contributions became both centralized and pyramidal, the opposite of the previous system, decentralized and with a confused hierarchy. The work of preparing the rolls, for so long entrusted to local authorities, passed entirely ‘in the hands of the Minister of Finance’ and in this way the taxpayer found himself in direct contact with the administration. The tax system no longer having any obstacles, the beneficial effects of such a measure did not take long to be felt. With ardor, the agents of this new administration carried out considerable work: three series of rolls, that is to say more than one hundred thousand tax slips, were established in a single year. It must be said that the ministry had not skimped on their pay (6,000 francs per year for a director, 4,000 for an inspector and 1,800 for a controller), which was undoubtedly not unrelated to such success.”

“Tax reform was slower. It was not until 1804 that all tax collectors were civil servants. The consular system gradually replaced the collectors of the departments, then of the main cities and finally of all the municipalities whose tax rolls exceeded 15,000 francs. At the end of the Consulate, the entire tax administration was thus entirely dependent on the central government. Subsequently, the one in charge of indirect contributions (taxes on tobacco, alcohol or salt) created on February 25, 1804 and called the Régie des droits réunis was built on the same pyramidal and centralized model. It was the same later for customs.”

“According to Michel Bruguière, historian of public finances, ‘Napoleon and Gaudin can be considered the builders of the French tax administration. [...] They had also developed and codified the essential principles of our tax law, so profoundly derogatory from the rules of French law, since the taxpayer has nothing to do with it, while the administration has all the powers’. Basically, after having clearly understood the true cause of the ‘financial wound’, Bonaparte wanted an effective, almost ‘despotic’ instrument to avoid experiencing the unfortunate fate of his predecessors. As a good soldier, he created a fiscal ‘army’ responsible for providing the regime with the sinews of war. It was also necessary to definitively break the link between private interests and state service in everything that concerned public revenue. The time of the farmer generals of the Ancien Régime or the ‘second-hand’ collectors of the Directory was well and truly over. Napoleon Bonaparte, with his fierce desire to centralize power in this area as in many others, undoubtedly gave his regime the means to last.”

French:

Page 208

Page 209

Page 210

[odinsblog]

While Democrats are busy worrying about “decorum” and “maintaining norms” and “reaching across the aisle” to eagerly “compromise” with Christoafascists, Republicans are doing unprecedented damage and routinely shatter every norm they encounter.

A divided House voted on Thursday to restrict abortion access, bar transgender health services and limit diversity training for military personnel, potentially imperiling passage of the annual defense bill as Republicans, goaded by their right flank, loaded the measure with conservative policy dictates.

The House voted 221 to 213 to overturn a Pentagon policy guaranteeing abortion access to service members regardless of where they are stationed, with Republicans propelling it to passage over near-unanimous Democratic opposition.

By a vote of 222 to 211, the House also adopted a measure to bar the military’s health plan from covering gender-transition surgeries — which currently can be covered only with a waiver — and gender-affirming hormone therapy. And the chamber was on track on Thursday to vote on a Republican proposal to strip funding from the Pentagon for all diversity, equity and inclusion training.

Taken together, the series of changes — which hard-right lawmakers had demanded be put on the floor as a condition for allowing the legislation to move forward — threatened to sap critical Democratic support for the annual defense policy measure, an $886 billion bill that would grant a 5.2 percent pay raise to military personnel, counter aggressive moves by China and Russia, and establish a special inspector general to oversee U.S. aid to Ukraine.

“I don’t think I’ve ever not voted for an N.D.A.A,” said Representative Pete Aguilar, Democrat of California and the No. 3 Democrat, using the initials for the National Defense Authorization Act, one of the few pieces of legislation regarded as a must-pass item to come before Congress each year. “I’m a no.”

The action came during an extraordinarily bitter debate in the House over the annual defense policy measure, normally a bipartisan affair that draws broad support, which this week has instead become a battlefield in a political culture war stoked by the G.O.P.

In heated exchanges on the floor, Republicans accused Democrats and the Biden administration of trying to turn the Pentagon into a hotbed of radical progressivism, while Democrats said Republicans were trying to use the Defense Department to achieve an extreme agenda of rolling back the rights of women, people of color and transgender individuals.

(continue reading)

[tomorrowusa]

Stuff like this is not exactly news, but it is finally making the news.

In a speech at the Turning Point Action convention in Detroit on Saturday night, former President Donald Trump once again questioned President Joe Biden's mental acuity, suggesting that Biden should take a cognitive test. However, in the next breath, Trump confused the name of the doctor who administered the test to him during his presidency. "He doesn't even know what the word 'inflation' means. I think he should take a cognitive test like I did," Trump said of Biden. Seconds later, he continued, "Doc Ronny Johnson. Does everyone know Ronny Johnson, congressman from Texas? He was the White House doctor, and he said I was the healthiest president, he feels, in history, so I liked him very much indeed immediately."

The doctor Trump was referring to is actually named Ronny Jackson, not Ronny Johnson. Jackson, who served as the White House physician for part of Trump's presidency, is now a Republican congressman from Texas and one of Trump's most vocal defenders on Capitol Hill. Trump, who turned 78 on Friday, has made questioning whether the 81-year-old Biden is fit for a second term a centerpiece of his campaign. However, critics quickly seized on his Saturday night gaffe, with the Biden campaign posting a clip of the moment, minutes later.

Biden has had a lifelong stutter which he's mostly overcome. Trump's attacks on the disabled to draw attention from his own shortcomings are just part of his routine.

In fact, Trump is the candidate who repeatedly has shown increasing signs of psychological derangement.

In April, a leading psychologist said Trump's mental capabilities appear to be "faltering in a very dangerous way," while speaking on the David Packman Show. Harry Segal, a senior lecturer in psychology at Cornell University who has been critical of the former president's mental health said he believed Trump's "cognitive decline as being another layer of danger on top of an already erratic, mentally challenged person who shouldn't be anywhere near the White House."

As for Dr. Ronny Johnson Jackson, using him as a source is rather dubious.

First on CNN: Rep. Ronny Jackson made sexual comments, drank alcohol and took Ambien while working as White House physician, Pentagon watchdog finds

The Department of Defense inspector general has issued a scathing review of Rep. Ronny Jackson during his time serving as the top White House physician, concluding that he made “sexual and denigrating” comments about a female subordinate, violated the policy for drinking alcohol while on a presidential trip and took prescription-strength sleeping medication that prompted concerns from his colleagues about his ability to provide proper care.

Johnson Jackson got the nickname "Candyman" for freely handing out drugs at the White House.

Ex-White House doctor known as the ‘candyman’ dispensed pills without prescriptions

A former White House doctor was allegedly nicknamed the ���candyman” for handing out pills to staff without prescriptions. [ ... ]

Former members of the White House medical unit claim that under Dr Jackson’s leadership, they had handed out stimulants and sedatives without prescriptions, and faked staff members’ identities to give them free healthcare. They claimed the practices had been shaped by Dr Jackson, now a Republican congressman, who was given the nicknames “Dr Feelgood” and “the Candyman”.

I'd love to see an analysis of Trump's blood. In addition to sky high levels of caffeine from his 12 Diet Cokes® per day, there are probably some interesting chemicals churning through his system.

[mariacallous]

The deadly New Year’s Day terrorist attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas have brought renewed attention to the scourge of extremism in the US military, but efforts to tackle it wilted in the later years of the Biden administration, and are unlikely to be revived once Donald Trump begins his second term this month.

Both the New Orleans vehicle attack that killed 14, and the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas in which the driver died, were perpetrated by discharged or serving members of the armed forces.

Though investigators have yet to officially link the events, they follow a pattern of active or veteran military personnel involvement in acts of domestic terrorism, including the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot; a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017; and the 2009 mass shooting at the former Fort Hood army base in Texas that killed 13.

In response to the series of deadly events, defense secretary Lloyd Austin promised to tackle longstanding failures by the US military to address the problem. In 2021 he announced a series of initiatives, including a working group to study white nationalism and other extremist behavior within the defense department, and the commissioning of an independent report to review the issue and make recommendations.

The efforts, however, fizzled. Congressional Republicans effectively killed the Countering Extremism Working Group in December 2023, starving it of funds in the annual defense authorization bill, months after CNN reported the Pentagon group had “vanished virtually without a trace” because of what analysts said was a concerted Republican “war on woke”.

Its demise, which was never publicly announced, came just weeks after the publication of a report to Congress by the inspector general of the US defense department that detailed 183 investigations of alleged extremism within military ranks.

Dozens of the investigations involved allegations of military members advocating, engaging in or supporting terrorism in the US or overseas, while 14 army investigations related to “advocating or engaging in unlawful force or violence to achieve goals that are political, religious, discriminatory, or ideological in nature”.

The independent report that Austin commissioned, by the Virginia-based Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), was eventually published in December 2023, 18 months behind schedule, and quickly became the subject of controversy.

It found “no evidence that the number of violent extremists in the military is disproportionate to the number of violent extremists in the US as a whole”, and “no evidence of violent extremist behavior by department of defense civilians”.

Republicans seized on the report as “proof” that the media had colluded with Democrats to create a false narrative about the existence of extremism in the military, while the Republican bloc of the House armed services committee posted to X, then known as Twitter, that Joe Biden had “wrongly targeted our servicemembers with a divisive and political witchhunt”.

But in a November 2024 investigation, the Associated Press found that the IDA report included data two years out of date, “grossly undercounted” the number of serving military and veterans arrested for the 6 January attack, and “provided a misleading picture of the severity of the growing problem” of military extremism, the AP said.

An IDA spokesperson said its report was delivered to the defense department in June 2022. “IDA stands behind the rigor of the analysis and remains confident that the findings, including with regard to the prevalence of violent extremism in the DoD, were solidly based on the best data available at the time the work was conducted,” the group said in a statement.

The defense department did not respond to a request for comment.

Heidi Beirich, chief strategy officer and co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said the Biden administration began with good intentions to tackle extremism in US military ranks, and made progress in several areas, but was ultimately unable to deliver verifiable progress.

“There were positives, introducing a tattoo database to screen recruits, and tightening up the security clearance process. They created a definition for extremism, and regulations in the army, marines and navy to ban fundraising for, or liking extremist groups on social media,” she said.

“But the issue is enforcement. We have no idea if these things are getting done, how many people have been sanctioned for these things? We don’t have good data from inside the DoD, we have no good information, really, about levels of extremism within the military.”

Beirich said the issue became “a political football” for Republicans, and that she feared the situation would become worse if Pete Hegseth, Trump’s controversial nominee for defense secretary, was confirmed.

“They started having conversations about how you’re smearing the military when you even talk about extremism, which is most evident with Hegseth saying that rooting out extremists is essentially a scam, or some kind of woke,” she said.

“It’s depressing that this problem looks like it’s not going to be taken seriously, and we’re probably going to have more incidents of terrorism from veterans or active duty. The American public is going to be more at risk.”

Other analysts say that tackling the issue is not just the responsibility of the defense department.

“A lot of the individuals who commit these acts are primarily veterans, and often honorably discharged,” said Matt Dallek, a political history professor at George Washington University and author of Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right.

“The question is how does the government, particularly the Department of Veterans Affairs, try to prevent this sort of radicalization? How do they address the wider problems and challenges that veterans face, access to healthcare, mental health care, readjusting to civilian society and finding gainful employment?

“Although many of these cases may be different, it’s perhaps not all that surprising that a couple of decades post 9/11, a couple of decades of US war in Afghanistan and Iraq, we’re seeing at least some of these incidents of radical association, maybe anger at the US government and military, anger at the way the wars were conducted.”

[ritchiepage2001newaccount]

Project2025 #CorpMedia #Oligarchs #MegaBanks vs #Union #Occupy #NoDAPL #BLM #SDF #DACA #MeToo #Humanity #FeelTheBern

JinJiyanAzadi #BijiRojava Trump believes fight against DAESH achieved goal [UPDATES]

According to reports by Reuters and numerous American media, the US military troops are to be withdrawn from Syria…

RELATED UPDATE: Mattis resigns after clash with Trump over troop withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-announces-mattis-will-leave-as-defense-secretary-at-the-end-of-february/2018/12/20/e1a846ee-e147-11e8-ab2c-b31dcd53ca6b_story.html

RELATED UPDATE: Top U.S. envoy in the fight against ISIS resigns

RELATED UPDATE: Journalist Houda-Pepin: We betrayed the Kurds

RELATED UPDATE: Chief Pentagon spokeswoman announces resignation

RELATED UPDATE: Bolton’s visit to Ankara: Yellow vests, 944 and more

RELATED UPDATE: Trump Says ISIS Is Defeated. Reality Says Otherwise.

RELATED UPDATE: Report Warns ISIS is “Resurging” in Syria After Trump Ordered a Partial Troop Withdrawal

RELATED UPDATE: The Man Who Couldn’t Take It Anymore

FURTHER READING:

[lboogie1906]

Ambassador Dr. Howard Kent Walker (December 3, 1935) is a military veteran, diplomat, and educator who was born in Newport News, Virginia. His father was a high school chemistry and mathematics teacher and his mother a homemaker. He enrolled at the University of Michigan where he studied.

He was a part of the Air Force ROTC, which meant he would have a three-year obligation to the Air Force after graduation. He was an analyst at the CIA, and he passed the Foreign Service exam, becoming a Foreign Service Officer. His first assignment was in the State Department’s Bureau of Inter-Africa Affairs, working on Africa-United Nations issues.

His first overseas assignment was at the Embassy in Lagos. He served as an International Relations Officer for West African Affairs. He was assigned as a Counselor for Political Affairs at the Embassy in Amman, Jordan and next to the Embassy in Dar Es Salaam where he served as Deputy Chief of Mission, the second in charge of the embassy. He held the same position in Pretoria, South Africa.

President Ronald Reagan appointed him to be Ambassador to Togo. He became a Foreign Affairs Fellow at the Foreign Service Institute and Director of the Office of West African Affairs. He served in the Office of the Inspector General at the State Department until President George H.W. Bush appointed him as his Ambassador to Madagascar and the Comoros. He served as the State Department’s senior representative and Vice President at The National Defense University. He became Deputy Commandant of The NATO Defense College in Rome.

He returned to teaching international relations at various U.S. universities. he holds a BA and MA from the University of Michigan, as well as a Ph.D. from Boston University. He is married and the father of two children. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

June 5, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 06, 2024

Today the S&P 500, which tracks the stock performance of 500 of the biggest companies on U.S. stock exchanges, closed at a new record high of 5,354. The Nasdaq Composite, which is weighted toward the information technology sector, also closed at a record high of 17,187. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was also up, but not to a new record. It closed at 38,807.

That notable economic news got very little attention, likely in part because there is so much else going on.

Most dramatically, House speaker Mike Johnson elevated Ronny Jackson (R-TX) and Scott Perry (R-PA) to the House Intelligence Committee, giving them oversight of the entire U.S. intelligence community and access to the nation’s most sensitive foreign intelligence. The Intelligence community includes intelligence from the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Space Force, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Department, the State Department, the Department of Energy (which oversees information about nuclear weapons), the Treasury Department, and the Department of Homeland Security.

It also oversees the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and that oversight is likely a key reason Johnson put Jackson and Perry on the committee. 

A former Navy admiral, Jackson was Trump’s White House physician. Trump liked him enough to try unsuccessfully to promote him into the cabinet and within the U.S. Navy, and then to back him successfully for Congress after he retired from the Navy in 2019. In 2022 the U.S. Navy demoted him from admiral to captain after a 2021 report by the inspector general of the Defense Department showed he had “disparaged, belittled, bullied, and humiliated” his staff and abused alcohol on at least two occasions when he was supposed to be providing medical care to government officials.   

Perry is more problematic than Jackson. Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, told the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol that Perry played an important role in the plan to keep Trump in office after he lost the 2020 presidential election. She told podcast host Scott Lamar in October 2023 that Perry was “central to the planning of January 6,” and she has said repeatedly that Perry asked Trump for a pardon before he left office.

Federal authorities from the FBI seized Perry’s cell phone in 2022 as part of their investigation into the effort to seize the presidency; he is the only member of Congress whose cell phone was seized. Like Trump, who has attacked the FBI since then-director James Comey refused to drop the investigation into the connections between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian operatives, Perry has complained bitterly about the FBI’s investigation of him.

Now, Perry will be on the committee that oversees the FBI. In a statement, he said: “I look forward to providing not only a fresh perspective, but conducting actual oversight—not blind obedience to some facets of our Intel Community that all too often abuse their powers, resources, and authority to spy on the American People.”

Former director of the CIA General Michael Hayden wrote: “That’s unbelievable. Both of them. Intelligence Committee? God help us.” 

There is other news about the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election: yesterday Wisconsin attorney general Josh Kaul filed felony forgery charges against attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who planned the use of fake electors; former judge James Troupis, who managed Trump’s 2020 campaign in Wisconsin; and Michael Roman, a political operative who allegedly delivered the paperwork for Wisconsin’s fake electors to a congressional staffer to try to get them to Vice President Mike Pence. 

On January 6, 2021, after the document was delivered, Troupis texted to Chesebro: “Excellent. Tomorrow let’s talk about SCOTUS strategy going forward. Enjoy the history you have made possible today.” 

In Georgia, a court of appeals paused the case against Trump and his co-conspirators from proceeding until it rules on Trump’s appeal to disqualify Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis. It has tentatively set a hearing date for October 4, meaning that voters will not get to learn the outcome of the trial until after the election. If Trump is reelected, the trial will almost certainly not go forward. 

The federal criminal case against Trump for retaining classified documents is also stalled. Judge Aileen Cannon not only has put off hearings, she has added a hearing on June 21 to consider whether Special Counsel Jack Smith was properly appointed in the first place. She is revisiting a decision already decided in the affirmative in 2019 by the Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals. She has also taken the highly unusual step of inviting three people not involved in the case to argue in that hearing: two will argue that the appointment is invalid, one will argue that it was done properly. 

Meanwhile, there were signs over the past few days of the deeply different party principles at the heart of the 2024 election. At an event to reach Black voters in what Julia Terruso and Sean Collins Walsh of the Philadelphia Inquirer described as “one of the whitest and most conservative parts of Philly,” Representative Byron Donalds (R-FL), who is Black, illustrated the grip of a fantasy idyllic past on MAGA Republicans. 

Donalds praised the Jim Crow era of American history—which was literally named for a vicious caricature of African Americans that helped to justify the lynching that characterized the period—because “during Jim Crow the Black family was together.” He blamed the Great Society programs of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, including civil rights and social welfare programs, for eroding family values. 

On the House floor, Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) urged Donalds to “check yourself before you wreck yourself.” Democratic National Committee chair Jamie Harrison was less poetic but more succinct. He wrote: “These fools have lost their damn minds….”

In the Senate, Democrats forced Republicans to vote on advancing a bill to protect access to contraception. Republicans threatened a filibuster, meaning it would take 60 votes to bring the bill forward. And so the measure failed by a vote of 51 in favor to 39 against (Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer of New York voted no so he could bring the measure up again). Republican senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted in favor of the measure. All the other Republicans either voted no or did not vote. 

All the Republicans running for reelection this year voted no: John Barrasso (R-WY), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Rick Scott (R-FL), and Roger Wicker (R-MS). 

Some of them said they voted no because there was no danger that Republicans would attack contraception, claiming that Democrats were just “fear-mongering.” But in 2022, House Republicans overwhelmingly voted against protecting contraceptive rights, and in an interview last month, Trump said he was looking at restrictions on contraceptives before his campaign walked the statement back. Yesterday, in a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee on “How Abortion Bans Have Created a Health Care Nightmare Across America,” a Republican witness, Dr. Christina Francis, chief executive officer of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) took the position that IUDs and Plan B emergency contraception constitute abortion and should be banned. In the Senate itself, Jodi Ernst (R-IA) has already proposed getting rid of Plan B.

A February 2024 poll showed that 80% of American voters said that protecting access to birth control was “deeply important” to them.  

For all their rhetoric about “America First,” MAGA Republicans are out of step with actual Americans. The Trump loyalists now in charge of the Republican National Committee also appear to be remarkably ill-informed about the country itself. Sam Brody, political reporter for the Boston Globe, noted yesterday that on their website promoting the Republican National Convention to be held in July in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Republicans used a photograph not of Milwaukee, but of Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[darkmaga-returns]

Feds Target Prominent SW Florida Conservative Businessman and Activist Alfie Oakes

Dr. Joseph Sansone

Nov 07, 2024

Apparent rogue federal agencies raided the home and farm of Alfie Oakes a SW Florida conservative activist. Reportedly, federal agents used a battering ram to enter Alfie Oakes home while his wife and daughter were home.

NBC Local News

Law enforcement, including federal officials, were seen going in and out of the home of Alfie Oakes on Santa Cruz Court in the Villages of Monterey community in North Naples and an agricultural packing plant in Immokalee. Federal agents from the Defense Criminal Investigative Service were seen at the packing plant. The DCIS investigates cases of fraud, bribery, and corruption, including cyber crimes and computer intrusions.

WINK News

Several law enforcement departments were also seen at Oakes Farm packing house, including the Secret Service, the IRS and the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Inspector General on the scene.

Alfie Oakes gained notoriety by refusing to engage in Nuremberg Crimes and force face masks on his employees or customers during the COVID madness. The product of a vertical marketing business model, Oakes’s Seed to Table grocery store is a destination with an on site restaurant and often features conservative speakers. Alfie Oakes has been interviewed by Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson and is a prominent local businessman and Collier County Republican State Committeeman.

The purpose of the alleged investigation is a mystery. It appears that Alfie Oakes is being targeted for being a Trump supporter and being outspoken about the fraudulent 2020 presidential election as well as openly resisting COVID tyranny.

In a tyranny, truth is treason….

[generallemarc]

What's actually in the Ukraine bill-a breakdown

Military Assistance

Military Personnel(no, this does not mean troops are being deployed) to respond to the situation in Ukraine and for related expenses: $238,190,000, subdivided into

Army: $207,158,000

Marine Corps:$3,538,000

Air Force: $23, 302,000

Space Force: $4,192,000

This is literally what it sounds like: paying for people to do things, as opposed to the next item...

Operations and Maintenance: $34,243,729,000, subdivided into

Army:$4,877,581,000

Navy:$976,405,000

Marine Corps$69(nice),045,000

Air Force: $371,475,000

Space Force:$8,443,000

Defense-wide(bolded for being important): $27,930,780,000. Of this, $13,772,460,000 is directly for aid to Ukraine, and $13, 414,432,000 is for replacement and reimbursement for both physical aid and service aid(ie training) given to Ukraine. In other words, only the first half is actually going to Ukraine(mostly in the form of physical things like vehicles, guns, ammo and equipment and not just money) while the second half never leaves America.

Procurement:$13,276,910,000, subdivided into

Missile Procurement, Army:$2,742,757,000

Ammunition Procurement, Army:$5,612,900,000,

Other Procurement, Army: $308,991,000

Weapons Procurement, Navy:$706,976,000

Other Procurement, Navy:$26,000,000

Marine Corps:$212,443,000,

Missile Procurement, Air Force:$366,001,000

Other Procurement, Air Force:$3,284,072,000

Defense-wide:$46,780,000,

Research Programs

Research and Development:$633,387,000, subdivided into

Army:$18,594,000

Navy:$13,825,000

Air Force:$406,834,000

Defense-wide:$194,125,000

Other Military Aid

Office of the Inspector General(this is funds for oversight): $8,00,000.

Related Agencies

Intelligence Community Management Account:$2,00,000

Energy Programs

Science for the production of medical, stable, and radioactive isotopes(no idea why this is here): $98,000,000

Atomic Energy Defense Activities

Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation for etc etc:$143,915,000

Federal Salaries and Expenses for etc etc: $5,540,000

Health and Human Services

Refugee and Entrant Assistance: $481,000,000. This provision specifically allows the relevant agencies to use this money for grants or contracts with nonprofits, which imo means it's likely that most of this will go towards aiding Ukrainian refugees in Europe, and thus that this isn't just money for moving Ukrainians to America.

Department of State

Diplomatic Programs to respond to the situation in Ukraine and countries affected by said situation: $60,000,000

United States Agency for International Development

USAID operating expenses appropriated to the President for response to etc etc: $39,000,000

USAID Office of Inspector General: $10,000,000

Bilateral Economic Assistance

Transition Initiatives(meaning transition to democracy): $25,000,000

Economic Support Fund(for Ukraine's government): $7,899,000,000. A provision states that none of this money may be used for pensions(as an anti-corruption measure) and that at least $50,000,000 of this amount must be used to respond to food insecurity caused by the war.

Assistance for Europe, Eurasia, and Central Asia(for Ukraine's private sector):$1,575,000,000

International Security Assistance

International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement(for Ukraine and other countries affected by the invasion):$300,000,000

Nonproliferation, Antiterrorism, Demining and Related Programs(for Ukraine and other countries affected by the invasion): $100,000,000

Foreign Military Financing Program(for Ukraine and other countries affected by the invasion): $1,600,000,000

Some of the more impactful general provisions of the act:

The transfer of long-range ATACMS to Ukraine was required by the act, and that appears to have already happened. The President was given the option to not do so if he determined it would be detrimental to America's national security interests, but it appears he didn't.

The Secretary of State was directed to insure as much in-person monitoring as possible for funds appropriated for Economic Support, Assistance for Europe, Eurasia and Central Asia, International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement, and Nonproliferation, Anti-terrorism, Demining and Related Programs

The amount of money spent out of the total amounts budgeted for Economic Support and Assistance for etc etc may not exceed half the total amount of funds given by all donors to Ukraine. This basically means that, in terms of economic assistance, Europe has to do at least as much spending as we do.

The two headings for economic assistance mentioned above(totaling to $9,474,000,000) are loans that the President may only forgive in the following circumstances: up to 50% of the debts incurred by these loans may be cancelled by the President at any time after November 15th, 2024, while the remaining 50% may be cancelled at any time after January 1st, 2026. Both cancellations would be subject to Congressional approval.