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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., expressed frustration with the Justice Department (DOJ) for withholding evidence and not prosecuting felonies. Chairman Nunes first revealed that former Obama Administration officials inappropriately unmasked the names of U.S. citizens for what appeared to be the purpose of spying on their political opponents.

He said the House will recall witnesses who clearly lied to Congress about having knowledge of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Barack Obama’s super PAC and the Clinton campaign paying for the debunked dossier. It is believed the Kremlin-sourced dossier was used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under Jim Comey as justification for a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which enabled them to spy on members of the Trump transition team.

“There’s no possible way the FBI did not know who paid for that dossier,” Chairman Nunes told Laura Ingraham on the debut of her new show on Fox News. “We don’t know if it’s just Comey or the whole FBI… This is a government out of control. It’s not okay for us to ask since March who used the dossier, who paid for the dossier, and then it comes out only because of subpoenas to the bank.”

House Intel Committee Chairman Devin Nunes expressed

Politics

President Donald Trump talks as First Lady Melania Trump and surgeon Dr. John Fildes listens at the University Medical Center after Trump met with survivors of the mass shooting on Wednesday, October 4, 2017, in Las Vegas. (Photo: AP)

President Donald Trump talks as First Lady Melania Trump and surgeon Dr. John Fildes listens at the University Medical Center after Trump met with survivors of the mass shooting on Wednesday, October 4, 2017, in Las Vegas. (Photo: AP)

President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Tuesday morning to respond to the media coverage of the indictments as a result of the investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. On Monday, Paul Manafort and his former business associate and protégé Rick Gates were told to surrender to federal authorities.

George Papadopolous, a 29-year-old volunteer who worked on a policy committee for the campaign, plead guilty to lying to a federal agent. Mr. Papadopolous, who was arrested on July 27 and signed a deal with the feds on October 5, is rumored to have worn a wire. He lied about the dates of contacts with a Russian professor.

The unsealed documents specifically state that the campaign volunteer’s requests to meet with Russians who claimed to have “dirt” on Hillary Clinton were repeatedly rebuffed by the Trump campaign. The record also shows the White House provided the special counsel with the emails proving Mr. Papadopolous lied to federal agents.

President Trump slammed the media coverage before stating the investigation is a distraction from helping working Americans.

As far as Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates, none the counts in the indictments had anything to do with President Trump and were in fact years before he joined the campaign. The indictments were a result of alleged violations to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) stemming from lobbying work on behalf of Ukrainian and Russian interests, as well as tax fraud.

Democrats have been holding out hope Mr. Mueller’s investigation politically or legally damages President Trump, and have defended the former FBI director against growing calls for him to resign due to conflicts of interest. But with his focus turning to Mr. Manafort’s pre-Trump campaign activities and The Podesta Group, they may have made a grave miscalculation.

As Peoples’s Pundit Daily (PPD) first reported, prosecutors for Special Counsel Mueller probed witnesses about the role The Podesta Group played in advancing Russian interests at the State Department under Hillary Clinton when working for Mr. Manafort. Tony Podesta, the brother of former Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, resigned from the group he co-founded after the indictments were announced.

The Podesta Group also failed to register under FARA until last April, which is an admission they lobbied on behalf of foreign governments, as well.

President Donald Trump responded to the media

Economy

Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell delivers remarks during a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington August 3, 2015. (Photo: Reuters)

Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell delivers remarks during a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington August 3, 2015. (Photo: Reuters)

President Donald J. Trump is expected to nominate Jerome Powell, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, to replace current Fed Chair Janet Yellen. The choice, which requires confirmation by the U.S. Senate, is seen by analysts as a move that would be a departure from the current monetary policy at least in the mid-term.

“If Trump nominates Powell to replace Yellen it will imply continuity in the Federal Reserve’s interest rate and the balance sheet policy, at least for a time,” a team of analysts at the Nomura Group said in a note Sunday. “As a governor, Powell has consistently supported policies proposed by Chairs [Ben] Bernanke and Yellen.”

Unlike Yellen, who spent most of her career in academia and government, Mr. Powell spent far more time in the private sector working at investment and banking outfits. He served at the position since May 25, 2012, after he was nominated by Barack Obama. Mr. Powell also served as assistant secretary and undersecretary of the treasury under George H.W. Bush.

President Trump during an interview last week with Fox Business’ Lou Dobbs that he wanted to put his “own mark” on the U.S. central bank, and has a history of criticizing the loose monetary policy of the Obama Administration. While a lite-version of that easy printed-money policy has continued and will in the short-term, analysts say nominating Mr. Powell as the next Fed chair would eventually spell the end to it.

“Over time, a transition from Yellen to Powell will likely move the center of gravity of the FOMC away from its recent interventionist inclinations,” the Nomura analysts said. “Of course, the president’s other appointments to the Federal Reserve Board will be important in this context as well.”

Analysts do not expect his nomination to result in a quicker pace of interest rate hikes.

President Donald J. Trump is expected to

Policy

Pedestrians walk through the Canary Wharf financial district of London January 16, 2009. (Photo: Reuters)

Pedestrians walk through the Canary Wharf financial district of London January 16, 2009. (Photo: Reuters)

I fully agree with my leftist friends who say that corporations want to extract every penny they can from consumers. I also (mostly) agree with them when they say corporations are soulless entities that don’t care about people.

But after they’re done venting, I then try to educate them by pointing out that the only way corporations can separate consumers from their money is by vigorously competing to provide desirable goods and services at attractive prices.

Moreover, their “soulless” pursuit of those profits (as explained by Walter Williams) will lead them to be efficient and innovative, which boosts overall economic output.

Moreover, in a competitive market, it’s not consumers vs. corporations, it’s corporations vs. corporations with consumers automatically winning.

Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute makes a very valuable point about what happens in a free economy.

Comparing the 1955 Fortune 500 companies to the 2017 Fortune 500, there are only 59 companies that appear in both lists (see companies in the graphic above). In other words, fewer than 12% of the Fortune 500 companies included in 1955 were still on the list 62 years later in 2017, and more than 88% of the companies from 1955 have either gone bankrupt, merged with (or were acquired by) another firm, or they still exist but have fallen from the top Fortune 500 companies (ranked by total revenues).

It’s not just the Fortune 500.

…corporations in the S&P 500 Index in 1965 stayed in the index for an average of 33 years. By 1990, average tenure in the S&P 500 had narrowed to 20 years and is now forecast to shrink to 14 years by 2026. At the current churn rate, about half of today’s S&P 500 firms will be replaced over the next 10 years.

Here’s Mark’s list of companies that have stayed at the top of the Fortune 500 over the past 62 years.

Mark then offers an economic lesson from this data.

The fact that nearly 9 of every 10 Fortune 500 companies in 1955 are gone, merged, or contracted demonstrates that there’s been a lot of market disruption, churning, and Schumpeterian creative destruction over the last six decades. It’s reasonable to assume that when the Fortune 500 list is released 60 years from now in 2077, almost all of today’s Fortune 500 companies will no longer exist as currently configured, having been replaced by new companies in new, emerging industries, and for that we should be extremely thankful. The constant turnover in the Fortune 500 is a positive sign of the dynamism and innovation that characterizes a vibrant consumer-oriented market economy.

He also emphasizes that consumers are the real beneficiaries of this competitive process.

…the creative destruction that results in the constant churning of Fortune 500 (and S&P 500) companies over time is that the process of market disruption is being driven by the endless pursuit of sales and profits that can only come from serving customers with low prices, high-quality products and services, and great customer service. If we think of a company’s annual sales revenues as the number of “dollar votes” it gets every year from providing goods and services to consumers… As consumers, we should appreciate the fact that we are the ultimate beneficiaries of the Schumpeterian creative destruction that drives the dynamism of the market economy and results in a constant churning of the firms who are ultimately fighting to attract as many of our dollar votes as possible.

Incidentally, Mark did this same exercise in 2014 and 2015 and ascertained that there were 61 companies still remaining on the list.

So creative destruction apparently has claimed two more victims.

Or, to be more accurate, the needs and desires of consumers have produced more churning, leading to greater material abundance for America.

I’ll close with two points.

All of which explains why I want separation of business and state.

The bottom line is that an unfettered market produces the best results for the vast majority of people. Yes, people are greedy, but that leads to good outcomes in a capitalist environment.

But we get awful results if cronyism is the dominant system, and that seems to be the direction we’re heading in America.

P.S. Even when corporations try to exploit people in the third world, the pursuit of profits actually results in better lives for the less fortunate.

In a free market, the “soulless” pursuit

Policy

President Donald J. Trump delivers remarks on tax reform at the state fairgrounds in Indianapolis, Indiana, on Wednesday September 27, 2017. (Photo: PPD)

President Donald J. Trump delivers remarks on tax reform at the state fairgrounds in Indianapolis, Indiana, on Wednesday September 27, 2017. (Photo: PPD)

I’ve responded to all sorts of arguments against lower taxes.

  • Tax cuts are “unfair” because rich people will benefit.
  • Tax cuts are wrong because revenue should be going up, not down.
  • Tax cuts are pointless because the economy won’t grow faster.
  • Tax cuts are misguided because there will be more red ink.
  • Tax cuts are risky because vital services would be unfunded.

But I’ve never had to deal with the argument that lower taxes are “dangerous.”

Yet that’s what Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post would like readers to believe. Here’s some of what she wrote today.

…tax cuts — not to mention tax cuts of the magnitude Trump and fellow Republicans contemplate — are worse than unwarranted. They are dangerous.

Dangerous?!?

Before clicking on the headline, my mind raced to imagine what she had in mind. Was she going to argue that lower taxes somehow might cause the nutjob in North Korea to launch a nuke? Was her argument that a tax cut would unleash the Ebola virus in the United States?

Well, you can put your mind at ease. The world isn’t coming to an end. It turns out that Ms. Marcus is simply making a rather hysterical version of the argument that tax cuts are bad because they result in more red ink.

They would add trillions to the national debt at a point when it is already dangerously large as a share of the economy. …the national debt is 77 percent of the economy, the highest since the end of World War II. It is on track to exceed the entire gross domestic product by 2033. That is even without a $1.5 trillion tax cut, the amount envisioned in the just-passed budget resolutions. …the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that increased growth would be counteracted within a few years by the drag of higher deficits; overall, the plan would increase deficits by $2.4 trillion during the first decade. …As an economic matter, they are simply reckless.

I’m actually semi-sympathetic to her argument. It isn’t prudent in the long run to reduce revenues and allow a continuing expansion in the burden of government spending. She would be right to hit Republicans for wanting to do the fun part of cutting taxes while ducking the politically difficult task of restraining spending.

That is a recipe for becoming another Greece. Not today. Not next year. Or even 10 years from now. The United States probably has the ability to stumble along for decades without doing anything to reform entitlements (the programs that are causing our long-term fiscal problems).

But I can’t resist making two points.

First, where was Ms. Marcus when Bush was pushing the TARP bailout through Congress? Where was she when Obama was advocating for his faux stimulus? Or the ObamaCare boondoggle?

These pieces of legislation were hardly examples of fiscal rectitude, yet a search of her writings does not produce examples of her warning about the “dangerous” implications of more red ink.

Her selective concern about deficits makes me think that what she really wants is bigger government. So if the deficit is increasing because of new spending, that’s fine. But if red ink is increasing because of tax cuts, that’s “dangerous.”

If nothing else, Marcus may deserve membership in the left-wing hypocrisy club.

Second, if Ms. Marcus genuinely cares about deficits, then I’ll forgive her for her past hypocrisy and instead simply ask her to look at the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) most recent long-run fiscal forecast.

She will see that more than 100 percent of America’s future fiscal crisis is due to expected increases in the burden of entitlement spending.

You may be wondering how something can cause more than 100 percent of a problem. Well, if you look closely at that long-run forecast (or previous forecasts), you will discover that tax revenues automatically are expected to increase. Not just in nominal terms. Not just after adjusting for inflation. Tax revenues will climb as a share of overall economic output. By about two percentage points over the next 30 years.

By the way, that built-in tax increase is bigger than the Trump/GOP tax cut, which will only reduce taxes over the next 10 years by $1.5 trillion out of an expected haul of $43 trillion.

Oh, by the way, I’ll add a third point. Advocates of higher taxes should be required to explain why more revenue for Washington will somehow lead to better results than what happened when such policies were adopted in Europe.

In other words, some of us don’t want to “feed the beast.”

CATO economist Dan Mitchell responds to Ruth

Policy

Former U.S. President Barack Obama delivers his speech during the 4th Congress of Indonesian Diaspora Network in Jakarta, Indonesia, Saturday, July 1, 2017. (Photo: AP)

Former U.S. President Barack Obama delivers his speech during the 4th Congress of Indonesian Diaspora Network in Jakarta, Indonesia, Saturday, July 1, 2017. (Photo: AP)

When I gave speeches during Obama’s time in office, especially to audiences with a lot of Republicans, I sometimes asked a rhetorical question about whether they approved of presidents who increased spending, bailed out big companies, expanded the power of the Washington bureaucracy, imposed more red tape, and supported Keynesian stimulus schemes.

President

Domestic Spending (Non-TARP)
Reagan 0.6%
Clinton 2.5%
Carter 2.8%
Obama 3.3%
G. W. Bush 3.9%
H. W. Bush 6.3%
Johnson 6.5%
Nixon 8.4%

They understandably assumed I was talking about Obama, so they would always expressed disapproval.

I then would startle the audience (and sometimes make myself unpopular) by stating that I was describing economic policy during the Bush years.

To be sure, there were some differences. I would give Bush a better grade on tax policy. But Obama got a better score (or, to be more accurate, a less-worse score) on government spending. But the overall impact of both Bush and Obama, as confirmed by the declining score for the United States from Economic Freedom of the World, was a loss of economic liberty.

This bit of background is important because any analysis of economic policy during the Obama years reveals that “hope and change” somehow became “more of the same.”

At least for economic policy. When I examined the economic record of George W. Bush, there were a lot of items to include in the “anti-growth policy” portion of the bar chart, but not much for the “pro-growth policy” section.

And now that we’re doing the same exercise for the Obama years, we get a chart that looks very similar. The specific policies have changed, of course, but the net result is the same. Bigger role for the state, less breathing room for the private sector and civil society.

That’s a rather disreputable collection of policies, including the faux stimulus, the cash-for-clunkers boondoggle, the Dodd-Frank regulatory orgy, and the costly ObamaCare disaster. And it’s worth noting that the one good policy that occurred during Obama’s policy, the Budget Control Act and the resulting automatic budget cuts (a.k.a., sequester), happened over his strenuous (and silly) objections.

By the way, I don’t think that Obama and Bush share the same ideology. My guess is that Obama has a very strident left-wing mindset and that he was telling the truth when he said he wanted to be a statist version of Ronald Reagan. I’m quite relieved that he was largely ineffective in achieving his goals.

Bush, by contrast, presumably didn’t want to significantly expand the size and scope of the federal government. But lacking a Reagan-style commitment to principles of limited government, his administration largely surrendered to public choice-driven incentives that resulted in incremental statism.

The lesson for the rest of us is that people should be less partisan and more principled. A bad policy doesn’t become good simply because a politician belong to the “R” team rather than “D” team.

Anyhow, the bottom line is that Obama era moved America in the wrong direction. For what it’s worth, he wasn’t nearly as bad as Nixon. And if I do this same exercise for LBJ, Hoover, and FDR, I expect Obama won’t be as bad as them, either.

But wouldn’t it have been nice if he had been as good as Bill Clinton?

Ranking the economic record of former Democratic

Opinion

Antifa, left, protesting Richard Spencer speaking at the University of Florida (UF) during a Hull Road march in Gainesville, Florida on October 19, 2017. (Photo: People's Pundit Daily)

Antifa, left, protesting Richard Spencer speaking at the University of Florida (UF) during a Hull Road march in Gainesville, Florida on October 19, 2017. (Photo: People’s Pundit Daily)

Just in case you didn’t realize, we’re “celebrating” an anniversary.

In 1917, at this time of year, the Bolshevik revolution was occurring in Russia. It resulted in the creation of the Soviet Union, followed in subsequent decades by enslavement of Eastern Europe and communist takeovers in a few other unfortunate nations.

This is a very evil and tragic anniversary, a milestone that merits sad reflection because communism is an evil ideology, and communist governments have butchered about 100 million people.

I’ve written about the horrors that communism has imposed on the people of Cambodia, Cuba, and North Korea, but let’s zoom out and look at this evil ideology from a macro perspective.

My view is that communism is “a disgusting system…that leads to starvation and suffering” and “produces Nazi-level horrors of brutality.”

But others have better summaries of this coercive and totalitarian ideology.

We’ll start with A. Barton Hinkle’s column in Reason.

…the Bolsheviks…seized power from the provisional government that had been installed in the final days of Russia’s Romanov dynasty. The revolution ushered in what would become a century of ghastly sadism. …it is hard even now to grasp the sheer scale of agony imposed by the brutal ideology of collectivism. …In 1997, a French publisher published “The Black Book of communism,” which tried to place a definitive figure on the number of people who died by communism’s hand: 65 million in China, 20 million in the Soviet Union, 2 million in Cambodia, 2 million in North Korea, and so on—more than 90 million lives, all told. …depravity was woven into the sinews of communism by its very nature. The history of the movement is a history of sadistic “struggle sessions” during the Cultural Revolution, of gulags and psychiatric wards in Russia, of the torture and murder of teachers, doctors, and other intellectuals in Cambodia, and on and on.

Here’s some of what Professor Ilya Somin wrote for the Washington Post.

May Day. Since 2007, I have defended the idea of using this date as an international Victims of Communism Day. …Our comparative neglect of communist crimes has serious costs. Victims of Communism Day can serve the dual purpose of appropriately commemorating the millions of victims, and diminishing the likelihood that such atrocities will recur. Just as Holocaust Memorial Day and other similar events help sensitize us to the dangers of racism, anti-Semitism, and radical nationalism, so Victims of Communism Day can increase awareness of the dangers of left-wing forms of totalitarianism, and government control of the economy and civil society.

In an article for National Review, John O’Sullivan explains the tyrannical failure of communism.

Those evil deeds…include the forced famine in Ukraine that murdered millions in a particularly horrible fashion; starting the Second World War jointly with Hitler by agreeing in the Nazi–Soviet Pact to invade Poland and the Baltic states; the Gulag in which millions more perished; and much more. …The Communist experiment failed above all because it was Communist. …Economically, the Soviet Union was a massive failure 70 years later to the point where Gorbachev complained to the Politburo that it exported less annually than Singapore. …it is a fantasy that the USSR compensated for these failures by making greater social gains than liberal capitalism: Doctors had to be bribed; patients had to take bandages and medicines into hospital with them; homelessness in Moscow was reduced by an internal passport system that kept people out of the city; and so on.

We’re just scratching the surface.

As an economist, I focus on the material failure of communism and I’ve tried to make that very clear with comparisons of living standards over time in Cuba and Hong Kong as well as in North Korea and South Korea.

But the evil of communism goes well beyond poverty and deprivation. It also is an ideology of mass murder.

Which is why this tweet from the Russian government is morally offensive.

Yes, the Soviet Union helped defeat the National Socialists of Germany, but keep in mind that Stalin helped trigger the war by inking a secret agreement with Hitler to divide up Poland.

Moreover, the Soviet Union had its own version of the holocaust.

I don’t know who put together this video, but it captures the staggering human cost of communism.

Meanwhile, Dennis Prager lists 6 reasons why communism isn’t hated the same way Nazism is hated.

The only thing I can add to these videos is that there has never been a benign communist regime.

Indeed, political repression and brutality seems to be the key difference between liberal socialism and Marxist socialism.

Let’s close with this chart from Mark Perry at the American Enterprise Institute.

All forms of totalitarianism are bad, oftentimes resulting in mass murder. As Dennis Prager noted in his video, both communism and Nazism are horrid ideologies. Yet for some bizarre reason, some so-called intellectuals still defend the former.

We’re “celebrating” an anniversary, an evil and tragic anniversary

Politics

An Islamic extremist celebrates as the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi burns after the terror attack that claimed the lives of 4 Americans on September 11, 2012. (Photo: Reuters)

An Islamic extremist celebrates as the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi burns after the terror attack that claimed the lives of 4 Americans on September 11, 2012. (Photo: Reuters)

President Donald Trump announced the capture of alleged Benghazi terrorist Mustafa al-Imam in Libya on Sunday, and he “will face justice in the United States.” The September 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, foreign service officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEAL-turned-CIA contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.

“To the families of these fallen heroes: I want you to know that your loved ones are not forgotten, and they will never be forgotten,” President Trump said in a statement Monday. “Our memory is deep and our reach is long, and we will not rest in our efforts to find and bring the perpetrators of the heinous attacks in Benghazi to justice.”

U.S. special operators captured al-Imam and are currently transporting him back to Washington, D.C., where he will be charged in federal court. The mission was approved by President Trump and carried out in coordination with Libya’s internationally recognized government, with praise from the U.S. State Department and Secretary Rex Tillerson.

“I am deeply grateful to the U.S. military, law enforcement, and intelligence community for their efforts to bring to justice the perpetrators of the September 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya,” Secretary Tillerson said. “The Department of State family continues to mourn the loss of Ambassador Chris Stevens, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith, and Tyrone Woods, and we will spare no effort to ensure that justice is served for these dedicated Americans and public servants. I spoke with some of their family members to underscore the U.S. government’s unwavering support.”

The trial of Ahmed Abu Khattala, the alleged mastermind of the 2012 attacks, began earlier this month. He had been awaiting trial since 2014.

The attack, which became a scandal after the 2012 presidential election, was investigated by the House Select Committee on Benghazi. The committee, which was headed up by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., was setup after emails revealed Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, helped author false talking points used by numerous members of the administration.

Former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who would later become national security advisor, first pushed the false narrative that claimed the attack was a protest started by a YouTube video, which she repeated during Sunday show appearances on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News and CNN.

The story was blatantly untrue.

Documents obtained by Judicial Watch and shared with People’s Pundit Daily (PPD) revealed top aides to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton always knew the Benghazi mission compound was under attack from a terrorist group, and Clinton herself lied to the victims’ families.

The committee, which was headed up by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., was established after separate emails obtained in April 2014 demonstrated that Mr. Rhodes manufactured the talking points. Rep. Gowdy and the committee released a report faulting the Obama Administration, including Mrs. Clinton.

“I want to thank our law enforcement, prosecutors, intelligence community, and military personnel for their extraordinary efforts in gathering evidence, interviewing witnesses, and tracking down fugitives associated with the attack, capturing them, and delivering them to the United States for prosecution,” President Trump added.

“The United States will continue to support our Libyan partners to ensure that ISIS and other terrorist groups do not use Libya as a safe haven for attacks against United States citizens or interests, Libyans, and others.”

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio and then-Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kansas, now the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), released a 48-page report that went even further. They said the White House and Mrs. Clinton deliberately misled the public, and had the smoking gun to prove it in the form of an email to her daughter, which admitted it was a terror attack.

President Donald Trump announced the capture of Benghazi

Politics

Tony Podesta, then-the Pennsylvania manager for the Kerry-Edwards campaign, speaks to Associated Press reporters in Philadelphia, Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2004. (Photo: AP)

Tony Podesta, then-the Pennsylvania manager for the Kerry-Edwards campaign, speaks to Associated Press reporters in Philadelphia, Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2004. (Photo: AP)

Tony Podesta, under investigation from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, resigned Monday morning from the firm he co-founded with his brother and former Clinton campaign manager, John Podesta. The Democratic lobbyist with ties to Paul Manafort told associates during a meeting at the firm he will be handing over full operational and financial control to longtime firm CEO Kimberley Fritts.

The announcement by Mr. Podesta comes on the same morning Mr. Manafort was told to surrender himself to federal authorities on 12 counts of conspiracy, fraud and violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The law requires those who lobby on behalf of foreign agents to file disclosures with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

Neither Mr. Manafort nor The Podesta Group, who began a relationship at least as early as 2011, appeared to have been in compliance with FARA. By filing a retroactive FARA disclosure this April, the liberal lobbying firm admitted to the violations.

More than a dozen of the firm’s clients have cut ties since it became clear Mr. Podesta was a target of the criminal investigation led by the special counsel.

From left to right: Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign chairman; Robert Mueller, the former FBI director and special counsel; and Tony Podesta, brother of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and head of the Podesta Group. (Photos: AP)

From left to right: Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign chairman; Robert Mueller, the former FBI director and special counsel; and Tony Podesta, brother of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and head of the Podesta Group. (Photos: AP)

As Peoples’s Pundit Daily (PPD) first reported in a bombshell Saturday, prosecutors for Special Counsel Mueller probed witnesses about the role The Podesta Group played in advancing Russian interests at the State Department under Hillary Clinton. The firm worked at the very least worked on a public relations campaign for the non-profit European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECMU), which aimed to promote the image of the then-Russian satellite regime.

The campaign, which was mentioned as a reason for the FARA violation in the indictment, was organized by Mr. Manafort.

Democrats, with the hope Mr. Mueller’s investigation politically or legally damages President Donald Trump, have defended the former FBI director’s investigation. But with his focus turning to The Podesta Group and the Clinton State Department, they may have made a grave miscalculation.

 View Manafort indictment –> manafort-gates_indictment_filed_and_redacted

Tony Podesta, under investigation from Special Counsel

Economy

A International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW) worker gestures at the General Motors Assembly Plant in Arlington, Texas June 9, 2015. (Photo: Reuters)

A International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW) worker gestures at the General Motors Assembly Plant in Arlington, Texas June 9, 2015. (Photo: Reuters)

The Dallas Federal Reserve said the Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey, a gauge of regional factory activity, rose 6 points in October to 25.6. That’s the highest reading since April 2006 and far stronger than the 21.3 median forecast.

While the headline reading is impressive, there are even more historically strong economic data within the report.

The new orders index climbed 6 points to a 10-year high of 24.8, and the growth rate of orders index moved up to 12.3. The capacity utilization index also pushed to its highest level in a decade at 22.5. Meanwhile, the shipments index moved down several points but remained positive and at a well-above-average level of 20.9.

The production index, a key measure of state manufacturing conditions, rose 6 points to 25.6 and reached its highest reading since April 2014. The company outlook index posted its 14th consecutive positive reading, holding firm at a very strong 25.8.

The employment index came in at 16.7, unchanged and well above the average. Less than 5% of firms reported net layoffs, a finding that has only been reported 5 other times since the survey began more than 13 years ago. The hours worked index inched down but remained positive at a solid 13.7, indicating a continuing lengthening of workweeks.

The raw materials prices and finished goods prices indexes edged down but remained very high at 32.3 and 15.3, respectively, both indicating upward pressure on prices and wages continued. The wages and benefits index also moved down but remained strong at 22.5.

Expectations regarding future business conditions was strongly optimistic. The index of future general business activity moved up 4 points to 38.5, while the index of future company outlook remained unchanged at 39.0.

The Dallas Federal Reserve said the Texas

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