Showing posts with label federal bureaucracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label federal bureaucracy. Show all posts

Monday, September 10, 2018

The Incredible Shrinking EPA


If there was a movie called the Incredible Shrinking EPA, I would go and see it. I would especially enjoy the scene where they were crying at their desk. But instead, I’ll just have to read about it:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shed approximately 1,200 jobs as roughly 1,600 employees departed and fewer than 400 new employees were hired during President Donald Trump’s first year and a half in office.

Departing employees included “at least 260 scientists, 185 ‘environmental protection specialists’ and 106 engineers,” according to the Washington Post.

The EPA’s workforce is now down 8 percent to a size it has not been since former president Ronald Reagan was in office, reported the WaPo.


Of course, we had to get a parting shot from a disgruntled bureaucrat:


“I felt it was time to leave given the irresponsible, ongoing diminishment of agency resources, which has recklessly endangered our ability to execute our responsibilities as public servants,” scientist Ann Williamson told the WaPo.

Williamson left the EPA in March after working for the agency for 33 years, according to the WaPo.


Don’t let the door hit you in the ass.




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Sunday, September 9, 2018

Sen. Ben Sasse Accurately Describes the Swamp




When I first started this blog, one of my main gripes was how Congress abrogated its constitutional responsibilities to unelected and unaccountable federal bureaucrats and judges.  

Finally, a politician summed up the swamp and he did so in less than 12 minutes. 

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

The Daunting Task of De-Obamafication of the Justice Department




Who says Washington D.C. can’t keep a secret? We thought it was peaches and cream during Obama’s tenure in office. The country was led to believe rainbows, unicorns and dancing leprechauns imbued the West Wing. The whole world was at one with an administration it was waiting for. But, of course, it was all a lie. Thanks in large part to the mainstream media.


What we do know is these bureaucracies are highly politicized. These agencies attract people who aren’t exactly friendly to our federalist system. Bureaucrats, by nature, are antagonistic to our worldview. If you don’t believe that ask a Republican on how well these agencies cooperate with our elected representatives. They’ll disabuse you of any notion of a government of the people, by the people and for the people.


Considering how the Obama administration politicized every aspect of our lives, we hoped federal law enforcement could withstand their assault. Come to find out, the rank and file were just as pissed off as the rest of us. The long awaited IG report revealed a major rift between the Justice Department and FBI agents particularly over an investigation of the Clinton Foundation. Here is an excerpt from the Washington Times:


The report describes the relationship between the two agencies as “being under great stress,” and said Mr. McCabe was caught in “an increasingly acrimonious fight for control between the Justice Department and FBI pursuing the Clinton foundation case.”


Former agents said the acrimony started before the election.


One said the relationship fractured under Mr. Holder as agents in field offices across the country did not trust Justice Department lawyers, whom they saw as Washington bureaucrats trying use investigations for political advantage.


The Justice Department, meanwhile, had become frustrated at the rank-and-file agents not always following orders and, at times, strongly disagreeing with superiors.



“I know from talking to some agents in the FBI at that time that there conflicts between the Holder DOJ and its priorities and how the FBI wanted to work cases,” said Danny Defenbaugh, a 33-year FBI agent who retired in 2002.


“The FBI had always taken pride in following the evidence to where it would lead and never allowing politics into their investigation decisions,” Mr. Defenbaugh continued. “But then the DOJ at times would say, ‘we don’t want you to do this.’”



If the Clintons are involved, you can damn well bet there is something shady going on. These people leave a wake of destruction wherever they go. I’m completely amazed at how these two have escaped prison.


The prognosis for de-Obamafication of the U.S. Justice Department is daunting. Again, an excerpt from the Washington Times:


Mr. Adams said it could take years to repair the division, and it could require a housecleaning of leadership at both the FBI and Justice Department.


“The problem is so vast and deeply imbedded in the Justice Department, it will be an extremely difficult thing to dislodge,” Mr. Adams said.


Lew Schiliro, the former head of the FBI’s New York field office, said Attorney General Jeff Sessions needs to take the reins.


“It has to be Sessions,” he said. “The bureau reports to him and the Justice Department reports to him, yet he’s been silent on the issue. He needs to be a strong attorney general.”



I like Attorney General Jeff Sessions, but I don’t think he’s the man for the job.


Source:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/apr/16/obamas-justice-dept-feuded-fbi-agents-quit-politic/


Saturday, March 4, 2017

Origins of the U.S. Kudzu-esque Administrative State



What in the hell has happened to our unalienable rights of life, liberty and property?  What happened to the federalist principles of self-government established in our Constitution?  In today’s America, those unassailable rights are permissible on conditions set forth by federal government bureaucrats and judges.  This isn’t the America of our Founders.  Hell this isn’t America, period.


The Obama administration exposed the hard reality that we aren’t the country we thought we were.  We’ve been slowly transforming into a European socialist welfare state and it’s been going on for a long time.


An article published in Powerline revealed just how this kudzu-like administrative state has grown by spreading its vines into the very fabric of American culture, and as you can expect, this ideology was nurtured in greenhouses of higher learning.  Here is an excerpt:


Studying administrative law in law school, I don’t think we read anything that raised questions about the legitimacy of the agencies giving rise to to it. We took it as a given and picked up the story with the passage of the Administrative Procedure Act in 1946. We should have taken a look at the question of legitimacy in constitutional law, and probably did, though the standard New Deal account I would have received is extremely misleading.
 Exercising executive, legislative and judicial powers, the agencies are a constitutional anomaly. When it comes to a government of limited powers based on the powers allocated and divided among the three branches, the administrative agencies don’t really fit. I am honor bound to add that the Supreme Court doesn’t quite see things my way, although Douglas Ginsburg spells out elementary principles (and cites some relevant case law) in “Legislative powers: Not yours to give away.”


The origins of the American administrative state began in 1857 when Columbia University hired Francis Lieber, a German immigrant, to teach a new discipline called “political science.”  His successor was another imported German, John William Burgess, who indoctrinated a whole generation of Americans into the “virtues” of administrative sciences including Woodrow Wilson.  This new philosophy is alien to American self-governance.   Here is an excerpt from Living Constitution, Dying Faith:


The birth of American political science created a bastion within the academy for the view that perpetual societal improvement is possible and inevitable, partly because of evolutionary unfolding, but partly with the aid of the right kind of superintendence.   The institutional and theoretical departures implied by this view would have made the new political science unrecognizable to the American Founders, whose “new science of politics” had almost nothing in common with it.  It was certainly the case that the new political science, in its dismissive contempt for traditional political philosophy, and unchanging principles of political right, and ideas and institutions from prior centuries, turned its back on the Founders.  For the most part, it still does.  American political science therefore remains almost genetically incapable of understanding the Constitution of the fathers.


So there it is.  Americans have been indoctrinated into accepting an administrative state that is outright hostile to our very essence.  And now that we’re confronted with a kudzu-esque bureaucracy, citizens are beginning to wonder if we have any recourse before we are completely subsumed by this foreign entity.

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Sunday, February 19, 2017

American Citizens Have Been Disenfranchised of Their Birthright



Millions of Americans instinctively realize something is wrong with Washington D.C. and the federal government in general.  We have judges deciding political issues that are way beyond “judicial review” such as gay marriage, immigration and national security.  We have bureaucrats imposing rules and regulations that have the weight of law while Congress sits on the sidelines claiming oversight.


Where are the checks and balances?  Are there no limitations on what these unelected judges can do?  Why do we need Congress if bureaucrats are running the show?  And where in the Constitution does it state that the legislative branch can abrogate their prerogatives to unelected bureaucrats?


I just finished reading Stolen Sovereignty by Daniel Horowitz and it is an eye opener.  I’ve written about the abuses by the federal courts and bureaucracies in this blog.  I’ve also written about Congress's dereliction of duty.  But I didn’t know the extent of their betrayal.  This federal government has systematically disenfranchised the American people of its birthright and they’ve done it by conferring power upon the unelected branches of government.


What I didn’t realize is that Congress has plenary powers over the federal judiciary.  They can decide the extent of its appellate jurisdiction as dictated in Article III Section 2.  They can tell the courts they no longer decide issues pertaining to immigration and naturalization, gay marriage, or even abortion for that matter.  The courts can only decide cases where they have original jurisdiction as defined in Article III.


This book also details how illegal immigration has disenfranchised American citizens of their birthright and the damage they’ve done to our electoral process.  You’ll be extremely pissed when you discover the lie that illegal aliens have due process rights and that the courts ignored 90 years of precedent.


What I got out of this book is the extent Congress has abrogated their constitutional responsibilities.  But that shouldn’t be a surprise when we have representatives like Nancy Pelosi.  I’ll never forget when she declared she’s not a constitutional scholar when pressed upon an issue.  Well, if you’re not well versed upon the Constitution, then what in the hell are you doing in Washington D.C.?





 

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Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Federal Bureaucrats Committing "Soft Coup"



Americans are realizing federal bureaucracies have taken over the country.  Progressive operatives in the EPA, Justice and State Departments have declared their intent to sabotage the Trump administration.  Even the intelligence community has been compromised by hardcore leftist.  National security advisor Michael Flynn was politically assassinated by a bureaucrat with an agenda.  Time Magazine is calling these tactics a "soft coup."  Here is an excerpt:


The whole episode is evidence of the precipitous and ongoing collapse of America's democratic institutions — not a sign of their resiliency. Flynn's ouster was a soft coup (or political assassination) engineered by anonymous intelligence community bureaucrats. The results might be salutary, but this isn't the way a liberal democracy is supposed to function.

Unelected intelligence analysts work for the president, not the other way around. Far too many Trump critics appear not to care that these intelligence agents leaked highly sensitive information to the press — mostly because Trump critics are pleased with the result. "Finally," they say, "someone took a stand to expose collusion between the Russians and a senior aide to the president!" It is indeed important that someone took such a stand. But it matters greatly who that someone is and how they take their stand. Members of the unelected, unaccountable intelligence community are not the right someone, especially when they target a senior aide to the president by leaking anonymously to newspapers the content of classified phone intercepts, where the unverified, unsubstantiated information can inflict politically fatal damage almost instantaneously.
 
Professional progressives will not tolerate a government of the people, by the people and for the people.  They believe this country belongs to them and “democracy” is damned.

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Thursday, February 9, 2017

Professional Progressives Demonstrate Elections Don't Matter



Americans are finding out who runs this country and it isn’t our elected representatives.  For over a hundred years, professional progressives have plotted to usurp the Constitution of the United States.  They’ve created bureaucracies that circumvent Congress and are now in open defiance of our president.  They’ve implanted judges who decree policies and rewrite laws that are clearly unconstitutional.  And now a lowly district court judge has assumed the mantle of commander in chief.


What’s next?  Will district court judges demand national security briefings?  Is our commander in chief supposed to consult with the 9th Circuit Court before addressing imminent dangers?  Let’s disabuse ourselves of this check and balance nonsense.  No one checks and balances these rogue federal judges whose sole allegiance is to a progressive ideology.



Professional progressives declare this is resistance to a Trump agenda.  What they are really demonstrating is elections don’t matter as long as they have control of the bureaucracies and the federal judiciary.  

Sunday, February 5, 2017

NOAA Intentionally Misled World Leaders on Global Warming



Proselytizers of man-made global warming always refer to NOAA as a reputable source.  Many of us have accused the Obama administration of politicizing these government agencies.  The Daily Mail showed the proof in this pudding.

A high-level whistleblower has told this newspaper that America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.

The report claimed that the ‘pause’ or ‘slowdown’ in global warming in the period since 1998 – revealed by UN scientists in 2013 – never existed, and that world temperatures had been rising faster than scientists expected. Launched by NOAA with a public relations fanfare, it was splashed across the world’s media, and cited repeatedly by politicians and policy makers.

But the whistleblower, Dr John Bates, a top NOAA scientist with an impeccable reputation, has shown The Mail on Sunday irrefutable evidence that the paper was based on misleading, ‘unverified’ data.

Why do we always have to refer to foreign publications for the truth?


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Monday, January 30, 2017

President Donald Trump Puts Stranglehold on Regulations



If you live by the administrative state, you die by the administrative state.  Conservatives should thank President Barack Hussein Obama for showing us the way.  He believed he could rule by bureaucrat without repercussions.  Well guess what?  That knife cuts both ways.


President Donald Trump decreed the following:


"If there's a new regulation, they have to knock out two but it goes far beyond that. We're cutting regulations massively for small business and for large business but they're different. But for small business, this is what this is about today. This will be the biggest such act that our country has ever seen," Trump said. "There will be regulation, there will be control, but it will be a normalized control where you can open your business and expand your business very easily and that's what our country has been all about."

A senior administration official briefed on the order said federal agencies that want to enact a new regulation will have to identify two to cut based on their own estimate of the cost of those regulations to the economy and the private sector. Agencies will identify possible regulations to eliminate but the White House will ultimately decide which to cut.

“Any new incremental costs associated with new regulations shall, to the extent permitted by law, be offset by the elimination of existing costs associated with at least two prior regulations,” the order states. “Total incremental cost of all new regulations, including repealed regulations, to be finalized this year shall be no greater than zero”

President Donald Trump is becoming the Democratic Party’s worst nightmare.  Crow is tough to chew.



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Friday, January 20, 2017

Obama's Crystal Crown Shattered





King Barack Hussein Obama was defiant right up to the end.  The Anointed One directed his minions in the federal bureaucracies to set a regulatory conflagration before the citizenry could beat down the doors and put a stop to this progressive dumpster fire. 

“There is a huge increase in the volume [of rules we receive] toward the end of an administration,” Miriam Kleiman, a spokeswoman for the Federal Register told The Hill. The end of President Barack Obama’s administration has been particularly heavy on regulations, however.

The Federal Register published 1,464 pages of rules Thursday, which is only the second-highest number of pages since President-elect Donald Trump won the election. The government published 1,465 pages on Nov. 18, 10 days after the election.

King Obama’s crystal crown is about to be shattered.  This man is going to find out the United States will not be ruled by pen and phone.  His executive orders will be rescinded.  The bureaucracies that shoved his progressive agenda down our throats will be dealt with harshly and without mercy.

Obama’s legacy has yet to be fulfilled.  His arrogance and complete disregard for the rule of law, the Constitution, federalism and American citizenship has awakened a patriotic zeal.

For eight years, these progressive dogs have humped our legs and crapped in our yards and to add insult to injury, billed us for it.  If President Donald Trump is unable to put these officious scoundrels in their place, the states will have to step up and invoke Article V.



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Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Federal Bureaucracies Will Help Pay for Mexico's Wall of Shame




How is President Donald Trump going to pay for the Mexican wall of shame?  Washington D.C. bureaucrats aren’t going to like the answer.


Making good on a promise to slash government, President-elect Trump has asked his incoming team to pursue spending and staffing cuts.
Insiders said that the spending reductions in some departments could go as high as 10 percent and staff cuts to 20 percent, numbers that would rock Washington if he follows through.
At least two so-called "landing teams" in Cabinet agencies have relayed the call for cuts as part of their marching orders to shrink the flab in government.

We can already hear the howling, wailing and hair pulling coming out the Democratic Party and their lapdogs in the media.  This is going to be an interesting four years.

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Monday, January 2, 2017

Progressives Spit on the Virtues of Democracy




Don’t you just love being lectured to by liberals?  These people are so self-righteous about the virtues of democracy that they’re incapable of recognizing their own hypocrisy.  I don’t believe I’ve read an article or an op-ed about the Democratic Party’s complete disregard for “democracy”; yet, there are numerous articles and editorials about Republicans violating the virtues of our institutions simply for exercising their constitutional prerogatives.  It has gotten so outrageous some are suggesting Donald Trump is a tyrant in waiting.  Here is an excerpt from a New York Times op-ed entitled, Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?


Norms of presidential restraint are also at risk. The Constitution’s ambiguity regarding the limits of executive authority can tempt presidents to try and push those limits. Although executive power has expanded in recent decades, it has ultimately been reined in by the prudence and self-restraint of our presidents.

Unlike his predecessors, Mr. Trump is a serial norm-breaker. There are signs that Mr. Trump seeks to diminish the news media’s traditional role by using Twitter, video messages and public rallies to circumvent the White House press corps and communicate directly with voters — taking a page out of the playbook of populist leaders like Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey


Barack Obama was prudent and exercised restraint?  Is this guy serious?  But what am I thinking?  The writer of this tripe is a fellow traveler.   Obama thinks nothing about getting on his high horse spewing the virtues of democracy while issuing executive orders and employing his minions in the federal bureaucracy churning out mandates and regulations without the peoples consent.  Is that democratic?  Isn’t that what tyrants do?


The whole progressive movement is an affront to our so-called democracy.  They were the ones who created this monstrous bureaucracy and then codified it with the 1946 Administrative Procedures Act.  Their whole intent was to circumvent Article I Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution: All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.


We are being ruled by unaccountable and unelected bureaucrats who answer only to a  progressive president.  Soon, we’ll find out if we have a federal bureaucracy that answers only to a liberal agenda.  Barack Obama and his fellow democrats have been scheming for this outcome since he came into office.


 I have another question.  Isn’t having federal judges overturning and writing laws from the bench an attack on democracy?  Liberals love using the courts to circumvent the Constitution, or completely bastardize a law to advance a liberal agenda.  We saw that here in North Carolina.  The people of the Old North State went to the polls and voted to amend our constitution recognizing only traditional marriages which consist of one man and one woman.  Liberals went to the courts and had our state constitution rendered unconstitutional.  I guess democracy only works when Democrats give their stamp of approval.



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Sunday, June 26, 2016

Breaking the Shackles of Bureaucracy



Britons showed incredible courage by voting to get out of the European Union.  They have demonstrated a fundamental truth that people want control of their destiny which can only be accomplished through self-governance.  Nameless, faceless bureaucrats in a foreign capital dictating policy is the antithesis of freedom.  You might as well be a slave.

Politicians find it much easier to schlep their responsibilities onto government bureaucrats.  They can have a pencil pusher rubberstamp their ill-conceived agenda without having to face an irate citizenry.  It’s the perfect foil for unscrupulous characters whose main job is to get reelected.  Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher knew what was going on when she called out the Labor Party as demonstrated in the video below.




We in the United States have a similar problem despite what foolish libtards say.  The Constitution of the United States grants legislative authority only to Congress.  But that body has abrogated its responsibilities to unelected and unaccountable federal bureaucrats.  What is happening in Washington D.C. is a flagrant violation of our social compact.  We are being ruled by an unscrupulous president and his infestation of progressive minions.  Is it any wonder Democrats laugh when we cite the Constitution?


I think all the stuff is largely tongue-in-cheek and the situations aren't AT ALL analogous BUT: what would the vote be?



As of now, Texans are grumbling for secession and who can blame them?  We’re citizens not subjects.  You can bet Washington D.C. sees us as the latter.




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Thursday, March 10, 2016

VA Scandal Exposed Apathetic Democrats and Politicization of Bureaucracies





How many times have we been told the Democratic Party is for the common man?  These phonies will trumpet their mantra every chance they get, but when it gets down to doing the work for the “little people” it’s nothing but hot air.  That’s exactly what a former federal employee union leader found out when she tried to get Democratic politicians to address the gross misconduct at VA hospitals.

Germaine Clarno admitted during a radio interview with host John Howell that Democrats ignored, dismissed or were at times outright hostile at her efforts to get members to do something about the negligence and abuses at the VA.  It wasn’t until she went to Republicans, as a last resort, when she began to get results.

HOWELL: Both [Sen. Dick] Durbin and [Rep. Tammy] Duckworth put out a statement last week, as did our junior senator Mark Kirk, who I know has been helpful to you, right doctor?

NEE: Yes. And I didn’t think he would be. He was the last resort.

HOWELL: And usually when a union has to go to Republicans it’s a frosty reception, I suppose.

CLARNO: Exactly. And if I would’ve gone to him two years ago, who knows what kind of lives could’ve been saved.

HOWELL: That’s a really sad aspect of this.

CLARNO: It is.

This VA scandal not only exposed the feckless nature of Democrats, it also demonstrated how politicized these federal bureaucracies have become.


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Thursday, February 11, 2016

Republican Presidential Debates and the Weaponization of Federal Bureaucracies




These republican presidential debates have revealed very little about where candidates stand on the issues.  Most questions are “he said this about you, do you have a response?”  I’m sick of that crap!  I can recall only a couple of times when substantive issues were brought forth that actually piqued my interest and changed my mind about a candidate.  One was centered on the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship, the other was about Kim Davis and religious freedom.  Carly Fiornia lost my support because of those two issues.


I can recall only a couple of times when a debate broke out during these inquisitions.  Fox Business had the courtesy to sit back and allow Rand Paul, Donald Trump and Jeb Bush hash out tariff policies.  What a welcomed change.


There might have been other issues that I missed, simply because I get bored and diverted my attention to something of substance such as an article or a book.


An issue that really needs to be addressed is the weaponization of the federal bureaucracy.  How are these candidates going to address a branch of government that is antagonistic to their agenda?  What are they going to do about bureaucrats that target conservatives?  This is a serious problem.  Even USA Today wrote about the lawlessness in Washington D.C.


The first sad lesson is that the notion of an impartial, professional civil service is a fiction. The big government designs of Democrats and the federal bureaucracy are aligned, and the bureaucracy often deploys its powers in ways calculated to frustrateRepublican presidents and to protect Democratic ones.

This is an open secret in Washington, leading Bloomberg View writer Megan McArdle to comment that even if elected, a President Trump wouldn’t change much because the bureaucracy wouldn’t go along:

“Anything that gets done by Washington must be done by the civil service. These folks are lifers. You can’t fire them. Because of the abovementioned legislative compromises required, you also can’t push a bill through that will let you fire them. And they — not the president, and not the cabinet secretaries — are the folks who do most of what government does. The president can wave his hands like Jean-Luc Picard and say, ‘Make it so.’ But if they don’t wanna, they ain’t gonna.


That is the honest truth.  Progressives constantly declare we live in a democracy.  How is this democracy when bureaucrats do as they damn well please without fear of retribution?  How is this democracy when your vote can be canceled out by a bureaucrat with an agenda?

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Sunday, January 24, 2016

The Rats Have Taken Over the Federal Bureaucracy




The Obama administration has become the bellwether for Marxist aspirants, race profiteers and self-loathing Americans.   Connected malcontents with a college degree are being shepherded into the federal bureaucracy and judiciary.  The Anointed One’s goal is to inundate the federal government with subversives.  Once they get in it will be almost impossible to get them out.
 

David Horowitz at Conservative Review confirmed what many of us have suspected and feared: the rats have taken over the ship.  Open borders organizations such as the AILA and race profiteers have invaded the Justice Department; environmentalist have been planted in the EPA; ACORN refugees are housed in HUD and the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the State Department.  You can bet other federal agencies are just as contaminated.


It will take a prodigious effort to ferret out these enemies of federalism, the U.S. Constitution and the American people.  This is an issue that needs to be addressed in the GOP primary.  Ultimately, it will have to be remedied by invoking Article V and convening a convention of the States.
      
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