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Polygamous leader used jailhouse phone to have ‘sexual’ conversations with kids: feds

A polygamous leader accused of kidnapping underage girls “brazenly” used the jailhouse phone system to have “explicit sexual conversations” with children, a federal filing states.

While in custody last November on suspicion of sex trafficking, Samuel Rappylee Bateman referred to a 13-year-old girl as his “sexy darling” during a video call that included his adult wives, the US attorney in Arizona alleged in documents filed on March 3.

Bateman, 46, also asked the young teen, identified as Jane Doe 4, about “all the sacred times” they shared together, in addition to more explicit sexual remarks.

The accused child trafficker also reportedly made similarly vulgar remarks during the same call to two 16-year-olds known as Jane Doe 10 and Jane Doe 11, the document claims.

At the time of the phone call, Bateman was barred from contacting Jane Doe 4, who is a named victim in the ongoing child abuse case against him.

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Biden admin calls for digital ID investment, public-private data sharing collaboration

The White House has presented its National Security Strategy that, among other points, calls for investing in digital IDs.

The Biden administration, however, is short on detail regarding this issue and privacy implications, while mentioning the term biometrics only once.

“Strategic Objective 4.5” is a 4-paragraph section in the 35-page document that speaks about supporting development of a digital identity “ecosystem.”

We obtained a copy of the document for you here.

The administration calls for improved digital identity infrastructure that would produce “a more innovative, equitable, safe and efficient digital economy.”

Like all other justifications for the push to adopt digital IDs, this one mentions conveniences and “secure” access to government services and benefits, “trusted” communication, as well as social networks, and improved payment systems.

To get there from here, the document calls for the digital ecosystem in question to undergo “fundamental changes,” and wants to bring in the private sector – both through “close cooperation” and public-private undertakings.

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Pentagon says U.S. will keep military presence in Iraq, 20 years after invasion

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says the U.S. will maintain a military presence in Iraq, 20 years after the United States invaded Iraq and overthrew President Saddam Hussein.

Austin made the announcement during an unannounced trip to Iraq on Tuesday – two weeks shy of the 20-year anniversary of the invasion.

He said after a meeting with Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani that U.S. forces would remain in the country “at the invitation of the government of Iraq,” Austin according to Reuters.

“The United States will continue to strengthen and broaden our partnership in support of Iraqi security, stability and sovereignty,” he said also said.

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‘Ain’t Your Grandma’s Rocket’: ‘UFO Footage’ Filmed by US Drone Over Iraq Emerges Online

The “UFO” in question was apparently filmed by a US military drone operating in Iraqi skies, with the footage recorded in May 2022.

As public interest in UFOs dies down after it became apparent that there was nothing extraterrestrial about the flying objects the US military downed in American and Canadian airspace last month, a batch of images supposedly depicting a UFO in Iraq has emerged.

The images appear to be stills from a video recorded by a US MQ-9 Reaper drone in the vicinity of Baghdad in May 2022.

These images feature some sort of flying object that has no visible wings or fins, with a source in the US Air Force reportedly saying that the object also had no visible propulsion and appeared to be “under intelligent control.”

Documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell, who disclosed this visual information on his and investigative journalist George Knapp’s podcast, said the object seen in the video definitely “isn’t your grandma’s rocket.”

“It shows an anomalous object which has been designated as UAP by our own air force,” he told one UK newspaper, with the UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon) being how UFOs are often officially referred to nowadays.

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Ukraine Wants the US to Provide Cluster Bombs to Use With Drones

Ukraine has been seeking cluster bombs from the US to use in its war against Russian forces and is now asking for a type of the controversial munition that they want to adapt so they can be dropped from drones, Reuters reported on Monday.

According to House Reps. Adam Smith (D-WA) and Jason Crow (D-CO), Ukraine is seeking the MK-20, an air-delivered cluster bomb. They said Ukrainian officials were asking members of Congress to persuade the White House to sign off on the delivery during the recent Munich Security Conference.

Cluster munitions scatter small bombs over large areas, making them more indiscriminate than other munitions. According to Reuters, the MK-20 releases 240 dart-like submunitions or bomblets after being launched.

The bomblets in cluster munitions often don’t explode on impact, making them a huge danger to civilians who comes across them, similar to land mines. The 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions that bans the weapons has over 100 signatories, but the US, Russia, and Ukraine are not parties to the treaty.

Since Russia launched its invasion in February 2022, both Russian and Ukrainian forces have used cluster munitions. Kyiv was also accused of using the bombs in populated areas of Donestk back in 2014.

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Countless Americans Plunge Into Despair As Hunger Spreads Like Wildfire All Across America

We haven’t seen anything like this in a long time.  A couple of factors are combining to push millions of Americans into a state of food insecurity.  First of all, food prices have been rising aggressively throughout the past year, and so our money does not go nearly as far as it once did.  Meanwhile, food stamp benefits are being slashed.  The federal government had greatly enhanced food stamp benefits for many Americans during the pandemic, but now that emergency program is coming to an end.  So what this means is that many Americans are going to have very little money to spend on food at a time when economic conditions are starting to get really rough.

The Washington Post recently sent a reporter named Tim Craig to Kentucky, and he discovered that poor people are waiting in “a mile-long line” just to get some free food…

As he claimed the first spot in a mile-long line for free food in the Appalachian foothills, Danny Blair vividly recalled receiving the letter announcing that his pandemic-era benefit to help buy groceries was about to be slashed.

Kentucky lawmakers had voted to end the state’s health emergency last spring, by default cutting food stamp benefits created to help vulnerable Americans like Blair weather the worst of covid-19. Instead of $200 a month, he would get just $30.

Blair actually gets up at 4 AM in the morning so that he can be first in line for these handouts.

On the Friday that the reporter from the Washington Post interviewed him, he ended up staying in that line for nine hours.

I couldn’t imagine waiting in line for that long, but Blair feels like this is what he and his wife must do in order to survive…

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DHS has a program gathering domestic intelligence — and virtually no one knows about it

For years, the Department of Homeland Security has run a virtually unknown program gathering domestic intelligence, one of many revelations in a wide-ranging tranche of internal documents reviewed by POLITICO.

Those documents also reveal that a significant number of employees in DHS’s intelligence office have raised concerns that the work they are doing could be illegal.

Under the domestic-intelligence program, officials are allowed to seek interviews with just about anyone in the United States. That includes people held in immigrant detention centers, local jails, and federal prison. DHS’s intelligence professionals have to say they’re conducting intelligence interviews, and they have to tell the people they seek to interview that their participation is voluntary. But the fact that they’re allowed to go directly to incarcerated people — circumventing their lawyers — raises important civil liberties concerns, according to legal experts.

That specific element of the program, which has been in place for years, was paused last year because of internal concerns. DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, which runs the program, uses it to gather information about threats to the U.S., including transnational drug trafficking and organized crime. But the fact that this low-profile office is collecting intelligence by questioning people in the U.S. is virtually unknown.

The inner workings of the program — called the “Overt Human Intelligence Collection Program” — are described in the large tranche of internal documents POLITICO reviewed from the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. Those documents and additional interviews revealed widespread internal concerns about legally questionable tactics and political pressure. The documents also show that people working there fear punishment if they speak out about mismanagement and abuses.

One unnamed employee — quoted in an April 2021 document — said leadership of I&A’s Office of Regional Intelligence “is ‘shady’ and ‘runs like a corrupt government.’” Another document said some employees worried so much about the legality of their activities that they wanted their employer to cover legal liability insurance.

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The Myth That America Prospered After WWII Despite Extremely High Taxes on the Rich

Left-wing politicians who demand higher taxes on the rich argue that the United States has, in the past, prospered when tax rates were very high, proving that high taxes do not harm the economy. And it is true: In the 1950s and early 1960s, the top federal personal income tax rate in the US was a horrendous 91 percent, after which it was lowered to 70 percent. Under Ronald Reagan, it was then successively reduced to 28 percent by 1988 (before being raised several times and then lowered again under Trump).

However, as Phil Gramm, Robert Ekelund, and John Early show in their book The Myth of American Inequality: “The top income tax in 1962 was 91 percent. After deductions and credits, only 447 tax filers out of 71 million paid any taxes at the top rate. The top 1 percent of income earners on average paid 16.1 percent of their income in federal and payroll taxes while the top 10 percent paid 14.4 percent and the bottom 50 percent paid 7.0 percent.”

Even when the top tax rate was lowered to 70 percent, not much changed. Only 3,626 out of 75 million taxpayers actually paid taxes up to 70 percent. Interestingly, the actual percentage paid by the top 1 percent of earners in the US was only 16.1 percent in 1962, when the top marginal rate was 91 percent. However, in 1988, when the top rate was only 28 percent, the percentage paid by the top 1 percent of earners had risen to 21.5 percent! As the top tax rate fell by two-thirds, the percentage of their income that the top 1 percent of tax filers paid in federal income and payroll taxes rose by a third.

This seems paradoxical, but it is logical, because it is not only the tax rate that is decisive, but the amount of income that is actually taxable. In the pre-Reagan era, there were numerous exemptions, loopholes, and tax-saving schemes that top earners could use to reduce their taxable income. Reagan abolished many of these opportunities, thereby increasing the proportion of income that was subject to taxation.

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New York City Spending $5 Million PER DAY on Housing and Feeding Illegal Immigrants

New York City is reportedly spending five million dollars a day on the feeding and housing of illegal immigrants now living on the city.

In what world is this kind of figure acceptable or even sustainable? How long can this possibly go on?

Think about the size of that number and imagine what could be done with that money to help American citizens.

If New York City has that kind of money to spend on illegal immigrants, why are there homeless people in the city? How is anyone in the city going hungry?

The New York Post reports:

NYC official says city is spending an estimated $5M a day on housing, feeding migrants

New York City is spending nearly $5 million a day to house and feed thousands of migrants — but the Big Apple is still barely getting a dime in aid from President Biden and Gov. Kathy Hochul.

The mind-blowing cost of the crisis was revealed Friday afternoon after city Emergency Management Commissioner Zach Iscol told a City Council panel that Gotham’s Department of Homeless Services and Health & Hospitals each spend an average of $363 daily to provide food and shelter for just a single migrant.

Given that there are more than 30,000 migrants currently being housed in city taxpayer-funded facilities, that would amount to a daily staggering bill of $10.89 million.

City Hall then waited until Friday night to officially correct Iscol’s comments.

After Mayor Eric Adams’ administration refused for several hours to go on the record, a spokeswoman, Kate Smart, finally wrote in an e-mail to The Post that “$364 per household is the per diem for asylum seekers.”

Based on what City Hall would only say on background earlier, “there are 12,700 households currently in our care,” that puts the daily migrant cost for the city still at a colossal $4,622,800.

This is insanity.

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