Sanders Targets ‘Black Voter-Betraying’ Biden As CNN Poll Shows Democratic Socialist Leading Pack
The brewing battle between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden is heating up, as The Hill reports that the 78-year-old Vermont Senator is looking for a ‘one-on-one battle’ with the 77-year-old former Vice President.
The beef between Sanders and Biden came to a head this week after Sanders accused Biden of supporting cuts to Social Security, while Biden hit back – claiming Sanders is mischaracterizing his position.
And while most polls still have Biden as the 2020 Democratic frontrunner, a national CNN poll released Wednesday had Sanders at 27% vs. Biden at 24%, while Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) came in a distant third at 14%.
A Biden confidant said the campaign sees Sanders as its biggest rival at the moment, even as polls of Iowa and New Hampshire find a tighter four-candidate race between Biden, Sanders, Warren and former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
“For now at least it’s trending that way,” said the Biden insider. “It looks like Warren and Pete have peaked.“
After struggling to reach people of color in the 2016 Democratic primary, Sanders has markedly improved his standing among nonwhite voters and is now challenging Biden at the top. –The Hill
Sanders supporters include artists such as Killer Mike and ‘The Squad’ (AOC (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Pramila Jaypal (D-WA) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).
Nina Turner
Meanwhile, Sanders national campaign co-chairman Nina Turner wrote in an op-ed last week in South Carolina’s “The State” that Biden “has repeatedly betrayed black voters to side with Republican lawmakers and undermine our progress,” according to The Hill.
Apparently the pressure is catching up to Biden – who mocked and berated a CBS journalist who asked about the feud.
Ron Paul: The Impeachment Trial Of President Trump Is “Pure Politicking”
Former United States Hose of Representatives member and presidential candidate Ron Paul is not too impressed with the ongoing impeachment trial of President Donald Trump in the US Senate. The impeachment trial is “pure politicking,“ declares Paul in a new interview at TRT World focused in the impeachment trial.
Paul further comments in the interview:
It’s always been said that impeachment is a political process. Well that’s an understatement when you look at what’s going on now.
With wrongdoing being pursued by politicians both Republican and Democrat in DC, Paul assesses in the interview that the real battle taking place is over “who’s going be the boss of this” and “who’s going to control the largess.”
Soros Speaks Live From Davos, Slams “Conman, Narcisist” Trump
To say that it is virtually impossible to understand what the almost 90-year-old George Soros is saying during his traditionally anticipated speech in Davos, is an understatement, so we will leave it to Bloomberg to summarize the key points from the speech so far, which as one can expect, emphasize Soros’ less than warm feelings vis-a-vis Donald Trump:
*SOROS SAYS PRESIDENT TRUMP IS A `CON MAN’
*SOROS SAYS PRESIDENT TRUMP IS THE `ULTIMATE NARCISSIST’
After spending the bulk of his 2019 speech slamming China, Soros has reverted to this topic, fusing it with the “other” one:
*SOROS SAYS XI JINGPING IS SEEKING TO EXPLOIT TRUMP’S WEAKNESSES
*SOROS SAYS U.S.-CHINA RELATIONS `DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND’
Soros also commented on the key geopolitical event of 2020 to date: the assassination of Soleymani:
*SOROS SAYS TRUMP HAD NO STRATEGIC PLAN WITH IRAN ACTIONS
Then, the billionaire democrat turned his attention to the “overheating” US economy, warning that it is only a matter of time before the economy boils over:
*SOROS SAYS TRUMP TEAM HAS OVERHEATED ALREADY BUOYANT ECONOMY
*SOROS: U.S. OVERHEATED ECONOMY `CAN’T BE KEPT BOILING TOO LONG’
Follow the rest of Soros’ speech courtesy of Bloomberg TV:
WATCH: George Soros speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Watch live ▶️ https://t.co/LzQ6N4HstA
Communist Party authorities in Beijing are moving to quarantine essentially the entire province of Hubei after the deadly coronavirus that has swept across the globe over the past week originated in Wuhan, its capital city, and China’s seventh-largest metropolis – larger than any American city, and roughly five times the size of London.
But before the barricades went up, the New York Times apparently managed to sneak a few photographers into Wuhan. The result: one of the best photographic records to appear in the Western press.
A series of photos taken in Wuhan and elsewhere around China illustrate the Communist Party’s heavy-handed effort to suppress the spread of the virus, even as global health experts warn that the “horse is already out of the barn.”
Photos show victims being transported between hospitals by health-care workers wearing full-body protection.
Chinese authorities have come down hard on the virus, though some claim that efforts like public spraying won’t do much to stop the virus.
But the sight of health-care workers out in the public spraying is probably helping to shore up public confidence.
On the streets and in the supermarket, people in Wuhan won’t go anywhere without face masks.
Police surround the entrance to a public transit station in Wuhan. Rail travel has been temporarily suspended as part of the effort to contain the virus.
On a train from Shanghai to Wuhan carries precious few passengers brave enough to make the journey. With the New Year holiday approaching, the train is usually packed this time of year.
Across China, the sight of officials carrying infrared thermometers has become commonplace.
The number of confirmed cases of Wuhan coronavirus is rapidly approaching 650 as new cases have been confirmed in Singapore and Saudi Arabia, while three suspected cases have been identified in Scotland.
The US is currently enjoying another stock market boom which, if history is any guide, also stands to end in a bust. In the meantime, the boom is having a politically toxic effect by lending support to Donald Trump and obscuring the case for reversing the neoliberal economic paradigm.
For four decades the US economy has been trapped in a “Groundhog Day” cycle in which policy engineered new stock market booms cover the tracks of previous busts. But though each new boom ameliorates, it does not recuperate the prior damage done to income distribution and shared prosperity. Now, that cycle is in full swing again, clouding understanding of the economic problem and giving voters reason not to rock the boat for fear of losing what little they have.
The Groundhog Day boom-bust cycle links with John Kenneth Galbraith’s observations on the phenomenon of financial fraud via embezzlement, which he termed “the bezzle”:
“To the economist embezzlement is the most interesting of crimes. Alone among the various forms of larceny it has a time parameter. Weeks, months, or years may elapse between the commission of the crime and its discovery. (This is a period, incidentally, when the embezzler has his gain and the man who has been embezzled, oddly enough, feels no loss. There is a net increase in psychic wealth.) At any given time there is an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement in – or more precisely not in – the country’s businesses and banks. This inventory – it should perhaps be called the bezzle – amounts at any moment to many millions of dollars. It also varies in size with the business cycle.”
– (Galbraith, J.K., The Great Crash 1929, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1954, p.152-53).
Galbraith’s bezzle captures perfectly the dynamics of Ponzi frauds in which existing investors are paid richly with inflows from new investors. Those rich rewards then attract new investors and the fraud continues until new inflows are insufficient to meet previous promises, at which stage the Ponzi scheme implodes. However, along the way all investors feel richer.
Galbraith’s bezzle also captures the dynamic of speculative bubbles, which are a form of fraud we collectively inflict on ourselves. Investors buy in believing they will be able to sell at a higher price, and their purchases drive up prices and attract new investors who hope to jump on the price appreciation band wagon. The bubble continues until belief in ever higher prices is punctured, whereupon buyers evaporate and the bubble implodes. Once again, all feel richer along the way.
Today’s stock market increasingly has the smell and feel of another bezzle. That smell is metaphorically reflected in President Trump who has the integrity of a con man and whose business history is marked by reliance on funding from suspect sources plus serial bankruptcies. Now, Trump has used the presidential bully pulpit to cajole the Federal Reserve into further inflating asset prices by enjoining it to lower interest rates.
In addition to directly impacting asset pricing, the Federal Reserve has given a green flag for speculative buying and strengthened beliefs that it stands ready to guarantee stock prices via the so-called “Powell put”. That put is an amplification of the prior “Bernanke put”, which was in turn an amplification of the “Greenspan put” which launched the Federal Reserve’s commitment to stock prices.
To be honest, it did not take much cajoling from Trump as the Federal Reserve has learned little from the past thirty-five years of serial asset price bubbles. Furthermore, the composition of its current Board of Governors leans strongly toward Wall Street, and all its Board members have a strong personal interest in higher stock market prices from which they each stand to gain.
The policy pyramid is supported by the mainstream economics profession (many of whom are also beneficiaries of higher stock prices) which has now embraced asset price inflation as the preferred tool for combating recession and sustaining economic expansions. The wheel has come full circle. Whereas in the post-War era economic policy aimed to provide a floor for labor, now it openly aims to provide a floor for capital.
So, why write this?
First, caveat emptor. This time is likely no different. A bezzle is likely brewing somewhere within the system, and there are also risks brewing without.
Second, it is politically important to identify in advance the causes of the bezzle and the characters involved. That can help combat the false narratives which will inevitably emerge if a bezzle is eventually exposed.
Third, our addiction to stock price inflation is politically and economically toxic. It is rooted in an illusion promoted by Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and mainstream economists that conflates the stock market and shared prosperity. The reality is a stock market boom is not the basis of shared prosperity.
The Real Umbrella Corp: Wuhan Ultra Biohazard Lab Was Studying “The World’s Most Dangerous Pathogens”
Now that not one but seven Chinese cities – including Wuhan, ground zero of the coronavirus epidemic – and collectively housing some 23 million people, are under quarantine…
… comparisons to the infamous Raccoon City from Resident Evil are coming in hot and heavy. And, since reality often tends to imitate if not art then certainly Hollywood, earlier today we jokingly asked if the Medical Research Institute at Wuhan University would end up being China’s version of Umbrella Corp.
Is the Medical Research Institute at Wuhan University, Center for Immunology and Metabolism also called “Umbrella Corp” for short?
As it turns out, it wasn’t a joke, because moments ago it was brought to our attention that in February 2017, Nature penned an extensive profile of what it called the “Chinese lab poised to study world’s most dangerous pathogens.” The location of this BSL-4 rated lab? Why, Wuhan.
A quick read of what this lab was meant to do, prompts the immediate question whether the coronavirus epidemic isn’t a weaponized virus that just happened to escape the lab:
The Wuhan lab cost 300 million yuan (US$44 million), and to allay safety concerns it was built far above the flood plain and with the capacity to withstand a magnitude-7 earthquake, although the area has no history of strong earthquakes. It will focus on the control of emerging diseases, store purified viruses and act as a World Health Organization ‘reference laboratory’ linked to similar labs around the world. “It will be a key node in the global biosafety-lab network,” says lab director Yuan Zhiming.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences approved the construction of a BSL-4 laboratory in 2003, and the epidemic of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) around the same time lent the project momentum. The lab was designed and constructed with French assistance as part of a 2004 cooperative agreement on the prevention and control of emerging infectious diseases. But the complexity of the project, China’s lack of experience, difficulty in maintaining funding and long government approval procedures meant that construction wasn’t finished until the end of 2014.
The lab’s first project will be to study the BSL-3 pathogen that causes Crimean–Congo haemorrhagic fever: a deadly tick-borne virus that affects livestock across the world, including in northwest China, and that can jump to people.
Future plans include studying the pathogen that causes SARS, which also doesn’t require a BSL-4 lab, before moving on to Ebola and the West African Lassa virus,
What does BSL-4 mean?
BSL-4 is the highest level of biocontainment: its criteria include filtering air and treating water and waste before they leave the laboratory, and stipulating that researchers change clothes and shower before and after using lab facilities. Such labs are often controversial. The first BSL-4 lab in Japan was built in 1981, but operated with lower-risk pathogens until 2015, when safety concerns were finally overcome.
And here’s why all this is an issue:
Worries surround the Chinese lab. The SARS virus has escaped from high-level containment facilities in Beijing multiple times, notes Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey.
Below we repost the full Nature article because it strongly hints, without evidence for now, that the coronavirus epidemic may well have been a weaponized virus which “accidentally” escaped the Wuhan biohazard facility.
A laboratory in Wuhan is on the cusp of being cleared to work with the world’s most dangerous pathogens. The move is part of a plan to build between five and seven biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) labs across the Chinese mainland by 2025, and has generated much excitement, as well as some concerns.
Hazard suits hang at the National Bio-safety Laboratory, Wuhan, the first lab on the Chinese mainland equipped for the highest level of biocontainment.
Some scientists outside China worry about pathogens escaping, and the addition of a biological dimension to geopolitical tensions between China and other nations. But Chinese microbiologists are celebrating their entrance to the elite cadre empowered to wrestle with the world’s greatest biological threats.
“It will offer more opportunities for Chinese researchers, and our contribution on the BSL‑4-level pathogens will benefit the world,” says George Gao, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology in Beijing. There are already two BSL-4 labs in Taiwan, but the National Bio-safety Laboratory, Wuhan, would be the first on the Chinese mainland.
The lab was certified as meeting the standards and criteria of BSL-4 by the China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment (CNAS) in January. The CNAS examined the lab’s infrastructure, equipment and management, says a CNAS representative, paving the way for the Ministry of Health to give its approval. A representative from the ministry says it will move slowly and cautiously; if the assessment goes smoothly, it could approve the laboratory by the end of June.
BSL-4 is the highest level of biocontainment: its criteria include filtering air and treating water and waste before they leave the laboratory, and stipulating that researchers change clothes and shower before and after using lab facilities. Such labs are often controversial. The first BSL-4 lab in Japan was built in 1981, but operated with lower-risk pathogens until 2015, when safety concerns were finally overcome.
The expansion of BSL-4-lab networks in the United States and Europe over the past 15 years — with more than a dozen now in operation or under construction in each region — also met with resistance, including questions about the need for so many facilities.
The Wuhan lab cost 300 million yuan (US$44 million), and to allay safety concerns it was built far above the flood plain and with the capacity to withstand a magnitude-7 earthquake, although the area has no history of strong earthquakes. It will focus on the control of emerging diseases, store purified viruses and act as a World Health Organization ‘reference laboratory’ linked to similar labs around the world. “It will be a key node in the global biosafety-lab network,” says lab director Yuan Zhiming.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences approved the construction of a BSL-4 laboratory in 2003, and the epidemic of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) around the same time lent the project momentum. The lab was designed and constructed with French assistance as part of a 2004 cooperative agreement on the prevention and control of emerging infectious diseases. But the complexity of the project, China’s lack of experience, difficulty in maintaining funding and long government approval procedures meant that construction wasn’t finished until the end of 2014.
The lab’s first project will be to study the BSL-3 pathogen that causes Crimean–Congo haemorrhagic fever: a deadly tick-borne virus that affects livestock across the world, including in northwest China, and that can jump to people.
Future plans include studying the pathogen that causes SARS, which also doesn’t require a BSL-4 lab, before moving on to Ebola and the West African Lassa virus, which do. Some one million Chinese people work in Africa; the country needs to be ready for any eventuality, says Yuan. “Viruses don’t know borders.”
Gao travelled to Sierra Leone during the recent Ebola outbreak, allowing his team to report the speed with which the virus mutated into new strains. The Wuhan lab will give his group a chance to study how such viruses cause disease, and to develop treatments based on antibodies and small molecules, he says.
The opportunities for international collaboration, meanwhile, will aid the genetic analysis and epidemiology of emergent diseases. “The world is facing more new emerging viruses, and we need more contribution from China,” says Gao. In particular, the emergence of zoonotic viruses — those that jump to humans from animals, such as SARS or Ebola — is a concern, says Bruno Lina, director of the VirPath virology lab in Lyon, France.
Many staff from the Wuhan lab have been training at a BSL-4 lab in Lyon, which some scientists find reassuring. And the facility has already carried out a test-run using a low-risk virus.
But worries surround the Chinese lab, too. The SARS virus has escaped from high-level containment facilities in Beijing multiple times, notes Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. Tim Trevan, founder of CHROME Biosafety and Biosecurity Consulting in Damascus, Maryland, says that an open culture is important to keeping BSL-4 labs safe, and he questions how easy this will be in China, where society emphasizes hierarchy. “Diversity of viewpoint, flat structures where everyone feels free to speak up and openness of information are important,” he says.
Yuan says that he has worked to address this issue with staff. “We tell them the most important thing is that they report what they have or haven’t done,” he says. And the lab’s international collaborations will increase openness. “Transparency is the basis of the lab,” he adds.
The plan to expand into a network heightens such concerns. One BSL-4 lab in Harbin is already awaiting accreditation; the next two are expected to be in Beijing and Kunming, the latter focused on using monkey models to study disease.
Lina says that China’s size justifies this scale, and that the opportunity to combine BSL-4 research with an abundance of research monkeys — Chinese researchers face less red tape than those in the West when it comes to research on primates — could be powerful. “If you want to test vaccines or antivirals, you need a non-human primate model,” says Lina.
But Ebright is not convinced of the need for more than one BSL-4 lab in mainland China. He suspects that the expansion there is a reaction to the networks in the United States and Europe, which he says are also unwarranted. He adds that governments will assume that such excess capacity is for the potential development of bioweapons.
“These facilities are inherently dual use,” he says. The prospect of ramping up opportunities to inject monkeys with pathogens also worries, rather than excites, him: “They can run, they can scratch, they can bite.”
The central monitor room at China’s National Bio-safety Laboratory
If that wasn’t enough, here is January 2018 press release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, announcing the launch of the “top-level biosafety lab.”
China has put its first level-four biosafety laboratory into operation, capable of conducting experiments with highly pathogenic microorganisms that can cause fatal diseases, according to the national health authority. Level four is the highest biosafety level, used for diagnostic work and research on easily transmitted pathogens that can cause fatal diseases, including the Ebola virus.
The Wuhan national level-four biosafety lab recently passed an assessment organized by the National Health and Family Planning Commission, according to a news release on Friday from the Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Virologists read data on a container for viral samples at China’s first level-four biosafety lab at the Institute of Virology in Wuhan
After evaluating such things as the lab’s management of personnel, facilities, animals, disposals and viruses, experts believed the lab is qualified to carry out experiments on highly pathogenic microorganisms that can cause fatal diseases, such as Marburg, Variola, Nipah and Ebola.
“The lab provides a complete, world-leading biosafety system. This means Chinese scientists can study the most dangerous pathogenic microorganisms in their own lab,” the Wuhan institute said.
It will serve as the country’s research and development center on prevention and control of infectious diseases, as a pathogen collection center and as the United Nations’ reference laboratory for infectious diseases, the institute said.
Previous media reports said the Wuhan P4 lab will be open to scientists from home and abroad. Scientists can conduct research on anti-virus drugs and vaccines in the lab.
The lab is part of Sino-French cooperation in the prevention and control of emerging infectious diseases, according to the news release.
The central government approved the P4 laboratory in 2003 when the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome spread alarm across the country. In October 2004, China signed a cooperation agreement with France on the prevention and control of emerging infectious diseases. This was followed by a succession of supplementary agreements.
With French assistance in laboratory design, biosafety standards establishment and personnel training, construction began in 2011 and lasted for three years. In 2015, the lab was put into trial operation.
Finally, this is what the real Umbrella Corp looks like from space:
Ex-Wells Execs Hit With $59MM In Fines Over Fake Account Scandal; Stumpf Barred For Life
Nearly four years after Wells Fargo’s reputation was terminally crushed by the humiliating fake accounts scandal, the punishment for Warren Buffett’s favorite bank and its (mostly former) employees is still being doled out, and moments ago the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced $59 million in civil charges and settlements with eight former Wells Fargo senior executives on Thursday, including the payment of a $17.5 million fine by John Stumpf, the bank’s former CEO, who also agreed to a lifetime industry ban. Carrie Tolstedt, who led Wells Fargo’s community bank for a decade, faces a penalty of as much as $25 million.
“The actions announced by the OCC today reinforce the agency’s expectations that management and employees of national banks and federal savings associations provide fair access to financial services, treat customers fairly, and comply with applicable laws and regulations,” Joseph Otting, who heads the OCC, said in a statement.
Wells Fargo unleashed unprecedented public and political ire in 2016 after its was revealed that bank employees opened millions of fake accounts to meet sales goals. That and a slew of retail-banking issues that subsequently came to light have led to regulatory fallout that’s in many cases unprecedented for a major bank, including a growth cap from the Federal Reserve. It also led to a historic Congressional grilling of the bank’s then CEO, John Stumpf, who resigned shortly after.
As Bloomberg notes,” this is the first public step the OCC has taken against former executives related to Wells Fargo’s problems. Regulators received criticism from some corners over the fact that few individuals and no top executives were held accountable for crisis-era missteps that cost the banks billions in fines and penalties.”
Regulatory actions against Wells Fargo have also included billions of dollars in fines and legal costs, and an order giving the OCC the right to remove some of the bank’s leaders. The Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission also have been investigating the lender’s issues.
Why did it take 4 years for some individual justice to finally emerge? Simple: regulatory capture – as Bloomberg adds, the OCC drew scrutiny of its own as the firm’s main regulator throughout the scandals, prompting an internal review at the agency.
The OCC and the Fed have both cited a wide-ranging pattern of abuses and lapses at Wells Fargo, yet despite the universal condemnation, the bank’s biggest shareholder, Warren Buffett, has refused to dispose of his stake.
1975 was an exciting time to be at Boston University’s School of Public Communication. There we were, about 30 students seeking a Master’s Degree in Broadcast Journalism. All of us thought our quest was noble, that we would become purveyors of truth, skilled fact-finders and truth-tellers in the Watergate tradition. The lessons presented were well worth the tens of thousands of dollars I had to pay for them.
Forty-five years later, having reached the top of my profession, I generally despise my own industry, something I never could have predicted. Here’s why…
The national TV press is presently controlled by six major corporations that use their vast power to profiteer while attempting to destroy ideological enemies. The coverage of Donald Trump’s presidency has proved that statement beyond any reasonable doubt.
The stage was set early when a New York Times columnist wrote that because Mr. Trump was so loathsome (to him and his liberal colleagues), the basic tenets of fair journalism no longer applied. Get Trump was the new rule.
The mandate of an honest journalist is to seek the truth, even if the facts of a story go against your personal belief system. It is wrong to simply publish accusation and allegations, you must scrutinize all charges. If you cannot find solid facts to prove a story, you then must balance it – giving both sides equal weight.
Did that happen in the Russian-collusion situation? Of course not. The New York Times and Washington Post printed story after story damning the Trump operation. The network news and CNN took their cues from those liberal papers, constantly deriding the President and those who supported him.
Then Special Counsel Robert Mueller blew it all up. Federal investigators could find no evidence of collusion.
But no apology for unbalanced and fallacious coverage was heard from the corrupt national media. Instead, it segued into the shameful impeachment hysteria.
Please understand this: the primary reason the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Trump is that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat members knew the national press would give them cover and blatant support. The media portrayed Adam Schiff and other anti-Trump zealots as heroes. This despite strong evidence the Ukraine whistle-blower secretly coordinated with Schiff, a blatantly political and deceptive act.
From the very beginning, there was no balanced coverage of the impeachment story, no attempt to put forth both sides or to provide perspective. Mr. Trump was portrayed as guilty of “high crimes” in the Times and Post, as well as on television, in Hollywood, and in the publishing industry. Any high profile person who had the temerity to disagree was mocked or worse.
The cold truth is that the men who preside over The New York Times and The Washington Post, and they are all men, believe THEY should be running the United States, not Donald Trump, who is a vulgarian in their eyes. These men well know the Democratic Party will blindly follow their editorial lead as will TV news executives at CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS.
Thus, the so called “free press” in America has become an industry that now seeks power over Americans. The far left vision these operations usually champion cannot be realized at the ballot box, the bosses know that. So it must be imposed by destroying progressive opposition, which the media does with enthusiasm. Just ask Brett Kavanaugh.
The key question is: how many of us realize what is actually happening with the dishonest, power mad media?
Impossible to say. But for those who do understand the corruption, the danger to American freedom is obvious.
And that is why I have come to despise my own industry.
World trade in 2019 expanded at its weakest year since 2009. Significant macroeconomic headwinds started to slow the global economy in late 2017, several quarters before the trade war began. We’ve covered the main shipping lanes from the U.S. to China and China to the U.S., along with other routes from Europe to China and China to other Asian countries, but new trade data has shown international cargo on the U.S. Great Lakes also plunged last year.
Cargo hauled across the Atlantic Ocean through the St. Lawrence Seaway to Great Lakes ports plunged 7% Y/Y last year, reported The Times of Northwest Indiana.
Trade officials attributed the steep decline in cargo volumes on the trade war, high waters that made some regions impassible, and adverse weather conditions that weighed on grain exports.
“The challenges of the 2019 shipping season underline the critical importance of protecting the future integrity of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence waterway as a reliable and efficient trade and transportation corridor for the United States and Canada,” said Bruce Burrows, president of the Chamber of Marine Commerce.
“High water levels are negatively impacting residents and businesses, including the marine shipping sector that transports cargo through the St. Lawrence Seaway, and we need to work together with the International Joint Commission and governments to conduct a proper study into water levels and their causes, and to develop a resiliency plan that can address stakeholder needs into the future.”
Burrows said the Great Lakes-Seaway transportation system supports more than 238,000 jobs and $35 billion in economic activity for North American economies.
Canada and U.S.’ annual growth rate has rapidly slowed since 1H18 — as a manufacturing recession continues to deepen. With no signs of abating in early 2020 – international cargo volumes across the Great Lakes could see persistent weakness in the coming quarters.
As for world trade, the expectation of a V-shape recovery in 2020 could be more of fantasy as global equities have already priced-in a massive rebound. The world has likely entered a U-shape recovery as low-growth becomes the new normal.
The Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee Sen. Chuck Grassley sent a letter Wednesday to the Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment’s director requesting detailed information on contracts provided to FBI informant Stefan Halper, who was spying on three of President Trump’s campaign aids during the 2016 election probe.
The expansive nature of Grassley’s investigation is significant and coincides – but is separate – with an ongoing investigation by the Department of Justice appointed prosector John Durham’s criminal probe into the matter,as first reported by SaraACarter.com.
Durham’s criminal investigation into the FBI, CIA, as well as private entities connected to the bureau’s investigation into the Trump campaign and now debunked theory that it colluded with Russia, has also expanded to the Office of Net Assessment. Known by its acronym ONA, the secretive office is run by Director James Baker, who has been in the role since being appointed by the Obama Administration in 2015.
In the letter to Baker Grassley asks a litany of questions as to Halper’s role within ONA, his contracts, his foreign contacts and whether the FBI, or other agencies, used the ONA office to pay Halper for spying on Trump campaign personnel.
“Can ONA state for certain that Halper did not use taxpayer money provided by DoD to recruit, or attempt to recruit, sources for the FBI investigation into the now-debunked theory of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia,” Grassley asks Baker.
Baker could not be immediately reached for comment.
According to sources familiar with the matter he has also been questioned by Durham’s investigative team. Grassley has also been looking into the matter since early 2019, when he requested that the “DoD Inspector General (IG) review allegations of mismanagement by ONA contracts for political, improper or wasteful activities.” The Senator “later sought information about ONA contracting processes following a DoD IG audit of the program, which found that ONA could not provide sufficient documentation that Halper conducted all of his work in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. The Pentagon issued a corrective action plan for ONA in august.”
Justice Department Kerry Kupec told this reporter that she could not comment on Durham’s ongoing investigation.
What we do know from Grassley’s office is that the investigation is focused on the ONA’s “contract compliance after reviewing troubling documents related to contracts awarded to Professor Stefan Halper.”
“Those documents call into question ONA’s stewardship of taxpayer dollars as well as its contract management and internal controls,” a press release on the matter stated.
This is where Halper’s role with ONA “becomes highly suspicious and his contracts coincide with his spying on the Trump campaign,” said one former government official, familiar with the matter. Halper was an integral part of the FBI’s investigation in 2016 into short-term Trump campaign volunteer, Carter Page and George Papadopolous. Halper’s Cambridge Intelligence Seminar was also connected to Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, when in April, 2014 Flynn, who was then head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was invited as a guest to London, England. Flynn would later be at the center of false stories accusing him of being a Russian asset and wrapping Russian born British academic Svetlana Lokhova into the false stories.
Lokhova, who recently spoke to The Sara Carter Show, said Halper did so because he is ‘the dirty trickster’ used to target, spy and spread disinformation in an attempt to target President Trump.
Lokhova also attended the dinner at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar in 2014. It was there that she briefly met Flynn. She believes it was Halper who assisted in pushing and leaking the false stories later in 2017 that she and Flynn had an affair and that she was an asset of Russia. She is now suing the news publications and Halper for defamation.
Halper first made contact with Page at his seminar as well, in July 2016. Page, who was already on the FBI’s radar, was later accused falsely in news reports as being a Russian asset, when false information in former British spy Christopher Steele’s dossier was purposefully leaked in a disinformation campaign against Trump officials. The unverified dossier was also used as the bulk of evidence by the FBI to get a warrant to spy on Page. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s most recent report revealed the extensive malfeasance by FBI officials to obtain the warrant against Page and also revealed that the FBI failed to validate any information in Steele’s debunked dossier.
The ONA, which was established under former President Richard Nixon, is considered the Pentagon’s ‘think tank’ but has been highly criticized in recent years for what appeared to be a failure to produce assessments. For example, in 2016 Washington Time’s national security writer Bill Gertz published a damning article revealing that Baker failed “to produce more of its signature product, namely, top-secret net assessments.”
As stated by Gertz, the office, “has focused its $20 million annual budget mainly on producing outside research projects, some of them of questionable value, according to critics.” Under the Pentagon the ONA is supposed to be an “internal research organization that awards contracts for academic reports intended to assist the military in producing long-term trends and prospects of military capabilities compared to other countries to identify future threats.”
That’s where Halper comes into play. Halper garnered numerous contracts from the ONA totaling more than $1 million and many which coincide with the same timeline he was reporting on Trump aids to the FBI.
Grassley’s investigation, however, reveals that “reviews of Halper’s research proposals prompted criticism of the quality and necessity of his work product. Other contracts show that Halper listed a Russian intelligence official as a consultant for an ONA project.”
That Russian intelligence official is former Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Vyacheslav Trubnikov. Here’s what’s important. Follow the timeline.
One of the contract’s under question was “awarded in September 2015, Professor Halper lists former Deputy Foreign Minister for Russia, Vyacheslav Trubnikov, as a consultant and advisor to a paper delivered to ONA. Trubnikov is a known Russian intelligence officer, who was listed by Christopher Steele as a source in the now-debunked Steele dossier, which was used as a predicate to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to surveil Trump Campaign adviser Carter Page. It is unclear from the contracting officer file whether Professor Halper paid Trubnikov for his assistance in gathering information for this paper, or in what capacity Professor Halper interacted with Trubnikov during the course of performing work for this contract. Further, reports indicate that Halper offered George Papadopoulos $3,000 for assistance in completing an energy study and met Carter Page at a Cambridge conference. Given Professor Halper’s intelligence connections and government funding, it is reasonable to ask whether he used any taxpayer money in his attempt to recruit Trump campaign officials as sources.”
Trubikov is the same source Steele alleged he used in his dossier that allowed the FBI to spy on Page.
“Halper was also in contact with Page and another Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, raising questions about whether Halper used U.S. taxpayer dollars to seek connections with Trump campaign officials,” stated Grassley’s office.
“The interactions also raise questions about what role, if any, Halper had in the Russian election interference investigation, which found no collusion with the Trump campaign.”
In the letter to Baker, Grassley “requested additional data on ONA contracts for the past five years, including details on their purposes, costs and efforts to ensure proper oversight and compliance. Grassley also questioned why ONA issued other contracts unrelated to Halper that appear to have no relation to ONA’s purpose and mission.”
Some Questions Grassley wants answered from Baker’s ONA (From The Letter To Baker)
In an effort to better understand ONA’s contracting practices, please answer the following questions, on a question-by-question basis, no later than February 5, 2020:
ONA is required to conduct a yearly Net Assessment of DoD’s military capabilities as compared to the military capabilities of other countries.[16] When was the last time ONA completed a Net Assessment?
Please provide a list of all contracts issued for each year over the last five years, the title of each funded project, and the total cost of each contract to the taxpayer. Of those contracts, which ones called for classified research?
Please provide a list of the top five individuals or entities, in terms of dollar amount, over the last five years that have received awards, including the names of awardees, number of contracts awarded, dates of award, dollar amount per award, the project to be funded, and the authorizing official(s).
Please describe ONA’s process for how it evaluates research proposals and oversees the process of editing and managing the research paper. In your answer, please address the following:
What role do pre-award evaluations play with respect to ONA’s decision to award a contract to an individual or entity?
Does ONA conduct any assessment of the validity of citations or supporting research used in the research paper? If not, why not?
When entering into contracts, does ONA require that research papers be peer reviewed to assure that the views within the deliverable are adequately vetted and not affected by bias or outside influence? If not, why not?
Does ONA believe that, for a research paper to be of significant value to furthering ONA’s purpose of providing assessments of the standing, trends, and future prospects of United States military capabilities and military potential in comparison with those of other countries, statements within research papers must be accurate and adequately vetted? If not, why not?
Does ONA currently require contractors to provide the name and dollar amount contributed by third parties to ensure that a contractor’s work is in no way influenced by foreign individuals or entities, or any other potential conflict of interest? If so, please provide this policy. If not, does ONA intend to develop or institute such a policy? If not, why not?
For each of Halper’s contracts, did ONA perform a post-contract evaluation? If so, please provide each evaluation. If not, why not?
If a contract has an exercisable option, which individual within ONA makes the determination as to whether that option is exercised? If ONA has the discretion to exercise an option in a contract, is the strategic value to ONA considered when that option is exercised? If not, why not?
In response to DoD IG recommendation #3, ONA stated that “not every contract requires exhaustive or significant verification of the methods used to derive analytic content.” Further, ONA stated, relating to Professor Halper’s contracts, that “[t]he Government received deliverables that were high quality and conformed to the requirements set forth in the contract.”[18] ONA further states that quality controls will be established, based on ONA’s minimum needs.
If a contractor does not actually interview individuals that they say they interviewed, or provide accurate sourcing, the deliverable does not meet contract specifications and the contractor should not be paid. Accepting and paying for a defective deliverable may be a violation of law. If ONA does not take any steps to verify a contractor’s work product, how can ONA rely on that contractor or deliverable to provide accurate information in order to make a net assessment?
What quality controls does ONA seek to establish in order to verify that contractors are adhering to, and fulfilling, every requirement in a given contract?
After a research paper is completed, are the papers shared outside ONA? If so, please describe the process by which research papers are shared within the federal government or private sector. If not, why not?
Did Professor Halper ever disclose his relationship with former Deputy Foreign Minister for Russia Vyacheslav Trubnikov to yourself or any other ONA official prior to completion of contract number HQ0034-15-C-0100 (The Russia-China Relationship: The Impact on the United States’ Security)? Does this relationship with a Russian intelligence officer suggest that there may be biased and unreliable information contained within the deliverable?
Can ONA state for certain that Halper did not use taxpayer money provided by DoD to recruit, or attempt to recruit, sources for the FBI investigation into the now-debunked theory of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia?
Are you, or any other ONA official, aware of any other relationships Professor Halper had with foreign intelligence officers?
