Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson speaks to supporters and delegates at the National Libertarian Party Convention, May 27, 2016, in Orlando, Fla. (Photo: John Raoux/AP Photo)
Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson has won the Libertarian Party nomination for president. Hoping to emerge as a viable contender against the two major parties’ nominees in the general election, Gov. Johnson says his strategy will consist of tapping into the historically high unfavorables for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Still, Gov. Johnson also had to contend with challengers from more purist wings of the Libertarian Party, falling five votes short of winning the 463 delegates needed for the nomination on the first ballot at the party’s national convention. When delegates voted for a second time, Gov. Johnson was able to secure the majority he needed (55.8%).
Gov. Johnson defeated five hopefuls to secure his place on top of the Libertarian ticket, which will likely be the only third party on the ballot in all 50 states.
Delegates have yet to vote on Johnson’s hand-picked vice presidential pick, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld. Many Libertarians here are wary of Weld, who joined the party less than two weeks ago and endorsed Ohio Gov. John Kasich in the Republican primary earlier this election cycle.
Unlike the primary and caucus system used by the Republican and Democratic parties, Libertarian presidential candidates have spent much of the past week debating and wooing delegates, who were free to vote for whomever they choose at the party’s national convention.
The Libertarian Party faces an uphill climb to become viable in the general election. A recent Fox News poll shows Johnson at 10% in a race against Trump and Clinton. However, public polling in general elections pre-Labor Day historically overstate the support of third party candidates and
Johnson was also the party’s nominee in 2012, when he received 1 percent of the popular vote and became the first Libertarian presidential candidate to receive more than 1 million votes.
State Department headquarters in D.C., left, and, right, Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks to the reporters at United Nations headquarters on Tuesday, March 10, 2015. (Photos: AP/Seth Wenig)
The State Department Office Of Inspector General (IG) released an audit last week that was absolutely damning to Hillary Clinton. Comparing the “Evaluation Of Email Records Management And Cybersecurity Requirements” with the former secretary of state’s past excuses and explanations could only conclude she was lying–pretty much at every turn.
Here are a few of the most notable, relevant statements made by Mrs. Clinton that have now proven to be categorically false.
Clinton Claimed to Have Turned Over Emails
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Mrs. Clinton, during her remarks at a press conference in New York, NY, on March 10, 2015, claimed she turned over all her State Department emails that were business related when they were requested. That was not true.
“I responded right away and provided all my emails that could possibly be work-related, which totaled roughly 55,000 printed pages, even though I knew that the State Department already had the vast majority of them. We went through a thorough process to identify all of my work-related emails and deliver them to the State Department.”
That was not true.
In truth, as we’ll see shortly, Mrs. Clinton was well-aware it was her own responsibility to ensure her records were adequately preserved because the State Department did not capture “the vast majority” of anyone’s records. Further, the audit stated Mrs. Clinton should have printed and saved her emails during her four years in office or immediately upon stepping down in February 2013.
Instead, Clinton provided those records in December 2014, nearly two years after leaving office and only after her people took it upon themselves to decide what was and was not to be surrendered. She admitted some 30,000 had been deleted, though the Federal Bureau of Investigation has reportedly managed to retrieve at least some of them.
Nevertheless, the IG report makes it clear.
“As previously discussed, however, sending emails from a personal account to other employees at their Department accounts is not an appropriate method of preserving any such emails that would constitute a Federal record,” the report stated. “Therefore, Secretary Clinton should have preserved any Federal records she created and received on her personal account by printing and filing those records with the related files in the Office of the Secretary. At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act.” — Pg. 23.
Claimed Her Emails Were Automatically Preserved
[brid video=”39288″ player=”2077″ title=”FLASHBACK Hillary Clinton Falsely Claimed Her State Department Emails Were Preserved”]
“Secondly, under the Federal Records Act, records are defined as reported information, regardless of its form or characteristics, and in meeting the record keeping obligations, it was my practice to email government officials on their state or other .gov accounts so that the emails were immediately captured and preserved.”
That was not true.
In truth, according to a department spokeswoman. the State Department only began automatically preserving emails in February, 2015. That’s more than two years after Mrs. Clinton’s tenure. So, what was her responsibility?
“If a senior official uses his or her private email account for the conduct of official business, she or he must ensure that records pertaining to official business that are sent from or received on such e-mail account are captured and maintained.” — Pg. 64.
Claimed Personal Email “Was Allowed” and “Predecessors Did the Same Thing”
[brid video=”39291″ player=”2077″ title=”FLASHBACK Clinton Claimed Email Server Was Allowed Predecessors Did Same Thing”]
Mrs. Clinton has also repeatedly claimed that she did not need to get anyone to sign off on the use of her personal email because it was allowed under the rules and her predecessors did the same thing.
“It was allowed under the rules of the State Department,” Mrs. Clinton told Jake Tapper on CNN during an interview on October 16, 2015. No, it was allowed. You know, one of my predecessors did the same thing. Others in our government have done the same thing at very high levels because the rules did change after I left state department. But at the time and in prior years the rules allowed it.”
First, using only private email to conduct official State Department business was not and is not allowed, and certainly not on a private home brew server. While Secretary Colin Powell did use a Gmail in a limited capacity, the audit completely refuted the latter ever did any such thing.
“Secretary Rice and her representative advised the Department and OIG that the Secretary did not use either personal or Department email accounts for official business,” the inspector general stated. “OIG searched selected records and did not find any evidence to indicate that the Secretary used such accounts during her tenure.” — Pg. 22
Pundit’s Take
As a bonus fact-check, it is also clear that Mrs. Clinton lied about her willingness to participate with investigators. From her first press conference at the United Nations in March to the present she has repeatedly claimed she has cooperated at every turn. That was known from previous reports, but the IG confirmed Mrs. Clinton is not at all being forthcoming.
As the tale of the tape shows, she has completely misled the American people and outrageously continues to do so.
In future talks, I may start to include this fascinating map, produced by Jakub Marian, which provides an apples-to-apples comparison of local purchasing power in Europe based on the cost of living and the average level of income.
Green nations therefore have the highest living standards, followed by blue nations, all the way to the red countries, which are the poorest.
This is a very interesting data, in part because it certainly seemed at first glance to show that there is a relationship between rich nations and economic freedom.
So I went to Economic Freedom of the World(EFW) and looked at the scores for the richest 10 nations on the map (actually, richest 11 since Austria and the U.K. are tied at 149).
Of those countries, all but one of them are considered economically free and are in the top 31 out of 157 nations in the ranking.
Only Sweden isn’t in this top category, and even that nation is ranked 42 and is mostly free.
There are three takeaways from these numbers.
First, it’s worth noting that the top two nations, Switzerland and Luxembourg, are tax havens. So maybe other nations should emulate such policies. And I’m guessing Liechtenstein and Monaco would be at the very top if they were part of either the map or the EFW rankings.
Second, libertarian perfection would be nice, but the free market is capable of generating good results even if policy is merely decent. Almost all European nations have excessive taxes and spending, for instance, but they compensate with very pro-market policies in other areas.
Third, there are several European nations from the former Soviet Empire that have earned good EFW scores. If their reasonably good policies are maintained for several decades, they will catch up to – and in many cases exceed – the living standards in Western Europe.
Last but not least, here’s a map of Europe based on the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, which is quite similar to EFW.
Silver Bullet Map of Europe (Source: London School of Economics and Political Science)
Notice that the green nations on this map largely match the green and blue nations in the Jakub Marian map. The Baltic nations are the most notable exceptions, and I’ve already predicted they will catch up to Western Europe if their pro-liberty policies are sustained.
Of course, the real role models should be Hong Kong and Singapore since those jurisdictions have more economic liberty than even Switzerland.
Actually, I’m even willing to say that France is an ideal role model. But only if nations emulate the France of 1870 rather than the France of 2016.
Can we learn lessons by comparing these two nations?
Yes. More than five years ago, I compared three decades of data to show that pro-market Chile grew somewhat faster than mixed-economy Argentina and much faster than statist Venezuela (chart below).
Now we have some new data.
My colleague at the Cato Institute, Marian Tupy, has an article in Reason that compares Chile and Venezuela.
He starts by noting that the two nations have moved in dramatically different directions when measuring economic freedom.
Chile’s success starts in the mid-1970s, when Chile’s military government abandoned socialism and started to implement economic reforms. In 2013, Chile was the world’s 10th freest economy. Venezuela, in the meantime, declined from being the world’s 10th freest economy in 1975 to being the world’s least free economy in 2013.
Here’s a sobering chart on the changes.
Some may believe that economic freedom as merely an abstraction.
What’s more important, they argue, is results. Is a nation enjoying good economic performance, or is it stagnating?
Well, it turns out that the abstraction of economic freedom is very important if you want good performance. Here’s another chart from Marian’s article. You can see that Venezuela has stagnated while Chile has boomed.
Chile is not a perfect role model, to be sure, because of an unsavory period of military rule.
But the good news, Marian points out, is that economic liberty has led to political liberty. Whereas the opposite has happened in Venezuela.
…as the people of Chile grew richer, they started demanding more say in the running of their country. Starting in the late 1980s, the military gradually and peacefully handed power over to democratically-elected representatives. In Venezuela, the opposite has happened. As failure of socialism became more apparent, the government had to resort to ever more repressive measures in order to keep itself in power.
Here’s a chart showing the remarkable progress in Chile..as well as the deterioration of rights in Venezuela (please note that “1” means strong political rights and “7” means low or nonexistent political rights).
All this data seemingly is slam-dunk evidence for the Chilean model over the Venezuelan model.
Yet there have been a number of leftists who actually praised the statist policies of Venezuela’s authoritarian rulers. Here are some excerpts from an exposê in theDaily Caller.
Socialist Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez was praised throughout his life by many figures in academia, journalism and Hollywood despite his brutal regime. This praise included Salon writer David Sirota’s piece after the leader’s death, titled “Hugo Chavez’s economic miracle.” In British publication The New Statesman, a headline as Chavez was nearing death in January 2013 was “Hugo Chavez: Man against the world,” and its sub-headline read “As illness ends Hugo Chavez’s rule in Venezuela, what will his legacy be? Richard Gott argues he brought hope to a continent.” This praise of Chavez by so many who enjoyed the benefits of living in a capitalist society while looking at the economic record of the late leader, as well as what his successor President Nicolas Maduro, has come undone.
And Joe Stiglitz gushed about Venezuela’s economic performance back in 2007.
Nobel Prize winning economist and former vice-president of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, praised Venezuela’s economic growth and “positive policies in health and education” during a visit to Caracas on Wednesday. “Venezuela’s economic growth has been very impressive in the last few years,” Stiglitz said during his speech at a forum on Strategies for Emerging Markets sponsored by the Bank of Venezuela. …Venezuela has taken advantage of the boom in world oil prices to implement policies that benefit its citizens and promote economic development. “Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez appears to have had success in bringing health and education to the people in the poor neighborhoods of Caracas, to those who previously saw few benefits of the countries oil wealth,” he said. In his latest book “Making Globalization Work,” Stiglitz argues that left governments such as in Venezuela, “have frequently been castigated and called ‘populist’ because they promote the distribution of benefits of education and health to the poor.” “It is not only important to have sustainable growth,” Stiglitz continued during his speech, “but to ensure the best distribution of economic growth, for the benefit of all citizens.”
Wow, this is a remarkable case of ideological blindness. Stiglitz presumably allowed his statist views to drive his analysis.
But let’s focus on one part of that excerpt. Yes, it’s very desirable for all citizens to benefit from economic growth.
But if you look at the chart from Marian’s article comparing GDP per capita in Chile and Venezuela, it’s abundantly clear which nation is producing better outcomes from average citizens.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and his foreign affairs adviser Yury Ushakov listen to Serbian Prime Minister and Progressive Party leader Aleksandar Vucic during their talks in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, May 26, 2016. (Sergei Karpukhin/Pool Photo via AP)
The Obama administration pushed sanctions against Russia for its illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine in 2014 and for the Kremlin’s backing of separatists in eastern Ukraine that continues to this day. The goal was to punish Russia for its actions, and to paraphrase President Obama, “to run their economy into the ground.”
The sanctions, however, aren’t working as advertised.
A key part of the strategy was to starve Russia and Russian companies of badly needed capital by cutting off access to Western capital markets. But just this week, Russia offered the first tranche of a $3 billion, 10-year sovereign bond to the debt capital markets. Yes, Western companies and investors did not participate, afraid to run afoul of the sanctions. Yes, Moscow only raised $1.75 billion of the $3 billion needed to help close the federal budget gap. Yes, Russia most likely overstated the participation of “foreigners” in placing the bond. And, yes, international clearing agencies may not settle the bond.
Still, the sale was momentous milestone.
Bond investors want to make money. With the Federal Reserve keeping American interest rates basically at zero (so we can service our debt and not kill the Obama economy completely), there is no yield — and little profit — to be found in developed country capital markets. The Russian bonds were placed at 4.75 percent, which is not an unacceptable number for the Kremlin’s coffers.
What does all this tell you? It tells you there is demand for Russian paper. Does anyone think that without the sanctions, Russia would have any problem placing a lousy $3 billion?
The Russian state-run bank VTB was the underwriter, as no Western banks would touch the offering. The prospectus promised the funds would only be used to shore up the Kremlin’s cash reserves and would not be siphoned off to fund cash-strapped Russian companies facing sanctions. The offering also warned that “no assurance can be given as to whether interests in the global bonds will be eligible to be held through any clearing system other than NSD” — Russia’s in-house clearing system.
What most Americans don’t realize is that Russia has very little sovereign debt, at a time when U.S. sovereign debt is approaching $20 trillion — that’s trillion with a “T.” Russia built up currency reserves of about a half-trillion dollars during the good times, a rainy-day fund that has fallen to around $300 billion after attempts to defend the ruble and bailouts of Russian banks and companies.
Everything is not awesome for Russia or its economy. The sanctions have meant a serious funding crisis, while crude oil prices plunged on global markets. But have you noticed? Brent crude passed through $50 a barrel Thursday for a brief time, off its lows of close to $30 a barrel just a few short months ago.
The real significance of the new bond offering is that Russia can once again use the debt markets to bridge over its funding gaps until oil rebounds even further. I am sure Moscow’s claims of the heavy participation of foreign buyers in the offering is not true, but it really doesn’t matter. What matters is they placed a bond — and there are investors willing to take a risk on Russia. There will be more.
Think about it. Where would you rather place your money? Would you place it in U.S. Treasuries, where you earn nothing from a country with debt levels above 100 percent of GDP and rising? A country with no end to irresponsible spending in sight?
Or would you place your cash with a government that is surviving despite having the global kitchen sink thrown at it and whose chief means of generating trade revenue — oil — has collapsed in price? Now that commodity is rebounding and there is very little debt to speak of. Oh — and you’d get a guaranteed annual return of 4.75 percent for the next decade?
There is demand for Russian paper and it will grow. The Kremlin will survive this crisis. I’m not talking politics or the morality of Russia’s behavior here, I’m talking market realities.
As for Mr. Obama, he will soon be gone. And as for Mr. Obama’s other slight towards Russia — that Moscow’s Syrian adventure will be a failure, well, that prediction is not working out so well either.
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MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, along with the entire Morning Joe panel, excoriated Hillary Clinton for lying about her email practices. The panel on Friday was reacting to the State Department’s audit showing the former secretary intentionally broke federal-records keeping act.
The report, which was conducted by an inspector general appointed by President Barack Obama in his first term, refuted each and every excuse/explanation Mrs. Clinton gave to reporters relating to her use of a private email server for official State Department business.
“Everything she said in there was just a lie,” Joe Scarborough said Friday morning.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is currently probing into Mrs. Clinton’s potential mishandling of classified information and whether or not there was any “public corruption” relating to the Clinton Foundation.
File photo: Shipping-cranes-in move containers at a port in Portland, Oregon. (Photo: REUTERS)
The Commerce Department said on Friday the second reading on first-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) was revised higher to show the U.S. economy grew at an annualized pace of 0.8%, up from the 0.5% initially reported earlier this month.
The median economic forecast called for a slightly higher increase of just 0.9% for the world’s biggest economy, which now posted the weakest performance since the first quarter of 2015. The barely improved reading reflects a minimal difference in the amount the U.S. trade deficit sliced off of the gross domestic product and a rebound in after-tax corporate profits, which gained 0.6% in the first quarter after plunging 8.4% in the fourth quarter.
However, there was no revision to the consumer spending component, which represents more than two-thirds of all U.S. economic activity. Spending increased at a pace of 1.9%, down from the 2.4% rate in the fourth quarter.
The Atlanta Federal Reserve currently forecasts second-quarter GDP rising at a 2.9 percent rate, though the continuing high level of inventories (among other factors) likely means they are overestimating growth. The economy grew at a 1.4% rate in the fourth quarter.
A closely-watched gauge of consumer sentiment from the University of Michigan came in at 94.7 in May, down slightly from an initial reading of 95.8. Still, the final reading beat the reading of 89 from the prior month and economists anticipated a reading of 95.4.
“Consumers were a bit less optimistic in late May than earlier in the month, but sentiment was still substantially higher than last month,” Surveys of Consumers chief economist, Richard Curtin said. “Indeed, there have only been four prior months since the January 2007 peak in which the Sentiment Index was higher than in May 2016, all recorded at the start of 2015.”
Final Reading for May 2016
May
Apr
May
M-M
Y-Y
2016
2016
2015
Change
Change
Index of Consumer Sentiment
94.7
89.0
90.7
+6.4%
+4.4%
Current Economic Conditions
109.9
106.7
100.8
+3.0%
+9.0%
Index of Consumer Expectations
84.9
77.6
84.2
+9.4%
+0.8%
Next data release: June 10, 2016 for Preliminary June data at 10am ET
Despite the meager GDP growth as well as a higher inflation rate, consumers became more optimistic about their financial prospects and anticipated a somewhat lower inflation rate in the years ahead. Positive views toward vehicle and home sales also posted gains in May largely due to low interest rates. The biggest uncertainty consumers see on the horizon is not whether the Fed will hike interest rates in the next few months, but the outlook for future government economic policies under a new president. This has increased their emphasis on maintaining precautionary savings, although the savings rate is not expected to increase much beyond its current level. Although small stock gains are anticipated, household wealth is more likely to benefit from rising home prices, with gains now more frequent than in a decade. Overall, the data indicate that inflation-adjusted consumer expenditures can be expected to rise by 2.5% in 2016 and 2.7% in 2017.
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In an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN, Hillary Clinton refused to accept the results of a State Department audit and admit she broke records-keeping rules. The damning report, which says that she violated rules governing the storage of potentially classified information on a private server, concluded Mrs. Clinton intentionally broke federal records-keeping rules while serving as secretary of state.
“The rules were not clarified until after I had left,” Clinton said.
As PPD previously reported, Mrs. Clinton’s line of defense and response to the criticisms headed her way from some on the left and everyone on the right are factually inaccurate.
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In an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said he plans to attend and speak at the Republican convention, and will release his delegates to vote for Donald Trump to help him beat Hillary Clinton.
“If Donald Trump asked you to speak on his behalf, you would do so?” Tapper asked Sen. Rubio.
“Certainly, yeah. I want to be helpful,” Sen. Rubio replied. “I don’t want to be harmful because I don’t want Hillary Clinton to be president. My policy differences with Donald Trump– I’ve spent months talking about them, so I think they’re understood.”
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