Monthly Archives: June 2023

Joe Biden and the Press

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Simon Ateba is a Cameroonian journalist representing Today News Africa in the White House Press Corps. During the daily mid-day-ish press briefings, President Joe Biden’s (D) Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre routinely clashes with him, essentially telling him to shut up and sit down when she’s not ignoring him altogether.

Then came last Monday’s live stream of the day’s presser—and a lively exchange between Ateba and Jeanne-Pierre was excised from the stream. Completely stripped out. Censored.

The deleted portion was restored only after Fox News Digital asked the press secretary’s office how that worked.  “The White House” claimed the deletion was caused by a technical glitch. Apparently, no one in Jean-Pierre’s office monitors the feed to ensure a livestream upload goes smoothly. Or at least that’s the implication from the claim, since surely any such glitch would have been corrected in real time, had anyone been paying attention.

Former President Donald Trump (R) didn’t even treat CNN‘s deliberately combative, constantly interrupting Jim Acosta so shabbily, for all that he so frequently argued with Acosta.

Again I ask: of what is Biden so terrified that he won’t even let his Press Secretary engage with a journalist like Ateba?

Plausible Deniability?

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Whistleblowers are telling Congress that Delaware US Attorney David Weiss was actively blocked from pursuing his investigation of Hunter Biden’s tax evasion and influence peddling machinations, including being denied permission to pursue the IRS’ tax concerns and being denied permission to bring serious (or any) charges against Hunter Biden in other jurisdictions than Delaware. These claims directly contradict Attorney General Merrick Garland’s prior sworn Congressional testimony that Weiss would have a free and unrestricted hand in his investigations.

Matthew Whitaker, Acting Attorney General under former-President Donald Trump, suggests that Garland might actually have had no knowledge of the obstruction coming from his office:

I also know how the Department of Justice works and Merrick Garland is being kept in the dark by a lot of this.
He’s not communicating with these US attorneys in Los Angeles and the District of Columbia who are doing his dirty work.

And

The Deputy Attorney General, who has day-to-day oversight of those offices, certainly is trying to keep things out of Garland’s office. And not only would I bring those US attorneys in front of Congress after they bring the six witnesses, I would also bring the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the tax division who would have had to approved or be involved in these cases.

Whitaker is being generous. These deputies trying to set up a case of plausible deniability for Garland. They’re failing at that.

Garland is an active participant in this obstruction by his deputies, if only by his continued allowing the obstruction to occur. Garland also assuredly knows of the obstruction at least since the publicity of the whistleblowers’ claims has become so widespread, and he’s still done nothing about it.

There is no plausible deniability here; Garland has constructive knowledge of the obstruction, and he has had all along: even if he doesn’t watch TV or read print news, these deputies work directly for him, Of course he knows what they’re doing, and he knows it in real time.

Merrick Garland must go. But House time and resources shouldn’t be wasted on impeachment when there aren’t the votes in the Senate for a serious trial, much less legitimate chance for a conviction. Instead, Congress and Congressmen must effectively impeach this person by widely and loudly publishing his many peccadilloes—most blatantly, for instance, investigating mothers protesting at school board meetings as domestic terrorists and allowing his FBI to “investigate” traditional Catholics as “right wingers”—and by deleting from the appropriate appropriations bill all funding for the office of Attorney General as long as he’s the AG.

A Thought on Moore v US

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Moore v US is a tax case that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear in its next term, beginning 2 October. The case asks whether mere asset value increases—wealth increases—can be taxed as income, just because of that increase, but before it has been realized—before the asset actually has been disposed of for more than the cost of its acquisition, with that value increase turned into actual dollars on the barrelhead.

The proximate subject concerns a provision in the 2017 tax reform that levied a one-time mandatory repatriation tax on foreign companies.

But the tax applied to American shareholders, even passive investors like Charles and Kathleen Moore of Washington state. They were hit by a surprise $14,729 tax bill, though they had never seen a dime of income from their investment in a friend’s company in rural India. They were taxed instead on the unrealized income of the foreign company.

The Moores sued for a refund—because with this IRS, of course they had to—but

the Ninth Circuit ruled that “realization of income is not a constitutional requirement.”

The Wall Street Journal‘s editors argue that

This defies the traditional understanding in US tax law, and in Supreme Court doctrine, that income must be realized before it can be taxed.

I go the editors one further. A homeowner can’t take an increase in his home value (for instance) down to the corner grocer and buy food, or even pay off credit card debt. That last, in particular, requires floating a new loan, even if in the form of refinancing the old. Neither can the Moores take any increase in their investment value on down to their auto dealership and buy an automobile: they must first convert the increase into a loan or into hard cash: they must realize that value increase.

If an increase in value is unrealized—if it hasn’t been converted to actual spendable value—it isn’t income in the first place; it doesn’t exist in any form except as wisps in the æther.

There’s nothing in the æther that’s taxable.

Rebellion, or…?

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Wagner MFWIC (perhaps ex-MFWIC) Yevgeny Prigozhin now claims his move through Rostov-on-Don, then up the M4 highway through Voronezh on the way to Moscow, was not an attempt to overthrow the Russian government, or even the Russian Defense establishment. (Note: the cite actually is a Moscow Times reprint of an AFP article.)

We went to demonstrate our protest and not to overthrow power in the country[.]

The move, which involved attacks on the Wagner units by Russian army and air force units and Wagner shootdowns of a number of helicopters and a command and control airplane, was the Russian iteration of a mostly peaceful protest.

On the other hand,

[T]he [Russian] Ministry of Defense said that the Wagner paramilitary group that launched a mutiny last week was preparing to hand over its heavy weapons[.]

It’s not necessarily an open question, then: the move to separate Wagner from its heavy weapons suggests the Russian government has made up its mind on how much protest, peaceful or otherwise, was involved in the matter.

Biden’s Pick to Run the CDC

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With the current CDC honcho leaving the position at the end of the week, President Joe Biden (D) has picked Mandy Cohen, ex-North Carolina Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, to run the agency. This is the woman who, while in the NC government,

  • acceded to Anthony Fauci’s words and directions unquestioningly throughout the Wuhan Virus Situation
  • idolized Fauci with a mask featuring his image
  • imposed harsh restrictions that disrupted everyday life with no medical—or any other—benefit
  • bragged about enforcing mass shutdowns

Nominees to the CDC Directorship aren’t subject to Senate Advice and Consent, so Biden can just appoint her.

However.

The Congress can have an impact on her appointment: the House can decline, through the appropriate appropriations bill, to fund the position of CDC Director and the Immediate Office of the Director, with the latter’s 10 Offices and Chief of Staff, until a suitable Director is appointed. The House can decline to fund the CDC as a whole. The Senate can pass the House’s bill and send the relevant appropriations bill to the President.

All that would take is the political will of the Republican majority in the House along with unified Senate Republicans in conjunction with the House declining to pass any sort of budget item via reconciliation.