MOHAMMED ALI PASSES ON, RIP

Icheoku says rest in peace the great one. Mohammed Ali died of Parkinson disease related respiratory problems. Adieu Champ.

HILLARY CLINTON SECURES PARTY NOMINATION, AND SO DID TRUMP.

Icheoku says it is now official that the two candidate to duke it out for the presidency of the United States of America this year are Donald John Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Republican and Democrat. Icheoku says although Bernie Sanders is not throwing in the towel yet, but her lead is now unassailable and she is for all intent and purpose the Democratic Party's nominee. Icheoku says let the fireworks now begin and America will certainly have a swell time, well spent this summer, watching the two candidates and their parties make a go at the office of the president of the United States of America. 

Icheoku congratulates Hillary Clinton for her milestone in securing her party's nomination as the first woman to ever do so. But as far as Icheoku is concerned, thats as far as she will go because this November, America will have a president named Donald John Trump, the 45th POTUS.  The mood of the country will not admit of an Obama's third term and not one through a wild-eyed feminist named Hillary Clinton. She is such a heavily flawed and irreparably damaged candidate and thats assuming she is not indicted before the election. Moreso, in the last 68 years, America has never voted for a party three successive terms but once. So not only the mood but the stars are well lined up for a Donald Trump's presidency. Go Trump; Vote Trump and together lets make America great again.

KIMBO SLICE DEAD AT 42, RIP

Icheoku says he was as bad as they came, brutally strong and he punched out his opponents into submission  knockouts. Kevin Ferguson aka Kimbo Slice, a mixed martial artist and fighter, died of apparent natural causes. He was 42 years old. Icheoku says rest in peace pugilist extraordinaire. 

Russian Military Power 2016 - 2020 HD

DESHAUNA BARBER, MISS DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA WINS MISS USA 2016.

Icheoku says congratulations. 

RIP OPEC: 1960 - 2016, AN ARTICLE BY MATTHEW DiLALLO

After another failure to agree on a coordinated oil policy, its clear that the OPEC we once knew has ceased to exist. For more than five decades OPEC has ruled the oil market with an iron will. It decided how much oil to supply to the market, which would all but guarantee a fair price for its members. However, the first warning sign that the mighty OPEC had started to lose its grip on the oil market showed up in late 2014, when it broke from its previous practice of protecting a fair market price for oil by instead focusing on protecting its share of the oil market. Now, after two failed meetings at which the organization couldn't come to an agreement on a coordinated effort to stem the oversupply, it has become clear that the OPEC the oil market once knew and feared is no longer in existence. 

No longer in control:- For decades OPEC had controlled the market and its members through quotas, which were the maximum output levels each member country was allowed to produce. That was intended to keep the oil market well supplied, but not so well supplied that it had a negative impact on the price. However, with the shift from price protection to market protection, OPEC relaxed its practice of policing quotas. As such, many of its members have routinely exceeded their production quotas in recent months, with OPEC's production often as much as 2 million barrels per day above its 30-million-barrel-a-day output ceiling. 

The problem with relinquishing some control over quotas is that it has become impossible to regain that control. That became clear in the past week when OPEC failed to reach an agreement on a new production ceiling. This marks the second time in nearly as many months that OPEC failed to reach an agreement on a coordinated effort to deal with the persistent oil glut that has hampered the market for nearly two years. 

With this latest failure it has become clear that OPEC is no longer able to meet its objective to "co-ordinate and unify petroleum policies among Member Countries, in order to secure fair and stable prices for petroleum producers." That, in effect, signals its demise as an entity that can drive the oil market. It is a demise that has been made clear by the fact that the price of crude barely budged after each of its past two failed meetings. 

Cause of death: greed and American ingenuity:- OPEC's decision in late 2014 to back off on protecting oil prices stems from its desire to control a large enough share of the oil market to be relevant. Those market-share concerns were stoked as OPEC was starting to lose share in the oil market, due in part to the emergence of U.S. shale production. In fact, it was also losing what was once its top customer: 

US CRUDE OIL FIELD PRODUCTION DATA BY YCHARTS.

As that chart shows, the surge in U.S. oil production directly displaced OPEC's oil, with its exports to the U.S. falling by more than half. 

Given that this production surge was fueled by triple-digit oil prices, OPEC reversed course and pumped at nearly max capacity in order to impair this upstart rival. While that has clearly worked with U.S. imports from OPEC rising as U.S. production declines, it has created a longer-term problem for OPEC, which is the fact that shale production no longer needs triple-digit oil to thrive. 

Instead, thanks to falling costs and some good old American ingenuity, shale drilling's breakeven point has plummeted. Wells that once needed oil over $75 a barrel to break even are now doing so at as little as $30 a barrel. This has come thanks to a combination of efficiency and productivity gains as well as technological improvements. 

EOG Resources (NYSE:EOG) is a prime example of this. The company is now getting 95% more oil per lateral foot on a horizontal well than just two years ago. Meanwhile, EOG Resources' completed well costs dropped by as much as 42% in the Permian Basin and 30% in the Bakken, with two-thirds of these costs savings estimated to be sustainable at higher oil prices. Furthermore, not only does EOG Resources have more than a decade of what it terms "premium drilling locations," which are profitable to drill at a $30 oil price, but the company's enhanced oil recovery projects in the Eagle Ford shale have nearly doubled the recovery factor of legacy wells, while being solidly profitable at $40 a barrel. 

Meanwhile, global producers like ConocoPhillips(NYSE:COP) have shifted their focus to become much more flexible. ConocoPhillips can ramp its production up or down in response to oil-market needs thanks to the short-cycle nature of shale wells. Furthermore, the company continues to lower its costs through efficiency gains, which has it well positioned for a future likely driven by greater oil price volatility. 

In a lot of ways U.S. shale has become the new swing producer in the oil market, which was the role that OPEC used to play. As such, it no longer seems to matter if OPEC freezes, lowers, or increases its output, because market-driven factors will determine whether companies like EOG Resources and ConocoPhillips increase or decrease investments that will add or hold back production growth. 

Investor takeaway:- OPEC had a great run, but it would appear that it has become irrelevant in the oil market. In some ways it caused its own demise, because its decision to push down oil prices caused American producers to reduce their costs to survive. Many did just that, with a growing number of shale plays now globally competitive at lower oil prices. This is putting the American oil industry in position to overtake OPEC as the new swing producer in the oil market.

MOHAMMED ALI, DEAD AT 74.

Icheoku says the boxer who easily was the greatest to ever wear the boxing gloves; the man who gave the world some zingers such as "Sting like a bee, fly like a butterfly"; whose legendary boxing exploits led to couching of such phrases as "Thriller in Manilla"; "Rumble in the jungle", Mohammed Ali, aka Cassius Clay, has died. He was 74 years old. 

Mohammed Ali suffered from Pakisnson syndrome for quite some time and had respiratory issues that led to his end. Icheoku's condolences to his family, particularly his adorable and loving wife, Lonnie Ali, who stood steadfast by  her man, showering him with loving care and attention throughout his affliction and stayed true to the end. RIP Mohammed Ali, ADIEU.

US ELECTION: THE MAN HURTING HILLARY IN HER FIGHT WITH TRUMP - NICK BRYANT

Adding another unanticipated sidebar to this topsy-turvy election, Kenneth Starr has lavished praise on Bill Clinton, citing his "genuine empathy for human beings", calling him "the most gifted politician of the baby boomer generation" and commending his post-presidential philanthropy, which he noted was Carteresque in its benevolence. 

Starr, a former independent counsel, was the author of what's probably the most expensive piece of pornography ever published, the Starr Report which chronicled, in graphic sexual detail, Bill Clinton's affair with a 21-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The one-time character assassin has become a character witness. 

Bill Clinton, despite being impeached for lying under oath about that affair, left office with the highest approval rating - 66% - of any departing president. He was also credited with balancing the federal budget and reviving the American economy from its early-Nineties slump. Since then, as Starr noted, he has followed a redemptive path. So he should be a prime asset to his wife Hillary as she seeks to become the first ever first lady to move from the East Wing of the White House to the West. 

The irony of Starr's kind words is that they have come at a time when Hillary, among other woes, has a Bill problem. The man who could well become the "First Dude" - Hillary's words, not mine - is proving to be something of a liability. Part of it stems, of course, from what eventually became the focus of Kenneth Starr's inquiry, Bill Clinton's womanizing.  It blunts her attacks on Donald Trump's sexism and misogyny which, in a contest where more women will vote than men, should have been her ace card. 

The billionaire, in a jujutsu-like move, has already launched an attack ad featuring video of Kathleen Willey, who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault, and Juanita Broaddrick, who accused him of rape. "DIRTY BILLS," read the front page of the New York Post the following day, conflating Trump's attack ad with the allegations against Bill Cosby. Nor is Trump relying on guilt by association. He has already called Hillary an "enabler" of her husband's fidelity. "She would go after these women and destroy their lives," he has claimed.  Like many of Trump's attacks, that may strike many voters as shrill and overstated, it also contains a kernel of truth. 

The White House did attempt to trash Monica Lewinsky when the scandal first erupted in 1998, and Hillary Clinton, during her husband's long phase of public denial, described it as being the product of a "vast right-wing conspiracy", absolving him of blame. Hillary as loyal "stand-by-your-man" wife does not marry that well with Hillary as feminist trailblazer, the image she is trying to project. My sense, having watched the Clintons fairly closely for over 20 years, is that they have a loving marriage and deep friendship. An animated conversation that started at Yale Law School in the early Seventies continues for both of them to fascinate and enthrall. 

But many critics of the Clintons believe it's a transactional partnership, a marriage of political convenience. To some, her loyalty during the most troubled phase of the Clinton presidency reinforces the sense that she's a cynical political operator, willing to do anything to accrue power. The Bernie problem, her difficulty in seeing off her Democratic rival, is also partly a Bill problem. The unexpected success of the Vermont Senator is explained not only by an aversion to Hillary but also a rejection of Bill. Sanders supporters are railing against his political and policy legacy. Bill Clinton's pursuit of a "Third Way" politics was designed to make the Democrats more electable and to end the party's losing streak in presidential politics. 

Up until his victory in 1992, they had only won one of the previous six elections. But this shift to the middle ground, and the centrist policies that accompanied it, alienated many on the Democrat left. Withholding support from Hillary Clinton and bestowing it instead upon Bernie Sanders is a form of revenge. Whether its financial deregulation, the welfare bill that Clinton passed with the Republican-controlled Congress, criminal justice reforms which have contributed to higher levels of black incarceration, the North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta for short, there's been an angry backlash against what Clinton once trumpeted as some of his greatest domestic accomplishments.  This has made her vulnerable to a challenge from the left, as Sanders has shown. But it also makes her vulnerable to a challenge from the right, because of Nafta.  

Blue-collar voters, who might ordinarily be expected to vote Democrat, stand to applaud when Donald Trump promises to renegotiate trade deals which have exported American jobs abroad. 

Hillary Clinton hinted recently that Bill would become her jobs tsar and focus his energies on reviving American manufacturing.  She clearly hopes that he can appeal again to blue-collar whites, who warmed to him as a candidate and president. But that bond has been severely eroded, if not severed completely, because he was the president who negotiated Nafta. Public perceptions about Bill Clinton have also changed, in a way which exposes the rupture between the Democratic establishment and the Democratic grassroots.  When he first appeared on the national scene, he could plausibly cast himself as the boy from Hope, his small-town Arkansas birthplace. 

Now, after all the millions he has earned on the international speaking circuit, he comes across not just as a limousine liberal but a Lear Jet liberal. Standing at the head of a metropolitan progressive elite, he does not have the same common touch of old. The Clintons, after all these years as the dominant power couple in the Democratic establishment, also project an imperious sense of entitlement. It explains why Hillary Clinton's email scandal cuts so deep. It reinforces the widespread view that the couple believe they are not bound by normal rules. Those of us who have watched him on the campaign trail have also been surprised at the 69-year-old's comparative lack of energy. The magnetism and charisma for which he is famed simply is not there. 

At a rally in New Hampshire, I happened to be stood next to Clinton's biographer David Maraniss, whose real-time Twitter feed made for fascinating reading. "When BC was introduced and stood on stage w/Chelsea, he showed nothing on his face, mouth agape, eyes seemingly blank... just frail, like he had to conserve every ounce of energy. No gleam in his eyes, no electricity, muted…. He lit up only when Chelsea talked about him. Then when it was his turn to talk a little bit of his old self came back, but not much." 

Once the most powerful energy force in any room, Bill Clinton is now only an ambient presence. The former president is not without his fans. There are thousands who still cheer this self-proclaimed architect of the bridge to the 21st Century. What's also been striking is how African-American voters have returned to the Clinton fold, after backing Barack Obama in 2008, despite protesters from the Black Lives Matters campaign targeting him on the stump.  

However, the former first couple's hopes that wistful memories of the Clinton administration would lead to a Clinton restoration have surely dwindled. Nostalgia is something that can give a departing president a warm glow, as Barack Obama is presently discovering, but hard for a presidential aspirant to harness, especially when so much of the country is angrily demanding change.

CLINTON'S EMAIL SERVER, A MISTAKE - JOHN PODESTA

“Since last year, Secretary Clinton has said her use of a personal email server was a mistake. What she thought would be a convenient way to communicate with family, friends and colleagues – by using one email account for both her work related and personal emails – has turned out to be anything but convenient. 

If she could go back, she’d do it differently. Had Secretary Clinton known of any concerns about her email setup at the time, she would have taken steps to address them. She believed she was following the practices of other secretaries and senior officials. While we understand the questions about Secretary Clinton’s email practices, we are confident that voters will look at the full picture of everything she has done throughout her career. We have faith in the American people. They know we have to be focused on solutions that will make a real difference in people’s lives."- John Pedestal. 

Icheoku says what a bullcrap baloney that it was a mistake, only trying to add insult into injury. Oh heck the former secretary of state did not know when she was warned but she chose to ignore it and thereby circumvent existing policies of the department designed to follow records law. Somebody makes a mistake when it was accidental, but not by design as showed in this case. The secretary not only used personal email address but went further to rout it through a private server which shows deliberation. She also  lied that she did not know it was illegal when evidence supports the fact that she was warned of existing department policies against such practice. 

Icheoku says this election is not about what is more important, it is about in whom does the American people have confidence and trust to do the right thing and move the process forward. If as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton could not be trusted with ordinary emails, how could any sane person ask the American people to trust her with the presidency of the country. It is not about emails; it is about character and candor to lead the nation and Hillary Clinton is highly shortchanged in both departments. 

The email is but one of such instances where Hillary Clinton has shown that she cannot be trusted and the litany of such double-dealing is very lengthy. This is a woman who will not release her speeches to Wall Stret bankers and who has been playing hide and seek with the American people for so long and in various instances. Icheoku says, may be Team Hillary should instead of trying to explain out an obviously intentional act of conceit and deceit, try bargaining a way for her out of possible prison term; because as far as many Americans are concerned, instead of seeking the White House, it should be "Hillary Clinton for Prison 2016."

HILLARY CLINTON EMBODIES WASHINGTON DECADENCE - PEGGY NOONAN.

The most interesting thing Donald Trump has said recently isn’t his taunting of Hillary Clinton, it’s his comment to Bloomberg’s Joshua Green. Mr. Green writes: “Many politicians, Trump told me, had privately confessed to being amazed that his policies, and his lacerating criticism of party leaders, had proved such potent electoral medicine.” Mr. Trump seemed to “intuit,” Mr. Green writes, that standard Republican dogma on entitlements and immigration no longer holds sway with large swaths of the party electorate. Mr. Trump says he sees his supporters as part of “a movement.” 

What, Mr. Green asked, would the party look like in five years? “Love the question,” Mr. Trump replied. “Five, 10 years from now—different party. You’re going to have a worker’s party. A party of people that haven’t had a real wage increase in 18 years.”

My impression on reading this was that Mr. Trump is seeing it as a party of regular people, as the Democratic Party was when I was a child and the Republican Party when I was a young woman. 

This is the first thing I’ve seen that suggests Mr. Trump is ideologically conscious of what he’s doing. It’s not just ego and orange hair, he suggests, it’s politically intentional.

It invites many questions. Movements require troops—not only supporters on the ground, but an army of enthusiastic elected officials and activists. Mr. Trump doesn’t have that army. Washington hates what he stands for and detests the idea he represents policy change. GOP elites will have to start thinking about two things: the rock-bottom purpose of the party and the content, in 2016, of a conservatism reflective of and responsive to this moment and the next. This will be necessary whatever happens to Mr. Trump, because big parts of the base are speaking through him. It is no surprise so many D.C. conservatives are hissing, screeching and taking names. They’re in the middle of something epochal that they did not expect. They’re lost. 

To another part of the Trump phenomenon that does not involve policy, exactly:

When Mr. Trump went after Mrs. Clinton over her husband’s terrible treatment of women—she was his “unbelievably nasty, mean enabler”—my first thought was: Man, I thought it was supposed to get bloody in October. This is May—where will we wind up? But I was struck that no friend on the left seemed shocked or appalled. A few on the right were delighted, and some unsure. Isn’t this the sort of thing that’s supposed to turn women off and make Hillary look like a victim? 

But so far Mr. Trump’s numbers seem to be edging up.

I was surprised that if Mr. Trump was going to go there early, he didn’t focus on a central political depredation of the Clinton wars. That was after Mrs. Clinton learned of the Monica scandal and did not step back, claiming a legitimate veil of personal privacy—after all, it was not she who had been accused of terrible Oval Office behavior—but came forward on “Today” as an aggressor. Knowing her husband’s history, knowing his sickness, having every reason to believe the charges were true, she attacked her husband’s critics, in a particular way: “The great story here . . . is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president. . . . Some folks are gonna have a lot to answer for.” 

She was speaking this way about conservatives, half or more of the country. At a charged moment she took a personal humiliation and turned it into a political weapon, which further divided the nation, pitching left against right. She did this because her first instinct is always war. If you have to divide the country to protect your position by all means divide the country. It was unprotective of the country, and so unpatriotic.

The lack of backlash against Mr. Trump’s attacks on Mrs. Clinton, though, I suspect is due to something else. It’s that the subject matter really comes down to one word: decadence. People right now will respect a political leader who will name and define what they themselves see as the utter decadence of Washington. 

I don’t mean that they watch “Scandal” and “House of Cards” and think those shows are a slightly over-the-top version of reality, though they do. Now and then I meet a young person who, finding I’d worked in a White House, asks, half-humorously and I swear half-curiously, if I ever saw anyone kill a reporter by throwing her under a train. I say I knew people who would have liked to but no, train-station murders weren’t really a thing then. (Someday cultural historians will wonder if the lowered political standards that mark this year were at all connected to our national habit of watching mass entertainment in which our elites are presented as high-functioning psychopaths. Yes, that may have contributed to a certain lowering of real-world standards.) 

But the real decadence Americans see when they look at Washington is an utterly decadent system. Just one famous example from the past few years: 

A high official in the IRS named Lois Lerner targets those she finds politically hateful. IRS officials are in the White House a lot, which oddly enough finds the same people hateful. News of the IRS targeting is about to break because an inspector general is on the case, so Ms. Lerner plants a question at a conference, answers with a rehearsed lie, tries to pin the scandal on workers in a cubicle farm in Cincinnati, lies some more, gets called into Congress, takes the Fifth—and then retires with full pension and benefits, bonuses intact. Taxpayers will be footing the bill for years for the woman who in some cases targeted them, and blew up the reputation of the IRS. 

Why wouldn’t Americans think the system is rigged?

This is Washington in our era: a place not so much of personal as of civic decadence, where the Lois Lerner always gets away with it. 

Which brings us to the State Department Office of Inspector General’s report involving Hillary Clinton’s emails. It reveals one big thing: Almost everything she has said publicly about her private server was a lie. She lied brazenly, coolly, as one who is practiced in lying would, as one who always gets away with it could.

No, she was not given legal approval to conduct her business on the server. She was not given the impression it was fine. She did not comply with rules on storage and archiving. Her own office told U.S. diplomats personal email accounts could be compromised and they must avoid using them for official business. She was informed of a dramatic increase in hacking attempts on personal accounts. Professionals who raised concerns about her private server were told not to speak of it again.

It is widely assumed that Mrs. Clinton will pay no price for misbehavior because the Democratic president’s Justice Department is not going to proceed with charges against the likely Democratic presidential nominee.

This is what everyone thinks, and not only because they watch “Scandal.” Because they watch the news. 

That is the civic decadence they want to see blown up. And there’s this orange-colored bomb . .

DEATH OF HARAMBE THE GORILLA, AVOIDABLE AND REGRETTABLE.

Icheoku says the death of the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla named Harambe was avoidable and regrettable; as gorillas have been known throughout the world to protect little ones who pay unscheduled visits to their enclosures. Like humans, they usually quickly respond and rush to the rescue of little ones in danger. Why the decision-makers in Cincinnati Zoo rushed to kill the 450 silver-back Harambe defies every logical imagination. A more well rounded Zoo minders, would have explored other ways of retrieving the child including using water jets or cannons to hose off the gorilla, using extra dose tranquilizer, stun guns, distractive toys, tasers, rappelling rescuers or even a helicopter noise to scare off the gorilla. 

But regrettably none of these non lethal options were explored, leading to the quick rush to take the life of a harmless and adorable gorilla, who was only protecting a child whose careless parents left to his own devices, leading to his tumbling down a gorilla's enclosure. Instances abound of similar occurrences throughout the world from England to Australia to Russia to Chicago as well as other places where more thinking Zoo officials, rescued children similarly exposed to possible danger but without taking lethal action culminating in the death of such a animal. 

But be that as it may and in as much as no amount of condemnation or blame game would bring back the lost life, Icheoku says whoever had the custody and care of the child when this incident happened, should be arrested immediately and prosecuted for child endangerment. How a little child, left under the care of an adult, in a zoo with variety of wild life, could easily escape their custodial sight and fell into a gorilla's enclosure, is beyond pale and calls for investigation. Such a custodian, in addition to prescribed punishment, should be fined heavily and made to pay the cost of replacement of another gorilla to the exhibit. 

Icheoku does not buy into any of the so far given explanation, including being saddled with too many children to care for. The duty to protect those children and keep them safe and away from possible harm and in a Zoo is imperative and inexcusable, regardless of their number. Further, the Zoo Director who made the fatal call to kill the endangered silver back, ought to and should resign his office, for rushing off to such avoidable end result. The child could have been rescued without necessarily killing the gorilla. But he did not do what is expected of him under the circumstance by exploring other less lethal options. 

He could have calmed down the atmosphere by asking everybody to quieten down in order not to further scare the already agitated wild animal. That way, the animal would not have had the need to escape with the child to avoid harm coming to him. Also the lame excuse that tranquilizer would have take time to work is also unacceptable as all the Zoo would have down was increase the doze and then waited the gorilla down. Lastly, the gorilla was not threatening the child nor was it in any way trying to harm or cause him any injury. Icheoku laments it was an irrational rush to take life of a such a beautiful majestic silver back and it is indeed regrettable. What a shame to the Cincinnati Zoo director that made call and ordered Harambe, the gorilla, to be executed.

PRESIDENT MUHAMMADU BUHARI, ONE YEAR AFTER.

Icheoku says it is today one year since he won election and was sworn in as Nigeria's president; but so far, there is practically nothing to celebrate about the man from Daura coming into office. A matter made worse when juxtaposed with the the ship-load of promises he made to Nigerian people that helped herald him into office. Icheoku never did nor is expecting anything revolutionary from the government, having never drank of the Buhari coolaid. Regardless, Icheoku says happy anniversary to the president and to Nigerians, this is exactly the bargain you made, so deal with it.

GAME OVER: EMAILGATE JUST CRIPPLED THE CLINTON EXPRESS - JOHN R. SCHINDLER

Running for president this year, after her abortive 2008 effort against Barack Obama, has not worked out quite as planned for Hillary Clinton. This was supposed to be her year, at long last. After enduring a quarter-century on the national stage—including tough years by the side of her gifted but scandal-prone husband—2016 finally lined up as Ms. Clinton’s best shot at moving back into the White House, this time with herin the Oval Office.

That outcome is looking less likely by the day. First, Hillary can’t manage to finish off Senator Bernie Sanders, despite his far-left politics that until recently resided quietly on the fringe of the Democratic party. They are fringe no more, and Bernie’s sincerity and authenticity offer an appealing contrast to the often awkward and stilted Ms. Clinton. This summer’s Democratic convention in Philadelphia, where Mr. Sanders will show up with legions of adoring fans who display a passion altogether lacking in the ranks of Team Clinton, promises to be quite a show—maybe even a madhouse.

Then there’s the troubling matter of EmailGate, the long-running scandal that this column has covered in great detail. That Ms. Clinton and her senior staff misused email during her tenure as secretary of state has long been crystal-clear. Refusing to use government email for government work was a violation of policy, while Team Clinton’s routing of said emails through a private server, then putting classified information on it—including above top secret information from the Intelligence Community—looks like a violation of several federal laws.

Early denials from the Clinton camp tried to make the entire matter go away, insisting there was no “there” there. Once that folded in the face of massive evidence that something indeed had gone very awry with Secretary Clinton’s emails at Foggy Bottom, the excuses shifted to ones familiar to those who experienced the 1990s. Everybody does it. It’s not really a big deal. Above all, this is politically motivated. These false accusations are the machinations of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Such dodges held water for months among Hillary fans, aided by parts of the mainstream media which, long accustomed to running interference for the Clintons, continued to do so, attempting to muddy waters that to those familiar with laws and regulations on the handling of classified materials are actually decidedly clear.

That all fell apart yesterday with the release of the long-anticipated State Department Inspector General’s special report on how Foggy Bottom handles email records and cybersecurity. A shoe has dropped for Team Clinton—a very big shoe—and there will be no going back now.

It can charitably be termed scathing, and it leaves no doubt that Team Clinton has lied flagrantly to the public about EmailGate for more than a year.

The Office of the Inspector General at State, as in all federal departments, exists to ferret out internal fraud, waste and illegalities. However, State had no real IG boss from 2009 to 2013, with an acting director heading up the office. Neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton were in any hurry to find a permanent director for State’s IG shop. Now we know why.

The State IG report, weighing in at over 80 pages, is crammed full of bureaucratese yet paints an indelible and detailed portrait of things going very wrong at Foggy Bottom—especially under Hillary Clinton. It can charitably be termed scathing, and it leaves no doubt that Team Clinton has lied flagrantly to the public about EmailGate for more than a year.

That the State Department’s IT systems were a mess for years was hardly a secret, and the IG report makes painfully clear that State has had a difficult time transitioning into the electronic age. Several recent secretaries of state used email in a manner that would be judged inadequate, and perhaps improper, by today’s standards, including Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, who served under President George W. Bush.

That said, only Hillary Clinton simply refused to use government email for government work—she repeatedly denied requests from State security and IT to use state.govemail—and she systematically dodged federal regulations on electronic communications and records preservation by setting up her private email server of bathroom infamy. Damningly, while several former secretaries of state cooperated with the IG in this important investigation, Ms. Clinton refused to.

As secretary of state, Ms. Clinton attempted a novel experiment of trying to avoid using any information systems that create records that can be subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The IG report includes painful details, including how she flatly refused to use state.gov email for anything, ever, citing privacy grounds. State IT was concerned because Ms. Clinton’s work emails—all being sent via her clintonmail.com address—were winding up in the spam folders of State officials. Important information was not getting where it needed to go. She needed to use official email for official business. Except she refused.

What was so important, so sensitive that Hillary had to dodge FOIA altogether? Clearly protecting her private life—whatever that might be—was valued more highly by Ms. Clinton than actually heading the Department of State.

Then we have the repeating warnings from State officials about the incredibly vulnerable nature of her ramshackle private email system from any cybersecurity perspective. These, too, were blown off by Ms. Clinton and her staff, despite several hacking efforts that staffers were aware of. Guccifer, the Romanian hacker who illegally accessed Ms. Clinton’s email during her tour at Foggy Bottom, has just pleaded guilty, and there can be little doubt that hackers more adept than he penetrated Hillary’s communications.

The FBI is investigating this case as political corruption—not just for mishandling of classified information.

Any foreign intelligence service worth its salt would have had no trouble accessing Ms. Clinton’s emails, particularly when they were unencrypted, as this column has explained in detail. Yet Hillary was more worried about the American public finding out about what she was up to via FOIA than what foreign spy services and hackers might see in her email.

What she was seeking to hide so ardently remains one of the big unanswered questions in EmailGate. Hints may be found in the recent announcement that Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, the former head of the Democratic National Committee and a longtime Clinton intimate, is under FBI investigation for financial misdeeds, specifically dirty money coming from China. In fact, Mr. McAulliffe invited one of his Beijing benefactors over to Ms. Clinton’s house in 2013. Not long after, Chinese investors donated $2 million to the Clinton Foundation.

That an illegal pay-for-play-scheme, with donations to the Clinton Foundation being rewarded by political favors from Hillary Clinton—who when she was secretary of state had an enormous ability to grant favors to foreign bidders—existed at the heart of EmailGate has been widely suspected, and we know the FBI is investigating this case as political corruption, not just for mishandling of classified information. That certainly would be something Ms. Clinton would not have wanted the public to find out about via FOIA.

As is their wont, Hillary’s loyal defenders are denouncing the State IG report as yet another “nothingburger,” adding with customary conspiratorial flair: “there are some real questions about the impartiality of the IG.” In this take, we are supposed to believe that the head of State’s IG office, appointed by President Obama, is a clandestine GOP operative.

Such escapism masquerading as hot takes won’t work anymore. Even The Washington Post, hardly a member of the VRWC, has conceded that EmailGate is a certifiably big deal, and “badly complicates Clinton’s past explanations about the server.” Its editors went further, issuing a blistering statementcastigating Ms. Clinton’s “inexcusable, willful disregard of the rules.” They minced no words: “Ms. Clinton had plenty of warnings to use official government communications methods, so as to make sure that her records were properly preserved and to minimize cybersecurity risks. She ignored them.”

Although Post editors were at pains to state that Ms. Clinton had not broken any laws with her gross negligence at Foggy Bottom, the issue remains open. The FBI is investigating that complex matter now. As this column has previously reported, Hillary’s “unclassified” emails included above top secret information about undercover CIA operatives serving overseas as well as extremely sensitive NSA reports about Sudan—all information from special access programs that’s supposed to be tightly guarded.

Several U.S. counterterrorism operations went awry thanks to Hillary’s slipshod communications security.

What sort of impact those compromises will have on the investigation into EmailGate remains to be seen. We won’t know until the FBI submits its findings to the Department of Justice, probably this summer, with a recommendation to prosecute (or not). The key figure in this whole matter is Patrick Kennedy, a longtime Clinton protégé and State’s undersecretary for management (hence his nickname, “M”), who oversaw the department’s IT and security offices. Mr. Kennedy is widely believed to have enabled Hillary’s irregularities—and apparent illegalities—with email and ran internal interference for her when questions became loud and frequent. The FBI will want to unravel this all.

Hints are now emerging that Ms. Clinton’s neglect of basic security may have damaged more than her political reputation. A new report suggests several U.S. counterterrorism operations went awry thanks to Hillary’s slipshod communications security. This serious accusation is unsubstantiated yet plausible, given how easy it would have been for foreign spies to access Ms. Clinton’s email—as well as how much classified information she and her staff routinely put in “unclassified” emails. Counterintelligence officers will be investigating EmailGate for years, searching for clues about clandestine operations that went wrong, possibly due to Hillary’s IT misdeeds at Foggy Bottom.

For now, Team Clinton has plenty of problems to deal with. Their proffered excuses—that everybody does it, it’s no big deal, it’s just a fake scandal ginned up by the VRWC—have been blown apart by the State Department itself. If Hillary wants to be our next president, she needs to come up with better answers to what she was doing with her email—and why.

So far, Bernie Sanders has treated EmailGate with kid gloves, refusing to go after Ms. Clinton with gusto on the issue. Donald Trump will show no such reticence. What the State IG has revealed plays directly into Mr. Trump’s #CrookedHillary narrative. Large swathes of the public have never liked the Clintonian view that rules are for little people—not Bill and Hillary or their friends. Ms. Clinton’s misconduct as our nation’s top diplomat, including compromising our national security in order to hide her private deals, raises serious questions about her fitness as commander-in-chief. We can be sure The Donald will ask them.

TO FIND PROGRESS IN NIGERIA, THINK LOCAL - SIDDHARTHA MITTER

On May 29, it will be one year since Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari took office. His electoral triumph and no-nonsense style sparked high hopes in a country fatigued by chronic corruption, poor infrastructure, the Boko Haram insurgency, and the incompetence of his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan. But it hasn’t been an easy year for Africa’s largest economy, which has been stunned by the drop in the price of oil — the main source of government revenue and nearly the sole source of foreign exchange. 

So what has Buhari accomplished? 

The evidence is contradictory. On one hand, for instance, a vast anti-corruption campaign is under way — in a country that badly needs it. Buhari reinvigorated the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the country’s lead anti-corruption agency, with aggressive new leadership. Every week brings news of prominent figures being questioned; the sums reportedly in play can reach billions of dollars. But the targeting feels haphazard, the methods are unclear, and running well-handled prosecutions in the country’s creaky justice system is a challenge. 

Buhari also appointed new leadership at the all-important state oil company, the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Investigations have shown that billions of dollars in revenue due for the public treasury have vanished inside the NNPC in recent years. Now the company is making a commendable effort at transparency, publishing accounts for the first time in years. But the oil sector is still in trouble. There is almost no working refining capacity, so gasoline is imported under a creaky license and subsidy regime that breeds chronic fuel shortages. Meanwhile, militants are sabotaging oil production facilities in the Niger Delta. Just cleaning house won’t be enough. 

Against this ziggurat of problems, all of which have both proximate causes and underlying ones that have festered for decades, the Buhari government has appeared at some times inert or incompetent, at others, purposeful and aggressive. There’s evidence to back every narrative, and Nigerian social media, where an ever-growing share of the population thrashes out its impressions, contains them all. 

Nigerians have every right to expect decisive leadership from their chief executive. But the presidency shouldn’t be viewed as the only potential source of change. Nigeria is a federal republic, with 36 socially and economically diverse states. This creates room for experimentation:- 

What the federal government can’t get done, perhaps the states can. 

Devolution of power is somewhat shallower in Nigeria than in some other federations, such as the United States. Still, the states have real authority, and having a reformist state government instead of an old-school, corrupt one makes a real difference to the business environment, the provision of public services, and ordinary people’s lives. Moreover, with populations between 2 and 20 million, Nigeria’s states are better-sized for reform than the national behemoth. And the lack of any real ideological differences between Buhari’s All Progressives Congress, which controls 22 states, and the opposition People’s Democratic Party, which has 13, makes a favorable environment for emulating reforms that deliver. (There is one third-party governor, in Anambra State). 

When Buhari took office, so did some 20 new governors. As in the past, some states are proving better run than others. The difference now is that the collapse of oil revenue makes it urgent for the states to find new ways to support themselves. In 2014, according to fiscal watchdog BudgIT, federal transfers accounted for 75 percent of total state revenues. Almost all that money came from oil revenue allocated — “shared,” in Nigerian parlance — from the federal account. Now, this source of funds has shriveled. Boosting their own resources (known as IGR, or internally generated revenue) is crucial for the states to keep services running. But it is also the key to future policy autonomy and the ability to progress no matter what happens (or doesn’t) in Abuja, the national capital. 

There is room to grow. A BudgIT analysis of monthly revenue for the first half of 2015 found only one state (Lagos) where IGR made up more than 50 percent of revenue. In a cluster of states, it accounted for 20-25 percent of revenue; in the poorest ones, especially in the north, it was as low as 5-10 percent. In part, the level of development of the local economy helps explain the variation. But another reason is that Nigeria is disastrously under-taxed: according to widely cited estimates, tax collection is only 7 percent of GDP, most of it from the oil sector. The real economy is far more diversified than its revenue base suggests. According to a Nigerian banking institute, at least $11 billion in non-oil-based taxes escapethe government each year. 

In the past year, the two states where new governors have taken the most aggressive policy steps are Kaduna, a big, relatively poor state in the north that has been highly dependent on federal transfers, and Lagos, the commercial hub, which has the healthiest state economy and lowest reliance on Abuja. Combined with more tentative efforts in other states, this suggests that leadership and political will, not the underlying condition of the local economy, are the crucial factors for progress in governance. 

In Kaduna, a former industrial powerhouse that has fallen on hard times, the hard-charging new governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has launched a volley of reforms: a biometric census of civil servants, an electronic land registry, removing middlemen from subsidy distribution, eliminating school application fees, starting free meals in primary schools, and more. He has instituted a Treasury Single Account (TSA), combining all the state’s revenue streams into one place, so that various agencies are not tempted by waste or graft. El-Rufai has also reduced the number of state ministries, appointed a relatively young, technocratic team, and has brought in the respected former head of the national tax agency to advise on state tax reform. And while data is kept close in most states, Kaduna is partnering with BudgIT to set up an open-budget electronic platform. 

The governor of Lagos, Akinwunmi Ambode, had the advantage of a much stronger foundation. Tax collection grew twentyfold from 1999 to 2015 under previous governors. Revenue management was opaque, however. To address this, Ambode also instituted a TSA, in September 2015. According to the state finance commissioner, merging the accounts has already saved the state 6 billion naira ($30 million at the official rate); restructuring the state’s debt portfolio has also saved money. A loan scheme for new small businesses began this year; the governor has promised to complete a long-delayed light-rail line, and secured federal support and cleared right-of-way issues for another. On May 25, four days before his own first-year anniversary, Ambode signed an agreement with a private consortium to build a massive and much-needed new highway and bridge across the Lagos lagoon, boasting that it would require no federal funds. 

Some other states are also taking steps to improve governance and grow revenue. In Ogun State, next to Lagos, second-term governor Ibikunle Amosun has overseen a substantial rise of internal revenue, including a 49 percent jump in 2015, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. These results follow a campaign to widen the tax net, with improved enforcement and more competent staff. In Anambra State in the east, internal income grew by nearly 30 percent in 2015; there, the government is replacing often-corrupt collectors with a network of point-of-sale devices. 

On the whole, however, more states are in trouble than are finding their way out of it. In 2015, only 11 states grew their tax intake, while the others saw mild to disastrous declines. According to BudgIT, in the first half of 2015, 19 of 36 states were unable to meet recurrent expenditures (such as paying salaries). In July 2015, 27 states sought a federal bailout; there are now controversies about whether some of those funds were mismanaged. 

Nigeria’s states cannot afford to wait for the federal government to turn the ship around. Emerging from oil dependency requires policy innovation at both the federal and state levels. Better information would help, too. Most state governments are poor at public communications, and the quality of journalism drops off precipitously as you get further from Lagos and Abuja. Lack of scrutiny, in turn, breeds complacency. But when Buhari comes up for reelection in 2019, most governors will too — and any improvements in Nigerians’ lives will have come as much from their performance as from his.