Memo for Our Montgomery County and Maryland Citizens, Prepared by Peter Huessy, President of Geo-Strategic Analysis of Potomac, Maryland

Cackle Campaign News

Scott Rasmussen says in his latest polling, Harris has been at 49% twice, 47% once and 51% once, while  Trump has been at 49% three times and 48% once. Trafalgar says the poll numbers are moving in the direction of Trump, especially in the swing states with the exception of Georgia where Trump is down by 0.4%.

Economic News

House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX) responds to the August jobs numbers:

“The Biden-Harris Administration’s tax-and-spend policies have unleashed widespread economic pain throughout our nation, with stubborn inflation and stagnant job growth continuing to plague American families.
 
Today’s report reminds us that the sustained economic hardship facing working people continues. Prior job gains were revised down yet again, with an abysmal 89,000 jobs added in July.
 
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris continue to scoff at the economic hardship facing working people, maintaining that their disastrous policies are ‘building up the middle class.’
 
To make matters worse, the Biden-Harris Bureau of Labor Statistics recently lowered its year-over-year employment estimate for March 2024 by nearly 1 million jobs, acknowledging that the economy is much weaker than previously believed.

• The economy added 142,000 jobs in August, up 28,000 from July.
   

Job gains in June and July were revised down 61,000 and 25,000, respectively, for a combined revision of 86,000. This brings job gains in June down to 118,000 and gains in July down to 89,000 – the lowest since December 2020 (-243,000).
 The estimate for year-over-year jobs gains in March 2024 was lowered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in an earlier report by 818,000 jobs. This had the effect of lowering total employment by 0.5 percent. 

Voting with your Moving Van

California Dreamen’: "This proposal asks us not to arrest, but instead detain and release observed narcotics sales"

By  Mary Margaret Olohan

Sep 5, 2024   DailyWire.com

As District Attorney of San Francisco, Kamala Harris proposed a program for drug dealers that would have allowed criminals to only be charged for selling narcotics on their third arrest. 

San Francisco’s chief of police at the time sent an October 24, 2005 letter to Harris declining to participate in the program, “Operation Safe Streets,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Daily Wire. 

“This proposal asks us not to arrest, but instead detain and release observed narcotics sales suspects pursuant to Penal Code Section 849(b) P.C. When the same suspect is arrested the third time for narcotics sales, your office would then charge all three counts,” wrote Heather Fong, who served as police chief until 2009. 

The revelation comes as Harris attempts to campaign as a tough-on-crime, law-and-order prosecutor, touting her past record and describing herself as someone who “took on perpetrators of all kinds — predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain.” 

But back in 2005, the police chief warned Harris that her proposed policy would allow narcotics sellers to immediately be released back onto the streets without consequences, encourage dealers to come to San Francisco, potentially increase violent crime in the city, and result in a double standard, “as adults would be released while juveniles would be booked.” 

“Additionally, narcotics dealers who sell drugs near a school would be released after only a brief detention,” Fong continued, noting, “Undoubtedly, this would send the wrong message to observant children who unfortunately witness drug dealing activity on a regular basis.” 

The chief also warned that the public would not view a “detain and release” program favorably, since neither the community nor the police department are sympathetic to drug dealers who “exploit for profit the weakness of others.” She also noted that it would be bad for officer morale and “counter to what every officer is taught.” 

Harris’ office told The Daily Journal in April 2006 that the idea behind the proposal was not to allow criminals to get off the hook, but instead help prosecutors build stronger cases against them. The Daily Journal reported that “police have scoffed at the plan.” 

“Defense attorneys who regularly represent drug dealers also are pooh poohing Harris’ plan, saying it sounds weird and unworkable,” The Daily Journal’s Dennis Opatrny wrote at the time. 

Harris’ criminal division chief, Jeff Ross, reportedly suggested to the police chief at the time that they should move forward with the program despite potential media criticisms. 

“It is true that San Francisco is home to some media outlets that may perceive of this program as being too tough on narcotics offenders, because more dealers will wind up behind bars as a result of this approach,” he wrote, adding, “I’m sure you would agree that we must pursue effective enforcement approaches without regard to whether there might be critical media coverage.” 

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Wire. 

A report released Wednesday from The Heritage Foundation found that she has always been “soft-on-crime,” though her representations of her record have varied based on her audience or political climate: she has shown support for defunding the police, bail policies that let violent criminals back onto the streets, and did not seek the death penalty in a number of “egregious cases,” according to the report. 

Just weeks after the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in police custody while an officer knelt on his neck, Harris claimed that it “is outdated and is actually wrong and backward to think that more police officers will create more safety.” 

She also promised to end cash bail, expunge some felon records, end federal mandatory minimum sentences, get rid of court-ordered fines, impose more restrictions on cops, and more, according to a memo from her 2020 presidential campaign exposed by the Washington Free Beacon in July. 

Want to Know How the Pollsters Poll?

Mainstream media is run by the Deep State. Pollsters followed media storylines and, like lemmings, they all rushed over the cliff of election propaganda for Kamala Harris.

Kennedy Endorsed Trump – Pollsters Endorsed Kamala Mainstream media is run by the Deep State. Pollsters followed media storylines and, like lemmings, they all rushed over the cliff of election propaganda for Kamala Harris. The Democrat National Convention ended on the 22nd of August. The day those doors closed American and foreign mainstream media began to write headline stories trumpeting Kamala Harris will win the election. Their stories included pollster predictions of a 3.5% jump in positive voter sentiment for the Harris/Walz ticket. Legacy media outlets are controlled by the Deep State, so their reporters had to ignore months of Trump’s monster rallies. They could not compare those rallies against the sparsely attended gatherings for Kamala Harris as a measure of voter enthusiasm. Instead, newspapers, TV and online media drooled over Kamala, explaining away her word salad speeches and extolling her promise to bolstering border walls and increase fracking. The media does not mention those policies have been steadfastly opposed by the Biden administration for the last four years – including Vice President Kamala. Pollsters immediately provided the media with strangely uniform predictions of a Kamala victory. A sampling of those poll-based headlines: Kamala Harris Opens up Biggest Lead Over Trump in 538 Polling Aggregate  “FiveThirtyEight's poll tracker, which complies the results of national and statewide polls and weights them according to reliability, shows that nationally Harris is on average ahead of Trump by 3.3 points, with 47 percent to the Republican’s 43.7 percent.”  Newsweek, 22 August Harris has a 3.6% lead based on 133 polls. In those 133 polls, the media website also mentions ActiVote, Outward Intelligence and the Rasmussen Reports.  The Hill, 25 August Harris, Trump dead even in Pennsylvania, according to RCP poll Real Clear Politics, 24 August Harris Leads By 4 Points In Post-DNC Survey Forbes, 27 August After DNC, Harris Seeks to Maintain Momentum “As of Aug. 23, she holds a 3.6-point lead over Trump in FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average and is gaining on the former president in many battleground states.” Epoch Times, 24 August Why did the media write those headlines? Was it to pump up Kamala’s standing in the polls to psychologically prepare us for the ballot harvesting  that will steal the November election? Is it 2020 all over again? The answer is that the CIA, FBI, DOD and their Deep State co-conspirators do not much like Trump, as we saw at the Butler Pennsylvania rally.  They missed him that time, but they still control the mainstream media with money, threats and blackmail. CIA’s Operation MOCKINGBIRD is still alive and well despite statements to the contrary. By the way, if you still don’t believe the Deep State controls legacy media, here is a montage of headlines promoting the Kamala Harris “Joy” propaganda line that sounds like the Nazi slogan, “Strength Through Joy.” To that she is now adding “Forward,” the communist favorite of Fidel Castro and Obama.  (The image below is from a recent post by the indomitable Elizabeth Nickson.)   Last week Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, confessed in testimony before Congress that the Deep State’s FBI and the Biden administration forced Facebook to suppress satire about the Covid jabs as well as news about the Biden family’s relationship with Ukraine’s corrupt Burisma company – before and after the 2020 elections. Pollsters and the 2016 Elections Let’s take a retrospective peek at what the pollsters predicting Kamala will defeat Trump in 2024 predicted for the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton Leads Donald Trump by 14 Points Nationally in New Poll “Hillary Clinton has widened her lead over Donald Trump, polling 14 percentage points ahead nationally, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll, which comes 12 days before the presidential election.” Time Clinton has 90 percent chance of winning: Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation Project Reuters, 7 November 2016 Every poll showed Clinton ahead right up to election day (except the LA Times /USC Tracking poll). An analysis by Real Clear Politics in November 2016 The poll of polls 2016 Election Forecast had Hillary’s chance of winning at 71.4% and Trump’s chance at 28.6% (even allowing for the electoral college votes) FiveThirtyEight November 2016 I could go on showing all the other pollsters who predicted Hillary Clinton would win, but that would only confirm that in 2016 the Deep State propaganda machine was working overtime to elect Hillary. Nevertheless, as this is being written, there are a few signs that indicate the pollster tide favoring Harris may yet turn. Before the August flurry of pollsters favoring Harris, in late in July Fox News, Rasmussen, CNBC and HarrisX polls put Trump ahead of Kamala. James Howard Kunstler of the Substack site Clusterfuck Nation, noted that on August 29th statistician Nate Silver, founder of the FiveThirtyEight poll of polls, put Kamala’s chance of winning down at 42.7 % versus Trump’s 56.7%.  Kunster added, “Voters have begun to notice that the candidate represents nothing except whatever happened the past four years in Biden-Land — which is to say, open borders, war for the sake of arms profiteers, flagrant censorship, inflation, cratering business activity, and overt DOJ political persecutions.”  Also, Martin Armstrong (founder of Armstrong Economics), has estimated Kamala Harris’s true poll numbers are well below Trump’s. Even Kamala supporter CNN is recognizing that Kamala Harris is having trouble. CNN’s pollster, David Chalian, found that his sampling of a key demographic cohort – white voters without a college degree in swing states -- favors Trump by huge margins. See the video here. How Pollsters Create Polls Government polls and estimates are almost always wrong because they are politicized. For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) had to revise the Biden administration’s brag of creating 3,140,000 new jobs in 2023.  It was revised downward by 749,000 jobs! The BLS also punched a hole in the Biden administration’s brag of creating millions of jobs in 2024. On August 21st, the BLS reported that the U.S. economy created 818,000 fewer jobs than originally reported in the 12-month period through March 2024. Something is not quite right with the number crunching skills at BLS, or were those downward revisions of new jobs meant to bolster the Federal Reserve’s decision to lower interest rates in an election year? If government data can’t be trusted, why should pollsters be trusted? That leads to the question of how polls are conducted these days. Despite the polling process being rather simple it is subject to many variables, and variables can be manipulated. Before I begin describing the reality of how polling results are generated, let’s review what pollsters usually state when releasing a poll. It’s something like: “Findings are based on calling a representative sample of 2,000 Americans and, after adjustments, has a margin of error of plus or minus 2%.” That’s the beginning of the scam, because the vast majority of pollsters no longer work that way, and they have not done so for more than 20 years. In December of 2023, Courtney Kennedy, the Pew Research Center’s vice president of methods and innovation, reported that of 69 polling organization only 6 still polled the old way. She said, “There’s a huge gap between the public understanding and where the survey field actually is.” The truth is that most polls are taken from people in huge survey panels. Many organizations have constructed those panels: Pew’s own American Trends Panel has more than 10,000 adults; The Gallup Panel has 100,000 members; the University of Chicago’s NORC panel has 54,000 members. To avoid countless and expensive hours calling random respondents who might not want to be surveyed, pollsters today assemble a collection of willing responders to form a panel, large or small, of members who provide their demographic profiles. Those demographic profiles come in handy when, say, the number of 50-year-olds in a survey is less than in the national population. In that case a pollster would give the number of 50-year-olds in his survey a bit more weight. That modeling and weighting process is also done for other demographic variables like education, party affiliation, income, etc. The pollster then describes the final panel he used as a “representative sample” of the American population. And there’s the rub – unless the pollster discloses the demographics of the panel members, and exactly how they were weighed, you cannot trust his result. The inherent flaws in the majority of today’s political polling systems were seen in the polls leading up to the 2016 and 2020 elections – and in today’s polls of Kamala versus Trump. The problem with the accuracy of political polls includes the demographic methodology of the panel system, but there are other problems with their accuracy. The way poll questions are asked can manipulate the answers. An example of a question that could generate an unreliable answer is, “Do you intend to vote for Trump?” What if the respondent is a Democrat who intends to vote for Trump but is afraid to say so fear of winding up on a Democrat list of white extremist terrorists? Or what if the respondent does not know whom he intends to vote for but has seen other polls that say Trump will lose. Who wants to vote for a loser? Bottom line -- the person who ultimately sees the poll result does not see the list of questions. Poll accuracy is also subject to the well-known problem of sampling and assumptions. Should the respondents taken from the huge panel all be citizens? Should they be registered voters? Should they be infrequent or frequent voters? Does the panel’s demographic data even have such information? Then there is the fact that pollsters know that small changes in assumptions can skew the poll’s results. Playing around with sampling and assumptions allows an unscrupulous or biased pollster to make the numbers dance to his tune. If biased pollsters are then able to place their skewed poll in a “respected” media outlet, and it doesn’t go against the accepted tide, that’s a win for their relationship with their client and, of course, their bottom line. Did we see the pollster herd instinct at work in August? It certainly was seen back in 1948, when the CIA was just being born and the FBI wasn’t politicized, so there was no excuse then – like Deep State manipulation of “respected” mainstream media. Let’s not fall for today’s “scientific” polls. We saw what happened when we fell for a new and “scientific” vaccine. Thanks for reading Chet Nagle's Now Hear This! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Chet Nagle's Now Hear This is free today. 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Three-Quarters of US Economy Stagnating or Contracting: New Federal Reserve Survey

Inflation growth was ’modest' while the labor market held steady.

By Andrew Moran

9/4/2024Updated:9/4/2024

Economic conditions in three-quarters of the United States experienced “flat or declining activity” in August as employment levels held steady and prices increased modestly, according to the latest Federal Reserve report.

The Beige Book—a summary of regional economic conditions across the 12 Fed districts—highlighted a national economy treading water. Of the dozen Fed districts, nine recorded sluggish or contracting economic activity, up from five in July. Three districts reported expansions.

While the overall labor market held steady, there were “isolated reports” of companies filling necessary positions, reducing hours and shifts, and lowering payrolls through attrition. Layoffs “remained rare” last month.

“Employers were more selective with their hires and less likely to expand their workforces, citing concerns about demand and an uncertain economic outlook,” the report reads.

On the inflation front, wage growth was “modest” and increases in businesses’ input costs and selling prices “ranged from slight to moderate.” However, the Fed’s contacts anticipate that cost and price pressures will “stabilize or ease further in the coming months.”

Consumer spending dipped in most Fed districts, while automobile sales varied by districts.

Manufacturing activity declined in most of the country, according to the Fed report. This was observed in the various regional central bank manufacturing surveys, such as the New York Fed’s Empire State Manufacturing Index and the Richmond Fed Manufacturing Index, highlighting a slumping sector.

Commercial and residential real estate industry construction was mixed in the reporting period, which was gathered on or before Aug. 26.

“District contacts generally expected economic activity to remain stable or to improve somewhat in the coming months, though contacts in three Districts anticipated slight declines,” the Fed report reads.

Recent Economic News

The financial markets were spooked again by two key manufacturing reports.

The August Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI)—an index that measures the general direction that the sector is heading—fell short of expectations and was stuck in contraction for the fifth straight month.

The S&P Global Manufacturing PMI weakened for the second consecutive month in August and came in slightly below the consensus estimate.

Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, warned that the latest U.S. manufacturing report sent “warning signals on economic conditions” as demand slowed, output fell, employment declined, and input costs unexpectedly rose.

“A further downward lurch in the PMI points to the manufacturing sector acting as an increased drag on the economy midway through the third quarter,” Williamson said in a report. “Forward-looking indicators suggest this drag could intensify in the coming months.”

Construction spending also slipped by 0.3 percent in July.

Workers assemble cars at the newly renovated Ford Assembly Plant in Chicago on June 24, 2019. Jim Young / AFP via Getty Images

“The ISM manufacturing index is still indicating a contracting sector with the key new orders and production components remaining in the doldrums,” James Knightley, chief international economist at ING, said in a note. “Construction activity is also cooling meaning that growth in the second half of this year is going to have to be provided by the services sector.”

The ISM’s August Services PMI will be released on Sept. 5 and is expected to show a tepid decline in activity.

The leading U.S. stock market benchmark indexes plummeted following the manufacturing figures, with the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average plunging by more than 600 points. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index declined by more than 3 percent, while the S&P 500 tumbled by 2.2 percent.

Stocks were little changed on Sept. 4 after new data assuaged slowdown fears. Factory orders surged at a higher-than-expected pace of 5 percent in July.

A soft landing—a moderate slowdown in economic growth without breaking the labor market—is the likely scenario, although other possibilities are being monitored closely, according to Jennifer McKeown, chief globalist economist at Capital Economics.

“I think it’s much too soon to be really concerned that we’re heading back into a recession, but these are risks that we’re monitoring really closely,” McKeown said during a live webinar on Sept. 4. “The more indicators turned down, of course, the more worried you become.”

Based on regional central bank models, the U.S. economy is expected to avert a recession in 2024.

The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow Model estimates 2.1 percent growth in the third quarter. The New York Fed Staff Nowcast anticipates an expansion rate of 2.5 percent in the July to September period.

Recent developments in the broader economy, from easing inflation to a weaker labor market, prompted Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to pivot on monetary policy and signaled last month that “the time has come for policy to adjust.”

Bureau of Labor Statistics data have shown the unemployment rate rising to its highest level since October 2021 and the number of job openings declining to their lowest levels since early 2021.

Investors overwhelmingly anticipate that monetary authorities will announce the first interest rate cut since 2020 at the September policy meeting, according to the CME FedWatch Tool.

The Update to the Transgender Issue

EXCLUSIVE: Red States Urge Federal Court To Halt ‘Medical Scandal,’ Unblock Child Sex Change Ban

Nearly two dozen states are urging a federal appeals court to uphold Florida’s ban on child sex change operations, warning that history may not look kindly on the sterilization of children for gender distress.

In a brief filed Wednesday and obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and 22 other state attorneys general urged the eleventh circuit court of appeals to reverse a lower court ruling that overturned Florida’s pediatric sex-change ban. The amici noted that until recently, “providing sex-change treatments to minors was practically unthinkable,” and recognized that many states and European countries have already created age-based restrictions on sex-change medical interventions.

“Maybe history is repeating itself in grim fashion, and we’ll one day wonder how this medical scandal spread so far before being reined in,” the brief states. “In any event, because ‘nothing rules out th[e] possibility’ that Florida acted to protect kids from sterilizing treatments, the district court grievously erred.”

The brief argues the court made a critical miscalculation by assuming the actions of the Florida State legislature were not motivated in good faith, while presuming the good faith of the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH).

WPATH is an influential transgender medical organization that recommends children receive sex-change interventions such as puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and sex change surgery.

In June Federal District Court Judge Robert L. Hinkle ruled against Florida law SB 254 which prohibits minors from receiving irreversible transgender treatments such as puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and sex-change surgeries. The decision is currently under appeal and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a stay on Hinkle’s ruling, allowing Florida’s ban on pediatric sex change to be implemented during the court proceedings.

In his opinion, Hinkle argued that “Gender identity is real” and suggested legislators in Florida who banned pediatric sex-change were motivated by bigotry.

“There has long been, and still is, substantial bigotry directed at transgender individuals,” Hinkle wrote. “Common experience confirms this, as do some of the comments of legislators recounted above. And even when not based on bigotry, there are those who incorrectly but sincerely believe that gender identity is not real but instead just a choice.”

The term “gender identity” was popularized by controversial sexologist John Money, and is used by transgender activists to describe a person’s internal sense of being male or female, distinct from their natural sex.

The Alabama-led brief states that claims of bigotry were made erroneously and without the “presumption of legislative good faith,” noting pediatric sex-change interventions are a “booming business, with devastating consequences for many.”

“When a legislature has admittedly ‘legitimate concerns’ about ‘substantial harm’ that sterilizing treatments are having on children, there is no ground for assuming that bigotry is the real reason the State acted,” the brief states.

The brief also rejects Hinkle’s claim that a Florida state House member’s quotation of a biblical passage which says God created people “male and female” was “evidence” that “animus” motivated the passage of Florida’s sex-change ban.

Hinkle references the WPATH Standards of care throughout his ruling, calling them “well-established standards of care” that underpin much of his argument for overturning Florida’s child sex change ban.

The amicus brief challenges the credibility of WPATH, referencing recently unsealed court documents showing top officials in the Biden-Harris administration, concerned about the political implications of minimum age requirements, pressured WPATH to remove lower age limits for sex change surgeries from their clinical guidance. (

“Senior government officials influenced the guidelines they now hold up as ‘evidence-based.’ Admiral Rachel Levine, the Assistant Secretary for Health at HHS, met regularly with WPATH leaders, ‘eager to learn when SOC 8 might be published’ because ‘[t]he failure of WPATH to be ready with SOC 8 [was] proving to be a barrier to optimal policy progress’ for the Biden Administration,” the brief states.

“After WPATH provided Levine exclusive access to the near-final draft of SOC8, Levine asked WPATH to remove the recommended age minimums for transitioning treatments. According to officials within Levine’s office, the Admiral was concerned that the listing of “specific minimum wages for treatment … will result in devastating legislation for trans care.”

It also points out that a pattern of prioritizing politics and ideology over science was again seen in documents showing WPATH breaking international standards of guideline creation by allowing clinicians with a financial conflict of interest to help craft the Standards of Care and suppressed the publication of their own research. 

“While the standards suggest ways for guideline committees to benefit from those clinicians’ expertise, they understandably recommend not putting clinicians who are financially dependent on the services under review in charge of evaluating the safety or efficacy of those exact services. WPATH did the opposite, expressly limiting SOC-8 authorship to existing WPATH members—who already practiced or espoused “gender-affirming care,” the brief states

___________

Peter Huessy is a Member of the Montgomery County Republican Central Committee. Since 1981 he has been President of Geo-Strategic Analysis of Potomac, Maryland. He was a former special assistant to the Secretary of the Interior and consultant to the US Air Force. He can be reached at [email protected]