SEE BELOW: AMERICANS WANT TO KNOW HOW THIS SUICIDE MOTHER FUCKER HAS SCAMMED THE UNITED STATES TAX PAYER OUT OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS.
The political consulting group co-owned by Rep. Ilhan Omar’s husband received nearly $635,000 in coronavirus funds, public records show.
Tim Mynett’s E Street Group LLC was given $134,800 this year as part of the Paycheck Protection Program; he was also given $500,000 in Economic Injury Disaster loans.
Omar (D-Minn.) and Mynett married in March, and just weeks after they tied the knot, his consulting firm was paid $189,000 by Omar’s campaign, The Post reported in July.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar is cutting ties with her husband’s political consulting firm after winning her bid for reelection, saying she wants to ensure her supporters feel there’s no perceived issue.
Omar married her political consultant, Tim Mynett, in March, sparking scrutiny and a complaint to the Federal Election Commission by a conservative group that alleged campaign funds paid for Mynett’s personal travel. The FEC has taken no public action on that complaint, and Omar has said payments to Mynett’s firm, E Street Group, were legitimate.
Omar’s campaign was big business for E Street Group. The campaign reported paying the firm more than $1.1 million for advertising and consulting in the third quarter of this year alone.
In an email to her supporters on Sunday, Omar said her campaign was terminating its contract with E Street Group to “make sure that anybody who is supporting our campaign with their time or financial support feels there is no perceived issue with that support,” the Star Tribune reported.
Executive order by President Trump to roll out the Covid-19 Vaccine first to Americans. We wholeheartedly agree with the President. But our last priority should be placing the criminals who rule states like dictators, authoritarians in their own right, the last in line.
In other words those who are of the Democrat persuasion need to suffer the full weight of the China Virus. Do it Mr. President, give back the HURT that they gave you these past four years. Do IT MR. PRESIDENT.
The president of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, Patrick Gaspard, will resign, opening the way for him to take a possible position in the Biden administration.
Gaspard previously served as U.S. ambassador to South Africa between 2013 and 2016 in the Obama administration. Before that, he served as director of the White House Office of Political Affairs.
Axios reported that there is speculation he could join the Biden administration, possibly as Labor secretary. He has previous experience with labor unions — having worked for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU.)
In a statement, Gaspard said he wishes to re-enter politics to continue “the struggle against oppression everywhere.”
FRAUDULENT ELECTION TO TAKE PLACE IN VENEZUELA – BIDEN CAMPAIGN LEARNED FROM CHAVEZ ON HOW TO STEAL – EX PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER BACKED UP CHAVEZ
In the run-up to what would be Hugo Chávez’s final election, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter provided the ultimate cover for the late caudillo when he called the Venezuelan election process “the best in the world.” Today, as the country roils in the aftermath of a contested election to elect Chávez’s successor, we now know that …
The Loeffler-Warnock debate will kick off at 7 p.m. EST on Dec. 6, after Jon Ossoff takes the stage at 5 p.m. by himself. Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., declined invitations from the Atlanta Press Club (APC) to debate his challenger again
“Sen. Loeffler looks forward to exposing Warnock as the most radically liberal candidate anywhere in the country and hear why he has attacked our police, military, small businesses, Israel and virtually every single voting bloc in the state of Georgia,” Stephen Lawson, Loeffler campaign communications director, said in a statement to Fox News.
VOTE DAVID PERDUE – A PATRIOTIC AMERICAN VS A SUICIDE BOMBER
90% OF THE CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS FOR OSSOFF CAME IN FROM CALIFORNIA’S WEST COAST LIBERAL ELITES – WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU?
At 5 p.m., Ossoff will take the stage next to an empty podium to represent the incumbent. Ossoff and Perdue debated twice before the general election. An APC spokesperson told Fox News that “we don’t feel it’s fair to penalize the candidate who has agreed to come.”
“The runoff in Georgia is an extension of the Nov. 3 general election, where 52% of Georgians voted against Jon Ossoff and his radical agenda. Perdue had a commanding first place win, outpacing Ossoff by over 85,000 votes – in nearly every other state, Perdue would have been reelected already,” Perdue communications director John Burke said in a statement about the debates.
Trump took to Twitter to voice his frustration over losing the traditionally red state by 12,500 votes and said, “I will easily & quickly win Georgia if Governor [Kemp] or the Secretary of State permit a simple signature verification.”
“Has not been done and will show large scale discrepancies,” Trump claimed. “Why are these two ‘Republicans’ saying no? If we win Georgia, everything else falls in place!”
Everything’s under control.Big government is needed to fight the pandemic. What matters is how it shrinks back again afterwards
Editor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For more coverage, see our coronavirus hub
In just a few weeks a virus a ten-thousandth of a millimetre in diameter has transformed Western democracies. States have shut down businesses and sealed people indoors. They have promised trillions of dollars to keep the economy on life support. If South Korea and Singapore are a guide, medical and electronic privacy are about to be cast aside. It is the most dramatic extension of state power since the second world war.
One taboo after another has been broken. Not just in the threat of fines or prison for ordinary people doing ordinary things, but also in the size and scope of the government’s role in the economy. In America Congress is poised to pass a package worth almost $2trn, 10% of gdp, twice what was promised in 2007-09. Credit guarantees by Britain, France and other countries are worth 15% of gdp. Central banks are printing money and using it to buy assets they used to spurn. For a while, at least, governments are seeking to ban bankruptcy.
For believers in limited government and open markets, covid-19 poses a problem. The state must act decisively. But history suggests that after crises the state does not give up all the ground it has taken. Today that has implications not just for the economy, but also for the surveillance of individuals.
It is no accident that the state grows during crises. Governments might have stumbled in the pandemic, but they alone can coerce and mobilise vast resources rapidly. Today they are needed to enforce business closures and isolation to stop the virus. Only they can help offset the resulting economic collapse. In America and the euro area gdp could drop by 5-10% year-on-year, perhaps more.
One reason the state’s role has changed so rapidly is that covid-19 spreads like wildfire. In less than four months it has gone from a market in Wuhan to almost every country in the world. The past week logged 253,000 new cases. People are scared of the example of Italy, where almost 74,000 recorded cases have overwhelmed a world-class health system, leading to over 7,500 deaths.
That fear is the other reason for rapid change. When Britain’s government tried to hang back so as to minimise state interference, it was accused of doing too little, too late. France, by contrast, passed a law this week giving the government the power not just to control people’s movements, but also to manage prices and requisition goods. During the crisis its president, Emmanuel Macron, has seen his approval ratings soar.
In most of the world the state has so far responded to covid-19 with a mix of coercion and economic heft. As the pandemic proceeds, it is also likely to exploit its unique power to monitor people using their data (see article). Hong Kong uses apps on phones that show where you are in order to enforce quarantines. China has a passporting system to record who is safe to be out. Phone data help modellers predict the spread of the disease. And if a government suppresses covid-19, as China has, it will need to prevent a second wave among the many who are still susceptible, by pouncing on every new cluster. South Korea says that automatically tracing the contacts of fresh infections, using mobile technology, gets results in ten minutes instead of 24 hours.
This vast increase in state power has taken place with almost no time for debate. Some will reassure themselves that it is just temporary and that it will leave almost no mark, as with Spanish flu a century ago. However, the scale of the response makes covid-19 more like a war or the Depression. And here the record suggests that crises lead to a permanently bigger state with many more powers and responsibilities and the taxes to pay for them. The welfare state, income tax, nationalisation, all grew out of conflict and crisis (see article).
As that list suggests, some of today’s changes will be desirable. It would be good if governments were better prepared for the next pandemic; so, too, if they invested in public health, including in America, where reform is badly needed. Some countries need decent sick pay.
Other changes may be less clear-cut, but will be hard to undo because they were backed by powerful constituencies even before the pandemic. One example is the further unpicking of the euro-zone pact that is supposed to impose discipline on the member-states’ borrowing. Likewise, Britain has taken its railways under state control—a step that is supposed to be temporary but which may never be retracted.
More worrying is the spread of bad habits. Governments may retreat into autarky. Some fear running out of the ingredients for medicines, many of which are made in China. Russia has imposed a temporary ban on exporting grain. Industrialists and politicians have lost trust in supply chains. It is but a small step from there to long-term state support for the national champions that will have just been bailed out by taxpayers. Trade’s prospects are already dim (see article); all this would further cloud them—and the recovery. And in the long term, a vast and lasting expansion of the state together with dramatically higher public debt (see article) is likely to lead to a lumbering, less dynamic kind of capitalism.
But that is not the biggest problem. The greater worries lie elsewhere, in the abuse of office and the threats to freedom. Some politicians are already making power grabs, as in Hungary, where the government is seeking an indefinite state of emergency. Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, appears to see the crisis as a chance to evade a trial for corruption.
The most worrying is the dissemination of intrusive surveillance. Invasive data collection and processing will spread because it offers a real edge in managing the disease. But they also require the state to have routine access to citizens’ medical and electronic records. The temptation will be to use surveillance after the pandemic, much as anti-terror legislation was extended after 9/11. This might start with tracing tb cases or drug dealers. Nobody knows where it would end, especially if, having dealt with covid-19, surveillance-mad China is seen as a model.
Surveillance may well be needed to cope with covid-19. Rules with sunset clauses and scrutiny built in can help stop it at that. But the main defence against the overmighty state, in tech and the economy, will be citizens themselves. They must remember that a pandemic government is not fit for everyday life. ■
