Thursday, November 21, 2019

BRIBES SUCKING BIDEN BOYS - PART OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY'S PANTHEON OF STAGGERING CORRUPTION

Dems' self-destructive defense of Biden family corruption

You know those idealized, perfectly conical shapes small children draw to depict hills and mountain peaks?  Well, according to the Cambridge Hillwalking Club, the Gaelic term for such a hill or peak so shaped is bidean or bidein.  Usually we find depictions of bideins adorning kindergarten walls and refrigerator doors, but in the case of the 2020 Democrat presidential primary, it would seem the pooh-bahs of the party's congressional delegation seem to view, like small children, their own morally faulted, fissured, and distinctly irregular Biden as one of those idealized, perfectly symmetrical bideins, a pinnacle to be defended against all comers, in spite of a widely televised admission of corruption by Joe, involving himself and his son.
If Trump-deranged, impeachment-crazed Democrats were still demonstrating even minor signs of political sanity, one might suppose they would think long and hard before trying to defend such overt dishonesty while simultaneously attempting to impeach the sitting president for a far less serious and less provable act involving largely the same players in the same country.  The Democrat leadership are confident that they can pull off this legerdemain because they believe that through their media minions, they control the watching eyes of the American public, keeping the rubes focused on fanciful hearings while the Bidens and their corrupt behavior remain hidden by media sleight of hand.  Their confidence is easy to understand; Democrats have long enjoyed the luxury of having the coastal, urban, elite media acting as fang-toothed propagandists for the party while hiding behind a hypocritical hijab of pious impartiality.

Joe and Hunter Biden in the 2009 Obama inaugural parade (photo credit: acaben).
But now the media are no longer making even a token attempt to appear unbiased; their masks have come off, and their role as the publicity arm of a single political party is ever clearer to millions more of the American public.  Now the Democrat prestidigitation is being seen for what it truly is: blatant, very high-level corruption during the Obama administration that Dems are trying to ignore and, even worse, condone, while cynically trying to unseat a president for a far less egregious offense.  Dems refuse to accept the reality that acknowledging Joe Biden's probably corrupt activities bear investigating might mitigate the stench of hypocrisy that now surrounds their impeachment proceedings.
The Democrat leadership may still feel confident that with the media's one-sided support, they can bamboozle the American public with their Capitol Hill hocus pocus, but they would be well advised to pause first and ask themselves:
"Is this the wrong Bidein to die on?"

Only six percent of the billions of dollars the "Foundation" takes in goes to charity.  The rest subsidizes the lavish lifestyles of the Clintons and their sycophants; those people who have sold their souls to rub shoulders with unadulterated power.

Clinton Foundation Put On Watch List Of Suspicious ‘Charities’


"But what the Clintons do is criminal because they do it wholly at the expense of the American people. And they feel thoroughly entitled to do it: gain power, use it to enrich themselves and their friends. They are amoral, immoral, and venal. Hillary has no core beliefs beyond power and money. That should be clear to every person on the planet by now."  ----  Patricia McCarthy


Clinton Foundation bleeding money with no Clintons in high office



The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation can no longer raise enough money to cover its expenses, ever since Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign failed to propel her into an office from which she could dispense political favors. Clinton Foundation reports to the IRS for the last two tax years have demonstrated that without anyone to grant boons, fewer donors are interested in supporting it.
Andrew Stiles reports for the Free Beacon:
The Clinton Foundation reported a loss of more than $16 million in 2018, according to newly released tax records, marking the second consecutive year of losses since Hillary Clinton's humiliating defeat to President Donald J. Trump in 2016.
The foundation reported total revenue of just $30.7 million, including $24.2 million worth of grants and contributions, a record low for the alleged "charity." That figure was well short of the foundation's total expenses for the year—$47.5 million— resulting in a net loss of $16.8 million.
The previous year, the Clinton Foundation reported a net loss of $16.1 million. In total, the organization has lost a staggering $32.9 million since Hillary Clinton's lifelong quest for the presidency crumbled to dust in November 2016.
The contrast with previous years when political favors were a lure is striking:
The Clinton Foundation posted its highest revenue haul ($249 million) in 2009, the year Hillary was sworn in as President Barack Obama's secretary of state. By 2013, the foundation had reported an additional $392.2 million in revenue, and went on to raise $344.4 million between 2014 and 2016.
Between 2008 and 2016, the Clinton Foundation reported total revenue in excess of $1.1 billion, or an annual average of $130.4 million. Needless to say, Clinton's stunning failure to defeat Donald Trump in the 2016 election appears to have had a significant impact on the foundation's ability to raise money.
US Attorney for Utah, John Huber, has been tasked with investigating the Clinton Foundation. So far there has not been a single leak out of his office over its work. That could mean either that they have turned up nothing, or that the investigation and grand jury are proceeding with the secrecy that the law demands.


VIDEO:
THE FRAUDULENT CLINTON FOUNDATION EXPOSED.
PAY-TO-PLAY FROM THE FIRST DAY!


Is it a signal that she's back in the game because she's selling her president-ability to the world's global billionaire crowd and laying the groundwork for more funds?  There are all kinds of ways for foreign billionaires to get money to the U.S. without consequences, after all.  What's more, it's pretty much the biggest base of support she has, which is at least one reason why she lost the 2016 election.
*
“The couple parlayed lives supposedly spent in “public service” into admission into the upper stratosphere of American wealth, with incomes in the top 0.1 percent bracket. The source of this vast wealth was a political machine that might well be dubbed “Clinton, Inc.” This consists essentially of a seedy money-laundering operation to ensure big business support for the Clintons’ political ambitions as well as their personal fortunes.


The basic components of the operation are lavishly paid speeches to Wall Street and Fortune 500 audiences, corporate campaign contributions, and donations to the ostensibly philanthropic Clinton Foundation.”

HILLARY & BILLARY AND RED CHINA!


“Facilitating strategic technology transfer in return for money is an old Clinton game.  The Chinese bought their way to access of considerable space technology when Bill Clinton was president.  Remember Charlie Trie, Loral, and the rest of the crew?”

THE CLINTONS AND RED CHINA:
A MONEY MAKING TRAITORSHIP!
"Ask Jeff Sessions about the charges.  Money was flowing into the Clinton Foundation from all over the world, disguised, rerouted through a Canadian charity, all to obscure its origins."

AMERICAN PREDATORS:

THE BRIBES SUCKING LIVES OF HILLARY  &  BILLARY

The Clintons have been a criminal enterprise since they came to power in Arkansas.  The list of scandals they have generated is long and tawdry.  Their principal goal then and now has always been to enrich themselves.  They never once had a moral compunction about lying, cheating, selling, and stealing their way to wealth. They are the Perons of America.  They eventually set up a "foundation" and the money kept rolling in. 


Only six percent of the billions of dollars the "Foundation" takes in goes to charity.  The rest subsidizes the lavish lifestyles of the Clintons and their sycophants; those people who have sold their souls to rub shoulders with unadulterated power.


THE SHADY POLITICS OF HILLARY CLINTON and her PAY-TO-PLAY MAFIA

The left cared nothing about that bit of collusion. 

Hillary and her campaign aides have long been involved with Russia for reasons of personal gain.  Clinton herself got $145 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation for allowing Russia to take over twenty percent of all uranium production in the U.S. Her campaign chairman, John Podesta, is reaping the financial benefits of being on the board of a Russian company, Joule, which he did not disclose.  PATRICIA McCARTHY

Had Hillary been elected, the Clinton Foundation would be raking in even more millions than it did before.  She would be happily selling access, favors and our remaining freedoms out from under us. PATRICIA McCARTHY



THE PHONY CLINTON FOUNDATION CHARITY slush fund


“There is no controlling Bill Clinton. He does whatever he wants and runs up incredible expenses with foundation funds,” states a separate interview memo attached to the submission.

“Bill Clinton mixes and matches his personal 

business with that of the foundation. Many 

people within the foundation have tried to 

caution him about this but he does not listen, 

and there really is no talking to him,” the 

memo added.

GOOGLE THE HIGH TECH MONSTER WE NEED TO KILL

Bokhari: Google’s Swamp Creatures Take Aim at Josh Hawley’s Big Tech Bill
Google takes on Apple Arcade with mobile game service
JUSTIN SULLIVAN/Getty
6:36

The Heritage Foundation is a fine institution that does excellent work on a number of topics. Unfortunately, it is also one of several conservative institutions in D.C. that takes money from Google — and it shows.

Yesterday, the think tank published a hitpiece about Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO)’s bill to end political censorship by big social media platforms.
Sen. Hawley, a freshman Senator elected in 2018, has become one of the most vocal critics of big tech in the upper chamber. His bill, which would amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), is a bold attempt to transform his rhetoric into action.
Hawley’s bill is called the Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act, and it takes aim at the most troublesome part of Section 230, the legal immunities that shield tech companies from lawsuits arising from the “good faith” censorship of content.
These are the provisions that allow tech platforms to disintegrate the social media presence of everyone from political activists to bustling online businesses with less due process involved than eviction from a neighborhood parking lot.
The bill is measured and nuanced in its approach. It takes care not to hurt small competitors to the established Silicon Valley giants. It would only apply to tech companies that have more than 30 million monthly active users in the U.S., 300 million worldwide, or more than $500 million in annual revenue.
Still, The Heritage Foundation is having none of it.
In an article attacking the bill, senior research fellow Diane Katz warns of dire consequences if Sen. Hawley’s bill were to pass.
Katz warns that absent the legal protections of Section 230, companies would risk a “barrage of lawsuits” if they are unable to satisfy regulators with their content moderation practices.
“Such a threat would likely provoke some platforms to either block all but the blandest content or refrain from curation altogether—and subject the public to the extremes of human depravity.”
The “extremes of human depravity?” What, like 4chan? Sorry, but that’s already allowed on the internet!
Plus, Sen. Hawley’s bill would only strip tech companies of their immunity to moderate a very specific type of content — political speech. It says nothing about “depravity,” which tech platforms would still be able to filter behind features like Google’s Safe Search.
Also, Katz seems to imply that tech companies aren’t already allowing “depravity” on their platforms, so long as it fits in with their worldview — note, videos promoting “Drag Queen Story Hour,” in which crossdressers read stories to children, can easily be found on YouTube. Unlike PragerU’s videos, they aren’t even hidden behind an age filter.
Katz also says that it is an “overwhelming task” for tech companies to prove the absence of bias to regulators. “Requiring tech companies to convey their proprietary intellectual property to government (to prove they are not acting in a discriminatory fashion) is an insupportable violation of property rights.”
This is a strange argument — companies have long been required to prove they are not acting in a discriminatory fashion. Does Katz support the repealing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act? It would certainly make her position consistent, if a little bold.
All the bill does is add political viewpoint to the list of categories that tech companies are not allowed to discriminate against. Honestly, this is something that should go beyond just tech companies — the concept of viewpoint discrimination is a massive wrench in the works of Diversity Inc., the kryptonite for workplace SJWs who love to bully and harass their conservative colleagues (especially in Silicon Valley).
It’s also highly necessary in a world where a few companies control virtually all communication, political or otherwise, on the internet. As Ann Coulter put it:


There’s a missing disclosure in Katz’s article — the fact that The Heritage Foundation takes contributions from Google. “Substantial amounts,” according to Google’s own transparency report.
It’s an important detail to disclose, because the article concludes with a talking point beloved of big tech advocates in D.C., namely that attempts to regulate Silicon Valley to stop political bias are no different to the Fairness Doctrine, a widely derided law from before the 1980s which forced broadcasters to be politically “balanced” in their coverage.
This argument is one of the top lines NetChoice, a D.C-based, conservative-focused lobby group that counts Google, Facebook, and Twitter among its clients.  In January, NetChoice VP Carl Szabo testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about why online platforms shouldn’t be subject to antitrust investigations — and the Fairness Doctrine comparison was at the forefront of his argument.
The Internet Association, the largest trade association representing Silicon Valley firms, takes a similar line. In an op-ed aimed at conservatives, the organization’s president wrote that new internet regulations could “spark a worse, more stringent version of the Fairness Doctrine.”
The Heritage Foundation is a think tank, and a think tank survives on the basis of donations. Still though, when its argument against Sen. Hawley’s bill is the same weak comparison made by Silicon Valley’s D.C. lobbyists in debates around completely different regulations, it’s hard to ignore.
The counter-argument? It hardly needs to be made, but obviously the businesses affected by the Fairness Doctrine never had anything like the legal immunities granted to tech companies that Sen. Hawley’s bill proposes to tie to political neutrality. Indeed, they still don’t, and that puts them at a massive disadvantage when competing with tech giants that have become publishers in all but name.
In a comment, Heritage Foundation media director Greg Scott said disclosure of the think tank’s Google funding was unnecessary because it didn’t affect their positions.
“For the same reason we didn’t [add a disclosure] when we publicly criticized Google/YouTube earlier this month for censoring a very popular Heritage video and when we called Google out for dissolving its AI board earlier in the year – because it is irrelevant. Total corporate support amounts to less than 2 percent of contributions and has exactly zero bearing on our policy positions.”
“No one should be surprised that Heritage favors consumer empowerment, opposes government intervention, and champions the free market. We always have – long before Google existed – and always will operate according to a core set of principles when evaluating policy proposals. The Heritage Foundation’s authority rests on the quality, rigor, depth, and independent nature of our research and analysis. Any suggestion to the contrary is false.”

Are you an insider at Google, Facebook, Twitter or any other tech company who wants to confidentially reveal wrongdoing or political bias at your company? Reach out to Allum Bokhari at his secure email address allumbokhari@protonmail.com
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.


Josh Hawley: GOP Must Defend Middle Class Americans Against ‘Concentrated Corporate Power,’ Tech Billionaires
3 Nov 2019184
4:31

The Republican Party must defend America’s working and middle class against “concentrated corporate power” and the monopolization of entire sectors of the United States’ economy, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) says.

In an interview on The Realignment podcast, Hawley said that “long gone are the days where” American workers can depend on big business to look out for their needs and the needs of their communities.
Instead, Hawley explained that increasing “concentrated corporate power” of whole sectors of the American economy — specifically among Silicon Valley’s giant tech conglomerates — is at the expense of working and middle class Americans.
“One of the things Republicans need to recover today is a defense of an open, free-market, of a fair healthy competing market and the length between that and Democratic citizenship,” Hawley said, and continued:
At the end of the day, we are trying to support and sustain here a great democracy. We’re not trying to make a select group of people rich. They’ve already done that. The tech billionaires are already billionaires, they don’t need any more help from government. I’m not interested in trying to help them further. I’m interested in trying to help sustain the great middle of this country that makes our democracy run and that’s the most important challenge of this day.
“You have these businesses who for years now have said ‘Well, we’re based in the United States, but we’re not actually an American company, we’re a global company,'” Hawley said. “And you know, what has driven profits for some of our biggest multinational corporations? It’s been … moving jobs overseas where it’s cheaper … moving your profits out of this country so you don’t have to pay any taxes.”
“I think that we have here at the same time that our economy has become more concentrated, we have bigger and bigger corporations that control more and more of our key sectors, those same corporations see themselves as less and less American and frankly they are less committed to American workers and American communities,” Hawley continued. “That’s turned out to be a problem which is one of the reasons we need to restore good, healthy, robust competition in this country that’s going to push up wages, that’s going to bring jobs back to the middle parts of this country, and most importantly, to the middle and working class of this country.”

While multinational corporations monopolize industries, Hawley said the GOP must defend working and middle class Americans and that big business interests should not come before the needs of American communities:
A free market is one where you can enter it, where there are new ideas, and also by the way, where people can start a small family business, you shouldn’t have to be gigantic in order to succeed in this country. Most people don’t want to start a tech company. [Americans] maybe want to work in their family’s business, which may be some corner shop in a small town … they want to be able to make a living and then give that to their kids or give their kids an option to do that. [Emphasis added]
The problem with corporate concentration is that it tends to kill all of that. The worst thing about corporate concentration is that it inevitably believes to a partnership with big government. Big business and big government always get together, always. And that is exactly what has happened now with the tech sector, for instance, and arguably many other sectors where you have this alliance between big government and big business … whatever you call it, it’s a problem and it’s something we need to address. [Emphasis added]
Hawley blasted the free trade-at-all-costs doctrine that has dominated the Republican and Democrat Party establishments for decades, crediting the globalist economic model with hollowing “out entire industries, entire supply chains” and sending them to China, among other countries.
“The thing is in this country is that not only do we not make very much stuff anymore, we don’t even make the machines that make the stuff,” Hawley said. “The entire supply chain up and down has gone overseas, and a lot of it to China, and this is a result of policies over some decades now.”
As Breitbart News reported, Hawley detailed in the interview how Republicans like former President George H.W. Bush’s ‘New World Order’ agenda and Democrats have helped to create a corporatist economy that disproportionately benefits the nation’s richest executives and donor class.
The billionaire class, the top 0.01 percent of earners, has enjoyed more than 15 times as much wage growth as the bottom 90 percent since 1979. That economy has been reinforced with federal rules that largely benefits the wealthiest of wealthiest earners. A study released last month revealed that the richest Americans are, in fact, paying a lower tax rate than all other Americans.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder

Enough Is Enough’: Josh Hawley Calls for Sanctions on Mexican Cartels

AP Photo/Susan Walsh
 6 Nov 2019220
3:30

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said Wednesday that “enough is enough” and called on the U.S. government to sanction Mexican officials and cartel members complicit in trafficking meth and killing Americans.

Hawley called for harsh retribution against the Mexican cartels complicit in ambushing and murdering nine American women and children near the New Mexico border.
In the wake of the attack on Americans, as well as the Mexican cartels’ complicity in Missouri’s meth crisis, the Missouri conservative called for the U.S. government to sanction the cartel members who are “openly slaughtering American citizens.”
“With Mexico, enough is enough. US government should impose sanctions on Mexican officials, including freezing assets, who won’t confront cartels,” Hawley tweeted Wednesday. “Cartels are flooding MO [Missouri] w/ meth, trafficking children, & openly slaughtering American citizens. And Mexico looks the other way.”
Hawley said that just over the last 14 days, there had been over 40 drug overdoses coming from drugs across America’s southern border.
Hawley continued, “In SW Mo last two weeks alone, over 40 drug overdoses & multiple deaths from drugs coming across [the] southern border. Story is the same all over the state. Cartels increasingly call the shots in Mexico, and for our own security, we cannot allow this to continue.”

 · 6h

With Mexico, enough is enough. US government should impose sanctions on Mexican officials, including freezing assets, who won’t confront cartels. Cartels are flooding MO w/ meth, trafficking children, & openly slaughtering American citizens. And Mexico looks the other way

In SW Mo last two weeks alone, over 40 drug overdoses & multiple deaths from drugs coming across southern border. Story is the same all over the state. Cartels increasingly call the shots in Mexico, and for our own security, we cannot allow this to continue


Hawley spent much of his August recess traveling across rural Missouri, learning what matters to the average Missourian.


This AM I had the great privilege of meeting Brittany Tune, a nurse, a mother of two, a follower of God, and a remarkable woman. Born & raised in rural Shannon Co., she has raised two kids on her own while putting herself through nursing school & dedicating her life to others




Brittany says meth is hammering this community. She has many friends & family members who have been touched by this epidemic. She worries about what it means for her own kids, ages 15 & 10. It’s much worse now than when she was growing up, she says





In an interview with Breitbart News in September, Hawley said that meth coming from Mexico is destroying local Missouri communities.
“Come with me to any town, any town in the state of Missouri of any size, and I will show you communities that are drowning in meth, drowning in it. It is literally killing people; it is destroying families it is destroying schools and whole communities,” he said.
“Missouri is a border state,” Hawley said, adding that “we have to got to secure the border to stop the meth” and “stop the flow of illegal immigration.”
Hawley’s remarks about the Mexican cartel attack on Americans mirrors that of President Donald Trump, who said Tuesday that the United States was ready for war against the drug cartels.
“This is the time for Mexico, with the help of the United States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth,” the president tweeted.
Trump has campaigned on cracking down on violence on the southern border as well as handling the drug cartels.
During an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Trump said he is “very seriously” thinking of designating the drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs).
“It’s psychological, but it’s also economic,” Trump told Breitbart News in March. “As terrorists — as terrorist organizations, the answer is yes. They are.”
Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) told Breitbart News in May that he would back Trump’s potential designation of the Mexican cartels as FTOs and that seizing cartel leader El Chapo’s assets would build the wall and make the cartels pay for it. In a similar manner to Missouri, Daines told Breitbart News about how Montana has been ravaged by meth from Mexican cartels.
Daines said that by seizing “billions” of El Chapo’s assets, it “would absolutely fulfill President Trump’s promise to build the wall and make Mexico pay for it. In this case, it would be a Mexican cartel paying for it would be an excellent idea.”
Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.



Economists: America’s Elite Pay Lower Tax Rate Than All Other Americans

The wealthiest Americans are paying a lower tax rate than all other Americans, groundbreaking analysis from a pair of economists reveals.

For the first time on record, the wealthiest 400 Americans in 2018 paid a lower tax rate than all of the income groups in the United States, research highlighted by the New York Times from University of California, Berkeley, economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman finds.
The analysis concludes that the country’s top economic elite are paying lower federal, state, and local tax rates than the nation’s working and middle class. Overall, these top 400 wealthy Americans paid just a 23 percent tax rate, which the Times‘ op-ed columnist David Leonhardt notes is a combined tax payment of “less than one-quarter of their total income.”
This 23 percent tax rate for the rich means their rate has been slashed by 47 percentage points since 1950 when their tax rate was 70 percent.
(Screenshot via the New York Times)
The analysis finds that the 23 percent tax rate for the wealthiest Americans is less than every other income group in the U.S. — including those earning working and middle-class incomes, as a Times graphic shows.
Leonhardt writes:
For middle-class and poor families, the picture is different. Federal income taxes have also declined modestly for these families, but they haven’t benefited much if at all from the decline in the corporate tax or estate tax. And they now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than in the past. Over all, their taxes have remained fairly flat. [Emphasis added]
The report comes as Americans increasingly see a growing divide between the rich and working class, as the Pew Research Center has found.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), the leading economic nationalist in the Senate, has warned against the Left-Right coalition’s consensus on open trade, open markets, and open borders, a plan that he has called an economy that works solely for the elite.
“The same consensus says that we need to pursue and embrace economic globalization and economic integration at all costs — open markets, open borders, open trade, open everything no matter whether it’s actually good for American national security or for American workers or for American families or for American principles … this is the elite consensus that has governed our politics for too long and what it has produced is a politics of elite ambition,” Hawley said in an August speech in the Senate.
That increasing worry of rapid income inequality is only further justified by economic research showing a rise in servant-class jobs, strong economic recovery for elite zip codes but not for working-class regions, and skyrocketing wage growth for the billionaire class at 15 times the rate of other Americans.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

Census Says U.S. Income Inequality Grew ‘Significantly’ in 2018

 

(Bloomberg) -- Income inequality in America widened “significantly” last year, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report published Thursday.
A measure of inequality known as the Gini index rose to 0.485 from 0.482 in 2017, according to the bureau’s survey of household finances. The measure compares incomes at the top and bottom of the distribution, and a score of 0 is perfect equality.
The 2018 reading is the first to incorporate
the impact of President Donald Trump’s end-
2017 tax bill, which was reckoned by many
economists to be skewed in favor of the
wealthy.
But the distribution of income and wealth in the U.S. has been worsening for decades, making America the most unequal country in the developed world. The trend, which has persisted through recessions and recoveries, and under administrations of both parties, has put inequality at the center of U.S. politics.
Leading candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, including senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, are promising to rectify the tilt toward the rich with measures such as taxes on wealth or financial transactions.
Just five states -- California, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana and New York, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico -- had Gini indexes higher than the national level, while the reading was lower in 36 states.