What Election Fraud?

On Wednesday, The Epoch Times posted an article about the research done into the Wisconsin 2020 election done by Election Watch (EW).

The article reports:

Election Watch (EW), a Wisconsin election integrity watchdog organization, has discovered that more than 150,000 votes cast in the 2020 presidential election cannot be connected with a valid address.

EW computer analyst Peter Bernegger said the group’s study of Wisconsin’s voter rolls found 45,000 such occurrences involving people who were living out of state in the Nov. 3 ballot, with another 107,000 documented instances on the part of voters who moved to another address within the state and cast a ballot in a different jurisdiction from the one in which they actually reside.

“That’s over 150,000 votes cast in the 2020 presidential election that cannot be tied to a valid address,” said Bernegger. “That’s illegal in the state of Wisconsin.

“Though there may be a reasonable explanation for most of these, the number of instances is so large that if only two out of 10 were nefariously cast votes, that was enough to tip the election to Biden.”

Former Wisconsin resident Jacob Alldredge, a 27-year-old industrial engineer living in Tennessee, is a case in point.

“I was outraged to learn that the Wisconsin state voter roll shows that I voted in person at the polls on Nov. 3, 2020, when the fact is I was living, registered to vote, and voted in Tennessee. I was not in Wisconsin that day,” he told The Epoch Times.

“The entire situation distresses me because, without election integrity, your vote doesn’t matter,” said Jacob Alldredge.

The article cites a situation where someone who did not vote in that election was credited as having voted and then later removed from the list of people who voted. Please follow the link to read the entire story.

When the Democrats did not cheat enough to put Hillary Clinton in the White House, they learned their lesson. I believe that if we checked addresses of voters in every state, we would find numbers similar to what was found in Wisconsin. I also believe that the movie “2,000 Mules” was a very accurate depiction of some of the cheating that occurred in the 2020 election.

Follow The Money

On January 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower said the following (source: Yale Law School):

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present

and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

On January 5th, The Daily Caller reported:

Members of Congress raked in profits from defense contractor stocks after voting to send billions in military aid to Ukraine, according to financial disclosures and voting records reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The U.S. has delivered more than $20 billion worth of military aid to Ukraine between Jan. 24, a month before Russia invaded, and Nov. 20, according to data compiled by the Council on Foreign Relations, and Congress has approved billions more in spending on Ukraine. To make up for that aid, top defense companies have boosted production, and lawmakers trading on company stocks saw a financial windfall as a result, according to publicly available stock trading data.

Overall, Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon netted the highest average returns on defense company stocks since 2021 at 40%, according to a chart published Tuesday by Unusual Whales, a site known for exposing how members of Congress profit from trading related to legislative issues. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has voted against Ukraine aid, was the top Republican at 35.5%.

We are seeing what President Eisenhower warned us about.

Breaking Up The Logjam

I am going on the record to say that I believe that Kevin McCarthy will be elected Speaker of the House by Friday night. I am not saying this because I am in agreement with Kevin McCarthy becoming Speaker, but because I can see the realities of the situation. First of all, this discussion within the Republican party should have been done in caucus, behind closed doors. Nothing was gained (and much was lost) by airing their dirty laundry in public. There are two main reasons I believe the stalemate will be resolved today–first of all, the role the lobbyists are playing in this has been made public, and second, until the members of the House of Representatives are sworn in, neither the Representatives or their staff will be paid. (The lobbyist participation story can be found here, and the pay story can be found here.)

It’s been a long time since Congress actually listened to the voters, and the role of the lobbyists in this debate is a reminder of that. I suspect that the lobbyists (and the Representatives) want to get this story off of the front page before the American public figures out that they have little or no voice in Washington.

We will know by tonight if I am reading this right!

An Indication Of Things To Come?

On Wednesday, The New York Post reported that the price of apartments in Manhattan is dropping.

The article reports:

Manhattan apartment prices fell 5.5% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of last year — the first time that residential real estate values in the borough dropped since the second quarter of 2020.

In the last quarter of 2022, co-ops and condominium apartments in Manhattan were sold for a median price of $1.1 million, according to a report by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage firm Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

Even though sales and prices were still higher compared to the fourth quarter of 2019, there was a sharp drop in listing inventory, according to the appraisal.

The median price of condos and co-ops sold during the fourth quarter of 2019 was $999,000.

The combination of higher interest rates and high prices have led to lower demand, the analysts wrote in their report.

The article notes:

Of all transactions in the fourth quarter of last year, 55% were all-cash deals — the highest proportion since Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman started tracking these trends.

Analysts do not believe that the fourth quarter is the start of a severe drop in home prices.

The $1.1 million median sales price in the fourth quarter represents the seventh consecutive quarter above that threshold.

Although I suspect that the general slowing of the economy plays an important role in the drop in home prices, I also wonder if public safety concerns about living in New York City are part of the problem.

On November 3, The New York City Police Department released their crime statistics for October 2022:

On enforcement, NYPD officers in October 2022 made 4,367 arrests for complaints of major felony crimes, a 16.5% increase over the 3,749 arrests for major felonies in the same month last year. Arrests for major felonies are up 25.8% (39,742 v. 31,582) so far in calendar 2022, compared with the first 10 months of 2021.

Overall index crime in New York City increased in October 2022, by 5.9% compared with October 2021 (10,930 v. 10,324) driven largely by a 19.3% increase in grand larceny auto (1,244 v. 1,043), a 9.6% increase in grand larceny (4,564 v. 4,163), and a 8.9% increase (1,388 v. 1,274) in burglary.

Those numbers show a significant increase in crime. I have to believe that would have some impact on the housing market in the City.

The Economy Is Not Doing Well

On Tuesday, Breitbart posted an article about The S&P Global U.S. Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for December.

The article reports:

The S&P Global U.S. Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) fell at the fastest rate since May 2020 in December, a continuing sign that the manufacturing sector is on the decline, S&P Global reported Tuesday.

The U.S. Manufacturing PMI posted a 46.2 in December, down from 47.7 in November and solidly below 50, which signals that the sector is contracting, according to S&P Global. Production levels contracted in back-to-back months, with new sales plummeting at the end of December at the fastest pace since 2007, as companies cited weakening demand amid “economic uncertainty” and inflation weighing on customers.

The article concludes:

The broader labor market remains incredibly tight, with hiring far surpassing investor expectations in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). However, even as the market remained tight, the BLS estimated that manufacturers added just 14,000 jobs in November, while private payroll firm ADP estimated that manufacturers actually lost 100,000 employees in November.

“While unemployment is a lagging indicator, manufacturing often lags less than the labor market as a whole,” said Antoni. “For manufacturing to bounce back, we need to see DC scale back the taxing, spending, and—perhaps most importantly—the regulating.”

Until we elect a President who understands the impact of regulations on businesses, our economy will not recover from the damage done to it by the shutdowns and the economic policies of the Biden administration. Unfortunately, policies made in Washington have a major impact on how Americans live their lives. This was not what the Founding Fathers envisioned–they wanted each state to make the laws impacting the people within that state. The states were to act as laboratories–when something worked well in one state, it could be implemented in other states. Unfortunately, we are seeing too many examples of things that have not worked being implemented. We need state leaders who will stand up to the federal government and contest anything that does not fall within the purview of the Tenth Amendment.

Just When You Thought The New York Times Couldn’t Fall Any Lower…

On Tuesday, The Blaze posted an article about a New York Times guest opinion column posted on Sunday.

The Blaze reports:

A New York Times guest opinion column published on Sunday claimed that mating with “shorter people” is a “step toward a greener planet” since smaller individuals are “inherent conservationists.”

The essay by writer Mara Altman, titled “There Has Never Been a Better Time to Be Short,” argued that people of shorter stature live longer and are “better” for the planet because they use fewer resources.

“The short are also inherent conservationists, which is more crucial than ever in this world of eight billion,” the article stated.

Altman’s essay referenced a study by Thomas Samaras, “the Godfather of Shrink Think,” which found that if Americans were 10% shorter, it would “save 87 million tons of food per year (not to mention trillions of gallons of water, quadrillions of B.T.U.s of energy and millions of tons of trash).”

“Short people don’t just save resources, but as resources become scarcer because of the earth’s growing population and global warming, they may also be best suited for long-term survival (and not just because more of us will be able to jam into spaceships when we are forced off this planet we wrecked),” the essay continued.

The article at The Blaze concludes:

The article referenced lecturer and artist Arne Hendriks, who “uses performance and exhibitions to encourage people to embrace fewer inches.” According to Altman’s piece, Hendriks does not allow his children to consume dairy and limits sugar to keep them from getting tall.

“The future I envision is different: I want my children’s children to know the value of short. I want them to call themselves ‘short drinks of water’ with ‘legs for minutes.’ While one yells, ‘I’m the shortest,’ I hope the other will bend his knees to gain an advantage, shouting, ‘No, I’m the shortest!'” the article concluded.

Twitter users relentlessly mocked the article for attributing height to climate change.

In response to the op-ed, Babylon Bee owner Seth Dillon tweeted, “Someone short and single is writing op-eds for The New York Times.”

Former Virginia Rep. Scott Taylor posted on Twitter, “Very heightist of you, @nytimes.”

Did the writer consider the environmental cost of lowering everyone’s kitchen cabinets so that the new generation of short people could reach them?

An Incredible Coincidence?

About two years ago, many of us saw the following video clip on YouTube:

Basically, President Biden is bragging about having the investigator fired who was looking into the corruption in Ukraine involving Burisma, a company connected to Hunter Biden.

I was reminded of this clip after reading about some recent events in the United States Virgin Islands.

On January 2, The Conservative Treehouse reported the following:

After successfully settling a $105 million lawsuit against the estate of Jeffrey Epstein in early December, U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Denise N. George then filed a lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase saying the “bank knowingly provided and pulled the levers through which recruiters and victims were paid.”

Attorney General Denise N George has just been fired.

The article points out:

AG George is fired from her position as USVI AG after filing a lawsuit against JPMorgan. Where did Joe Biden go on vacation? The U.S. Virgin Islands.

The article concludes:

AG Denise George also seems uniquely qualified:

...”Attorney George served as an Assistant Attorney General and trial attorney in the criminal, civil, family, juvenile, White Collar and public corruption divisions of the Virgin Islands Department of Justice for a period of over 18 years.  During her tenure, she successfully prosecuted a full spectrum of violent crimes, including murder, manslaughter, rape, domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse.  As a member of the Child Abuse Task Force, she co-authored the Virgin Islands’ first criminal child abuse and neglect statute.  In the Civil Division, she represented the V.I. government in civil lawsuits filed against and on behalf of the government.

Attorney George also served for several years as the Director of the White Collar Crime and Public Corruption Division.  During that time, she managed the division and successfully prosecuted complex white collar crimes of embezzlement, forgery, fraud, racketeering and public corruption.” (more)

Maybe this is just an incredible coincidence, but it sure looks familiar.

Insanity In California

I suppose saying insanity is running rampant among California lawmakers is redundant, but it seems as if they are doing things to destroy their state’s economy on purpose.

On January 1, The Gateway Pundit reported the following:

Big rigs and buses made before 2010 are now banned from operating on California roadways.

The law, which went into effect on New Year’s Day, was part of a set of clean air regulations the California Air Resources Board passed nearly 15 years ago.

According to truck lobbying groups, the new law will prohibit about 10 percent of the commercial motor vehicles that are operating in the state.

“The rule applies to diesel vehicles that weigh at least 14,000 pounds. The air resources board said there are an estimated 200,000 vehicles that have yet to comply with the rule just days before the new year, including roughly 70,000 big rig trucks, or about 10% of the commercial motor vehicles operating in the state, according to trucking lobbying groups,” KCRA reports.

The board argued that newer engines are better at “filtering out harmful particulate matter.”

“When we passed the regulations in 2008, it was to reduce community exposure of toxic air contaminants, it is 100% to protect public health,” Gerald Berumen, spokesman for the air resources board, told the station.

The article notes:

A truck older than 2010 will be exempt if the engine is replaced with a model made in the last 12 years.

Those who drive fewer than 1,000 miles per year in the state can also apply for a low-use exemption.

The law making things more difficult for many truckers to operate comes as supply chain shortages are still a problem in many areas.

The article concludes:

“Many of us would have thought the consequences of California’s goods movements could be severe,” Rajkovacz (Joe Rajkovacz, director of government affairs for the Western States Trucking Association) said. “You can’t take that big of a percentage of the vehicles off the road, but with the slowdown in the economy, it remains to be seen what the impact will be.”

I understand the desire for cleaner air–most of us share that desire. However, to take 10 percent of the trucks off the road abruptly is going to create some serious supply-chain problems. I really wonder if Californians are happy with their elected officials.

Rescuing Public Education

Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

The recent gains by Republican candidates on the Boards of Education in the local counties represent an opportunity for significant change that must not be squandered The public education system needs a major overhaul. Before any changes are made, a clear and prioritized set of goals must be established. Only then can realistic and specific plans and actions be chosen to meet those goals. What should the goals be? The essential function of education in any society should be the training of children to be productive, self- supporting members who maintain the values and beliefs necessary to maintain that society. Failure to accomplish this will result in the destruction of that society. How do we accomplish this?

First, public schools must prioritize traditional academic skills like reading, writing and math. This can only be accomplished when school administrators and teachers are held responsible and rewarded for improved student achievement. This will require setting specific goals and ensuring that other nontraditional subjects are not taught until the basic skill levels are achieved. This will require allocating instructional time based on the student’s achievement level. The goal of education must return to maximizing each student’s ability–not the goal of equal outcome. Like it or not, human beings are born with differing abilities. That is just the way it is. Societies that are successful, maximize each person’s innate abilities, not demand “equity”(i.e. everyone performing at the same level).

Second, education must teach the values and beliefs that have made that society successful if that society is to continue. That does not mean ignoring things from the past that needed or may still need improvement. No society is perfect, but America has provided greater freedoms and economic opportunity to more people than any other country. The values of the country must be taught and respected. Teachers unwilling to do so must be fired. Indoctrination of non-American values must cease. Allowing Critical Race Theory instruction, transgender instruction, requiring teachers to use pronouns inconsistent with the student’s biological gender, etc. must not be allowed.

Third, a recent report by the Heritage foundation, showed that over the past twenty years, the number of school administrative staff has increased by 87% nationally; while the number of students increased by 8.5% and the number of teachers by 7.6%. Local Boards of Education should review the allocation of resources to make sure that the focus returns to classroom instruction, not a bloated bureaucracy.

Fourth, a large percentage of teachers leave because of disruptive unruly students that are not effectively dealt with by the school administration. Special schools should be established where disruptive students are required to display acceptable behavior. This used to be called “Reform Schools”.

Can these objectives be accomplished? Only time will tell. The entrenched education system will not change without the determination and courage of the Board of Education members. Board of Education members (or their designees) and parents should be allowed to monitor the audio of all classes. There should be nothing to hide.

Unfortunately, This Seems To Typical Of Congressmen

On Monday, Breitbart posted an article about Representative Liz Cheney, who is not officially out of Congress. The article notes that Congress was a very successful financial move for Representative Cheney.

The article reports:

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) will vacate her congressional seat on Tuesday after becoming a wealthy woman during her six years of serving Wyoming.

Cheney, who lost her Republican primary by nearly 40 points in August, will depart Congress on January 3 and return home as a defeated 56-year-old never Trumper.

Cheney will not depart Congress empty-handed. During her six years in Congress, she has become very wealthy. Breitbart News reported in August that Cheney’s net worth ballooned from an estimated $7 million when she first took office in 2017 to possibly more than $44 million in 2020. Depending on the specifics of her latest financial disclosure form, Cheney’s net worth could have skyrocketed up to 600 percent in Congress.

According to her 2020 Personal Financial Disclosure form, Cheney declared a net worth between $10,422,023 and $44,140,000, stemming from assets valued between $10,432,024 and $44,155,000. She reported no earned income, gifts, or transactions. She did, however, declare she held three posts, including a trustee position at the University of Wyoming, membership of a holding company, and what appears to be a position in her family’s trust.

Admittedly, she was not middle class when she went into Congress, but it would be interesting to know how a person increases their wealth by 600 percent while serving in Congress.

Now that we have seen President Trump’s tax returns, maybe Congress needs to share theirs–with information on stock trades and their relationship to legislation members of Congress were involved in.

Solutions For America

On December 18th, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness titled, “10 Steps to Save America.”

The article lists his ten ideas:

Cut the Debt

Secure the Border

Tap Natural Resources

Oppose Discrimination

Disrupt and Reform Higher Education

Revive the Armed Forces

Fix Voting

Drain the Swamp

Upend the Welfare State

Restore Norms

Many of these problems are the result of well-meaning policies that were supposed to solve the problems they created. The welfare state was supposed to end poverty. Instead it created a bureaucracy that has no incentive to reduce the number of people on welfare. Draining the swamp refers to the administrative state that is currently making most of our laws–instead of the legislative branch of the government that is supposed to make them. Restoring norms like community standards, marriage as the foundation of our society, and protecting children from pornography would be a step forward.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. These are things we can all work to implement that would definitely improve the future of our country.

The CDC Censored Information On Defensive Gun Uses (DGUs)

On Saturday, Hot Air posted an article about the CDC’s censorship Defensive Gun Uses statistics.

The article reports:

Gun control activists know that Defensive Gun Uses (DGUs) are a thorn on their side because they make selling gun control harder. Therefore, in what can be uncharitably described as a conspiracy against the civil rights of The People, they mounted a months-long pressure campaign, using influence from a Democrat Senator and the White House, to privately meet with CDC officials to get higher-end DGU statistics removed from the CDC website.

Beth Reimels, Associate Director for Policy, Partnerships, and Strategic Communication at the CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention, said in one email to the three advocates on December 10th. “We will also make some edits to the content we discussed that I think will address the concerns you and other partners have raised.”

While conspiring with gun control activists behind closed doors, the CDC at the same time did not bother reaching out to the researcher whose higher-end DGU estimates were yanked from the CDC website:

Kleck, Professor Emeritus at Florida State University’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, stood by his research. He said the CDC did not reach out to him for his perspective before making the change. He argued the removal of the reference to his estimate was “blatant censorship” and said it was evidence of the politicization of the agency.

The article also notes the lack of media coverage of the censoring of the statistics:

What the CDC did was indeed censorship, but there’s more censorship at play here. And that’s the mainstream media’s complete and total blackout of this story. I have been following the news just about daily to see who does and doesn’t cover this story. So far, to the best of my knowledge, the only coverage from a large media organization has come from Fox News, who reported on the collusion between the CDC and gun control activists, and then followed up with another story on some Republicans in Congress demanding that the CDC reinstate the statistics. Other than these stories, there’s minor coverage at The Daily Caller, Real Clear Politics, and the New York Post which reports it as the “grumbling” of a researcher.

It seems as if some of our government agencies are not being honest about sharing important information with their fellow Americans.

Fighting For Their Constitutional Rights

On Saturday, BizPacReview reported that a Missouri judge has ruled that Mark and Patricia McCloskey won’t receive their guns or fines back following their pardon for exercising their Second Amendment rights, brandishing weapons as BLM rioters invaded their property in 2020. This is an interesting case. There are conflicting stories about how the protesters got into their neighborhood through a locked gate. There are also reports of the protesters threatening the McCloskeys. I am confident that if the McCloskeys had not shown the protesters their guns, the McCloskeys might have been the victims–not the people on trial. It should also be noted that BLM’s record of protest does not include a lot of peaceful protests.

The article reports:

Gov. Mike Parson (R) pardoned the two attorneys last year who had pleaded guilty to fourth-degree assault and second-degree harassment, both misdemeanors. They were charged after waving guns at Black Lives Matter protesters who had entered their private road in front of their home in June 2020.

Mark McCloskey filed a lawsuit in 2021 contending that he and his wife were entitled to the Colt AR-15 rifle and a Bryco .380-caliber they were forced to relinquish after their plea deal and the roughly $2,750 they were ordered to pay, according to Fox News. He argued that the governor’s pardon nullified all judgments and orders in the case.

Moriarty ruled that the pardon had “no bearing whatsoever on any of the terms of the negotiated plea agreement.”

“Plaintiff and his wife are required to follow through with their end of the bargain,” she wrote in her ruling.

The article notes:

No shots were fired and no one was hurt during the encounter. Callahan later determined the protesters were peaceful.

The McCloskeys certainly did not see it that way and there was no way they could know the protesters weren’t armed that were marching to the home of then-St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson’s house to call for her resignation. The prosecutor’s argument appeared specious to many.

During the 2021 sentencing hearing for the attorneys, Judge David Mason asked Mark McCloskey if he acknowledged that his actions put people at risk of personal injury. He responded, “I sure did your honor.”

On the courthouse steps after the hearing, McCloskey, who was a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate at the time, said he’d do it again if faced with similar circumstances according to the Associated Press.

Again, considering the track record of BLM, I am not sure I would have assumed the protesters were peaceful. This is simply another attack on gun ownership and the right to defend yourself by a judge who does not understand (or acknowledge) the rights of Americans protected by the U.S. Constitution.

 

 

Green Technology vs. Cold Weather

On Sunday, Pamela Geller posted an article at The Geller Report about the problem New York City is having plowing the snow from the recent snowstorm. Traditionally, garbage trucks with snow plows are used for snow removal in New York City.

The article reports:

Don’t count on seeing electric garbage trucks plowing snow from city streets any time soon.

The city Department of Sanitation’s goals to become carbon neutral are clashing with the limits of electric-powered vehicles.

The department aims to switch all 6,000 vehicles in its fleet from gas to electric as part of the state’s goal to reduce emissions by 2040. But city officials say they haven’t found electric garbage trucks that are powerful enough to plow snow.

The department has ordered seven electric rear loader garbage trucks, custom-made by Mack and costing more than $523,000 each, with delivery slated for the spring. Used for curbside trash collection, the department’s current rear loader truck fleet runs on diesel and is outfitted with plows to clear streets during snow season.

But officials say previous electric trucks tested by sanitation have not lasted longer than four hours plowing snow before running out of power, and the new electric trucks will be used for trash collection but not plowing snow.

The technology used in electric cars needs to be modified to deal with cold weather. Tesla does have a heater that can be installed in their cars to increase their range in cold weather. However, not everyone can afford either the Tesla or the heater. At some point in the future, electric cars may be a viable option to the internal combustion engine, but that time is not now.

 

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

On Wednesday, The Daily Caller posted the following headline:

BlackRock Will Partner With Ukraine To Help Attract Investors, Rebuild Country, Zelenskyy Says

The article reports:

The Office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Wednesday that he had met with CEO Larry Fink of investment firm BlackRock, and that the two had agreed to coordinate their efforts to invest in Ukraine’s reconstruction.

Zelenskyy and Fink agreed to “focus in the near term” on efforts to attract investors for “the most relevant and impactful sectors of the Ukrainian economy,” according to a statement by Zelenskyy’s office. The two parties previously met in September to discuss the terms under which BlackRock might offer the Ukrainian government pro bono investment advice, according to Kyiv.

On December 28, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about Blackrock and its future involvement in Ukraine.

The Conservative Treehouse reports:

BlackRock, Inc. (together with its subsidiaries) is a massive publicly traded multinational investment firm with over $8.68 trillion in assets under management [December 31, 2020 financial statement] in more than 100 countries across the globe.  To say that Blackrock is invested in globalism, climate change and leftist politics, would be a severe understatement {See Here}.  Larry Fink is the CEO and people like Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton’s attorney of record, are on the board.

The Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute, the guy who tells the $8.7 trillion investment firm BlackRock where to put their money, is Tom Donilon; President Obama’s former National Security Advisor (before Susan Rice), and a key advisor to Joe Biden throughout his career in politics; who was also recently put in charge of U.S-China policy by the State Dept. {link}

The article at The Conservative Treehouse concludes:

We have written about the previous conflicts {Go Deep Here} and {Go Deep Here}. So, now we have the Biden administration positioning U.S. taxpayer funds going into Ukraine.  That DC money will now blend with Blackrock rebuilding money and come out of the laundry operation to provide financial benefits to Blackrock, Zelenskyy and the Biden family syndicate.

Go figure.

There is a reason many politicians come to Washington as middle-class Americans and leave as millionaires. We are about to see that principle illustrated.

Something To Watch Closely

On December 30th, Just the News posted an article about some new regulations coming down from the Environmental Protection Agency. First of all, laws are supposed to be made by elected, accountable Congressmen–not be unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats.

The article reports:

The Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing rules for how it will implement a controversial part of the Clean Water Act.

The waters of the United States, or WOTUS, definition details that the EPA sets the threshold and exceptions of what waterways fall under federal jurisdiction. A waterway, from rivers to road ditches, that fall under the federal umbrella under WOTUS can only be altered with EPA permission.

The final rule change goes back in time, reinstating the rules for navigable waters, seas, interstate waters and upstream sources. The agency says the final rule reverts policy back to what it was before it was expanded in 2015.

“When Congress passed the Clean Water Act 50 years ago, it recognized that protecting our waters is essential to ensuring healthy communities and a thriving economy,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. “Following extensive stakeholder engagement, and building on what we’ve learned from previous rules, EPA is working to deliver a durable definition of WOTUS that safeguards our nation’s waters, strengthens economic opportunity, and protects people’s health while providing greater certainty for farmers, ranchers, and landowners.”

The final proposal was met with criticism by road builders, who say applying WOTUS to road ditches would undermine key provisions in President Joe Biden’s infrastructure law.

The article concludes:

In June 2021, the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers announced it intended to redefine WOTUS.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard Sackett v. EPA, a case filed against the agency by an Idaho landowner, in October. The court is expected to release an opinion in early 2023.

How To Improve Election Integrity

On December 30, Tom Fitton posted the Judicial Watch Weekly Update.

The Update reports some good news about election integrity:

New York City Removes 441,083 Ineligible Names from Voter Rolls Thanks to Judicial Watch!

We just settled a federal election integrity lawsuit against New York City after the city removed 441,083 ineligible names from the voter rolls and promised to take reasonable steps to clean its voter registration lists in the future.

We filed the lawsuit in July after the city failed to clean voter rolls for years. The lawsuit, filed under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), pointed out that New York City removed only 22 names under federal law over six years (Judicial Watch v Valentine et al. (No.1:22-cv-03952)).

Our suit detailed how New York City’s “own recent data concedes that there were only 22 total” removals under this provision “during a six-year period, in a city of over 5.5 million voters. These are ludicrously small numbers of removals given the sizable populations of these counties.”

Moreover, the “almost complete failure of Kings, Queens, New York, Bronx, and Richmond Counties, over a period of at least six years, to remove voters” under a key provision of federal law “means that there are untold numbers of New York City registrations for voters who are ineligible to vote at their listed address because they have changed residence or are otherwise ineligible to vote.”

The settlement details how the city responded to our notice about its voting roll deficiencies with a massive clean-up:

[The Board of Elections] notified Judicial Watch that, in February 2022, they removed, pursuant to Section 8(d)(1)(B) of the NVRA, 82,802 registrations in Bronx County, 128,093 in Kings County, 145,891 in New York County, 66,010 in Queens County, and 18,287 in Richmond County, for a total of 441,083 registrations.

[The Board of Elections] notified Judicial Watch that going forward they intend to cancel registrations pursuant to Section 8(d)(1(B) in each odd-numbered year in the months following a federal election.

Specifically, the city also agrees to track in detail and report its voter roll maintenance efforts through 2025:

For both 2023 and 2025 … the [Board of Elections] will notify Judicial Watch … on or before March 31, by means of separate excel spreadsheets for Bronx County, Kings County, New York County, Queens County, and Richmond County, of the number of removals, including removals pursuant to … the NVRA, made during the previous two years.

The NVRA requires states to “conduct a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove” from the rolls “the names of ineligible voters” who have died or changed residence. Among other things, the law requires registrations to be cancelled when voters fail to respond to address confirmation notices and then fail to vote in the next two general federal elections. In 2018, the Supreme Court confirmed that such removals are mandatory (Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Inst. (138 S. Ct. 1833, 1841-42 (2018)).

This historic settlement is a major victory for New York voters who will benefit from cleaner voter rolls and more honest elections. We are pleased that New York City officials quickly acted to remove 441,000 outdated registrations from the rolls. We look forward to working together under this federal lawsuit settlement to ensure New York City maintains cleaner rolls for future elections.

We are a national leader in voting integrity and voting rights. As part of our work, we assembled a team of highly experienced voting rights attorneys who stopped discriminatory elections in Hawaii, and cleaned up voter rolls in California, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, among other achievements.

Please follow the link above to read the entire post. There is some good news here about the future of America’s elections.

‘Woke’ Has Invaded The American Military

On Saturday, The Daily Caller posted an article with the headline, “These Are The Top 7 Times The Military Went Woke In 2022.” That’s not encouraging.

Here is the list:

1. Teaching Critical Race Theory at service academies

2. Ditching male-centric training practices at Marine Corps boot camp

3. Creating a first-ever DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) Committee

4. Helping airmen evade state-level transgender laws

5. Changing fitness standards to permit more women in the service

6. Scrubbing Confederate references from DOD constructions

7. Prioritizing climate change

None of these things make our military stronger, more cohesive, or more able to protect and defend America. Meanwhile China is doing the things to make its military stronger, more cohesive, and able to defeat any military on the planet. This will not end well.

Please follow the link to the article for further details.

Cloward-Piven At Work

Study.com defines the Cloward-Piven theory as follows:

The Cloward-Piven Theory is a strategy devised in the 1960s to successfully provide welfare and attempt to solve political problems. The main steps of this strategy are to:

    1. Overload a system
    2. Create mass panic and hysteria as the system is overloaded
    3. Oversee the destruction of the system
    4. Replace the former system with a new system

This is the basic outline for The Great Reset.

In a June 2020 article, The Hill describes The Great Reset as follows:

At a virtual meeting earlier in June hosted by the World Economic Forum, some of the planet’s most powerful business leaders, government officials and activists announced a proposal to “reset” the global economy. Instead of traditional capitalism, the high-profile group said the world should adopt more socialistic policies, such as wealth taxes, additional regulations and massive Green New Deal-like government programs. 

The biggest obstacle to The Great Reset is America. We like our freedom and we like our prosperity. On Thursday, Breitbart posted an article that might illustrate how the Biden administration can easily overload the welfare system.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden’s United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has officially reopened legal immigration to foreign nationals with a history of using American taxpayer-funded welfare benefits.

In early 2020, the Trump administration finalized a federal regulation known as the “public charge” rule that made it less likely for foreign nationals to secure green cards to permanently reside in the United States if they had previously used welfare programs like food stamps, Medicaid, or taxpayer-funded housing programs.

Almost immediately after taking office, Biden threw out the finalized public charge rule imposed by the Trump administration, blowing open the door for welfare-dependent legal immigration to the United States, for which American taxpayers will ultimately foot the bill.

First of all, why are laws being made by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats instead of Congress? Until we correct that, we are not really the representative republic that our Founding Fathers established. Secondly, why do we want to bring more people into America who will be welfare-dependent when we can’t even help the people who are already here. Until we find a way to get homeless veterans off the streets, we need to stop allowing people to come here simply to access America’s welfare system.

A Victory For Equal Access

For a few years, libraries across America have featured Drag Queen Story Hours for children. However, when actor Kirk Cameron asked to read his new children’s book at the Indianapolis Public Library’s main branch, he was turned down.

On Thursday, Breitbart reported what happened next:

“This was the largest event held at the library in its 137 years of existence,” Zac Bell with BRAVE Books, who is with the book’s publisher, commented. “The turnout was phenomenal! We were blown away.”

According to Bell, the Indianapolis Public Library “originally denied us the ability to book the reading. We sent them a letter that threatened legal action and they backed down.”

Meanwhile, Cameron and his publisher recently criticized libraries that will not allow a public reading of his book but offer “drag queen story hours” for children.

However, “No more will the family of faith be shut out from the public square!” Cameron wrote in a social media post Wednesday.

Kirk Cameron will be reading his book at New York’s Scarsdale Library on Friday.

This is what the event in Indianapolis looked like:

Thank you, Kirk Cameron and Brave Books for standing up for the rights of parents to have access to events that build up their children.

 

 

 

Limiting Freedom In The Name Of Climate Change

On Wednesday, The American Thinker posted an article about a new policy being put in place in Oxford, England.

The article reports:

This is one of those stories that you’re certain is from the Babylon Bee, and that is stunning in its implications when it turns out to be the truth. In this case, the truth is that, in accordance with UN and WEF climate recommendations, the city of Oxford (home to the famed university) approved plans mandating that citizens may not drive more than 15 minutes distance from their homes without permission. It’s called the “15 Minute City” and is intended to reduce auto emissions. Mostly, though, it will reduce liberty, which is what climate change madness has always been about.

In many ways, the 15 Minute City (which the WEF and UN approvingly tout) is an old, unexceptional idea: Even in big cities, people like vibrant neighborhoods that allow them to travel very short distances (walking, riding a bike, or driving) to fulfill their daily needs (food, clothing, haircuts, etc.). Indeed, there are lots of people who pick homes based on their proximity to amenities. They don’t want to spend their lives in their cars or on public transportation chasing from one thing to another. And that’s fine. Making choices based on lifestyle preferences is a perfectly sound, market-based way to go through life.

But the marketplace is not what globalists want. They want control. Certainly, that’s the case in and around Oxford, England. Word is trickling into America that both the leftist Oxfordshire County Council and the Oxford City Council have plans. Big plans.

On November 30, Vision News reported:

Oxfordshire County Council, which is run by Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party, secretly decided to divide-up the city of Oxford into six ‘15 minute’ districts in 2021 soon after they were elected to office. None of the councillors declared their intention of imprisoning local residents in their manifestos of course, preferring to make vague claims about how they will ‘improve the environment’ instead.

Every resident will be required to register their car with the County Council who will then monitor how many times they leave their district via number plate recognition cameras. And don’t think you can beat the system if you’re a two car household. Those two cars will be counted as one meaning you will have to divide up the journeys between yourselves. 2 cars 50 journeys each; 3 cars 33 journeys each and so on.

Under the new rules, your social life becomes irrelevant. By de facto Councils get to dictate how many times per year you can see friends and family. You will be stopped from fraternising with anyone outside your district, and if you want a long distance relationship in the future, forget it, you are confined to dating only those within a 15 minute walk of your house.

A single person’s life will be at the mercy of Communists in central office, dictating the same type of draconian rules we had to avert the last crisis, a mild flu virus so deadly 80% of people didn’t even know they had it.

If this policy is maintained in Oxford, it will eventually come to America.